Am I a bad person if (as left as they come) I invest in American Private Prison contractors on the assumption that Trump will go through with his deportation scheme at least to some extent?
Am I a bad person if (as left as they come) I invest in American Private Prison contractors on the assumption that Trump will go through with his deportation scheme at least to some extent?
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 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. :(
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.
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
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.
"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.
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.
“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.
Yes
I mean you're straight up buying shares in plantations so yes.
“As left as they come”.
Doubt.
Yes
"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!
Of course.
Yes lmao
Yes.
"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.
There are other investments that are less... morally questionable...
Like, even investing in real estate is still less morally wrong than literal prison labor.
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?
Don't do it, friend.
The better investment generally is to invest in index funds anyways, which makes your hands at least a little bit cleaner.
Thought so. Just making sure.
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.
I don't think so - the stock market is extremely detached from fundraising in the modern world and if that company decided to fundraise it'll mostly do so on the back of mutual funds and uni endowments.
I personally find divestment is a pretty ineffective personal action in terms of individuals.
You are benefitting from incarceration and forced labor
The stock market is so detached from reality that the impact you're having is nearly nil. You're much more directly supporting forced labor and incarceration when you buy a t-shirt, Chinese garlic, register your car, eat pretty much any fast food, enjoy chocolate, or do literally anything connected to Walmart.
My point in the comment above is that Divestment (outside of retail investment) has almost no impact. If you live in America you're already evil as fuck and profiting from the misery of millions. The stocks you own are some of the least evil shit you're doing.
So is every other American.
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??
Fuck it, imma say it. Some questions are hella stupid
Needed to be said. I honestly thought I was in Onion territory at first…
Apparently the left stops somewhere about right of centre - what a quaint political system the US has.
Do you remember the part in Schindler's list where his factory's weapons and ammo were all out of spec and couldn't be used?
The question of morality in investments is not absolute; it depends on how one frames responsibility and agency.
Markets are amoral tools. Financial markets operate independently of moral judgments. When individuals invest in an industry, they are not necessarily endorsing its practices but recognizing an opportunity within existing systems. One can argue that targeting an investment does not equate to creating or exacerbating the problems within that industry.
The existence of private prisons and deportation schemes reflects systemic issues, not individual investors. Policies and demand for incarceration stem from government choices and public sentiment. As such, targeting investors as "bad people" shifts focus away from the policymakers and institutions enabling these systems.
Some may justify these investments pragmatically: by securing financial stability, individuals can later support progressive causes, donate to charities, or fund organizations fighting for systemic change. For example, an investor might use the returns to support immigrant advocacy groups or lobby for prison reform.
There is algo "Separation of Investment and Values". Not every decision must align with one’s ideological framework. People often compartmentalize their personal lives from their professional or financial strategies. A leftist could rationally engage in capitalism as a survival mechanism within an inescapable capitalist framework while still advocating for systemic change.
Many industries—tech, energy, or agriculture—have problematic practices, from exploitative labor to environmental harm. Singling out private prisons overlooks the broader complexity of investing in any sector. Most portfolios inadvertently include industries with ethical concerns, such as fossil fuels or fast fashion.
Defending this investment as not inherently immoral hinges on the premise that financial actions alone do not define someone’s character. Morality lies in how individuals balance their actions, mitigate harm, and contribute positively to society. However, ethical investments often require introspection and alignment with long-term values. While investing in private prison contractors can be defended on pragmatic or systemic grounds, it’s worth questioning whether the financial gain outweighs the potential ethical compromise.
Hmmm, are you saying workers are alienated from each other via the market? Social relations are mediated by commodities and money??
I swear I've heard this somewhere before...
Are you saying is not? When applied to investments, the abstraction becomes even more pronounced. As investors, individuals might focus on profit potential (commodities and returns) without directly engaging with or even acknowledging the human or social costs underlying those profits. The market acts as a buffer, depersonalizing the consequences and further alienating participants from the broader social implications of their actions.
So, yes, you’ve heard this before, and it’s a classic critique of how capitalism distorts and reframes human connections in terms of profit and exchange! Marx argues that under capitalism, commodities take on a life of their own, obscuring the labor and social relations that produced them. The true connections between people—worker to worker, worker to consumer, are hidden behind the veil of market exchange.
Short freedom
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.
The world won't be any better if you don't. The only difference is what you'd feel about it yourself.
The way I look at it, someone is going to profit off a that suffering, might as well be me.
That makes the world worse though. Do you really want to make the world a worse place?
My not owning shares of a company doesnt make them any less bad, at least if in own shares I can vote on who is elected to the board and what direction they take things.
If enough like minded people with money wanted to do to corecivic what elon musk did to Twitter the way to do that is by owning enough stock to do a hostile takeover and force the company to shut down.
Thats how you use capitalists lack of ethics against them.
In theory if you could use any profits to make counter-investments or buy enough stock to be able to influence them to move in a different direction then your strategy might be viable, but unless you literally just buy 1 share to be able to harass them at stockholder meetings then in all likelihood your money is doing more harm than good.
Best to just straight up invest in organizations that are effective in stopping these things and influencing policy against them.
Nope. Name a company or even an investment that isn't evil. Would you want to invest in it? If you tried to avoid all of them it would be a very difficult life.
I say who the fuck cares what some Internet randos think. I bet you ten shares that more than a handful of the people taking about ethical conundrum didn't even vote this past election.
The only thing that matters is can you live with it? If you can, go for it and make a buck working within the confines of Americans values because if you don't, someone else will.
I'll tell you that I don't regret buying into the reddit IPO despite its various ethical scandals and going forward here my family and future matters more at this point than anything the average American says since they voted or say on their asses and literally didn't vote for all of this.
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.
Unless you got hundreds of thousands in assets to invest, you are only gambling on the suffering and slavery.
Yes
I would also ask yourself if this is beneficial at all.
Look at their historical prices. Investors have already bought into this.