If you understand the trade-offs and want to get involved, by all means. I'd be careful about thinking you understand trade-offs though. I'm sure you're not an

If you understand the trade-offs and want to get involved, by all means. I'd be careful about thinking you understand trade-offs though. I'm sure you're not an idiot, but I'm more sure that you can't possibly understand the inner workings of a mega corp with 10,000 employees whose full time job involves running the company. If you did, you could create a 1 man startup and put them out of business. Re: world hunger - this is a localization problem. Anyone claiming corn from Kansas should feed starving Ethiopians needs to spend time in the food industry. I can't speak to shareholder value - I'm not a big believer that should ever be the motivation. If you're a passive investor, be passive. I put my passive money into funds because I need to keep up with the market, end of story. I put my active money into small companies I can manage and run.