[brianwawok]

If 50% of people avoid investing in industries that are profitable and hurt/kill people, that means people with no such reservation take the profit. You essentially pass the gains to people OK with causing cancer.

I don’t think the avoid investments you don’t believe in changes anything except making others money.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

You could use the same type of logic to argue that voting is meaningless. And indeed investment is also a form of voting. One individual usually changes very little(except in this case one individual could make a tremendous difference depending on their net worth), but that's not necessarily a justification for doing nothing. Look up Kant for relevant philosophy.

[LionTamer]

> You could use the same type of logic to argue that voting is meaningless

Wouldn’t it be more apt to compare it to not voting? If morally principled people opt not to vote then the leader is chosen by those who are not morally principled, and the parent comment argues that if morally principled people opt to divest from tobacco then only the morally unprincipled remain as the shareholders in the industry.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

That distinction doesn't really matter here. The point is that no matter whether I vote or not, the size of the effect of my decision is roughly the same, namely 1 vote. Therefore the fact that I'm only 1 vote is not in itself an argument for deciding either way.

[paulryanrogers]

Buying and owning shares sustains what the company does. That's the vote. Shareholder voting is another more fine grained dimension, and one that requires compromising ones integrity.

[glaucon]

And that's OK. Invading neighbouring countries in order to make use of their resources is a "good deal" for the invader. Just because some states might do that doesn't mean other states should say "hey, we're missing out here !".

[desindol]

and that's OK? oof you strongely need to readjust your moral compass.

[glaucon]

OK my post was ambiguous. What I was trying to convey was that just because others are making money from it doesn't mean that morally it's fine to do so oneself. Everyone has to make their own decisions, clearly supporting the production of one of the greatest poisons of the last hundred years is unsupportable but there will be some who do that.