This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I feel like there's another issue here, which is large institutions (typically mutual funds) holding vast shares in these companies, yet not selling when the price skyrockets. The supply side of the stock market is broken if most of the public float is locked up. If Vanguard or Blackrock were selling their holdings (which are held on behalf of their clients, which they have a fiduciary duty to) when the price doubled or quadrupled, then that would help not only meet demand, but quell a bunch of it.
If the execs are all selling, everyone who go in early are selling, demand is insatiable, and yet the people managing most of America's 401Ks are just sitting on their hands, something is wrong.
The fact so many shares are essentially 'locked up' makes short selling more profitable, but more volatile. It makes buybacks much more attractive (especially for executives). All the incentives are wrong. You don't actually need many people to create a meme stock, you just need Blackrock, Vanguard, and other institutions, to own most of the shares.
And when the share price of a company spikes far past what its fundamentals suggest it should be worth, maybe companies should be forced to issue new shares and dilute everyone else, in order to get the price down. Almost feels irresponsible for a company to not raise funds off things like this, since it'd benefit the majority of their shareholders.
People worried for years "what happens when everyone owns index funds?" and it was considered a "lol if we should be so lucky for that to ever happen for us to worry about" scenario.
How much of the float is in index funds?
AMC has raised money off of the current stock price. I suspect they are nervous to try it too hard.
It's frankly a weird place for CEOs to be. I would just resign and fuck off to an island rather than be the test case for a million new shareholder lawsuits.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link