Do you have a pension?

Deleted User wrote: »

It's almost as if they don't care.

Oh no, the opposite actually - these posters seem to care a lot, about trying to muddy the waters, so that they can obstruct criticism of unethical investments.

bluewolf wrote: »

It's always a conspiracy, especially when it isn't

Yes whenever anyone is critical of another posters flawed arguments or the motives behind them, that's automatically putting forward a 'conspiracy theory', right?

Think you need to look up the definition of 'conspiracy'.

I - like a lot of other people - wouldn't have a job without those electronic devices, actually.

The ethics of purchasing goods, are plagued with practical problems - especially since you can't practically avoid having to purchase some things.
The ethics of investing, are not - you don't have to invest in anything, you have no excuse for not doing your research.

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mahoganygas wrote: »

So we should only invest in companies that we know are iron clad, ethically and morally incorruptible?

Could you name 5 of them please?
It's not that I don't want to do my homework. I just don't believe you that these companies exist in the real world.

That's your problem, not mine. You list them.

Permabear wrote: »

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That's pretty ridiculous hyperbole, which assumes peoples accumulated wages are not enough to support them into old age - which, if true, would be indicative of bigger problems with the economy and distribution of wealth...

My position isn't set to an extreme of not investing in anything either, it's pointing out that investments are far more of a deliberate choice, than any purchases are - you don't have to invest in anything, so when you do, you have far less of an excuse for not doing your research, and making sure your investments are as ethical as you can manage.

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Permabear wrote: »

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So in other words, no, you think peoples accumulated wages are not enough to support them through old age.

If that's true, then obviously the distribution of wealth in the economy is off-kilter, and should be more equitably divided so that people don't have to rely upon investments into old age.

Permabear wrote: »

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Ah there's the rereg backslapper/thankee again...

Nobody said anything about taxing 'the rich' - don't be in such a rush to put soundbite's in peoples mouths...

If you claim it's possible for investments to accumulate enough wealth to people, to pay for retirement, then there is obviously enough wealth to go around, so that the economy can be reconfigured, to do this without investments.

The wealth generation potential is there - it's solely a distributional problem.


Besides from this, my post didn't exclude investments either, it contrasted how purchases are far less of a choice, than investments - the point still stands, that investments are far more of a deliberate and researched choice, than purchases are, and are subject to far higher ethical standards given the ability to avoid unethical investments, and the difficulty of avoiding unethical purchases in todays economy.

beach_walker wrote: »

Tbh I'll put my hands up as one of the people whom the "ethical" concerns well, concern me! I've really never considered what the hell pension funds are invested in (general disinterest) but it definitely wouldn't sit right with me if I found mine were in companies/industries which I think are doing active harm.

What's the good in a nice pension pot if it's helped to destroy the planet/kill people/make the world a sh!tter place for my kids? You can right me off as a do-gooder (it'd be a first :pac: ) but I've turned down jobs in areas which I don't agree with, why wouldn't I do the same with my money?

If you're actively investing in a pension at the moment, and if you know e.g. the name/plan for the fund, you can likely find a document on their website outlining investments.

It's something I'm curious about in general about pension funds, so if you have any leads on that (fund names etc.), I could easily look that up and see if they have info on the type of companies they invest in - and could see if (at first glance) there are any ethically questionable companies there.

A good site I recommend for searching companies, is www.sourcewatch.org - if there's dirt on a prominent company, you can very likely find it there on first look (and they have tobacco/environmental stuff as probably the no.1 concern they watch for) - and a company's Wikipedia page can often be the next best bet.

Chances are your pension fund is actively managed. You will have a stake in dozens, hundreds or possibly thousands of companies. Your fund manager could be place hundreds of trades throughout the day to keep your fund optimally balanced. If you find a company on that list which you don't like, you can't just ring up your fund manager and tell him to liquidate your position in BAT because you hate cigarettes. That's not how it works.

The other option is to do as the good Komrade says and manage your own portfolio. Research a small group of companies you like, place a few trades and sit on the investments for 30 years. Lots of people do this. The problem is that you don't really benefit from diversification. So you have to make sure that you do your homework really well and pick only the winning horses. It's also incredibly expensive.

Picking a well performing stock which also gets a gold star in some arbitrary ethics test is the hard part. I'm still waiting on examples of this.

On your point re: abortion. This can apply to any vice, but you mentioned abortion so let's go with that. How do you find a company which is morally opposed to abortion? It's easy enough to find companies which don't provide abortion services. But what about builders who once profited from a contract to build an abortion clinic? Or a cleaning company who's key client is a chain of abortion clinics? Or what about CEO's of random companies who fully support abortion? Do they get struck off the list?

My point is that it's not that easy to examine your investments in great detail each month. It's certainly not as easy as googling "is Puppy Dogs PLC a good company?"

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I'm all for ethical investment, good stuff. However things like individual purchases are as important, it's generally just a cop out to say it's not practical. How many people even know you can buy an ethical phone? How many know the rankings of which are more ethical? Or only buy second hand? And so on in a million different cases.

Individual purchases can be practically bought ethically - but with your purchases overall, it's very hard to practically avoid some amount of unethical purchases.

It's far far easier to avoid unethical investments, and given how much of a long-term involvement many investments (particularly pensions) will have in companies, and how much research such investments involve, then there's not really any excuse for ignoring ethical issues.

So, ethical purchasing and ethical investing, are not equivalent - and the 'appeal to hypocrisy' fallacy that people are using to try and justify unethical investments, by pointing to unethical purchases, is (apart from being fallacious on its own terms...) not comparing like with like, since it's arguably a practical impossibility, to avoid some amount of unethical purchases (to the point, that it's akin to blaming people, for being in the economic system they inhabit - which they have no choice in).