this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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If a business was actually losing money for 20 years straight then how does it continue to grow? Think about Amazon and how long it wasn't profitable despite being one of the largest businesses ever in recorded history.
It's a business scam that's a legal way of pay significantly less taxes than they normally would.
dont forget getting to gamble with other peoples forced retirement accounts! yay!
Haven't most places moved to 401ks for this reason? I'd never participate in a pension and I imagine the vast majority of those working in the tech industry are smart enough not to as well
I could be wrong I'm basing all this on assumptions about others intelligence
wouldnt it be cool if retirement didnt rely on the market, at all? in any capacity. like, if we werent forced to go with a 'lower risk' tier of the house of cards.
The value of money is based on the market, all aspects of finance are based on economies. Even just a straight up savings account gradually devalues
We fucked up a species when we traded communities for economies.
Pensions are amazing, why the hell would you not want one? 401ks are nice, too, and ideally you find a gig that does both. Yes, there are some companies that have fucked their employees' pensions over, but those are in the minority and doing so is illegal, so those companies tend to be doing other illegal shit as well (e.g. the infamous case of Enron).
A 401k is something, an account, I legally own. A pension is a promise.
I dont want to be pinned down to one company, or because i may want to retire earlyz or because i want actual full 100% control of how my money is invested so that i know it's inline with my religious beliefs and morals
And yet, many (maybe even most) countries in Europe operate on a pension system for retirement. That would include tech workers in said countries as well.
But American companies (and Canadian too?) have mostly done away with them by now
It's because it keeps getting funded by venture capitalists, as far as I understand. Keeping it afloat because they believe it will eventually bring a return on that investment.
I feel like investments used to be a reasonable thing. Like some rich fella or a fund organization or something invested in a thing and then a little later (couple years at most I would say) it's profitable and can start paying back the investment (which was essentially a loan).
Now it's become more and more pyramid-scheme-esque. You start with a small funding round to get a bit of growth but you still grow faster than profits can keep up with. Then you get a slightly bigger funding round but you also grow slightly faster. Then you repeat this for 20 years and then you have Reddit's situation I suppose.
But it seems crazy. Why is there so much money in the world being spent for this potential return? I get it, investments do enable innovation and new businesses and all that. That's the supposed benefit of capitalism. But it's starting to feel ridiculous when it goes on for so long without ever producing a surplus of value.