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Comment by usaar333 | Hacker News Reader

A follow-up question is if Robinhood (by massively reducing trading costs/friction) is socially positive or not. Their career pitch is that they democratize America's financial system (https://careers.robinhood.com/), but looking at how the reduced friction just leads to Average Joe losing more money, you could credibly view this as a type of destructive "excessive democracy".

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They are increasing access to markets for the average person. They're also encouraging uninformed investment decision-making by doing things like sending push notifications when big name stocks swing way up or down, earning money by selling users' trading data to the highest bidder (increasing the overall fraction of "national product" that ends up in the pockets of financiers as the purchasers of that data make fast moves on that info) , plus that whole debacle with their "checking & savings" product.

What do you mean by “users’ trading data”? If different from the trades themselves?

I just meant the transaction history.

Don't forget trading on margin and access to options.

If the Average Joe loses more money, maybe they should rename it SherrifOfNotingham as it would be stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

Individuals are actively choosing to make investments. Although I will say that it seems that their risk assessment department is seriously lacking. (see: u/1r0nyman)

I dunno, he doubled his money — I think his assessment of risk was spot on ;)

simply reduce it down to is gambling socially positive or not

Some day in the future we will look back on present day paternalism as a terrible evil.

This attitude of “Those people are too stupid to do what they want. We should stop them.” Is awful.

Enough.

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