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Not a carefully-written article. When you buy stock in a public company, that company is not getting your money -- the seller of the stock is! So if you buy a P

by jblow 13y ago

Not a carefully-written article. When you buy stock in a public company, that company is not getting your money -- the seller of the stock is! So if you buy a Pepsi stock or a Shell stock, you are investing in that stock, but not investing in the company in a traditional sense (in which they get money from you and expect to pay out more money later, with the surplus coming from their activities). [There is the small factor that the company usually owns some of the stock and demand for the stock usually pushes the price up slightly, the company's stock assets do benefit slightly in a case like this, but this doesn't matter unless they sell, which is a rare activity compared to general volume of investment.] Since the article does not differentiate between stocks, bonds, and loans, it is essentially useless. I guess they didn't care enough to differentiate, and just wanted to say bad stuff about the foundation; or, maybe they just don't understand finance much at all, and didn't think about it.

judk 13y ago
Come now. If unethical corporations faced divestiture, amoral investors would expect less profits, which would drive down prices all the way to the IPO/VC buyin and the RSU packages for management. You can't seriously believe that the stock market exists while disbelieving that buy-side demand is a fundamental component of launching and running business.
- jblow 13y ago
  Of course not, but look: you manage the investment arm of a charity fund and your job is to provide more income for that fund in the future. If you put money into stocks, and get a return on that, that return means very concrete things: more people who get polio vaccines, more people who get dewormed, etc, etc. Very concrete results. If you don't put money into stocks, because they are unethical ... well, how exactly? As we have mentioned the stock has already been sold. So, you don't do it because by doing so you are helping support a market system that may provide a setting for future unethical corporations to arise in and go public? (Along with many ethical corporations?) Or because by providing demand for the stock now, you retrocausally made it possible for that company to have IPO'd years or decades ago? These are very abstract and weird concerns when your job is very directly to help people. You say "if unethical corporations faced divestiture", but even a large fund like this one has no say in that. If they don't invest in McDonald's or Walmart or whatever, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. So seriously, if you were running the fund, what would you do? For real. If you make less money, actual human beings die who would not have died, in volume. (All of this said, I would feel pretty dirty about buying the stock of a prison company, anyway. But railing on them for stuff like McDonald's and Walmart just ... doesn't make sense.)

by jblow 13y ago

judk 13y ago

Come now. If unethical corporations faced divestiture, amoral investors would expect less profits, which would drive down prices all the way to the IPO/VC buyin and the RSU packages for management. You can't seriously believe that the stock market exists while disbelieving that buy-side demand is a fundamental component of launching and running business.

jblow 13y ago
Of course not, but look: you manage the investment arm of a charity fund and your job is to provide more income for that fund in the future. If you put money into stocks, and get a return on that, that return means very concrete things: more people who get polio vaccines, more people who get dewormed, etc, etc. Very concrete results. If you don't put money into stocks, because they are unethical ... well, how exactly? As we have mentioned the stock has already been sold. So, you don't do it because by doing so you are helping support a market system that may provide a setting for future unethical corporations to arise in and go public? (Along with many ethical corporations?) Or because by providing demand for the stock now, you retrocausally made it possible for that company to have IPO'd years or decades ago? These are very abstract and weird concerns when your job is very directly to help people. You say "if unethical corporations faced divestiture", but even a large fund like this one has no say in that. If they don't invest in McDonald's or Walmart or whatever, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. So seriously, if you were running the fund, what would you do? For real. If you make less money, actual human beings die who would not have died, in volume. (All of this said, I would feel pretty dirty about buying the stock of a prison company, anyway. But railing on them for stuff like McDonald's and Walmart just ... doesn't make sense.)