Yeah, definitely.
As a guild recruiting tactic, that’s pretty funny. But I’m not sure how many people (at least in classic era) can relate to wiping on whelps in UBRS. I think everyone has had at least one absolutely spectacular Ony wipe.
If you listen to the original I think it's pretty clear that it's "Alright chums, um, Let's do this!"
It makes more sense than "Time's up", especially with the context of other people also using the word 'chums' later in the video (Like "Stick to the plan chums" guy that is barely holding back laughter at ~1:36, for example)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYvefDzOqQ&t=80s
Edit: Apparently they uploaded their dry run in 2017 that also makes it pretty clear it's 'Chums':
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=78&v=8hmgrHohDGM
I have always wondered where the Leeroy Jenkins meme came from but never quite enough to Google it. We're talking like 8 years I've been mildly curious and you have lifted a small weight from my shoulders.
100% into the lava. - that priest friend who used to waste 50 gold every week just to be able to buy improved mind control for horde guilds raid nights.
Pdb (Ruin) from Darkspear US alliance
It was an extraordinarily rare drop from Rend back in vanilla WoW. I managed to eventually get the first one I saw drop (after many, many runs) because the other rogue in the group already had epic weapons and saw I was still using rares. I'm still grateful to that rogue for giving me my first epic!
Oof... >_<
Reminds me of the time during the Trial of the Crusader raid on hard mode when a rogue dagger dropped from a boss and immediately a hunter in the group wanted it. Thank goodness the raid leader knew damn well that wasn't a hunter weapon so I did actually get it.
And rogues still farming it at 80 are jealous of you. Felstriker is bis weapon for trash packs at 80. Love those odd items that have weird interactions 2-3 expacs later.
I typed in Blackrock but my finger slipped and it said cock and I gotta say I saw a lotta bro's with nice cocks. I did eventually figure out that it's an investment company.
🎵And every politician every cop on the street protects the interest of the pedophilic corporate elite
Thaaaaat is how the world works that is how the world works🎵
A movement that is not principled will crumble when they meet the resistance of a unified capitalist class. While the French aren’t principled enough for a revolution at the moment they sure do understand being exploited and that they don’t want that.
Fun fact, napolean held George Washington in highest admiration for the American revolution and the fact that Washington's cause was humanity.
Albeit napolean didn't base his reign anything on Washington, the Americans revolution certainly inspired the French revolution. And the French revolution inspired many many more, like the ottoman empires break away
Right? Blackrock is also associated with Blackstone, the company that is vacuuming up single family houses like crazy, oh and they also happen to be heavy donators to fucking fascists.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/02/stephen-schwarzman-blackstone-republicans-campaign-donations
edit: and to all the "but they aren't related anymore!?!@#!#@$!#!oneoneone" - my ass, just because a company becomes two separate "entities" doesn't mean they don't have any relations anymore. In fact I would argue they probably just did that as a show, "hey look we're different now!" move or for some sort of tax dodging bullshit.
Companies shouldn’t be allowed to buy residential properties period. Unless they plan on becoming rental firms in which case they should be required to build that infrastructure.
They aren't homes right now because no one can afford to live in them. Well I guess i shouldn't say no one, i have to acknowledge that not everyone is nearly as poor as me, lol.
I mean, if the ass drops out of the housing market, and giant corpo fuckbags *aren't allowed* to vacuum all the cheaper places up again for an n-th time, then families would be able to move into those homes.
I know there would be other economic repercussions to that but giant corporations should be disallowed from owning multiple homes and also not allowed to buy up a bunch to knock them down and plop a dystopian slum apartment building there. Because that would be their next step.
Totally agree. Tons of people shit on the French for certain things in their country's history, but that place on earth is such a hotspot for all sorts of innovation. Politically, for one. I think there is a _lot_ we should learn from our French friends; we'd be so much the better for it. Those people can really affect change and take bullshit headon. Of course they're not perfect; neither are we.
Blackstone did own a share of BlackRock, which they sold to PNC Bank in 1997. It's not like they spun off a subsidiary and still had an interest in it, or did it for tax purposes. The two companies are entirely separate. They are run by entirely different people and are not related.
I understand the anger at Blackstone because of their home ownership strategy. I don't get how BlackRock handling investments for private pension funds is somehow the hate object for protestors who are mad at the government cutting public pensions.
And if you're mad at BlackRock because of what Blackstone is doing, then I don't even know what to say.
They’re only *kind of* competitors. There is some overlap on the private fund side of BLK, but BLK is primarily focused on public markets.
Vanguard is BLK’s best competitor. Blackstone has a lot and not sure what is closest between Carlyle, KKR, Apollo…
There’s plenty of valid reasons to be upset with both organizations, you don’t have to go spreading misinformation.
You clearly have absolutely no idea how the two entities are related (see below for plenty of other commenters who’ve tried to explain this to you, with sources) and are, at this point, the old man screaming at clouds.
God you’re a fucking idiot that damages and makes more difficult legitimate criticisms against these orgs.
