Posted on 11/08/2025 8:53:23 PM PST by EnderWiggin1970
Donald Trump’s new stock-buying strategy isn’t socialism, but it is a step toward a government-controlled economy.
Recently, a handful of people—none of whom have ever invited me to their birthday party—accused President Donald Trump of being a socialist. Gavin Newsom, who many pundits credibly believe is the governor of California, said Trump is committing socialism by having the federal government buy stock in private companies.
At the time of writing, the government has taken shares in Intel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas, U.S. Steel, and even a Canadian mining company that mines cobalt or some other stupid mineral I hate. This raises the question:
Is Trump, as Newsom contends, a full-blown socialist? Or is he just an asymptomatic carrier of socialism, like I am with tuberculosis?
Let's nail down what we're talking about.
In socialism, the government owns the means of production. Instead of private companies making goods to satisfy customers and turn a profit, the state produces things to hit output quotas. That's a lot easier to do if you cut quality. The Soviet Union literally made televisions so poorly that they sometimes exploded. Not a great incentive structure for generating stuff, even if an exploding television is still an improvement over The View.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
The road Trump is going down ain’t socialism.
The government picking winners and losers in the marketplace goes by another description; one that is usually tossed around incorrectly.
Partial nationalization (of Intel, etc) is surely one of the ugliest chapters of the Trump presidency.
“Trump needs to be ruthlessly dismantling the Deep State......”
It was a campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education.
Nobody has requested Congress to prioritize a bill doing just that. As such the promise is not currently being kept.
Something is wrong.
Government taking an ownership share in companies is certainly socialistic.
I didn't like it when Obama took over GM. I didn't like it when it was suggested that Social Security funds be invested in the stock market. It can only lead to shenanigans. Government officials threatening to sell a company's stock if the CEO doesn't come across with campaign contributions. Woke ideologies foisted on companies by 'progressive' public officials. Companies being coerced into producing idiotic products for the 'sake of the planet'.
Nothing good will come from this in the long run.
Without the US government owning stock, what is to stop China from buying everything and lifting the corporations from the US wholesale?
You don't need to have one government to buy up stock to prevent other entities from buying it. Indeed, one entity buying up some stock has nothing to do with other entities buying into it. What you can do is enact legislation barring certain foreign entities from purchasing equity in a corporation. Or, even if they surreptitiously did so, from having voting rights and therefore taking control of a US-based corporation.
Anyone who thinks so really has a load of mental issues and should start seeing a shrink.
Because the government can say no. The government cannot stop companies from leaving.
If members of Congress can buy and sell stock to enrich themselves, why can’t the government buy and sell stock to enrich the economy?
As the article mentions, government is a really stupid player when it gets involved with making economic decisions. In practice it doesn’t “enrich the economy” - it misallocates funds so that labor and capital get wasted instead of being used efficiently, causing us all to become poorer as a result.
Bitcoin is in a completely different category than investing in equities such as discussed in this article. It is a store of value (like gold or dollars). And owning any amount of bitcoin does not give the government any "control" over it - Bitcoin is defined by the consensus rules of the thousands of nodes running it, and which software those nodes run is established democratically and by consensus by all the stakeholders in the system. And those stakeholders are motivated by what improves and upholds the value of bitcoin the most - which means a large, wealthy entity that attempts to throw its weight around to make short-term gains at long term expense, or enact selfish rules that enrich it at the expense of others will be ignored and rejected as soon as the bitcoin community realizes what is going on. (The 2016-17 Bitcoin civil war being an excellent case in point.)
But unlike dollars, Bitcoin is scarce and not centrally managed/controlled, and unlike gold it is digital and thus usable in a modern economy. When people finally, and inevitably, give up on fiat "money" you'll be glad the government has some hard assets like gold and Bitcoin to fall back on and transition over to rather than trying to push another worthless, unscarce, centrally-controlled fiat currency on us.
If Trump’s a socialist then Mamdani is an American Patriot
Figure the odds.
Ditto
Trump is not a socialist. He’s not a conservative either I’m willing to give him a chance cause what we’re doing isn’t working
He’s an opportunist.
The government hasn’t bought any bitcoin. They hold it through confiscations.
Not a huge point, but it should be pointed out. Sovereign wealth funds are not “American.”
In his heart, Trump tends to be a NY Republican at best. Conservative…he is not.
It’s fascist.
Socialism controls the means of production. Fascism (not Nazisim) allows for a capitalist marketplace and private ownership, but it picks the winners and losers. For example, it allows car production on a private level but it allows only VW and BMW to compete.
One of our problems is we’ve allowed for the misuse of words and we’ve lost control of our language.
Trump isn’t a Nazi. He isn’t a socialist. But he sure as hell is not a conservative republican.
Trumps scam coin, pumped and dumped right before inauguration, disqualifies him from much in the crypto world. It was a scummy thing to do. I am surprised more people did not get angry about it.
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