Hacker News Reader

There's some Saphir-Whorf-adjacent things to be said here.

If all you're able to express with clarity is purchase intent, how can you be anything other than a consumer?

That seems to be a rhetorical question, but I'm going to pretend I didn't notice.

You can purchase future income streams or a share of the revenue of an enterprise. Then you'd be an investor.

"consumer" is sometimes used as codespeak left leaning circles meaning: someone who implicitly agrees with capitalism and uses it without much real criticism.

So an "investor" of your type is just someone who is more of a consumer. As they consume not only food or housing for example, but they also consume investment opportunities.

I dont know who you are hanging out with but I really don't think people use "consumer" like that. You would end up removing like 90% of the most forceful critique of capitalism in general if "consumer" was something voluntary rather than coerced. It really wouldn't make any sense! That line of thinking sounds much more neoliberal than anything else, with the emphasis on the individual and their right/wrong behavior in the market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com