Is it time to end the stock market... and put a close to non-stop expansion in America?

No.

That would be a very,very bad idea.

So far, I got two negatives but no explanations.

Sure it would cause chaos… but only at first. Housing prices cost you 20 years worth of salaries simply because the market takes into account the fact that you can BORROW that much.

If the paradigm of borrowing and expansion ended… you’d be able to rent-to-own for pennies on the dollar.

The price of raw materials would suddenly go way down. The price of delivery of those materials would go way down.

Salaries would remain stable (except for those people who are tied to Wall Street and the Banks, they’d lose a massive amount), while the prices of services and materials would shrink.

Our whole economy is based on never-ending expansion. Before Wall Street and global banks, a person could build a home for the cost of a year’s worth of work.

Not 20 years, the way it is today.

The reason people work 8 hours a day still, with all this technology available… is the nonstop drive to expand. The design of our economy creates the fact we have to work 20 years to own a home, and it creates the fact we have to work 8 hours a day or more just to live a comfortable life.

The men at the spigots of the money flow (those in control of the workings of the stock market and global banks) are parasiting your money directly out of your wallet, and most have no idea this is going on because they take “the economy” for granted, as if its not specifically designed in America to cause laborers to work, work, work, and those with connections to get ultra-rich at the expense of their own workers. And they work hard too, but no harder. They have connections. Just like the men who controlled water, in Rome. But our bankers and stock marketeers are a lot more greedy than the Roman water managers.

Huge companies in the future can be formed by cooperatives instead of corporations. There’d still be stupidity, but there’d be far less greed, corruption, graft, and hours worked for the dollar.

The transition between expansionist-economy into turnkey economy would be chaotic. Maybe that’s what the above two replyers fear. It would be very chaotic, and last probably 20 to 75 years before things turned around and stabilized into the new paradigm. But once the shift is made…. you’d no longer be a slave. And if you’re a Wall Street executive… you won’t be able to suck blood anymore.

PS I play and invest in the stock market. I swing trade. I’ve never lost money in it at the end of the month… but that’s only because I know how corrupt it is, my strategy is to follow the corruption. My strategy works because of two reasons: 1) the stock market is corrupt and 2) most people have no idea just how corrupt. My point returns to ending the stock market)

no get real. the wheels on the bus go round and round…....

Um, where did you get these ideas? What is a “turnkey” economy? Are you thinking of some form of communism? What do you do about distribution or resources? What happens when demand for resources gets higher and higher, but there is no increase in supply? How will resources be distributed if there is no monetary system? Do we go back to using clam shells?

You sound like you’re just pissed at rich people, perhaps even including yourself. It sounds like you think that corruption dirties all money. It sounds like you think that the flow of capital has no relationship to the economy. It’s like kids trading baseball cards—an activity with no real meaning.

And I still have no idea what you think would replace it. Change is constant. If you stagnate, you die. If you don’t have a market, how can you distribute capital?

You don’t even say what kind of corruption you are talking about. Come on, dude! Spill the beans! What corruption do you see every day? I’m not asking you to name names; just to give examples so we can know what the hell you are talking about.

The game will never stop, until everyone is dead. And even then, the bacteria will still be competing. There will always be more demand than there is supply. Don’t worry about it. If we can’t keep expanding, we will conserve and improve efficiency in order to make enough for all the new people. We may well turn to being a gift economy (fat chance). We may well all become more cooperative and less selfish (right). I’m sorry. Cooperation is just another form of selfishness. So is giving, for that matter.

Wasn’t Darwin something? No longer must we camouflage our most profoundly selfish instincts, we can be proud of a pathological selfish nature…cos that’s how the Animal kingdom operates… We can draw inspiration from the conduct of apes, rats and bacteria, our animal and bacteriological ancestors are our teachers. Ok. But Maybe then if we want to survive as individuals, we have to co-operate rather than exploit a capitalist system.

Go read. Milton Friedman, John Keynes, Peter Lynch, Jeremy Seigel. Economies are based on laws…not legislated laws, but natural laws. The stock market was developed as a result of a need for a more efficient way for corporate ownership to be transferred. It didn’t create the market. It was developed, as we know it, as a result of natural economic laws. Read a book.

@daloon, by turnkey economy… I mean a mostly capitalist economy, but without the ability to raise massive capital through the selling of stock. And without the ability to lend money one does not already possess.

