Selling shares might be a good idea if that same money is reinvested in environmentally sound enterprises. If you're exhorting us to leave the capital markets stage to those who don't care about anything but profit, we'll be handing them the keys to the kingdom without building alternatives to their destructive practices.
It's not an easy conundrum to juggle, and it is certainly one in which principles will conflict, each of which is dearly held.
Take the principle that exploitation of the Earth purely for profit is nefarious. If I engage in that, then I run up against my own principle. So, let's say I eschew such exploitation. But, I own a car. And it needs petrol. Should I then forego my own mobility in order to safeguard my principle? Because the enjoyment I get from driving is also a profit from exploitation of the Earth.
How I reconcile the two is to deem my use of a car as a necessary evil. But when I conceive a necessary evil, then I open the gate to others to conceive of investing in oil and gas as also being necessary evils. It becomes an argument of degree. And, in truth, our whole existence is an argument of degree, because principles will always ultimately come up against each other and a decision needs to be taken, usually on the basis of words like 'conscionable' or 'reasonable' or 'acceptable'.
One way to resolve the conflict of paradigms is to reshape how shares are held. So that profit no longer becomes the driver for investment, but rather some other criterion: such as ensuring employment or ensuring a reasonable standard of living for all, with dividends being only an adjunct and not the prime goal. Only radical legislation could achieve that, and it'd need to be at a world scale. Because wherever you leave a loophole, someone will crawl through it. And there will always be those who don't need a loophole - they just crawl.
I know translators who refuse to do translations for the oil & gas industries or for tobacco or firearms or such things. There are nefarious practices also in pharma and, there, it is hard to tell whether a pharma company is overall benevolent or nefarious. I think penicillin is beneficial; but I wonder at the apparent scam wrought upon us annually with the flu vaccination, given its "hit and miss" reputation. Insurance is another area of doubt: some medical insurers refuse claims wholesale, without even looking at the medical file. So boycotts themselves can be hit and miss.
I'm an aficionado of railways. Early railways issued investor prospectuses in which dividends were assured at a percentage rate. Invest at a 2 1/2% dividend, in a sum of £1,000, you were assured of an annual dividend of £25. If the railway's earnings did not allow a payment at 2 1/2%, you got whatever the split was. The remainder of the earnings went towards improving technology, building bridges, whatever. So, if dividends were pegged to some standard, like the bank lending rate, or inflation or whatever, there would be no incentive to exploit staff or markets or customers, especially if excess profits were taxed - confiscated - by government to go toward, as you suggest, "more worthy projects". If you want to ponder this more deeply, take a look at this article by me: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/lets-shake-up-the-world. That article declares itself as a "germ of an idea", so it's not all thought through. And, just like the stock market's ballroom carpet (as referred to in the article), the germ itself probably contains a fair few bubbles.
The greatest enemies of a principle are the words "and" and "but". When exceptions and qualifications are laid upon a principle, it will labour to achieve its goal. Here's an article on one such instance, where the weight placed in a law on "negotiation" led to the law being utterly ineffectual: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/a-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-on. Or consider the 1789 second amendment to the US Constitution, on which an article is in preparation. The amendment was introduced at the behest of states that feared the crushing might of the US federal state every bit as much as the US had feared the mighty British Navy. And see where that has got us to in terms of gun ownership in the US today.
On the other hand, look at article 25 of the Belgian Constitution, which says "De drukpers is vrij; de censuur kan nooit worden ingevoerd." (The printed press is free; censorship shall never be imposed). The provision was cited in Antwerp Court of Appeal to repel an ex parte application by the government to place a gagging order on the owner of an illicitly imported cat from Peru during Covid, against whom an order was sought to compel the cat’s owner “forthwith to cease and desist from all and any comments relative to Lee the cat, the Federal Agency for Safety and the Food Chain and the officials thereof in any form of media whatsoever, and to subject to a coercive fine of 1,000 euros any and each infringement thereof." The freedom of speech guaranteed in article 19 of the Constitution would thereby have been impinged upon prospectively, whereas the ECHR had ruled in the RTBF case (application 50084/06, decision of 29 March 2011) that only retrospective abuse of the freedom of speech may be pursued in Belgium, but not prospective gagging orders. It is the pure, unequivocal simplicity of article 25 that allowed the court to ward off a serious endeavour by Belgium's government to ride roughshod over its own Constitution.
Or the German Constitution's three-word principle of unassailable brilliance: Bundesrecht bricht Landesrecht. Federal law overrules state law. No arguments. No buts, no ands.
So, a principle is best framed as a sound principle rather than as a weak-willed principle beset with buts and ands. The examples show: it can be done.
