Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
@BenWP The concrete gesture would be to buy a socially-responsible fund that excludes gun companies from its portfolio or if it owns them, publicly engages with those gun companies via shareholder resolutions to get them to change their ways.
Just another mellenial tried to get 5 Mins of fame. Why next year 90% us citizens would ask who is this guy. Most if them are not very serious unreliable.
@LewisBraham: You present a good idea for me, and a dilemma. In my retirement account I could exchange the Vanguard Balanced Index (5*-Gold) for CREF Social Choice (3*). Such an exchange would probably cost me real $ for my gesture. I can't fault my TIAA advisor for recommending a better fund and not in-house instrument. Ouch...
@msf: "This is different from boycotting advertisers of a program. There the objective is clear - get the advertisers to pull their advertising and in doing so get the program pulled or changed. Here, I don't know what the objective is." The objective is to get the entire f***ing world to recognize that life is more important than guns and money. Yes, Vanguard and Blackrock as corporations don't own gun equities, it's through their mutual funds. By such logic, McDonald's fast-food "restaurants" are not McDonald's, because they are independently owned franchises. Pile of nonsense. McDonald's doesn't mind putting their name on the restaurant. But every time a wage issue or something else comes up, they don't mind distancing themselves from their own name.
Anyhow, everyone is busy talking their way around the real issue. The fact that a mutual fund house offers Index Funds (which includes some gun makers) is not the issue. So, OK, they offer a product which by definition must include guns, to the extent that guns make up X percentage of the Index.
Boycotts and protests happen when the ones in control refuse to listen or have stopped listening. Boycotts and protests are by definition, a back-door way to attempt to change policy, law or particular circumstances. Montgomery bus boycott: no one in charge of the city's bus company was going to change anything unless financial pressure was brought to bear. Same with South African Apartheid. Same with the Israeli occupation of Palestine. And on and on.
Capitalism is based on greed, so we take it for granted, and structure corporations and systems based on greed. But we just refuse to call it greed. Gun makers, with the NRA, have for DECADES been deliberately unreasonable in insisting that their profits are more important than doing what we can to keep guns away from crazies. So, it's time to punish them, on all fronts, using every available avenue. 2,000 years ago, A particular fellow from Nazareth in the Galilee ran into such intentional blindness wherever he went, particularly with respect to those in charge of institutions and systems. The Hebrew prophets faced intellectually soft and morally lazy and corrupt people, too.
@Crash- If a particular fellow from Nazareth in the Galilee were preaching as is "The Hogg" (willmatt72) it's a good bet that he would have been dismissed as a "punk" (Ted) also.
Only in America can we turn the victims into the aggressors.
hear
To Ted, Maurice, john, jojo and willmatt the idea that some 18yo whose classmates got murdered in cold blood gets uppity, or organized, or organizes, or speaks out even with assistance and media coverage is just too much to bear. So unfair. Those manipulative libtards.
He deserves to be labeled a Mussolini punk, and told to not even do laundry, and he gets pissed on for supposedly having some minutes of fame. Or something.
You dudes all effectively have got blood on your hands, I say. I'd say shame, but, you know, there's no shame anymore in the rightwing. How dare that uppity kid do and say these things!
@Catch - I think that these young people are fantastic, and they are doing exactly what you described - getting people to recognize what's important. Hopefully to effect political change. I contributed to March For Our Lives. So make no mistake about where I stand here.
But I see boycotts as a tool that usually targets specific companies for a reason. To be effective, their objective needs to be something more clear and more narrowly focused than merely enhancing public awareness (which could be a means to an end, but not the end in itself).
You mentioned McDonald's. Let's use that. Say that FightFor15 organized a boycott, but that your neighborhood franchisee was already paying a living wage. (Franchisees can do that.)
Do you boycott your local McDonald's and punish (your word) someone who might be your neighbor for doing exactly what you want? Or do you continue patronizing your neighborhood joint at the risk of weakening the boycott against the brand?
I don't believe there's a good answer. Regardless, this is just a reformulation of a question I asked before: do you boycott Blackrock's gun-free funds?
My Vanguard funds don't own gun manufacturer stocks (and are not likely to in the future). Should I sell?
Comments
The objective is to get the entire f***ing world to recognize that life is more important than guns and money. Yes, Vanguard and Blackrock as corporations don't own gun equities, it's through their mutual funds. By such logic, McDonald's fast-food "restaurants" are not McDonald's, because they are independently owned franchises. Pile of nonsense. McDonald's doesn't mind putting their name on the restaurant. But every time a wage issue or something else comes up, they don't mind distancing themselves from their own name.
Anyhow, everyone is busy talking their way around the real issue. The fact that a mutual fund house offers Index Funds (which includes some gun makers) is not the issue. So, OK, they offer a product which by definition must include guns, to the extent that guns make up X percentage of the Index.
Boycotts and protests happen when the ones in control refuse to listen or have stopped listening. Boycotts and protests are by definition, a back-door way to attempt to change policy, law or particular circumstances. Montgomery bus boycott: no one in charge of the city's bus company was going to change anything unless financial pressure was brought to bear. Same with South African Apartheid. Same with the Israeli occupation of Palestine. And on and on.
Capitalism is based on greed, so we take it for granted, and structure corporations and systems based on greed. But we just refuse to call it greed. Gun makers, with the NRA, have for DECADES been deliberately unreasonable in insisting that their profits are more important than doing what we can to keep guns away from crazies. So, it's time to punish them, on all fronts, using every available avenue. 2,000 years ago, A particular fellow from Nazareth in the Galilee ran into such intentional blindness wherever he went, particularly with respect to those in charge of institutions and systems. The Hebrew prophets faced intellectually soft and morally lazy and corrupt people, too.
Only in America can we turn the victims into the aggressors.
To Ted, Maurice, john, jojo and willmatt the idea that some 18yo whose classmates got murdered in cold blood gets uppity, or organized, or organizes, or speaks out even with assistance and media coverage is just too much to bear. So unfair. Those manipulative libtards.
He deserves to be labeled a Mussolini punk, and told to not even do laundry, and he gets pissed on for supposedly having some minutes of fame.
Or something.
You dudes all effectively have got blood on your hands, I say. I'd say shame, but, you know, there's no shame anymore in the rightwing. How dare that uppity kid do and say these things!
Yessir.
But I see boycotts as a tool that usually targets specific companies for a reason. To be effective, their objective needs to be something more clear and more narrowly focused than merely enhancing public awareness (which could be a means to an end, but not the end in itself).
You mentioned McDonald's. Let's use that. Say that FightFor15 organized a boycott, but that your neighborhood franchisee was already paying a living wage. (Franchisees can do that.)
Do you boycott your local McDonald's and punish (your word) someone who might be your neighbor for doing exactly what you want? Or do you continue patronizing your neighborhood joint at the risk of weakening the boycott against the brand?
I don't believe there's a good answer. Regardless, this is just a reformulation of a question I asked before: do you boycott Blackrock's gun-free funds?
My Vanguard funds don't own gun manufacturer stocks (and are not likely to in the future). Should I sell?