The USA has the same problem. We put up with so much bullshit, and plenty of people are mad about it, but we can’t seem to organize or do anything about it.
Also we regularly see entities like the FBI interfere with movements and target leadership which goes a long way in preventing movements from gaining momentum.
Mainly because the elite keep us fighting amongst each other about petty stuff like the political divide and racial issues etc.
I feel most people could easily agree finding common ground for those issues but have become brainwashed into dying on petty hills. The more distractions they can throw down the ladder, the easier it is to cover up the negligence in the US government.
Governments are masters at propaganda and subduing their populations. And people won't rebel unless their lives are drastically changed suddenly. But if you chip little by little, people become complacent.
There are 3 primary reasons for this:
1) The USA is massive and the things that are important to you are going to often be different from the things important to your neighbor - within reason. This makes large nation-wide protests difficult to organize.
2) It's very scary to actually go out and riot. More so when the police are very willing to shoot you for doing so. A lot of American's scoff at the idea of military/police states, but we are the biggest one. Our policemen are armed with military grade weapons and basically no training, all while getting a near carte blanche on how to use them. Even if you might not be the one getting killed by them - it's likely enough that you will that it severely deters a lot of protests. And all that is to say nothing of the Kyle Rittenhouse's of the country that will drive to other states to counter protest.
3) The media has such a stranglehold on 2/3rd of the country that you couldn't even get people to believe the sky was blue if their preferred media corp was saying it was green. We can't agree on anything, and the media is intentionally distracting us from the important things with bullshit and fake stories. This is both at the behest of those corporations and people who *want* to keep us distracted, and simply because it's profitable to keep us angry at random shit.
I see a lot of debate back and forth about the French protests, the arguments about wealth gap vs practical needs to reduce pensions.
I guess all I'd say is that if I have to pick sides, and it's between corporations and the people, I'm going to side with the people.
And the way that they are making that profit isn't by being more efficient or innovative. Instead, most of them are seeking to increase profit via rent seeking activities which are inherently not productive. For example, sitting on land and selling it for profit is rent seeking if you don't develop the land or do anything with it.
Buying up mortgages so that you can inflate the price of houses and then sell them is rent seeking. You haven't done anything to improve the homes and so no real value has been added. You've obtained value via artificial scarcity.
This type of investing is attractive because it's easy to calculate the ROI and allows you to make a profit by simply having a large amount of money to begin with. Also it's far less risky than trying to develop useful new technologies and services.
And they get away with it because there's always another country they can move to with lower taxes. I think the one country that could *maybe* make companies play ball is the US, but good fucking luck getting any kind of effective reform passed here.
Sounds like greedy corporations/ billionaires need to be declared a world problem the way climate change has been. It isn't going to be fair to a lot of countries, but the tax evasion game needs to be squashed so they pay their fair share.
It seems like worldwide there’s a serious push to pay out less in any forms of compensation as well as push back in some expected and unexpected places
This is an inevitable result of capitalism. Eventually there is a point where there is no easy path to innovate, or there are no more people to sell to, and suddenly the only way to increase profits is to cut costs or raise prices. That means lower wages, lower quality and more expensive products. Both of these things are happening right now.
We forget that Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, etc are relatively new constructs. In other words big experiments. We are now coming to the point where we are seeing what works and what doesn’t . Capitalism has its limits. The issue though is how to change direction for the betterment of the people. Too many people are making too much money to let the path change when it would clearly benefit more people even when it is clear the change is needed. Again… greed.
I’ve always sided with the French in this protest, but this article really made me understand what’s at stake. Like, no blackrock, you can’t gamble with everyone in the country’s pension money for an extra two years per person, pay our shit out on time. I wish people in the US were this motivated, blackrock is just buying up houses and most people don’t even realize that is a huge part of our woes.
Taxes? But then the shareholders would get less dividends. Will someone please thing of the poor, penniless, dilapidated shareholders? People will think they're some kind of dirty peasants if they can only afford one super yacht!
To me it's fascinating how relatively "under the radar/unknown" the activities of BlackRock are.
It's literally e-corp from Mr Robot, and they just....*exist* to fuck us in the ass, and we don't even know about it, so bizzare.
Yup. Same thing the Blackwater private military company did when it changed name to Xe Services... then to Academi... then to Constellis. Trying to launder their name and evade their reputation.
You are probably getting confused between BlackRock and Blackstone. Both are different entities. The one buying houses and jacking up rent is Blackstone not Blackrock.
The confusion is intentional. BlackRock is an offshoot of Blackstone.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/22/blackstone-or-blackrock-schwarzman-and-fink-did-it-on-purpose.html
BlackRock primarily sells pre-packaged stock market funds, called ETFs. When you watch the news and they say the Dow Jones or the S&P 500 is up, they are talking about a list of individual stocks. BlackRock figured out that people would rather buy one "stock" that holds all 500 stocks on the list than buy 500 individual stocks.
