The Blackrock Conspiracy Debunked
Added 2023-11-03 16:25:26 +0000 UTCIt's out for everyone. Feel free to drop in in the comment sections!
Comments
There is plenty that can be said about hidden influence, mainly through private foundations and their web of connections they have built up in academia, media, government, corporations, etc... I generally don't believe that anyone is so brilliant and smart as to actually be able to run or control the world. I think the main issue is when few individuals have way more wealth they know what to do with so they start perverting established structures by the sheer force of the money they dump into their favorite projects. I don't think this applies to BlackRock or other big institutional investors because their incentives are to seek long-term financial growth without activist agendas getting in their way.
The Hated One
2023-11-15 12:26:32 +0000 UTCYou are of course right, that it is a complicated mess of incentives. However certain individuals and groups have positioned themselves to obtain amplified control. Since they are using that control to push fringe theories and pseudoscience, there is a growing pushback. But they don't want to be stopped by the pushback. (They are pushing the fringe theories and pseudoscience only to cover up their real goals.) As a result, these people and groups are trying to hide their influence. They want to micro manage, while saying go with the flow outwardly. This hiding process, is (typically) done by sponsoring fake research (etc), and making sure it gets publicized. As usual, the mental defense against this is to use only core data; ignore analysts supposed science and replace it with your own deep understanding of the topic (and people's various motivations that affect it); and of course pray for wisdom, because the amount of bad data is time consuming to sift away rapidly.
Peter
2023-11-14 09:34:08 +0000 UTCI wouldn't say any familiarity with "business practice" invalidates research. Research is needed to confirm or deny assumptions about the economy just like this one. It had been thought that institutional investors would exercise great control due to lower portfolio costs, until it was found different incentives played a more significant role. Now the latest research suggests that horizontal shareholders aren't seeking to micromanage their portfolio companies, but rather want them to go with the "flow" of the indices they are part of. I don't believe anyone is smarter than the economy. It's a complicated mess of cross-sectional incentives.
The Hated One
2023-11-13 15:33:32 +0000 UTCIt should be noted that the big three control the selection of management (that was in the video.) As a result, the big three don't need to disagree with management very much, to retain an iron grip of control. They simply picked managers, in advance, who were following the same goals as the big three. And yes, there are lots of snowflakes doing what snowflakes do. But the snowflakes were chosen and re-chosen during their entire career, little by little, being sifted until the obedient and ignorant were found and ready to obey when placed in the higher positions. And yes, if you meet and talk with some of the management types, they do talk and act like ignorant nitwits, quite often. Even the controller class people, act more like stodgy cronies, rather than brilliant business leaders. (Though I can't say I have ever met anyone from Blackrock specifically.) So obedience is what the management types do, but not obedience to the owners of the portfolios. The big three's employees operate at the behest of those who control of the big three, that basically being the owners of the big three, not the portfolio owners. (The portfolio owners are just customers.) As such, the people who are in practical control of all that wealth, are the people who control the employees at the big three, and those controllers are therefore the ones who pull the strings and puppet the world's companies. No research or analysis is needed to determine that. It is just common business practice. In fact, in most cases this puppeting is a business practice that is a legally *required* activity. No conspiracy needed. Moving forward from there, we can look and see that just a few people are in control of all three of the big three, (and more beyond that even...) and suddenly the viral "conspiracy theory" is just a well documented, and legally required, fact. Then ask yourself what those few in the position to puppet so much... have for personal beliefs, motives, morality, and information sources. Where do they get their information from? Why are so many of them so bought into fringe pseudoscience? But that, is a topic for another day.
Peter
2023-11-06 00:48:15 +0000 UTC
