In traditional regular investment you give companies money so they can make more money off them by creating value, and also you get some control of the company.

Note that commercial companies are obliged by law to maximize shareholders value, government can punish them if they don't.

Gambling, on the other hand, only redistributes capital around, without creating any value, which would be at least benign, if it didn't _attract_ all kinds of crime: drug abuse, human trafficking, fraud and violence.

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tzs 2 days ago | parent [-]

But when I buy stock it doesn't give money to the company. It gives money to the previous stock holder that I bought the stock from. From the company's perspective all that happened is that a small share of the company has changed ownership.

	▲	deepsun 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You probably talking about publicly traded companies: If you buy stock at IPO, direct listing or any other follow-on offering -- it goes directly to the company. And the price you pay then already accounts for your future ability to resell your stock to anyone else later, stocks would valued way less if you could only sell it back to the company. But also don't forget that public trading is only one market, there's also a huge market for private companies stocks. Those go directly to the company for its operations. And I also haven't touched dividends.