Skip this article if you think capitalism is swell or that “Going Galt” would accomplish anything other than huge embarrassing failure for the Galt-goers.

I came late to the investment game, mostly due to a perception that getting involved in the market was something that only suckers, and (more importantly) rich people who don’t want to work for a living, do. I imagined investing as mainly a way for silver-spoon babies to gain an ownership share of a business upon whose shop floor they will never set foot, and to siphon off unearned profits from the people who actually work there. For those of us who actually do work for a living, I reasoned that investing was a trick to get us to lend money we earned through our labor, to people who haven’t ever earned money through labor of their own, so that they can finance their business without ever getting their hands dirty.

In short, I felt like investing was only for bourgeois scum, or for working people who are getting fleeced by bourgeois scum. But I’ve changed my mind.

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