The mask slipped from the face of the financial elite at the start of this year when a group of private investors played the stock market for all it was worth. Working as a group, independent low-level investors manipulated the price of Game Stop stock shares and made a killing. In response to this, the formerly popular trading app Robinhood locked Game Stop stocks from being purchased. Holders were able to sell, but they could no longer buy.
In other words, when the little guy wins, the big guy takes the ball, goes home, and steals the trophy. Independent journalist Tim Pool commented at the time that we always knew the game was rigged, that we knew the dice were loaded — but on the off chance we did roll sixes, we never before suspected that they would go so far as to kick players out of the casino.
While the mainstream media tried to conflate these small-time Game Stop stock buyers with Trump-aligned terrorists, the rest of us were bleeding trust in the establishment. One commentator even suggested that the Game Stop buyers were being controlled by Russian intelligence.
In the current political climate, the only good news we can reliably and honestly print is that most people are not buying the lies. Unfortunately, enough people do buy the lies to enforce them. But a new app has arisen to compete with Robinhood and to offer members of the public to compete on a level playing field with the major stock buyers again.
It’s called Public, and it has offered to pay investors to leave other apps and become their customers. This is widely and accurately considered to be a strike at the heart of the proprietors of companies like Robinhood.
The new company is clearly targeting a demographic that is disillusioned with brokerages that claim to be for the common investor while fixing the game for major players and selling their user information at the same time- just as the social media platforms do. Their ad is noticeably meme-like, using Internet-culture lingo that the disenfranchised Robinhood stock buyers speak fluently. It features singer Michael Bolton making fun of himself and serenading the demographic that Public wants to turn into clients.
The ad is funny — if you understand the jargon of Internet stock traders — but it is also accurate in its depiction of betrayal at the hands of a financial industry that has been duplicitous with one class of people while offering valuable advantages to another class.
It’s a story that has been in the making for as long as humans have formed societies: the struggle of the toiling class against the predations of a ruling class that believes it has a right to cheat. Hopefully, Public will be everything it claims to be. If so, it could be a powerful tool for regular people to claim what is theirs. However, we feel it is only a matter of time before it will be subverted by those who want to destroy human freedom in the name of power.