As for corruption… look at the Market Makers and so-called Specialists at the Stock Exchange. They manipulate the opening price of the stocks they are responsible for, either for their own benefit, or for the benefit of who above them ordered to them to adjust the price. Sure, they can’t manipulate it 100% every minute of every day. But they can manipulate it here and there, and get rich doing so at the expense of investors who have no clue.

A capitalist economy does not need a stock market, and does not need banks who are allowed to lend out 10 times the money they actually possess.

Those things were good for the past America… but now that America is full… no reason to expand for expansion’s sake.

@RLMinVA, if economies are inherently based on natural laws, then how does North Korea’s economy work? It’s controlled and interfered with at every level. And they get along. But they live in a totalitarian society, so their economy isn’t nearly as healthy as other countries that allow for some natural chaos. They probably have a huge black market that they don’t even take advantage of. In fact, a huge-degree of laissez-faire type capitalism is obviously healthy for any economy. But its certainly not healthy in its total, pure form… when counteractive manipulations can be made by the government for the benefit of the people. Too many of those manipulations becomes what people fear as socialism, of course. No ”-ism” is good in pure form. That’s idolatry to believe in any of them that way.

And the stock market wasn’t formed as way for corporate ownership to be orderly transferred. Its easy to transfer ownership in any number of ways, no need for a stock market for that.

It was created for economic expansion, and to make it quick and easy to raise massive capital for the corporations that issue it, while at the same time providing an investment and potential profit, for those willing to take the risk, those risktakers each absorbing a tiny portion of any loss, or enjoying a share of any profit. There’s definitely positives to the stock market. But we’re at a point in history where the negatives outweigh such positives.

@Kraigmo You do understand that “stock” and “money” are just metaphors? They are metaphors for confidence—confidence that whatever endeavor you are engaging in is of sufficient value to enough people to make it worth supporting a given venture. The amount of countable money in the system is irrelevant. What matters is confidence. Money is just a convenient measure of confidence. The stock market is just a convenient way to exchange confidence.

Yes, the system can be manipulated. But every system will be manipulated. Turnkey is just as vulnerable.

I am in agreement with you, but you have to realize that in order to do what you want, people need to place a lid on what they want. Personally, I think it would be worth it. It is not just the stock market but the entire corporate structure that should be replaced by smaller more localized companies. We should concentrate suburban areas into small cities linked by mass transit and surrounded by wilderness areas. Most of our food should come from local sources. This, unfortunately, is wishful thinking on my part. It is not going to happen volutarily, though energy shortages and global warming may force it into being. Are you familiar with any of the books by Bill McKibben? You might be interested in his book Enough.

I understand what Daloon means by stock and money being metaphors. Just like gold, or carved sticks from a king, or mutual exchange agreements… all just metaphors for confidence in whatever system is being used, just like he said.

But in America, the goal of a giant cereal company isn’t to sell cereal. It’s “to grow”.
The goal of giant insurance companies isn’t to sell insurance… It’s “to expand”. Same goes for a lot of other (but not all) companies, especially in America.

Large Companies are no longer interested in just buying and selling. They add little games to the system (the stock market being one of them) to fuel this growth and expansion.

The desire to grow is pathological, at this point. Why can’t a corporation be happy making a huge profit buying and selling things? Why the insane desire to grow? It’s like an arms race… each company feels that if it doesn’t grow, it will get swallowed up by another company that does grow. This isn’t inherently a part of capitalism… it’s a byproduct of a credit-based economy and the nature of stock-owned companies.

And it’s not even healthy… more than half of the failed banks and insurance companies over the last year would have been prevented if those banks and insurance companies didn’t buy up so many side-businesses and credit-schemes, and instead just concentrated on their core business.

The 3rd largest mortgage services company in America, LandAmerica (the holding company containing a company founded by Benjamin Franklin) is now gone. It would be here today, if it didn’t try to expand, expand, expand. They expanded themselves into oblivion, declared bankruptcy last year, and what was left of them, was bought out by their largest competitor, Fidelity.

On one hand, this is proof capitalism “works”. Failed decisions result in companies dying and being taken over by competitors. But this is ironic because the very things LandAmerica was doing to survive (nonstop expansion) were the very things that killed it. It’s core business… title policies… were always profitable. But it couldn’t stick to its core business due to that insane desire for growth. (Also, how convenient that the CEO who helped destroy it… got huge bonus promises from Fidelity right before he arranged for the company’s semi-orderly collapse into banktrupctcy and the sale of its one profitable core unit to Fidelity).