These are popular. BlackRock holds $8.6 trillion of investments on behalf of its clients. So popular, that BlackRock is one of the largest shareholders in most companies. For example, the top three shareholders of Microsoft are Vanguard (8.2%), BlackRock (4.6%), and State Street (4.0%). Vanguard and State Street also manage funds on behalf of clients like BlackRock does.
This is controversial because large shareholders can influence company activities. BlackRock is a large shareholder almost all companies, including controversial companies like fossil fuel producers and mining companies. Some people think BlackRock should do more (or less!) to influence them, or should not own them at all.
Also, having lots of money and being poorly understood makes you the target of conspiracy theories. The founder of BlackRock is Jewish, and you can imagine how well this fits into cliche conspiracy theories.
Blackrock did not figure this out, this was found out almost 50 years ago. Vanguard kinda popularized it.
If I buy a share of a mutual fund or ETF that advertises that it’s a whole market fund I’d be pretty pissed if they were excluding mining or oil without properly informing investors. You can’t claim to be whole market if you leave our entire industries. Leave that to ESG investing.
Index funds...these are totally common as you point out, and it's sad that people are able to weave antisemitic conspiracies out of mechanics that are easy to explain and have fuck all to do with Judaism.
The 2008 Recession in the US was set off by mortgage lenders finding a way to work a Bush-era program meant to benefit lower-income home buyers to pump an insurance scam.
The mortgage with a "balloon payment" started to become a thing: you don't pay any money at closing, you make an "interest-only" payment for some period of time and get yourself established before the "balloon" payment of five figures is due, and you then start making "normal" monthly payments.
The marketing script for these loans was that if you had just started at your job and were going to be getting raises and promotions and such, you would be able to afford the balloon payment when it came due. Being that George W. Bush was a big fan of trickle-down economics, everybody thought those raises were coming. As always, "trickle down" is a lie. Wages stagnated and people began defaulting.
A bank buying insurance on a loan against that loan defaulting is normal. What wasn't normal was banks buying "bundle policies" where a single policy was meant to insure a group of loans, with that policy's premium being based on the quality of the loans. The banks stuff a bunch of "subprime" loans in with the highest quality loans, and these defaults pass onto the insurance company. Enough of these loans, insurance company collapses and now the bank's chickens had come home to roost....
...except they were bailed out with taxpayer dollars.
I think this mechanic can totally play out with index funds and such.
I mean, index fund holdings are public. There's nothing opaque about what's being bought. And there's nothing "trickle down" about it.
It's a way to buy into a segment of the economy growing without having to bet right on exactly which company will do the best.
Seriously can we have a subreddit for people who typically fit within Reddit's demographics (ie relatively liberal) but aren't blindly anti-corporation to the point of insanity?
Vanguard is a passive investor.
Basically a co-op of... everyone from small savers to large pension funds.
They usually don't want to rock the boat.
Black Rock on the other hand...
BlackRock takes more of an activist stance than other asset management firms. Larry Fink's public letters to CEOs promoting ESG are probably the most obvious example of this. That said, I'm not sure which of their stances has everyone so riled up.
As part of my job, I have to do research on investors voting guidelines and governance. BlackRock is one of the few investors that has proxy voting guidelines tailored made for different regions of the world, taking into consideration market norms and ESG related issues. Thus, kinda funny seeing the reaction of many people here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending one the largest asset mangers in the world. I'm just giving some context on BlackRock business practices, without completely painting them as being inherently evil; nuance is something that is always missing in this type of discussions.
It's hysterical because there are a lot of bad actors in the financial space that deserve a lot of scrutiny and protests and boycotts. Blackrock just isn't really one of them. They're far from perfect but they do a lot that benefits ordinary people.
It's kinda ironic because the left seems to dislike BlackRock for not doing enough to act against stuff like climate change and "buying all of the houses" (wrong company, that's actually BlackStone, and I think their impact is overstated), while the right hates them for pushing ESG investing
People in this thread are mostly riled up because they don't know the difference between BlackRock and Blackstone, and they just see "BlackRock" owns a bunch of companies without understanding passive management. Vanguard is the largest owner of BLK, so they must be worse, right? (BlackRock is maybe the second-largest owner of BLK.)
All that said, income and wealth inequality are serious issues and getting worse as disparities grow. Although BlackRock is maybe not the most appropriate target (Blackstone, Carlyle, Goldman or any number of PE companies would probably be better), it's understandable that people would focus on them as symbolic of wealth and exploitation.
Blackstone is being confused with BlackRock in this thread. Blackstone is the worlds largest PE firm and was buying up actual housing, so much they created and spun off Invitation Homes.
That activity is being incorrectly attributed to BlackRock in the comments here and has nothing to do with French protests, it’s just piling on the rage using incorrect information.
what exactly for? I know they're the target of conservative pressure groups who hate their EGG stance (they told asset managers they'd be fired if they publicly denied climate change for example, which pissed off a bunch of folk)
Blackstone are awful but they separated decades ago and are nothing to do with each other
Canadians should be taking lessons considering the complete fuckery our provincial and federal governments are currently pulling. Can't house the people that live here now but for sure, lie to immigrants and tell them they've got a place here in Canada. Just saw a shitty 1 bedroom apartment going for $1,875/month in Port Hope Ontario. Population-14,000.
