Hey I am currently in the privileged position to think about what I do with the money I saved as an emergency fund. Do I put it in an account that gets interest so less gets lost to inflation?
But from my understanding the bank can only pay that interest because they loaned the money to someone that uses it to exploit people labor or extracts rent from them etc.
Where I live saving for retirement is currently not that big of a thing because its something the state manages, but what do folks do that dont have that?
Should anarchists buy stocks or what else should they do with money that exceeds their safety needs?
For me, this question untangles like:
To answer:
I have objections to indirect ownership, so I don’t like the concept of owning shares in companies where I’m not involved - especially if those companies don’t have any kind of internal democracy. I might make an exception if a company did something I would consider very useful to society, or if a fund only dealt with companies that do something very useful. I would worry about oversight - how would I know which companies respect their workers?
I don’t oppose speculative investment, but I do that rarely - only when I’m confident that a market is irrational and I know better. I consider most markets defective, allowing a person who finds a market malfunction to extract profit. In total, I have made a speculative investment about 5 times in my life. It can result in loss or profit - for me it has resulted in profit. I have maintained a hard rule for myself: I’m only allowed to invest money which I would not cry about losing, and I’m not allowed to hurry.
I have limited objections to passive income. I don’t mind my neigbour earning money with a solar park he built with my assistance - if it provides kilowatt-hours to the grid, it’s not passive in my book… but I consider the proliferation of rent-seeking behaviour as a gateway to dystopian class society where people lose their autonomy. :( Additionally, I object because the country where I live (Estonia) taxes passive income lower than active income - another gateway to a dystopian future. However, if passive income was taxed appropriately (equally or higher than doing work), I would not have that objection since it would not destabilize society. I do not currently earn any passive income, and I have even stopped simulating it (over here, that is done to optimize taxes).
My answers reflect my own behaviour and may not particularly sync with any political or economic theory.
When I’ve had excess money, I have sometimes spent it to cheaply obtain something that is broken (in my case, a malfunctioning electric vehicle, the leftovers of a welding shop, such things) that I definitely know I can fix and sell for profit, or disassemble and sell without loss. I avoid such ventures when I’m not confident enough.