from Hacker News

Understanding "Financialization" and How to Defeat It

by qp11 on 5/27/24, 3:32 AM with 13 comments

• by jameslk on 5/27/24, 4:01 AM

  This article has a lot of opinions (it’s from a union organization) without a lot of citations. In the 1970s, a lot of things changed (e.g. see this discussion[0]). Seems this article wants to focus on its narrative of what happened in the 1970s.

  0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25188457

• by jbm on 5/27/24, 4:05 AM

  > How to Defeat It

  Apparently this is by creating unions and a postal bank. I have no idea how we get from here to there, I wish they had concentrated on that.

• by jcranmer on 5/27/24, 4:11 AM

  > If that focus on immediate shareholder value means the quality of products suffers, the environment is damaged, that workers are treated poorly, or even if it comes at the expense of the long-term sustainability of the business, that's too bad! Today’s profits are the only thing that matter in a world of financialization.

  ... is this trying to argue that corporations cared about all of that stuff before financialization? Because that is what it seems like it's trying to argue. And as anyone who's done even a cursory glance at the history of the 19th century well knows, corporations were far more rapacious than they are today.

• by anonydsfsfs on 5/27/24, 4:04 AM

  ...is that the entire article? This reads like the thesis statement for a much longer article or book.

• by zooq_ai on 5/27/24, 4:04 AM

  What a dumb article