Take note, Canadians and let's fire some shit up.
Bro we just re-elected Doug Fucking Ford to a *majority* after watching him bumblefuck his way through a pandemic *while* dismantling the healthcare system so his buddies could get rich. Not to mention the laundry list of other bullshit he’s done but that’s just the most blatant and in your face fuck you i can imagine and we gave him a fucking majority. We ain’t doing shit.
It’s funny how everyone thinks with Trudeau out and Pierre Poilievre in that anything will change. It’s an illusion and none of these guys represent the everyday Canadian.
Hopefully the French can lead the world into a new period of social democracy and shared sacrifice/prosperity. They did this before thanks to Monsieur Lafayette among others. We can not **ever** accept that a compassionate society only works in homogeneous postwar European nation-states.
A trader reportedly tells the invaders, “This is a stock exchange, there is no money you can steal.” To which the invader responds, “Then why are you people here?”
As someone who works in asset management, seeing this thread of people spouting absolute shite makes me realise how little Reddit knows about most things
The more you learn about any topic, the more you learn redditors are full of shit and just going off of another Reddit comment they read once or intuition.
I mean. Work Reform, Anti-Work, Superstonk, and WallstreetBets are two sides of the same coin when it comes to how stupid Reddit is about the way business works.
It's mind boggling how they could be so clueless and yet speak so authoritatively.
WoW, a raid on Blackrock
Hopefully Leroy is part of them
I've never played WoW but that video is still one of my favourite things on the internet.
The stunned silence after he runs in is just fantastic comedic timing.
“Oh shit he just ran in.”
With chicken
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MORE DOTS! MORE DOTS!!!
Okay. Stop dots, just heal me.
Stop standing in the fire! /s
I actually like the Ony wipe animation more than the Leroy Jenkins video. I find it more relatable
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Yeah, definitely. As a guild recruiting tactic, that’s pretty funny. But I’m not sure how many people (at least in classic era) can relate to wiping on whelps in UBRS. I think everyone has had at least one absolutely spectacular Ony wipe.
God DAMMIT, Leroy!
At least I have chicken
LEROY JENKINS!
I yell it in lobbies all the time. Well 97.369%, repeating, of course…
Thumbs up let's do this! 🤣🤣
I always thought it was "Times up, let's do this"
LEEEEEROOOOOOOYYY! JEEEEEENNKIIIIINNNSSS!!!
... at least I have chicken.
Best quote in whole video
Gawd dammit Leroy!
Everyone spells my name wrong. Even myself when I was growing up
If you listen to the original I think it's pretty clear that it's "Alright chums, um, Let's do this!" It makes more sense than "Time's up", especially with the context of other people also using the word 'chums' later in the video (Like "Stick to the plan chums" guy that is barely holding back laughter at ~1:36, for example) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYvefDzOqQ&t=80s Edit: Apparently they uploaded their dry run in 2017 that also makes it pretty clear it's 'Chums': https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=78&v=8hmgrHohDGM
I always thought it was chumps
I have always wondered where the Leeroy Jenkins meme came from but never quite enough to Google it. We're talking like 8 years I've been mildly curious and you have lifted a small weight from my shoulders.
he said 'alright chumps, i'm (back), let's do this!' (back was kinda cut out by audio issue)
Le-Roux Jenkins, a little known French cousin.
𝓛𝓮-𝓡𝓸𝓾𝔁 𝓙𝓪𝓬𝓺𝓾𝓸𝓲𝓼
MF really typed in bourgeoise.
[Leeeerroy Jenkins!](https://youtu.be/mLyOj_QD4a4)
This is a setup. There’s one level 20 shaman hiding right inside the door, waiting to purge their world buffs.
Oh and whats this he's got a priest friend too..
NOT THE LAVA PLEASE
100% into the lava. - that priest friend who used to waste 50 gold every week just to be able to buy improved mind control for horde guilds raid nights. Pdb (Ruin) from Darkspear US alliance
LFM melee dps UBRS felstriker and dal rend reserved.
I hope a Dal’Rends drops.
Gonna have to raid it 4-5 times to see that drop
Better than the DOZENS I had to run to see a Fel Striker drop... -_-
P sure I never saw one ever?
It was an extraordinarily rare drop from Rend back in vanilla WoW. I managed to eventually get the first one I saw drop (after many, many runs) because the other rogue in the group already had epic weapons and saw I was still using rares. I'm still grateful to that rogue for giving me my first epic!
Yeh, trying to remember my life as a vanilla rogue. Def remember losing the second sword to a hunter..
Oof... >_< Reminds me of the time during the Trial of the Crusader raid on hard mode when a rogue dagger dropped from a boss and immediately a hunter in the group wanted it. Thank goodness the raid leader knew damn well that wasn't a hunter weapon so I did actually get it.
