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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.)
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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. 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.
I mean you're straight up buying shares in plantations so yes.
“As left as they come”.
Doubt.
"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!
Yes
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.
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'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??
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?
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.
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.