Selling shares might be a good idea if that same money is reinvested in environmentally sound enterprises. If you're exhorting us to leave the capital markets stage to those who don't care about anything but profit, we'll be handing them the keys to the kingdom without building alternatives to their destructive practices.
No, I am not exhorting anything of the kind.
It's not an easy conundrum to juggle, and it is certainly one in which principles will conflict, each of which is dearly held.
Take the principle that exploitation of the Earth purely for profit is nefarious. If I engage in that, then I run up against my own principle. So, let's say I eschew such exploitation. But, I own a car. And it needs petrol. Should I then forego my own mobility in order to safeguard my principle? Because the enjoyment I get from driving is also a profit from exploitation of the Earth.
How I reconcile the two is to deem my use of a car as a necessary evil. But when I conceive a necessary evil, then I open the gate to others to conceive of investing in oil and gas as also being necessary evils. It becomes an argument of degree. And, in truth, our whole existence is an argument of degree, because principles will always ultimately come up against each other and a decision needs to be taken, usually on the basis of words like 'conscionable' or 'reasonable' or 'acceptable'.
One way to resolve the conflict of paradigms is to reshape how shares are held. So that profit no longer becomes the driver for investment, but rather some other criterion: such as ensuring employment or ensuring a reasonable standard of living for all, with dividends being only an adjunct and not the prime goal. Only radical legislation could achieve that, and it'd need to be at a world scale. Because wherever you leave a loophole, someone will crawl through it. And there will always be those who don't need a loophole - they just crawl.
I know translators who refuse to do translations for the oil & gas industries or for tobacco or firearms or such things. There are nefarious practices also in pharma and, there, it is hard to tell whether a pharma company is overall benevolent or nefarious. I think penicillin is beneficial; but I wonder at the apparent scam wrought upon us annually with the flu vaccination, given its "hit and miss" reputation. Insurance is another area of doubt: some medical insurers refuse claims wholesale, without even looking at the medical file. So boycotts themselves can be hit and miss.
I'm an aficionado of railways. Early railways issued investor prospectuses in which dividends were assured at a percentage rate. Invest at a 2 1/2% dividend, in a sum of £1,000, you were assured of an annual dividend of £25. If the railway's earnings did not allow a payment at 2 1/2%, you got whatever the split was. The remainder of the earnings went towards improving technology, building bridges, whatever. So, if dividends were pegged to some standard, like the bank lending rate, or inflation or whatever, there would be no incentive to exploit staff or markets or customers, especially if excess profits were taxed - confiscated - by government to go toward, as you suggest, "more worthy projects". If you want to ponder this more deeply, take a look at this article by me: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/lets-shake-up-the-world. That article declares itself as a "germ of an idea", so it's not all thought through. And, just like the stock market's ballroom carpet (as referred to in the article), the germ itself probably contains a fair few bubbles.
The greatest enemies of a principle are the words "and" and "but". When exceptions and qualifications are laid upon a principle, it will labour to achieve its goal. Here's an article on one such instance, where the weight placed in a law on "negotiation" led to the law being utterly ineffectual: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/a-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-on. Or consider the 1789 second amendment to the US Constitution, on which an article is in preparation. The amendment was introduced at the behest of states that feared the crushing might of the US federal state every bit as much as the US had feared the mighty British Navy. And see where that has got us to in terms of gun ownership in the US today.
On the other hand, look at article 25 of the Belgian Constitution, which says "De drukpers is vrij; de censuur kan nooit worden ingevoerd." (The printed press is free; censorship shall never be imposed). The provision was cited in Antwerp Court of Appeal to repel an ex parte application by the government to place a gagging order on the owner of an illicitly imported cat from Peru during Covid, against whom an order was sought to compel the cat’s owner “forthwith to cease and desist from all and any comments relative to Lee the cat, the Federal Agency for Safety and the Food Chain and the officials thereof in any form of media whatsoever, and to subject to a coercive fine of 1,000 euros any and each infringement thereof." The freedom of speech guaranteed in article 19 of the Constitution would thereby have been impinged upon prospectively, whereas the ECHR had ruled in the RTBF case (application 50084/06, decision of 29 March 2011) that only retrospective abuse of the freedom of speech may be pursued in Belgium, but not prospective gagging orders. It is the pure, unequivocal simplicity of article 25 that allowed the court to ward off a serious endeavour by Belgium's government to ride roughshod over its own Constitution.
Or the German Constitution's three-word principle of unassailable brilliance: Bundesrecht bricht Landesrecht. Federal law overrules state law. No arguments. No buts, no ands.
So, a principle is best framed as a sound principle rather than as a weak-willed principle beset with buts and ands. The examples show: it can be done.