THE STOCK MARKET 💸💸💸

So when I was a boy, my dad had me flipping thru this manual, choosing a stock fund sort of thing to put my lunch money into.

I liked it. It's cool. I was into it.

Invest in things people are doing, that are driving the world forward, and passively earn a return. Neat!

Markets are awesome.

But now as an adult type of person, something about it doesn't seem quite right.

Markets are awesome, but..

If I own a piece of a company, they should want my creative input and guidance. Otherwise what's the point of having me? If it's just to passively own the share, I wonder why they wanted to sell it.

It's easy to think of things as being legitimate and making sense just because they happen on a large scale, but does it pass the sniff test conceptually?

People worry about some symptoms, like "insider trading", but not about the root issue. We just take for granted that it's normal that other people will want to sell us a share of their company, and we don't have to do anything and still get a piece of the action.

If some random guy in a small office offered you that deal (and even if you knew you'd legitimately have a share of their company), you'd probably be like "....uhh"

Needing capital is a thing, ya. But that's for startups, and it's up to seasoned venture capitalists to decide if it's worth funding. Established companies with plenty of cash flow shouldn't have a need to sell you a share, unless they want a way out and a way to leave the public with the bag.

Try thinking about future trends and what a good stock market strategy would be.

To me it seems like there's so much boom potential in Africa, and most of Asia seems a pretty safe bet to grow.

(In general the poorer countries should trend better than the richer countries, if you assume there's nothing special or long lasting about the richest countries and the disparity should lessen.)

So suppose you can anticipate the best economies to invest in. Easy, right? Buy and hold shares of those economies, and boom.

But I don't think it actually works like that.

Whenever I think about these trends and where the booms will be, the biggest (the overwhelming) thing that I just keep thinking about is a trend towards decentralization.

Even beyond "mom and pop" type of decentralization (like removing the rules that favor big corporations), I imagine there comes a point where I can deliver my lasagna to you on a drone copter, and other similar advancements that cause an explosion in peer-to-peer and very decentralized commerce.

That's where the real boom happens. And the stocks you own, even if they're in boom economies, don't very perfectly tap into that.

So while Africa may boom to a higher standard of living more similar to the rest of the world, I'm not sure there's a way to passively buy and hold a share of that.

The way to tap into that is to have your boots on the ground, creatively doing something.

So I think that's what the con is. It isn't that large companies are gonna collapse and go to 0. It's that they won't keep up with the emergent economy and the real growth that happens.

(And the people who sell it to you are happy to be liquid, rather than be stuck with the bag in a constantly evolving world.)

I'm not saying not to buy stocks

They're probably better than real estate and cash and gold and basically everything besides BTC. Especially if you identify some trends decently.

But I see it as an investment in the current paradigm, or basically a hedge against the kind of world we want taking longer to get here.

I don't think there's a way to use stocks that taps into the emergent, localized, peer-to-peer growth explosion that's bound to happen at some point.

They might do quite well. They might sort of tap into the real growth. But very imperfectly. You'd be better off holding Bitcoin.

It continues to be my feeling that Bitcoin is the only thing you can passively hold that taps into the future of where we're going. Everything else you want to be doing, using.

It could be a slow boil. If you own some big stock like General Electric or whatever, maybe what happens is they essentially become cash dispensers who try to identify the right projects to invest in. And owning a share of them is a share of their ability to invest correctly, to invest in more decentralized things.

But that still won't be as good as the actual growth that's happening. (Good visionaries and creators aren't going to be settling for deals that give a big windfall to the people who spotted the startup cost.) It will be a way of like "hanging on", so that the old way isn't left entirely in the dust, but it'll still fall behind.

You'd be better off holding Bitcoin, and diversifying into projects that you're a part of yourself.

Standard advice from someone like Jim Rogers would be something like "sit on the sidelines in cash until you're sure, and then strike". It's good advice. But what you want to be doing now is hold Bitcoin. Cash or gold will keep you static, but Bitcoin will keep you tethered to the emergent p2p economy. Sit on that sideline, and then decide when the moment is right for other things.

public ownership could be a thing

Sort of.

And blockchains could maybe help.

But only for projects that make sense to own publicly. A bridge or a port. Energy, hospitals. Things that are a utility to a whole area and inherently matter to lots of different people.

One aspect of these services is that decreasing the chance of big mistakes seems like the vital thing. (You want the bridge to work so that everything it services can be excellent more than you really need the bridge to itself be excellent or the best bridge it could have possibly been.) So big companies who internally have a very decentralized mechanism of making decisions seems better than lots of little centralized companies.

So, large scale collective ownership, is how I think it may evolve for these. But even then it will be different than how it works now.

You should have a vote or influence commensurate to how many shares of it you own. And the amount of shares you own should have something to do with your reputation (i.e, you're allowed to buy more of them if you're more trusted). If you're regarded as someone who makes good decisions or has experience at this exact thing, or at least is a known person with presumed good intentions and vested interest like you have a house or a business nearby, all these things should tip the scales towards you mattering more than some unknown.

It shouldn't be like the way it is now where ownership is given out blindly based on whoever wants it and has money. (In that case, you'd never want there to be a mechanism for your owners to steer the company, because your owners have no idea how to steer it.) You should own because you have something to offer.

You wouldn't want it to be easy for an evil person with enough money to create a terrible bridge, basically.

So it would maybe mimic the way we own stocks now, but is actually just a more elaborate version of actually being involved and doing something for the company.