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The United States is far more socialist than capitalist and it’s not close. In the early 1900s the federal tax rate was 0. Now we spend 125% of what we bring in in taxes. That is definitely not capitalism. That’s not a free market, that is the government spending far beyond what’s even feasible

The term "capitalism" was literally only created for the purpose of writing criticisms of the (then) current system of markets/trading/taxing/investing.

Try actually defining capitalism in a way that doesn't apply to basically any random society since the dawn of agriculture.

Stuff like people buying and selling items using a currency for a price the individual chooses has been common to basically every human society we have written records for.

The formalization of the process of buying shares in a company and receiving dividends/profits as a result is a bit newer, but the general concept of "I give you money, you use it to make something and sell it then give me money back" has been around for roughly the same amount of time as currency itself.

Anyways, my point is that there is a lot of things to criticize about our current world/economy, using the term "capitalism" while doing so is too vague to be useful in any way.

(Communism/socialism does have more of an actual definition, but very few people are aware of or use it, so it doesn't help all that much).

Empirically this isn't true. However you feel about "true" capitalism vs socialism, countries underpinned by capitalism have prospered, even the socialist flavors (China, Scandinavia)...while the countries that have attempted pure socialism have all failed.

Is there even a government under true capitalism or is it more like the lunar anarchy described in „the moon is a harsh mistress“?

Under True Capitalism™, cartels could do their price fixing on reality shows.

Where does capitalism mandate corruption? Yes, it is not realistic to assume there is no corruption, but capitalism in and by itself does not mandate corruption.

Obviously this all falls apart when capitalism can buy legislation. We are seeing how the USA is currently eroded by a few oligarchs.

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That's crony capitalism again

The most insistent the salesman, the highest odds you got a bad deal.

But we are thread is about corruption (probably with bribes, and stealing the money of people that didn't participate on the transaction), while everybody keeps pretending is a consensual sale.

Did you buy it from a door-to-door salesman, or did you seek it out?

See, a positive outcome from investing in inflated stock.

problem with solar is that in itself it is great, but here in US if you look at the cost per watt produced it is heavily inflated with permitting and marketing costs. which is basically their margins till it becomes barely profitable to you. otherwise most of solar system cost has been fallen quite a bit for last decade plus.

dont believe me, look up how much a open loop DIY system costs.

I'm going to assume this question was in good faith, and ignore that you are seemingly spamming it as a 'gotcha' all over this discussion.

If I'm already invested, and they change the rules on me in a way I don't like, I have to sell, and that's a taxable event.

So if I have invested in a Nasdaq index, and I don't want a massive exposure to SpaceX prematurely, I am forced to close my position and immediately pay taxes on the profits. I pay the taxes, and now my investing capital is reduced because Elon wanted to force index funds to buy SpaceX stock, which indirectly forces all current owners to buy SpaceX.

It's not future buyers so much as people that are already exposed, and were probably not counting on getting rug pulled by the Nasdaq.

So no, you are correct that no one new to investing is forced to own SpaceX stock, but millions of existing fund holders are now exposed to a stock in a way that simply wasn't possible when they put their money in, and will be penalized if they don't want that.

People already own them, and have owned them for months or years before the rules were changed for SpaceX.

There's a cost to selling, the brokerage fee plus in many countries there's then taxes due on any profits. Many people would prefer to have unrealized gains where they can pay the tax years ahead, when they need the money.

(Also please don't make the same comment 4+ times.)

leaving the word 'forced' aside (purposefully), pension funds, 401k holders, and many passive investors end up buying these things. you're right that no one is "forcing" them, but people who try to invest responsibly with little control over the day-to-day which is most people place trust in the institutions who do that investing for them.

I don't think that the claim of "the Nasdaq is misusing their institutional trust" is a controversial claim. Moreover, one of the things that people choose when they (401k, pension funds, passive investors) is institutional mechanisms that prevent potentially mispriced items from entering their portfolios.

The problem is a lot of passive investors own large quantities of that ETF, and to take their money out now they have to pay a tax penalty, so they are forced to invest in SPCX due to the rule change.

Its also a matter of principle. They had a seasoning period to allow for market price discovery over time, and they created a process to waive it for one company. Its not unreasonable to say that that is a bad thing.

Correct. Index funds are owned by people. For example, I have invested a large chunk of my retirement savings in an S&P 500 indexed fund (as many, many other people do). Whatever stocks the S&P 500 list, are what I end up owning; if I don't want to own one of those, I have to either roll that money into a different fund (which IIRC has limits, can't do that too often without tax consequences) or take the money out (and pay a tax penalty for withdrawing it before retirement).

So whether the index funds do or don't buy a certain stock has direct implications for real, non-millionaire, people.

No, they're just owned by people. Most of whom aren't billionaires.

Okay? Just because you don't have access to that investment vehicle doesn't mean others aren't using it. What type of reasoning is this? "I, personally, am not too badly effected, therefore it's not a problem"

And guess what, your VTI which does track NASDAQ as part of it's index is effected by this inclusion rule.

>QQQ and /NQ or /MNQ futures are the most popular instruments for getting exposure.

QQQ tracks the Nasdaq 100. It's an index fund. If the index includes a new ticker, then QQQ has to buy it.

Buying QQQ doesn't seem like going out of one's way. I don't understand your comment. "ETFs and chill" is a very common investment strategy.

Literally the index. If you track the NASDAQ as part of your index you must obey it's inclusion rules.

Funds often have institutional investors. Many of them Pension Funds (i.e. ordinary every day people) and when the institutional investors signed up, they didn't do so expecting Nasdaq rule change.

that is the whole point of an index fund - they buy whatever is in the index so you can get exposure to the total market. The scandalous thing is that an IPO'd company is going to have a lot of volatility for weeks to months after it goes public, so they typically do not allow any newly listed company to be included in the index for up to one year. This is for the benefit of retail. People have put their entire life savings into these funds because they are viewed as the optimal tradeoff between risk and return. Those people are now contractually obligated to either sell everything or expose themselves to spacex's IPO price movements.

> And if you are buying an instrument where you can lose more than you invested, the approach maybe wrong? :-)

This is precisely why shorting can lose more than you "invest", because you're not buying an instrument, you're selling it with the intent (or promise, depending on what kind of instrument it is) to buy it back later, hopefully at a lower price.

The risk is unbounded.

Yes, you can but does that ability benefit the population/nation/market as a whole?

Are they actually? How many intermediate steps are involved in finding shares to borrow for a short? I imagine they have to be transferred to some central depository with the feature, for a start, and that takes 2-4 days