probably the little guys own most of Vanguard and Blackrock, etc... But a few at the top control them.

This was a question I raised among the "Bogleheads" (fans of Jack Bogle, Vanguard's founder) in the '90s and '00s.

Low fee retail investing was still pretty new in the early '90s, and popularized in the '80s as part of the new FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) model sockpuppeted by (((Reagan))). The corollary was abandonment of the US economy as a place where real world concrete productivity happened ("deindustrialization"), with multinat corps' seizure of productivity gains, as the real value of labor was driven downward.

Jack's model was buy the market with ultra-low-fee funds, gradually but systematically, and hold it over time, taking advantage of the compounding function and the overall market trends. Ride out the bumps. Understand the difference between investing and speculating. It is a model that served me and my family well during the tech frenzy of the late '90s into 2001, and then the big crash in 2008. I avoided terrible errors that I saw countless friends making (especially in the Dot Con in 1999-2001). I remember saying at parties in Silicon Valley/Bay Area: "Never take options in lieu of salary. Invest on your own." And getting laughed out of the room...by people who probably today are still paying off their CA state tax bills. People who reamed themselves because they didn't understand the (((pyramid scheme))).

But back to the Bogle model: I wondered, what happens when eventually all the conservative small buy and holders have their shares grow systematically, and then collectively command a huge portion of the economy? If "the stock market" grows on average historically by 10% a year, then it has to double every 7 years.

Is that real economic activity? Or just numbers games? If this represents real economic power, how does that get translated into political power, when the globo does nothing but numbers games, devoid of any consideration of who it affects and how? Does it reflect anything other than currency devaluation?

I never got much conversation that seemed to comprehend the exponential function across longer periods of time, and what that means for who owns/controls what. And of course the UniParty was busy worrying about furthering social BS and endless wars.

Still, today, when people screech about Vanguard and Blackrock (and leave out Fidelity, State Street, etc.), it seems odd. The remaining wealth of the prudent middle and working classes reside in those holdings. Blackrock is out there vacuuming up houses as effectively the buyer of last resort. Then there's the whole commercial real estate bubble, which some have been waiting to pop for going on 20 years now.

But I have to wonder how much of this is managed for the good of American families/workers/communities. That is what I see MAGA being about. The effort to turn the supership toward creating real wealth for real people via real productivity. I told a financial adviser this, about 8 years ago, and he sniffed, "Oh, so you're an Enlightenment Romantic."

Yeah, I found another adviser.

Now, getting your wealth back out of those systems is another thing entirely. The worst experiences I've had are with TIAA-CREF, the best with Vanguard and Charles Schwab. And god forbid you should receive an inheritance, or leave one for someone else. The death taxes are over the top, and the limits on how you can "own" property left to you are often vicious, and inflicted by various levels of gubmint.

I'm tired after making firewood so may not be writing clearly, and will stop. Thank you for reading my blog post.