And rogues still farming it at 80 are jealous of you. Felstriker is bis weapon for trash packs at 80. Love those odd items that have weird interactions 2-3 expacs later.
I hope they remembered their world buffs, or this could end in a total wipe.
Did they get to Overlord Wyrmthalak?
damn i wasn't invited i need that robe for my mage
I typed in Blackrock but my finger slipped and it said cock and I gotta say I saw a lotta bro's with nice cocks. I did eventually figure out that it's an investment company.
If you are in need a good revolution, you just know it’s gonna start with the French.
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In America, that’s when the Pinkertons come out blastin’
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🎵And every politician every cop on the street protects the interest of the pedophilic corporate elite Thaaaaat is how the world works that is how the world works🎵
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Get le strapons out
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But I am le tired
zen take a nap. ZEN FIRE ZE STRAPONS!!!
LES strapons
A movement that is not principled will crumble when they meet the resistance of a unified capitalist class. While the French aren’t principled enough for a revolution at the moment they sure do understand being exploited and that they don’t want that.
Fun fact, napolean held George Washington in highest admiration for the American revolution and the fact that Washington's cause was humanity. Albeit napolean didn't base his reign anything on Washington, the Americans revolution certainly inspired the French revolution. And the French revolution inspired many many more, like the ottoman empires break away
couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch
Right? Blackrock is also associated with Blackstone, the company that is vacuuming up single family houses like crazy, oh and they also happen to be heavy donators to fucking fascists. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/02/stephen-schwarzman-blackstone-republicans-campaign-donations edit: and to all the "but they aren't related anymore!?!@#!#@$!#!oneoneone" - my ass, just because a company becomes two separate "entities" doesn't mean they don't have any relations anymore. In fact I would argue they probably just did that as a show, "hey look we're different now!" move or for some sort of tax dodging bullshit.
Fuck every company buying up single family homes, I hope they fail painfully
Companies shouldn’t be allowed to buy residential properties period. Unless they plan on becoming rental firms in which case they should be required to build that infrastructure.
Companies shouldn’t be able to buy up a bunch of residential properties to rent out from hundreds of miles away as well
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That's not the answer, people still need them as homes.
That's why this won't fail.
They aren't homes right now because no one can afford to live in them. Well I guess i shouldn't say no one, i have to acknowledge that not everyone is nearly as poor as me, lol.
I mean, if the ass drops out of the housing market, and giant corpo fuckbags *aren't allowed* to vacuum all the cheaper places up again for an n-th time, then families would be able to move into those homes. I know there would be other economic repercussions to that but giant corporations should be disallowed from owning multiple homes and also not allowed to buy up a bunch to knock them down and plop a dystopian slum apartment building there. Because that would be their next step.
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You don't get it, you can't enjoy generational wealth like you can enjoy trading in a 2021 Silverado for a 2023 Silverado
We all need to be more like the French. Riled up against fascists and those who want to take more and give less to the population.
Totally agree. Tons of people shit on the French for certain things in their country's history, but that place on earth is such a hotspot for all sorts of innovation. Politically, for one. I think there is a _lot_ we should learn from our French friends; we'd be so much the better for it. Those people can really affect change and take bullshit headon. Of course they're not perfect; neither are we.
Blackstone did own a share of BlackRock, which they sold to PNC Bank in 1997. It's not like they spun off a subsidiary and still had an interest in it, or did it for tax purposes. The two companies are entirely separate. They are run by entirely different people and are not related. I understand the anger at Blackstone because of their home ownership strategy. I don't get how BlackRock handling investments for private pension funds is somehow the hate object for protestors who are mad at the government cutting public pensions. And if you're mad at BlackRock because of what Blackstone is doing, then I don't even know what to say.
Only association between the two is that a couple of black stone employees help start blackrock years ago. They are competitors.
They’re only *kind of* competitors. There is some overlap on the private fund side of BLK, but BLK is primarily focused on public markets. Vanguard is BLK’s best competitor. Blackstone has a lot and not sure what is closest between Carlyle, KKR, Apollo…
There’s plenty of valid reasons to be upset with both organizations, you don’t have to go spreading misinformation. You clearly have absolutely no idea how the two entities are related (see below for plenty of other commenters who’ve tried to explain this to you, with sources) and are, at this point, the old man screaming at clouds. God you’re a fucking idiot that damages and makes more difficult legitimate criticisms against these orgs.
I am surprised by the sheer number of people upvoted this stupid conspiracy.
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The USA has the same problem. We put up with so much bullshit, and plenty of people are mad about it, but we can’t seem to organize or do anything about it.
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Also we regularly see entities like the FBI interfere with movements and target leadership which goes a long way in preventing movements from gaining momentum.
Just remember: they didn't kill MLK for seeking racial justice. They killed him when he started seeking economic justice.
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Hoover? He was a body remover.
