Who Owns Your Insurance Company? (Episode 11)

We’re told the stock market is the great equalizer. Buy shares, and you’re an owner. Put money in your 401(k), and you own a piece of corporate America right alongside the people running it. Everybody wins together.Here’s what that story leaves out: the richest 10% of Americans own more than 80% of the value of the entire stock market. When a company buys back its own shares or pays out a dividend, that money is overwhelmingly returning to a narrow slice of people who were already at the top. Most of us buying an index fund in our 401(k) aren’t really investing in anything. We’re speculating on a price, hoping to sell at a higher price than we bought. The company doesn’t get our money. Another shareholder does, on the other side of the trade.None of that requires anyone to be a villain. Nobody has to intend for wealth to concentrate upward for it to concentrate upward. That’s just what the ownership structure does, on its own, every single day, whether anyone in the building is thinking about it or not. The stock market was sold to us as a wealth equalizer. Structurally, it’s closer to the opposite.But I’ve belonged to ownership structures that actually work the way the stock market is supposed to work. And I noticed the difference long before I had language for it.Comment at livecounterflow.substack.com - Have you ever belonged to something structured like this ... a co-op, a mutual, a member-owned anything ... and noticed the difference before you could name it? I’d love to hear it. Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe