• ryannathans@aussie.zone
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    3 days ago

    Shareholders of these companies are likely you or I, as they are so big they are significant parts of index funds purchased by retirement funds and the like

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Maybe, I still hope the go belly up. My 401k isn’t worth supporting companies that spread deliberate disinformation. (Looking at you facebook). Hell, when the stock market took a nosedive over tarrifs, I pulled my entire 401k and put it into foreign investments to try to further the crash. Literally the only thing these dipsticks understand is money, and if they’re losing it, thats when they pay attention.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      3 days ago

      A lot of people don’t realise that around 40% of the value of the S&P 500, and the majority of the Nasdaq 100 (i.e. QQQM) is big tech companies.

      You could always build a portfolio that excludes companies you feel are unethical (for example, exclude oil and gas companies, exclude big tech, etc), but if you were to exclude all companies that have done something unethical then you’d probably end up with the S&P 0 (an empty list)

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Maybe our quality of life, livelihood, and retirements should not be bound to the success of for-profit corporations?

        This is the greatest grift of all time. Binding the average citizen’s, and governmental, wealth to the success of private corporations means that the economic success of those corporations, and the oligarchs who own them, become equal to “national security”; thus they are violently protected by the state, even when their actions and success are the antithesis of democracy.

        • dan@upvote.au
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          2 days ago

          I agree, but unfortunately it’s a reality of a capitalist society that large private companies have a lot of the wealth, and so people set themselves up for retirement by owning a very tiny part of those companies.

          • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Our retirement plans didn’t used to be tied to the stock market. So clearly there’s a way to have retirement plans that don’t tie the entire middle class to the success of every large corporation.

            • Disaster@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              Well, there’s the Defined Benefit pension, however typically these pension funds then become institutional investors who seek to own shares in… you guessed it - stocks.

              At least those institutional investors are at least somewhat responsive to public pressure campaigns, as the state/local comptrollers are a politically appointed position.

              When you give your money to a 401k, the fund manager gets all the voting rights on the corporate board and is generally only accountable to “A reasonable rate of return”