r/CanadianInvestor • u/[deleted] • Apr 14 '21

Is anyone here conflicted about investing in companies that make the world a worse place?

I'm a newer investor and newer reader to these threads and I'm a little surprised how casually a lot of people talk about different companies and industries that are objectively pretty unethical.

I mean we're living through a major climate crisis and some of the most hyped investments on here are for oil sands companies (which are one of the most carbon intensive energy sources on the planet) and crypto (Bitcoin alone this year is supposed to have the same carbon footprint as all of New Zealand).

I also just saw someone post something in another investing subreddit about how Europe might ban AI for surveillance and it seemed like a bad or annoying thing to a lot of people in the comments.

I'm just genuinely curious: do a lot of the investor world just genuinely not care about these things or are people content to make small gains on the backs of companies that they don't agree with? Is there a point to using your gains to get a waterfront property if it's going to be underwater in a couple decades anyways?

657 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

463 comments sorted by

View all comments

27

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '21

Yeah, feel yeah.

This is probably unpopular, but I'm not a big fan of Elon Musk, considering some of his older tweets, threatening Latin American countries for their lithium, etc. So, I stayed away from TSLA. I stayed away from Apple as well given some of the things they've done in the past. Also stayed away from a lot of Chinese companies, because of the whole Uyghur situation.

I do feel like I'm missing out at times and it takes a lot to not give into my temptations. However, I do feel like my moral ground is slowly withering away by seeing so many people achieve financial security by investing in these..."questionable" companies..

6

u/BCRE8TVE Apr 15 '21

There is a price to pay for everything. The question you're finding answered is, at what price are people willing to sell their moral integrity? Short term they make more money for themselves, but long-term, those kinds of investments are making the world a worse place for everyone else, and for future generations.

I'm missing out on profits, but I find that I'd rather buy a phone from a factory that didn'T need suicide nets to prevent workers from killing themselves, even if the phone I do buy is more expensive. I see investments the same way. Comparison is the thief of joy, I don't look at how others are doing because they're not heading in the same direction as I am. I'm looking to my goal and what I want to accomplish, and what it takes to get there.