• unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The act of investment is purchasing (or exchanging) capital using cash or other assets.

      A business may acquire funding from investment, but in such a case the investor is trading cash for equity, bonds, or some other investment asset representing the present or future value of the company, or generated by the company. The investor is not supplying capital, but rather purchasing capital (or trading capital).

      The idea that the investor is supplying capital to the company is only a metaphor.

      Someone may lose money from an investment, but most capital is owned by immensely wealthy individuals, whose situation is vastly removed from that of ordinary workers, who actually do face the risk of losing their only home or their only car.

      Even small businesses are owned by individuals who have chosen to become business owners in order to profit from others’ work. Any risk they assume is through an attempt to enrich themselves from gains not shared with workers. By not sharing their gains with those who are working to create them, business owners, large or small, are not helping workers, but rather preventing workers from advancing.