I’ll have to check that book out that LostInParadise recommended.

The purpose of business is not to grow; it’s to make a profit. Profit is made, of course, when you sell widgets for more than it costs to make them.

There are a number of ways of maximizing profit. You can sell more widgets. The more widgets you sell at a profit, the larger a profit you make. You can reduce your cost of producing widgets, so there is a greater profit per widget. You can increase the demand for widgets in order to sell more (often via marketing campaigns). You can improve the quality of your widgets in order to sell more.

In order to make more money, you have to grow the business. It’s not pathological. It’s just the reason why people are interested in providing goods and services to each other.

Growth comes in several ways, too. Demand for your product may increase, either due to customer’s desires, or due to efforts to enhance demand. And of course, another way to make more money is to acquire other businesses that sell a lot of widgets. Acquisition of other companies, if done well, can also help you reduce the cost of producing widgets.

You ask why corporations can’t be happy making a huge profit buying and selling things. It isn’t corporations that aren’t happy, it’s the people who own the corporations. They want to make more money, and it doesn’t matter if they do it by buying and selling or by making more widgets or merging with other companies.

In the end, it comes down to individuals. We are the ones who are always desirous of more. Why do we want more? We want to improve our quality of life. We could always decide that this current quality of life is the maximum, and we will stay here forever. That’s what it would take to have a no-growth economy. In order to make people at all happy with no material improvements in their lives, you would have to, at the very least, even out the distribution of goods and the wealth of all people. If you don’t make everyone equal, then people will not stop wanting what other people have.

I don’t see how you can get people to be satisfied with the current level of wealth. So if you don’t do that, then a no-growth economy is impossible. You’re blaming the wrong thing for the need for growth. It’s not credit markets or the stock market, or even companies, themselves. It’s us. Every single person who wants more than they have.

Corruption is always going to be a part of human behavior. You’re looking for some kind of utopian world that is really anti-human. I’m sure this may come from some philosophical view about the role of humanity in the cosmos, but I think your idea is a non-starter, and your justification for the idea also is not a desirable goal, even if you could get people to go along with you.

Constant growth is not possible. Resources are finite and at some point the growth will stop. There is limited energy, limited minerals and limited space on the planet. The current growth has already done great damage. We are wiping out wildlife, creating urban and suburban blight and increasing people’s stress levels. Toward what end? So people can play with more gadgets and gizmos? This will all eventually come to an end. The only question is whether we do it sanely and humanely or wait for it all to come crashing down.

We have let the children run amok and they are burning the house down. Does a sensible parent give in to their children’s demands? There must be discipline with regards to economy particularly where credit is concerned…right if money is a metaphor for confidence, then credit is a metaphor for gambling. And unlike the Casinos the banks will lose.

@LostInParadise wrote: Constant growth is not possible. Resources are finite and at some point the growth will stop.

Our planet has gazillions of gigawats raining down on us every day. To all intents and purposes, it is an unlimited supply of energy. Our planet has a vast amount of material in it. If you have enough energy and technological know-how, growth can go on until the sun dies. Far longer than we can imagine humans will survive, anyway.

If the growth of human population peaks at 9 billion and then starts to decline, as some demographers predict, then we’ll be able to increase resources for people without using more than we currently do.

People will choose between gadgets, development and less development. It is what it is. We can seek to persuade others about which choices we should make, but protecting the wilderness (such as it is) at the expense of people is a very difficult sell.

I think the coming “crash” is oversold. I’m all in favor of protecting the more wild areas of the world, but even if we don’t, I don’t think there will be disaster. Humans will figure out how to deal with the problems, or humans will die. My bet is on humans.

@daloon , There are any number of things that we could run out of. It only takes one limiting factor to halt growth. Maybe it will not be energy sources directly but perhaps the amount of land required to do the conversion. Solar cells used for electric generation and wind turbines take up a lot of land. Perhaps the limiting factor will be copper or some other mineral or maybe the level of pollution. I could be wrong, but I can’t imagine the entire world, even with its current population size, ever being able to live at the level of industrial nations. Consumer dominated economies have only been around for the last 200 years or so, a very short period in the grand scheme of things. If we had to, we could get by just fine at an equillibrium level.

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