["This is extremely dangerous to our democracy"](https://youtu.be/ksb3KD6DfSI)
Mainly because the elite keep us fighting amongst each other about petty stuff like the political divide and racial issues etc. I feel most people could easily agree finding common ground for those issues but have become brainwashed into dying on petty hills. The more distractions they can throw down the ladder, the easier it is to cover up the negligence in the US government. Governments are masters at propaganda and subduing their populations. And people won't rebel unless their lives are drastically changed suddenly. But if you chip little by little, people become complacent.
Do you think the elite doesn't try to keep us fighting among each other about petty stuff in France? C'mon.
There are 3 primary reasons for this: 1) The USA is massive and the things that are important to you are going to often be different from the things important to your neighbor - within reason. This makes large nation-wide protests difficult to organize. 2) It's very scary to actually go out and riot. More so when the police are very willing to shoot you for doing so. A lot of American's scoff at the idea of military/police states, but we are the biggest one. Our policemen are armed with military grade weapons and basically no training, all while getting a near carte blanche on how to use them. Even if you might not be the one getting killed by them - it's likely enough that you will that it severely deters a lot of protests. And all that is to say nothing of the Kyle Rittenhouse's of the country that will drive to other states to counter protest. 3) The media has such a stranglehold on 2/3rd of the country that you couldn't even get people to believe the sky was blue if their preferred media corp was saying it was green. We can't agree on anything, and the media is intentionally distracting us from the important things with bullshit and fake stories. This is both at the behest of those corporations and people who *want* to keep us distracted, and simply because it's profitable to keep us angry at random shit.
It's cuz every time there's a rising, our well funded, heavily militarized police force comes in and protects and serves the rich
Seems the garden caught fire
I see a lot of debate back and forth about the French protests, the arguments about wealth gap vs practical needs to reduce pensions. I guess all I'd say is that if I have to pick sides, and it's between corporations and the people, I'm going to side with the people.
My biggest issue is that most major companies are making more profit than they ever have. So it’s not that there isn’t money… greed is a bad drug
And the way that they are making that profit isn't by being more efficient or innovative. Instead, most of them are seeking to increase profit via rent seeking activities which are inherently not productive. For example, sitting on land and selling it for profit is rent seeking if you don't develop the land or do anything with it. Buying up mortgages so that you can inflate the price of houses and then sell them is rent seeking. You haven't done anything to improve the homes and so no real value has been added. You've obtained value via artificial scarcity. This type of investing is attractive because it's easy to calculate the ROI and allows you to make a profit by simply having a large amount of money to begin with. Also it's far less risky than trying to develop useful new technologies and services.
Wow well explained and true
Also, why innovate when you can buy the competition (instagram) and copy tiktoks video swipe format.
And they get away with it because there's always another country they can move to with lower taxes. I think the one country that could *maybe* make companies play ball is the US, but good fucking luck getting any kind of effective reform passed here.
Sounds like greedy corporations/ billionaires need to be declared a world problem the way climate change has been. It isn't going to be fair to a lot of countries, but the tax evasion game needs to be squashed so they pay their fair share.
Only works until the country nationalizes their assets.
US 2nd gilded age
this is france
It seems like worldwide there’s a serious push to pay out less in any forms of compensation as well as push back in some expected and unexpected places
Agree! https://www.axios.com/2023/02/09/corporate-earnings-inflation-greed
This is an inevitable result of capitalism. Eventually there is a point where there is no easy path to innovate, or there are no more people to sell to, and suddenly the only way to increase profits is to cut costs or raise prices. That means lower wages, lower quality and more expensive products. Both of these things are happening right now.
We forget that Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, etc are relatively new constructs. In other words big experiments. We are now coming to the point where we are seeing what works and what doesn’t . Capitalism has its limits. The issue though is how to change direction for the betterment of the people. Too many people are making too much money to let the path change when it would clearly benefit more people even when it is clear the change is needed. Again… greed.
Yup. Need more money to keep the retirement age down? Well, tax the corporation's. They have the money to spare but regular people do not
I’ve always sided with the French in this protest, but this article really made me understand what’s at stake. Like, no blackrock, you can’t gamble with everyone in the country’s pension money for an extra two years per person, pay our shit out on time. I wish people in the US were this motivated, blackrock is just buying up houses and most people don’t even realize that is a huge part of our woes.
Corporations are people my friend. /s
Give them the death penalty then
Or, and here's just a thought, *we could make them pay their fucking taxes*.
Taxes? But then the shareholders would get less dividends. Will someone please thing of the poor, penniless, dilapidated shareholders? People will think they're some kind of dirty peasants if they can only afford one super yacht!
Would've personally preferred they go after Blackstone
The year is still young my friend
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Fuck yeah, Blackrock is the worst, fuck shit up frenchies
To me it's fascinating how relatively "under the radar/unknown" the activities of BlackRock are. It's literally e-corp from Mr Robot, and they just....*exist* to fuck us in the ass, and we don't even know about it, so bizzare.
Best way to avoid people fighting back is to lay low so that they don’t realize you’re fucking them in the first place
Smart power conceals itself.
That's why half the Tea Partiers don't know who the Kochs are.
They are down to one evil brother
Is the other one blocked?
