yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

The Ponzi Factor: Banned on Quora


2m read
·Nov 3, 2024

The first fallacy, when I believe the most fundamental falsehood that leads to other false ideas, is the notion that stocks are equity instruments that represent ownership. Finance professionals will argue the stock market can't be a Ponzi scheme because the value of a stock represents value in a company and ownership instruments are being exchanged in the transactions.

But there's practically no truth to this idea because the value of a stock has no legitimacy. It is just an arbitrary number derived from a Ponzi exchange process, and the value is not backed by anything. A share of Google can trade around nine hundred dollars, but Google explicitly states in writing that the par value of their stock is only 0.001 cent.

Google also says they do not pay their investors any dividends, and their Class C shareholders have no voting rights. So if you own a share of Google, you won't receive any money from Google's business activities. You won't be allowed to vote on any corporate issues, and Google isn't obligated to pay you anything more than 0.001 cent for that share you bought for nine hundred dollars.

Does that really sound like a legitimate ownership instrument? If I mail you a chair that was missing three legs, the seat cushion, and the backrest, whatever I sent you, can I really call it a chair? For a value to have legitimacy, there must be someone or something in place to back that value.

The value of the dollar is backed by the United States government. The value of a house is backed by the intrinsic physical value of the house itself. But the value of stocks is not legitimately backed by anyone or anything. The idea that today's common stock represents the real intrinsic value of a company is a baseless and unproven idea.

If people are selling such an idea to make money, then it is also a fraudulent idea.

More Articles

View All
Article II of the Constitution | US Government and Politics | Khan Academy
Hi, this is Kim from Khan Academy, and today I’m investigating Article 2 of the Constitution, which establishes the executive branch of government. It’s Article 2 that establishes the office of the President of the United States, tells us who’s eligible f…
What If The World is Actually a Prison? | The Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer
What if this world is actually one giant prison? When the 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observed the amount of pain that we experience during our lifetimes, he concluded that it’s not happiness and pleasure we’re after, but a reduction of t…
The CIA's TOP SECRET Mind Control Drug
At the end of the Korean War, The New York Times published a gripping story detailing how returning American soldiers may have been converted by communist brainwashers. The story became widely popular. Some troops were allegedly confessing to war crimes, …
3d curl intuition, part 2
So where we left off, we had this two-dimensional vector field V, and I have it pictured here as kind of a yellow vector field. I just stuck it in three dimensions in kind of an awkward way where I put it on the XY plane and said, “Pretend this is in thre…
Want to Get SUPER Rich? Sacrifice These 17.
When you see millionaires and billionaires in the world’s wealthiest people, you have to be 100% sure that they reached this financial status as a result of sacrifices. Every one of them gave up a lot to get to where they are today. Sacrifice is what sets…
How To Use The Content Tab
Hi, I’m Dave from Khan Academy, and I want to show you how you can preview and make assignments from right within the Teacher Dashboard. So let’s take a look at how the Content tab works. From your Teacher homepage, click into a class, and you’ll see th…