“At Vanguard, you’re more than just an investor. You’re an owner.” This is the credo of one of the biggest investment companies in the world. While many people find the slogan reassuring, it is actually quite alarming to anyone who has experience with a democratically run establishment. Vanguard is owned by billions of people, which means billions of people get a vote in how Vanguard is run. And when everybody has a vote, nobody has a vote. People who used to live in China understand this instinctively. Americans may not.
Democracy and demagoguery go hand in hand. The American version of free enterprise was that when you owned your business, nobody else got a vote in how your business was run. It also meant that whoever owned a press had freedom of speech. Lately we have found that our platforms for self-expression (Twitter, Facebook, Google) are owned by multinational corporations, and when we look to the companies with a controlling share, they are also owned by multinational investment companies like Vanguard. Vanguard offers democracy to its investors. Many investors still have not realized this is not a good thing.
The word “democracy” has a pleasant connotation, even among many people who value freedom of expression for the individual. The word “socialism” has a mixed connotation in different populations. Some intellectuals embrace socialism, precisely because it implies that people get to vote about economic issues that affect them. Others know that socialism is closely related to communism, and that loss of ownership eventually leads to losing freedom of speech. I have heard people who champion private property rights use the adjective “democratic” in a positive way, while being opposed to socialism, but the idea of democracy in business is much more clearly related to the concept of socialism than is democracy in government.
Examples of democratically run businesses include those where the customers of a business are its owners (e.g. an electric co-op), or when employees of a large business are equal owners of its stock (a worker cooperative). How is that not socialism? If you are an Objectivist who has read Atlas Shrugged, it will remind you of the Twentieth Century Motor Company and what happened to it when the Starns fortune heirs decided to bestow ownership on the workers.
When we try to find out who owns the big tech giants of today, we find a number of holding companies and intermediaries among the owners. Over and over again, the name of Vanguard resurfaces. Vanguard, on its own website, boasts that it is not owned by shareholders: it is owned by the very investors whose funds it is managing. This is a truly frightening idea. If the investors knew how to manage an investment business, wouldn’t they just manage their own funds? Why go to experts if people just like yourself can dictate what the expert will do when taking care of your affairs?
Would you be reassured to seek treatment at a clinic where other patients just like you get to vote on the medical procedure you undergo? Would you want to fly in an airline where the other passengers get to vote on the flight plan? Would you want to dine at a restaurant where other diners get to vote on how your meal is prepared? Would you want to be a mental patient where the inmates are running the asylum? That is what a true democracy in business would be like.
Or it could be that your vote does not really count, and the managers of the company do whatever they damn well please. When everybody has a vote, and everybody is billions of people, then nobody has a vote. When everyone has a say, no one has a say, besides the politicians.
Vanguard has openly been called a cult, where people enjoy the flavor of the Koolaid, so they do not leave. And those who understand what socialism really is do describe Vanguard as socialist. In fact, Vanguardism is a socialist idea.
Vanguard is not owned by China, we have been assured over and over again. Vanguard is owned by the investors, ordinary people like you and me, all over the world. But Vanguard is headquartered in Shanghai, and China has a strong say in what businesses operating in China must do.
The great reset has already begun. “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.” Or, to put it in a more socially democratic way: You will be a co-owner of everything, but your vote will not count. And when the camp commandant asks you if you are happy, you will not dare to answer in anything but the affirmative.
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My eyes were slowly opened a few years ago when I saw how liberals were openly embracing socialism with no questions asked. They do not admit that communes and communist societies actually help only those at the top. The irony is people in countries where the free market thrives and have a say in their destiny end up having a higher standard of living than in countries like China, which censor freedom of speech and have cities most cannot afford to live in.
I am so glad you are aware of these issues. Freedom of speech is just not possible without a free market. And now that we see the Big Tech Giants deplatform people right and left, we need to understand this behavior is not a result of free markets, but of socialist machinations.