this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Anarchism

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As anarchists: Do you buy shares, get money from interest, invest or save for retirement? (self.anarchism)
submitted 10 months ago by punkisundead to c/anarchism@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/5944604

Hey I am currently in the privileged position to think about what I do with the money I saved as an emergency fund. Do I put it in an account that gets interest so less gets lost to inflation?

But from my understanding the bank can only pay that interest because they loaned the money to someone that uses it to exploit people labor or extracts rent from them etc.

Where I live saving for retirement is currently not that big of a thing because its something the state manages, but what do folks do that dont have that?

Should anarchists buy stocks or what else should they do with money that exceeds their safety needs?

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[–] StrayCatFrump 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Generally you should do what:

  1. Maximizes your personal well-being (though note I'm not saying "wealth", because they two are not always the same), and
  2. Satisfies your personal and ideological principles as well as possible, at least to the point where you can live with yourself.

Just because we have systemic critiques doesn't mean we should go live in a cave and eat bugs. To the degree possible we should prefigure the society we want to build, but torturing ourselves individually to do it is both unproductive and likely takes away from our focus on more important things like organizing and taking direct action that impacts the system. We do tend to make personal sacrifices to further our ideological goals, but there's both a practical limit and one where we shouldn't be cruel to each other in our expectations.

Many of us are vegans. Most of us probably avoid buying shares in oil companies. But all of our circumstances are different. Perhaps people salting Chevron to radicalize union organizing there will wind up with its stocks in their retirement accounts that are difficult to divest from without harming their ability to retire, due to their particular circumstances. It seems pretty shitty to expect someone to just get rid of them without us having some kind of dependable (e.g. mutual aid) infrastructure in place to take care of each other in our old age.

TL;Dr: Yet you participate in society. Curious!

[–] demesisx@infosec.pub 2 points 10 months ago

My sentiments exactly.

I gotta eat too, foo!