4 ms·
Standard arguments used in the article: 1. "It doesn't matter what I do -- If I don't do some particular evil, someone else will do that evil in my place" aka
by gohrt 11y ago
Standard arguments used in the article:
1. "It doesn't matter what I do -- If I don't do some particular evil, someone else will do that evil in my place" aka "I'm just one person, my vote is irrelevant"
2. "punishing past mishbehavior is not a deterrent to future misbehavior" (In this case, the punishment would be lowering the stock price of a company, by not buying its stock, which punishes the people who (gave money to people who... recursively) gave money to the founders.
- ikeboy 11y agoAlso, the cost of preventing the evil is not worth it. It would be more efficient to spend the money on what you're good at.
- mistercow 11y agoNeither of those strike me as characterizing major argument of the article. Rather, they are used in support of the stronger points about where to aim your resources.
- ikeboy 11y agoPunishing past behavior by a long chain like that seems extremely inefficient. Sure, if society could coordinate well enough to not fund bad behavior, that could be a large enough effect to matter. But the optimal level on which to act seems to me to be the government level. If society doesn't want such companies, society should elect politicians etc that lead to them being banned. Note that boycotts are different. A boycott directly takes money away from the target that would have been spent otherwise. This takes money away from someone who didn't take money away from someone etc. So you can endorse private boycotts of products but not private boycotts of stock.
- Kluny 11y agoThey came for the Jews and I said nothing because I wasn't a Jew....
- Houshalter 11y agoThe main arguments is opportunity cost. Every dollar spent (or lost) on that goal is a dollar taken from some other goal. The "standard arguments" are correct though. Your vote absolutely is irrelevant. And this is a thousand times more true in markets where people can make large sums of money by defecting. And if you get past that, the stock price doesn't even affect the company. It's extraordinarily indirect. If you somehow make the stock price artificially low, that will somehow discourage future investors from investing in something similar? It seems unlikely.
- sideshowb 11y agoIn addition to what gohrt said: the threat of falling tobacco stocks does guide behaviour of these companies, even if they are not raising capital, because if stocks go low the company is more susceptible to hostile takeover, and top tier management probably want to keep their jobs.
- philh 11y ago(I didn't RTFA.) > "It doesn't matter what I do -- If I don't do some particular evil, someone else will do that evil in my place" aka "I'm just one person, my vote is irrelevant" These are different arguments. The second says, my actions don't have any effect. The first says, my actions affect the world, and also other people's actions, and their actions affect the world so as to cancel out the direct effects of my actions. Reducing the first to the second misses a lot.