GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine
> These points doubtless make me appear to be a complacent shill for the financial industry, talking down to the rubes. For the record, I’m still angry about the way workers were ripped off in Britain more than three decades ago, and about the way the little guy ended up bearing the brunt for the financial implosions of 2000 and 2008. But it looks horribly to me as though the same thing is going to happen again — and I don’t think the answer to today’s many ills is to empower poor people to bankrupt themselves with margin accounts and derivatives.<p>Who is this hurting, exactly? The author is making it sound like messing up the short stock is somehow hurting "the little guy" in the long run, and I wouldn't see that happening unless:<p>a) Gamestop is somehow in a bunch of mutual funds tied to employee pensions/401k's<p>b) The "little guy" refers to the Reddit traders that are making a killing right now, with the expectation that eventually the stock price will crash again.<p>As best I can figure, most of the /r/ guys are doing this as a form of trolling and aren't expecting to get rich off it or pour their live-savings into it. And again, as best I can figure, the only people this "hurts" are the ones who were originally shorting the stock. So if this comes down to guys on Reddit pissing in Wall Street's cornflakes, it's hard for me to feel sympathetic for Wall Street.