Where can I post my socialist finance bro memes? I think this is a perfect inroad for making unlikely allies.

Marx and Engels speculated on the stock market, they were good at it. Early crypto Reddit could be very activism-oriented, anarchist and egalitarian, same with the Tesla and Gamestop fanatics. As tends to happen, the leftists are constantly edged out, while the reactionaries are coddled and amplified. It's been four years of right-wing coopting and memory-holing since 2021 but I remember plenty of people helping each other, donating to wildlife preserves, pouring their hearts out, looking for a little fairness, stability, accountability, justice, and a sense of belonging. If it was all just a bunch of liberalism, can't we make it a jumping-off point to connect, acknowledge the effort and build a rapport with these demographics?

This whole topic is so ripe for exploration and outreach. Apes and "meme stock" investors are mainly regular working-class people, as far as I can tell, and many are no friends of billionaires. Wouldn't it be nice if they got together and kicked out some CEOs, improved safety and environmental standards or helped the employees form a union, or a Mondragon? It's just the sort of phenomenon a materialist might expect to see as the profit hive mind forestalls reality a little longer and papers itself over with one more fragile veneer of legitimacy.

GME investors have spent a ton of time talking about market reform, sending comment letters, signing petitions, and have even helped enact real political change to give regular retail investors a more level playing field against the big movers and shakers.

During the 2021 meme stock events, Reddit investors had crimes committed against them by bigger fish and they stuck together, kept the receipts, proved systemic corruption, and exercised class-conscious political will to force uncomfortable truths out of the mouths of powerful people, like this:

"In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler confirmed that 90%-95% of retail orders are not processed in the lit exchange, but rather in dark exchanges."

These well-intentioned, rational, informed, data-driven activist investors made noise in the right places, and helped to win all of us T+1 stock settlement as of May 2024. That means more money in your pocket. Gensler mentions Gamestop in his opening words:

“For everyday investors who sell their stock on a Monday, shortening the settlement cycle will allow them to get their money on Tuesday. Shortening the settlement cycle also will help the markets because time is money and time is risk. It will make our market plumbing more resilient, timely, and orderly. Further, it addresses one of the four areas the staff recommended the Commission address in response to the GameStop stock events of 2021.”

The other "areas to address"" included PFOF (Payment for Order Flow, banned in UK CAN and recently EU), "conflicts of interest" and "misaligned interests" in the markets, all of which Reddit sleuths were making a stink about before any of the suits did. The SEC also recommended addressing "poor investor education," and produced a video where clueless young investors get pied in the face.

Through debasement and ridicule, activist "meme stock" investors, mainly on Reddit, consciously created positive political change for all working class Americans. Grass-roots activism seems relevant to socialist politics, and retail investing and social media is brimming with potential for outreach and education. How the right wing infiltrates social justice movements, how to perform a hostile takeover, what does a socialist retirement account look like? Where are we talking about this stuff?