I think the private prison system is one of the worst institutions in the world. I think the reality of the stock market has no connection to capital reinvested into businesses vs shareholder dividends. Investments at this scale are not like giving a three person startup 2 million dollars. They’re not growing their businesses by putting it all into capex.
Are you an asshole for gambling on whether Trump will keep his word, using the systems in front of you? Dare I say it? No. You’re not.
I don’t think it’s bad to profit from the US economy even though some of those profits would end up being by very evil means. At least in that way, you don’t really have a choice as the economy is very interconnected.
But in this scenario you do have a choice, there are plenty of ways to invest and make money without going out of your way to be extra evil.
Sorry about the ugly comment you are receiving. Seems people on lemmy love to enforce the godwin’s law.
My opinion: be careful, all the anti immigration rhetoric is just ineffective gesticulation (like with the wall). A lot of nothing to please the racist population… and scare the illegal workers so they accept slave wage, thus enriching the owners of hotels, farms, restaurants… etc.
The prison wont gain much , or at least not as much as some traditional business
Yes. Doing so makes you a hypocrite. Don’t worry through, there’s no shortage of hypocrisy in America. It’s practically a requirement to be at least unwittingly hypocritical. Just by drinking Coke or tipping a waiter you’re contributing to a broken system designed to exploit people for maximum profit.
But here’s the rub. You can’t, in any practical sense, escape that crap, however, you can choose to not deliberately contribute to stuff outside your immediate wheelhouse. It’s one thing to buy a chocolate bar out of a vending machine, but investing in Nestle? That’s a choice, and one you could have easily skipped. You could skip the candy too, but it’s very, very hard (and impractical) to refuse every corporate product ever. Everything, from the materials in your electronics to your mortgage company, to most food from lettuce to frozen chicken, exploits people. But you don’t have to voluntarily make the problem worse.
And on the sliding scale of morality, investing in slavery - in this case the prison industrial complex is just greed and indifference to the cost in human suffering. Seriously research it, slavery in all but name has been part of the plan since the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. We never had a justice system; we have a punishment system that hungers for the labor of the downtrodden, especially of minorities.
So if you want to at least try and be a better person, and investing is something you want to do, look into the companies you’re investing in. See what their executives are paid compared to their workers here and abroad. There are companies that you can ethically justify investing in - small companies, co-ops, credit unions, pro-union companies, companies actually trying to solve problems or make the world better, like solar manufacturing, etc.
If you want to invest in human suffering, then you’re going to have to make peace with being a bad person and being judged for it. I’d advise at least trying not to. It’s a hopeless battle, but fighting honorably is its own justification.
There are not enough hundred dollar bills in the world to wipe off the stench of being branded a doody-head by the fediverse.
Thank you for your well thought out response to what might otherwise be dismissed as a trolling attempt.
“I’m just trying to monetize human suffering. Am i a bad person?”
Actually no, you’re not “bad.” You’ve gone so far past bad that bad is just a dot on the horizon in your rearview mirror.
So first, you need to know that the definition of “genocide” is larger than you probably think.
The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The acts in question include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group.
Emphasis mine.
Second, hastily-built private prisons constructed for the purpose of keeping a group that has committed no crime in one place long enough to “dispose of” them? They also have a technical term: a concentration camp. If they’re also performing work, they’re a labor camp.
So what Trump wants to do with Latiné folks is a form of genocide.
Third, there are multiple levels of supporting a genocide, from being a member of the society that created the out-group, all the way up through pulling people from that out-group from their homes. Somewhere in the middle of that list is “voluntarily providing aid to those committing the genocide.”
Fourth, each level of support bears a different culpability, and each individual within the levels bears a different culpability based on their knowledge and understanding of what’s happening, their intentional decision to participate or not, and the amount of protest they raise at the treatment of the out-group.
So, knowing all of this, where would you put such a decision?
Fuck it, imma say it. Some questions are hella stupid
Needed to be said. I honestly thought I was in Onion territory at first…
I’m a bit confused as to why you would have to ask this if you truly are “as left as they come” but… yes of course??
“As left as they come”.
Doubt.
“listen. I don’t WANT Hitler to commit mass genocide. But I am going to fund the company of the gas chambers he plans to use. Because I benefit from it”.
It’s not a one to one comparison but um. Yeah.
Buying stock is not funding the company though unless the company is issuing new stock. The company already took the cash during the IPO. The only thing buying shares does is affect the price. So it will make some evil shit stain who is the founder of the company wealthier.
It’s a bit more nuanced. Buying the stock increases the stock price which makes issuing stock a better deal for the company in case they want to expand operations. It also makes stock buybacks less likely.
So if they issue stock OP is indirectly funding the company. If OP prevented a buyback and the money went into investments such as a new prison OP has an different effect. Otherwise there’s no effect.
I was coming to say that also.
The stock market is nothing more than gambling on the public (rich people) sentiment about how well that company is going to do. It’s similar to how there is gambling on who will win the presidency, and does not affect the outcomes.
Buying stock is not investment, the money that the company recieves comes from issuing the stock. Your money does not fund the evil things that the company does, unless you are paying for goods/services from that company. But, I have seen that stock price influences the decisions of leadership inside the company. Your individual action will not influence the stock price.
While I admit that I used to think trading was gambling I now know that while there is an element of gambling, there are a lot of measurable factors that make the “gambles” much more informed, even market psychology to some extent.
Yes. Regardless of the second part. Don’t invest in private prisons, even if it’s sums that would seem inconsequential to the industry as a whole.
Edit:If it’s invest in, in the sense of, buy the stock of, I’d still say yes. It still contributes to the success of the industry, even if just minuscully so.
Apparently the left stops somewhere about right of centre - what a quaint political system the US has.
Yes. Bad.
Unless you got hundreds of thousands in assets to invest, you are only gambling on the suffering and slavery.
Yes
