But about as democratic as can be. No one was forced to buy Reddit. Benefit or not to the company, the company was essentially sold. The new owners of their very own choice will want a return. A big return to essentially cover 8 billion they just paid for it.
Reddit will need tens of billions in revenue to make the profits those new owners will demand. It is that drive to justify the cost that will make it another shitty bloated ad platform.
But that’s not really how the stock market works anymore. Now investors don’t buy stock to support a company and draw a portion of the profits. That version of the market hasn’t existed for a while.
Now, the market is used as a gambling platform for wealthy people and is kept afloat only by IRA, 401k, charitable trusts, etc. Basically, a company is having trouble with profit. You buy into the company, put in a CEO you can control, have them boost the price at the expense of employees, customers, and long-term profit. Sell the stock. Let the company fall apart.
Then buy it low, have the CEO make up a new product based on whatever tech fad is popular. Sell just before the money is spent. Let the project fail because all the money was spent on marketing and consultants and not on the employees to actually do the project. Buy up the stock again, do some stock buybacks, sell again, etc.
But it’s never a strategy of: hire really good employees, make them happy, give them an achievable project with enough funding, increase the company’s reputation by making quality products, etc. That requires actually good business plans and products and a lot of work and no short term, “hey look at how much money I saved by cutting budgets even though everyone said our products will be crap without it,” kinds of flashy quarterly reports.
Playing the gambling game is more reliable profit and with retirement funds and all that keeping serious market crashes from happening, and the politicians being on their side and willing to bail them out if it does get bad, there’s a lot of wiggle room and a lot of people to lose money and funnel to them that doesn’t affect the corporations.
But about as democratic as can be. No one was forced to buy Reddit. Benefit or not to the company, the company was essentially sold. The new owners of their very own choice will want a return. A big return to essentially cover 8 billion they just paid for it.
Reddit will need tens of billions in revenue to make the profits those new owners will demand. It is that drive to justify the cost that will make it another shitty bloated ad platform.
But that’s not really how the stock market works anymore. Now investors don’t buy stock to support a company and draw a portion of the profits. That version of the market hasn’t existed for a while.
Now, the market is used as a gambling platform for wealthy people and is kept afloat only by IRA, 401k, charitable trusts, etc. Basically, a company is having trouble with profit. You buy into the company, put in a CEO you can control, have them boost the price at the expense of employees, customers, and long-term profit. Sell the stock. Let the company fall apart.
Then buy it low, have the CEO make up a new product based on whatever tech fad is popular. Sell just before the money is spent. Let the project fail because all the money was spent on marketing and consultants and not on the employees to actually do the project. Buy up the stock again, do some stock buybacks, sell again, etc.
But it’s never a strategy of: hire really good employees, make them happy, give them an achievable project with enough funding, increase the company’s reputation by making quality products, etc. That requires actually good business plans and products and a lot of work and no short term, “hey look at how much money I saved by cutting budgets even though everyone said our products will be crap without it,” kinds of flashy quarterly reports.
Playing the gambling game is more reliable profit and with retirement funds and all that keeping serious market crashes from happening, and the politicians being on their side and willing to bail them out if it does get bad, there’s a lot of wiggle room and a lot of people to lose money and funnel to them that doesn’t affect the corporations.