https://markets.businessinsider.com/amp/news/steve-cohen-ken-griffin-invest-3-billion-gamestop-short-seller-2021-1-1030003305?__twitter_impression=true

Wall street and bailouts. Name a more iconic duo.

  • TossedAccount [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    The whole privatizing profits and socializing losses thing is supposedly proof to the market fundamentalist libs that capitalism as it currently exists can't be Real Capitalism because it's not Free Market^TM capitalism, but "socialism for the rich" or Corporatism or Crony Capitalism. Under a truly Free Market^TM the people who took short positions on Gamestop simply eat the loss without a bailout and divest from those short positions, and the /r/WSB noisemakers and distorters would have been too atomistic to influence the price of the stock to begin with. The lack of rational behavior and lack of Walrasian outcomes is evidence enough of this.

    The root of the problem here is ultimately a lack of class consciousness and rejection of Marxist economics in favor of neoclassical (effectively neoliberal) ideology. These libs recognize the problems with oligopoly but they fail to take into consideration the role of imperialism in reinforcing oligopolistic and irrational outcomes like this. They fail to recognize what's obvious to Marxists and Keynesians, that oligopoly is the inevitable result of the initial free market conditions that arguably sort of existed when Smith, Mill, and Ricardo were alive, so the wonkiest of them (usually actual economists and other educated PMC libs) who only partially recognize these contradictions fall in line behind trust-busting and similar Warren-esque policies that otherwise completely preserve market conditions. Meanwhile the true believer ideologues put their head in the sand and simultaneously believe there's a corporatism/crony capitalism problem while also somehow believing that privatization is the solution.

    • camaron28 [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      So, they want a casino.

      I mean, that's literally what they want.

      • TossedAccount [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        They glorify calculated risk-taking by the petty bourgeoisie and insist that business owners who got lucky deserve the reward for taking risks and putting their asses on the line (setting aside that the downsides of risk can easily be offloaded onto employees, e.g. wage cuts and layoffs during lean years).

      • OneToughNerd [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah, but they think that they can control the rules so that no one breaks it.