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> You shouldn't be blaming bad investors. They pay for their decisions with their, or more often somebody's else, money.

> Blame the collective ownership of means of production, which in form of public companies have dominated the Western world for the last 30+ years.

Can you unpack these two points? I don’t understand. It sounds like you’re saying “don’t blame the owners (because investors ARE owners); blame the owners”.

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I think GP is arguing that public companies, which are often blamed for "shortcomings of capitalism" are in fact not capitalistic at all. "Collective ownership of means of production" was postulated by Karl Marx as one of the pillars of communism.

Publicly traded companies allow shareholders to limit their risk - when things start to go wrong you sell your shares to a bigger fool, and it's not your problem anymore. Also, as shareholders are not personally responsible for wrongdoings of their companies it also limits the risk to the buyer.

In short: publicly traded companies are enablers for moral hazard that we constantly observe in financial markets.

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