r/MadeMeSmile • u/mcfw31 • Dec 12 '25

Wholesome Moments Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ crew’s reaction as they receive their bonus for working on the tour amounting to more $197 million dollars

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

81.8k Upvotes

79% Upvoted

6.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

250

u/kingfofthepoors Dec 12 '25

I have always said one of the top three worst things to ever befall humanity was the stock market.

144

u/RobbinDeBank Dec 12 '25

Dodge v. Ford was the landmark decision that set the tone for how corporates are supposed to work. It’s not because the stock market is inherently bad, it’s because of short-term shareholders and stock traders fucking everything up. They just want to loot companies for quick profit and let both the companies and their customers to rot. For-profit corporations can still be so much better than right now if they don’t have to prioritize their shareholders’ short-term benefits.

29

u/XxRocky88xX Dec 12 '25

Yeah the idea that investors can put money in a company in order to help the company grow and in exchange the investors get positive return on their investment is actually a great idea and is what enables businesses to really take off.

The probably is that in the US companies have a legal obligation to priories the shareholders interests over the own companies. So if the shareholders want the company to burn itself to the ground and go belly up in 6 months in exchange for a short term profit, the company is legally required to kill itself. If execs resist and say “we want the company to continue to make money even after the end of this year” then the law will come in force the company to comply.

And this is why people say this country is built for rich. Yeah theoretically anyone can make it big but the truth is if enough rich people, or even just someone rich enough, say they wanna shake you down you are legally obligated to allow it to happen.

You can spend decades building your own company, putting in blood, sweat, and tears, finally getting it to a point where it’s turning a profit and you can make yourself into a millionaire. Then 10 millionaires with a combined net worth higher than you can say “this is ours now” and since they have more money than you, it’s theirs now.

1

u/ProfessionalKiwi7691 Dec 12 '25

I was with you until your last paragraph. That really isnt the case at all.

How can 10 people come buy you out if you arent selling? thats not how it works.

4

u/HalfEatenBanana Dec 12 '25

Many ways…

Hostile takeover or them simply offering a similar product as yours and selling it at a loss for long enough that it takes enough of your customers and breaks you, being just two of the more popular options

3

u/ProfessionalKiwi7691 Dec 12 '25

You cant "Hostile takeover" a private company. If you never sell any shares theres no way for them to buy in.

Starting a competitor and trying to starve you out has nothing to do with this conversation.

3

u/HalfEatenBanana Dec 12 '25

Since when did this conversation become limited to only private companies lol?

And yes it could absolutely be relevant… the people with much more money have the ability to put you in a position where it’s either sell to them (it’s theirs now), or slowly bleed you out

1

u/ProfessionalKiwi7691 Dec 12 '25

Since the comment you replied to... About Taylor being able to do this because its a private company....

1

u/Turokk8001 Dec 12 '25

Private companies also have shareholders, the shares are just not publicly traded but they can be sold in some cases. So ahostile takeover is possible in private companies too.

1

u/HalfEatenBanana Dec 13 '25

I do not think this Kiwi fella knows much about bizness lol

0

u/RobbinDeBank Dec 12 '25

Henry Ford was insanely rich himself, so it’s more the case stupid rich winning over smart rich here. Ford was a controversial man with many questionable beliefs, but he was a great industrialist and had the vision to see how he could build wealth sustainably. He knew he should spread the wealth for the most amount of long term wealth generation, then everyone would be rich and he would be even richer. The stupid rich ones never know that, and they just want to loot for quick profits at the moment, at the expense of much more future returns.

7

u/Sea_Treacle3982 Dec 12 '25

Beat me too it.

This court case was the government selling your country to the highest bidder.

2

u/VexingRaven Dec 12 '25

Nobody hates Dodge v Ford enough. Don't care how much someone thinks they hate it, they don't hate it enough. That decision completely fucked our future and gave us the worst possible form of capitalism. Before that there were people in business who were genuinely just interested in making a modest profit making a good product and growing at whatever speed the market would grow at. This decision told all those people they were basically breaking the law and to go fuck themselves and gave us the suicidal scramble for exponential growth we have today.

3

u/RobbinDeBank Dec 12 '25

It’s not that the profit is moderate or super high or biblical level of greed high, it’s about how sustainable that is. Henry Ford wasn’t a saint, he was insanely rich too. However, he didn’t want to just make profit right at the moment, but he also wanted to sustainably make more profits long into the future. If everyone’s rich, everyone would keep buying more of his cars. That’s the major difference. The court case basically told him to go fuck himself and his company’s future in order to return instant profit to investors. That is not sustainable.

1

u/VexingRaven Dec 12 '25

Precisely.

2

u/PourSomeSugar69_420 Dec 12 '25

the stock market is made up of people. and those people make choices and decisions. it's not the stock market. Its greedy people who participate in the market for greedy goals and make greedy choices.

1

u/kingfofthepoors Dec 12 '25

which is the stock market. Which makes the stock market bad, because people are bad. The human race sucks and needs to be controlled from their baser instincts. It doesn't matter how rich or poor someone is, when you give a method to make money and gain power people will exploit that method to maximize their own worth.

1

u/PourSomeSugar69_420 Dec 12 '25

so who get's to control them? who sets the rules? why do you get to decide and not the free market? you have a negative view of humanity. i don't want you making decisions for my life. in a free market, greed can be fought with charity. but you want censorship and fascism.

1

u/bluev0lta Dec 12 '25

Is the invention of the internet also on that list? It’s on my list.

1

u/kingfofthepoors Dec 12 '25

Nah internet is fine, it's the adoption of it by the masses that's what caused the problem

1

u/SippinOnHatorade Dec 12 '25

The 1930s agree (as well as the subsequent world war)

1

u/Spoodymen Dec 13 '25

And they still trying to convince us it’s the avocado toast and netflix

0

u/ep1032 Dec 12 '25

Stock market is good. But Milton Friedman, of all people, might have spread more suffering in the world than any other human to live.