Anyone voluntarily participating in the US for-profit prison system is, almost assuredly, a problematic person with questionable morals.
It’s literally making money off of slavery. If you would not be proud to call yourself a slave-owner, I’d hope you would also not be proud to invest in slavery.
Royal “you,” by the way. Not OP, specifically.
In a culture where almost everyone is wearing clothes made by children working 14 hour days who occasionally burn to death because fire exits would cost too much, this seems to me, an odd line to draw.
Might just be me but I’m not sure I see much of a difference between slave investor and wearing slave labour.
I think the difference is, you can CHOOSE not to invest in slave labor. If 100% of the clothes are made by slave labor, what are the other options? Be naked? You’ll get arrested, and now by US law, YOU’RE the slave labor.
Whereas nothing is forcing you to invest in slavery.
But they aren’t all made by slave labor. You only have to spend 3-5x as much. Not a problem if you buy %80 less clothes.
Not 100% of clothes directly benefit slave labour. For the price conscious, there are thrift shops/second hand clothes almost everywhere and ethical clothes available online for a bit more (but generally less than brand name stuff that’s expensive and still made by child slaves.)
Whereas nothing is forcing you to invest in slavery.
We all have to do something to survive.
If you have money to invest, you aren’t struggling to survive.
You can invest money for your childrens future and still be struggling. Many people choose to forego a lot for their children but know investing for their education etc is a sacrifice they’ll make.
There are other industries that are very profitable to invest in, and is much less unethical.
I don’t disagree with you that slave labor is bad regardless of who, what, where, how. I disagree, however, that there’s not much difference between purchasing products you need and investing in a business.
Some folks can’t afford anything except cheap clothing/household goods from overseas, where they are often made in sweatshops with slave and/or child labor; it’s not their fault that they can’t afford to purchase ethical products. No one needs to invest in a business, though, so choosing to invest in one that deals in slavery is that investor’s fault.
For those of us who can afford ethically-sourced/made items, though, I agree that it’s quite similar. I have no excuses other than people are, as a whole, not good to each other. :(
I fully excuse folks who are really struggling. Though given thrift shops are a dime a dozen, I don’t entirely think it’s a free pass.
Sorry, this one just bugs me. I absolutely hate that our culture has this huge blind spot to the very real exploitation that so many people engage in but we’ll simultaneously get furious about sins that are, in comparison, fairly minor.
Investing in something evil is reprehensible but I put it on about the same realm as buying an expensive slave made product. At least for the investment, maybe it’s for your kids or something rather than looking cool.
Really appreciate the reasoned response though!
Difference is, if you invest in Apple and find out they use slave labor, you are still primarily investing in a phone production industry. Investing in prison labor is just that, slave labor. A phone company can eventually stop using slave labor, but prison labor is always slave labor.
Huge difference between not being able to afford the right thing, and being able to afford the right thing and instead investing in the really bad thing.
Kind of like how I have to gas up but I would never invest in the oil industry.
But there are non slave alternatives all over. For the price conscious, there are thrift shops, facebook marketplace etc. Otherwise, there’s tons of ethical clothing available online and if you live in a city, probably in some stores near You.
I agree and I think there isn’t much of an effort being made, but investing in it seems like it’s making an effort in the wrong direction.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. There is no ethical investing, either.
*yawn
Yeah, it’s pretty boring, that’s why they call it “a boring dystopia.”
Orlly now?
Yeah, there are a lot of big cheaters right nowz doesn’t mean All of it is
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.
“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.
What does it mean “as left as they come”? When you’re interested in profiting from current slave labour and future concentration camps.
Bad isn’t even a category here, you’re a wannabe fascist profiteer
“As left as they come”.
Doubt.
“I’m not a Nazi”
Said the Nazi, investing in the German military. I’m a friend to the Jews! But I might as we’ll profit off of their incarceration and death, I mean, it’s happening anyway. It’s not like I could instead of thinking only for myself in this time possibly use some of this extra capital I happen to have available to invest and actually do some good with it, but nah.
Short answer: Yes
Long Answer: Good lord. Yes, it would be something a bad person would do.
In effect, any gains you make will be blood money. Have fun with that on your conscience.
“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.
Yes
I mean you’re straight up buying shares in plantations so yes.
Yes.
Investing to make money off of other’s suffering is never justified.
You may as well scream “FUCK YOU, GOT MINE” a little louder.
Yes
Yes lmao
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?
“Would I be a bad person if I loaned the neighborhood pusher some money to re-up his fentanyl package?”
But the ROI is just too good!