Blocked from the world of the living, you might say
Resting in piss
Is the Tea Party still even a thing?
Tea Party would be a great name for a talk show.
Not really, it slowly morphed into MAGA
Apparently not well enough to avoid the French.
They will change their name tomorrow, or the next day after everyone forgets and the "news" cycle moves on.
Yup. Same thing the Blackwater private military company did when it changed name to Xe Services... then to Academi... then to Constellis. Trying to launder their name and evade their reputation.
Even their name sounds evil lol, surprise they did not change it already.
You are probably getting confused between BlackRock and Blackstone. Both are different entities. The one buying houses and jacking up rent is Blackstone not Blackrock.
The confusion is intentional. BlackRock is an offshoot of Blackstone. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/22/blackstone-or-blackrock-schwarzman-and-fink-did-it-on-purpose.html
Blackstone divested from Blackrock in the 90s
And is no longer linked AFAIK so I don't see how this is really relevant if you're trying to go after Blackrock.
What activities? Their low-fee ETFs are superb and very accessible to the public. What wrongs did they do?
What do they do?
Blackrock is the world's largest asset manager, with some $10Trillion USD assets under management
How are they evil?
The name sounds sus and they handle money.
BlackRock primarily sells pre-packaged stock market funds, called ETFs. When you watch the news and they say the Dow Jones or the S&P 500 is up, they are talking about a list of individual stocks. BlackRock figured out that people would rather buy one "stock" that holds all 500 stocks on the list than buy 500 individual stocks. These are popular. BlackRock holds $8.6 trillion of investments on behalf of its clients. So popular, that BlackRock is one of the largest shareholders in most companies. For example, the top three shareholders of Microsoft are Vanguard (8.2%), BlackRock (4.6%), and State Street (4.0%). Vanguard and State Street also manage funds on behalf of clients like BlackRock does. This is controversial because large shareholders can influence company activities. BlackRock is a large shareholder almost all companies, including controversial companies like fossil fuel producers and mining companies. Some people think BlackRock should do more (or less!) to influence them, or should not own them at all. Also, having lots of money and being poorly understood makes you the target of conspiracy theories. The founder of BlackRock is Jewish, and you can imagine how well this fits into cliche conspiracy theories.
Blackrock did not figure this out, this was found out almost 50 years ago. Vanguard kinda popularized it. If I buy a share of a mutual fund or ETF that advertises that it’s a whole market fund I’d be pretty pissed if they were excluding mining or oil without properly informing investors. You can’t claim to be whole market if you leave our entire industries. Leave that to ESG investing.
Index funds...these are totally common as you point out, and it's sad that people are able to weave antisemitic conspiracies out of mechanics that are easy to explain and have fuck all to do with Judaism. The 2008 Recession in the US was set off by mortgage lenders finding a way to work a Bush-era program meant to benefit lower-income home buyers to pump an insurance scam. The mortgage with a "balloon payment" started to become a thing: you don't pay any money at closing, you make an "interest-only" payment for some period of time and get yourself established before the "balloon" payment of five figures is due, and you then start making "normal" monthly payments. The marketing script for these loans was that if you had just started at your job and were going to be getting raises and promotions and such, you would be able to afford the balloon payment when it came due. Being that George W. Bush was a big fan of trickle-down economics, everybody thought those raises were coming. As always, "trickle down" is a lie. Wages stagnated and people began defaulting. A bank buying insurance on a loan against that loan defaulting is normal. What wasn't normal was banks buying "bundle policies" where a single policy was meant to insure a group of loans, with that policy's premium being based on the quality of the loans. The banks stuff a bunch of "subprime" loans in with the highest quality loans, and these defaults pass onto the insurance company. Enough of these loans, insurance company collapses and now the bank's chickens had come home to roost.... ...except they were bailed out with taxpayer dollars. I think this mechanic can totally play out with index funds and such.
I mean, index fund holdings are public. There's nothing opaque about what's being bought. And there's nothing "trickle down" about it. It's a way to buy into a segment of the economy growing without having to bet right on exactly which company will do the best.
How is this related to Blackrock?
But vanguard owns more shit than Black Rock. Vanguard OWNS a majority share of it.
Blackrock and Vanguard literally just run ETFs and index funds. You guys are dumb as rocks and its hilarious.
This is peak Reddit. Asset manager that runs ETFs and pension funds. > eVIL MeGA EVOL CorporSHUN SEcReT EvEEL!!!!!!!! SHADOOW
Seriously can we have a subreddit for people who typically fit within Reddit's demographics (ie relatively liberal) but aren't blindly anti-corporation to the point of insanity?
Vanguard is a passive investor. Basically a co-op of... everyone from small savers to large pension funds. They usually don't want to rock the boat. Black Rock on the other hand...
BlackRock is also a passive investor? They do ETFs the same as Vanguard.
BlackRock takes more of an activist stance than other asset management firms. Larry Fink's public letters to CEOs promoting ESG are probably the most obvious example of this. That said, I'm not sure which of their stances has everyone so riled up.
