> An AMZN share on the other hand represents some small percentage of actual labor and production being done by Amazon's employees.
Which is nice on paper but is functionally worthless for virtually all shareholders unless AMZN pays a dividend, no? The only way to generate wealth from AMZN right now is to give it to someone else for more money than you paid for it. If you bought AMZN 20 years ago for retirement, you'd still be waiting for that asset to produce anything on its own. For fun, compare that to the East India companies which paid up to double digit dividends from year one.
To be fair, AMZN is one of the more promising examples of these tech growth stocks, but many of them seem to be trading in a way similar to BTC: pure speculation on an asset which currently does not produce anything on its own -- and has no guarantee that it ever will.
> That BTC I own represents an immutable thing that itself does nothing.
Part of BTC's value is probably the hope (speculation) that it will one day be used as an alternative payment system / store of value / whatever, and that will cause it to maintain value. As of right now, a share of AMZN itself does virtually nothing either. Its value lies in the hope (speculation) that one day Amazon will pay us money for holding it.
Which is nice on paper but is functionally worthless for virtually all shareholders unless AMZN pays a dividend, no? The only way to generate wealth from AMZN right now is to give it to someone else for more money than you paid for it. If you bought AMZN 20 years ago for retirement, you'd still be waiting for that asset to produce anything on its own. For fun, compare that to the East India companies which paid up to double digit dividends from year one.
To be fair, AMZN is one of the more promising examples of these tech growth stocks, but many of them seem to be trading in a way similar to BTC: pure speculation on an asset which currently does not produce anything on its own -- and has no guarantee that it ever will.