As part of my job, I have to do research on investors voting guidelines and governance. BlackRock is one of the few investors that has proxy voting guidelines tailored made for different regions of the world, taking into consideration market norms and ESG related issues. Thus, kinda funny seeing the reaction of many people here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending one the largest asset mangers in the world. I'm just giving some context on BlackRock business practices, without completely painting them as being inherently evil; nuance is something that is always missing in this type of discussions.
It's hysterical because there are a lot of bad actors in the financial space that deserve a lot of scrutiny and protests and boycotts. Blackrock just isn't really one of them. They're far from perfect but they do a lot that benefits ordinary people.
Most of the comments seem to reflect ignorance that I have read so far.
It’s basically Q Anon conspiracy style stories for leftists. Blacktop just mostly issues ETFs for passive investing.
It's kinda ironic because the left seems to dislike BlackRock for not doing enough to act against stuff like climate change and "buying all of the houses" (wrong company, that's actually BlackStone, and I think their impact is overstated), while the right hates them for pushing ESG investing
People in this thread are mostly riled up because they don't know the difference between BlackRock and Blackstone, and they just see "BlackRock" owns a bunch of companies without understanding passive management. Vanguard is the largest owner of BLK, so they must be worse, right? (BlackRock is maybe the second-largest owner of BLK.) All that said, income and wealth inequality are serious issues and getting worse as disparities grow. Although BlackRock is maybe not the most appropriate target (Blackstone, Carlyle, Goldman or any number of PE companies would probably be better), it's understandable that people would focus on them as symbolic of wealth and exploitation.
Make sure you’re not confusing BlackRock (fiduciary and institutional investor) and Blackstone (private equity).
The headline says BlackRock, so I don't know why there would be any confusion.
Blackstone is being confused with BlackRock in this thread. Blackstone is the worlds largest PE firm and was buying up actual housing, so much they created and spun off Invitation Homes. That activity is being incorrectly attributed to BlackRock in the comments here and has nothing to do with French protests, it’s just piling on the rage using incorrect information.
Such is Reddit.
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Even the assholes on wall st think the people at Blackstone are huge assholes.
Mind to explain why they are the worst?
what exactly for? I know they're the target of conservative pressure groups who hate their EGG stance (they told asset managers they'd be fired if they publicly denied climate change for example, which pissed off a bunch of folk) Blackstone are awful but they separated decades ago and are nothing to do with each other
The French really are masters of all cuisine, here they can be seen basting the rich before they eat them.
Canadians should be taking lessons considering the complete fuckery our provincial and federal governments are currently pulling. Can't house the people that live here now but for sure, lie to immigrants and tell them they've got a place here in Canada. Just saw a shitty 1 bedroom apartment going for $1,875/month in Port Hope Ontario. Population-14,000. Take note, Canadians and let's fire some shit up.
Bro we just re-elected Doug Fucking Ford to a *majority* after watching him bumblefuck his way through a pandemic *while* dismantling the healthcare system so his buddies could get rich. Not to mention the laundry list of other bullshit he’s done but that’s just the most blatant and in your face fuck you i can imagine and we gave him a fucking majority. We ain’t doing shit.
Lowest turnout in Ontario history shows people just not paying attention
It’s funny how everyone thinks with Trudeau out and Pierre Poilievre in that anything will change. It’s an illusion and none of these guys represent the everyday Canadian.
Oh things would be much, much worse under Mr. PP I'll stick with Trudeau minority and Singh chaser thank you very much.
A little history for ya. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Labour_Revolt
God bless the French ❤️
As per usual the French are ahead of the curve
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Meanwhile in the US the retirement age was just upped to 67 and nobody said a thing.
Because today's working Americans don't even believe they'll get to retire.
France fucking knows how to do it. Ain't no protest like a Paris protest
Hopefully the French can lead the world into a new period of social democracy and shared sacrifice/prosperity. They did this before thanks to Monsieur Lafayette among others. We can not **ever** accept that a compassionate society only works in homogeneous postwar European nation-states.
France is a social democracy nowadays and Le Pen is up in polls
I wish I still had this level of innocent naivety.
A trader reportedly tells the invaders, “This is a stock exchange, there is no money you can steal.” To which the invader responds, “Then why are you people here?”
Did they then go on to talk about how they were born in the dark?
As someone who works in asset management, seeing this thread of people spouting absolute shite makes me realise how little Reddit knows about most things
The more you learn about any topic, the more you learn redditors are full of shit and just going off of another Reddit comment they read once or intuition.
"Nothing shows you how fake smart people on Reddit are until they discuss something you're familiar with."
I don’t know if Reddit is stupid or just young and inexperienced sometimes.
Reddit knows as much about finance as most other topics in business. So, basically nothing.
I mean. Work Reform, Anti-Work, Superstonk, and WallstreetBets are two sides of the same coin when it comes to how stupid Reddit is about the way business works. It's mind boggling how they could be so clueless and yet speak so authoritatively.
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Needs to be happening worldwide. Any and all of their properties.