[roysting]

You are making a mistake in equating several things here. Not only is this SpaceX IPO that has latched itself onto pensions through accelerated inclusion in the S&P100 and other funds a different and rather unique matter, but excluding harmful industries is really rather stupid of people who oppose those industries.

If, e.g., all those who opposed those industries had instead bought the industry stock, the people with those ideals opposed to those industries could have at the very least profited from the sale of the stock...which the company itself basically does not see direct benefit from (you are not buying the stock from the company or giving the company any money in most case)...and used/committed that money to even greater opposition. If a catalytic number of those had formed, they could have also even made real impact through shareholder initiatives and actions demanding changes by pressuring board members who rely on votes, etc.

It's one of those nonsensical, moralistic and ...sorry... foolish mindsets that common people have, the idea that simply by not participating the King will leave them be. The psychopathic narcissists in control will never leave you be, no matter how much you virtue signal by not buying their stock from someone else that is not the company or no matter how much you ask or how far you run and beg and ask to be left alone.

Frankly, although I am not certain that it was done intentionally, if I were a major mover and more powerful person, I would propose the very kind of moralizing, self-righteous campaign that has shot the commoners in their feet by getting them to simply check out and not participate in things the could have otherwise controlled a lot more.

So instead of people who actually care...but are clearly rather foolish...all/a disproportionate amount of control and power and money is left to those who do not have those qualms. Hence why none of this "excluding harmful industries" has affected anything whatsoever and we now have square mile measured AI data centers and tens of millions of low climate impact people being moved into high climate impact countries, and we have more war and death and addiction than humanity has seen in 90 years.

In case it is not yet clear to some of us, a stock is like if you went to some second hand/thrift store and bought a brand of clothing that was reviled for some reason or another, i.e., use of child sex slave labor, you giving a thrift store money to wear the second hand clothing not only does not benefit the reviled company, but just alone wearing second hand clothing will likely have more a positive impact than guying some other company's clothing that will later turn out to have used regular child labor.

[ChoosesBarbecue]

> If a catalytic number of those had formed, they could have also even made real impact through shareholder initiatives and actions demanding changes by pressuring board members who rely on votes, etc.

For SpaceX, from Matt Levine [0]:

> SpaceX will have dual-class stock, with Class B shares getting 10 votes per share. Musk owns 93.6% of the Class B (and 12.3% of the low-vote Class A), for total voting power of 85.1%.[5] Tesla does not have dual-class stock, Musk is a minority owner, and he has worried aloud about the risk of losing control of Tesla’s robot army because he doesn’t have voting control of the company. Not a problem at SpaceX! Build all the robot armies you want!

> Because of Musk’s voting control, SpaceX is a “controlled company” under stock exchange rules, so it doesn’t have to have a majority of independent directors or an independent compensation committee. So the board of directors can be made up of Musk’s buddies, and they can pay him whatever they want.

> Even aside from controlling 85% of the voting stock, Musk gets to appoint a majority of the board of directors himself, without the Class A shareholders even voting.[6]

Does not sound like this is remotely true for SpaceX, then?

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-21/spa... (the other footnotes are from the article itself)

[goobatrooba]

While not wrong, your perspective is very simplistic. A company gains massively from strong stock performance - they can issue more shares to raise capital, give handouts, take loans at better rate, pursue M&A with stock payment, ... So anyone who buys stock they ethically disagree with is certainly supporting that company - and inversely not using those funds to the advantage of other companies that they find morally more appealing.

[roysting]

I get your point and it is the reason I said “most of the time”. But frankly, what I think the perspective you espouse here is suffering from, is a kind of grandiosity and self-righteous moralization of the very kind that is self-defeating, because it misses the scope and scale of things. In other words, the perceived/expected and the actual effect are very far divergent.

Someone saying “I’ll show that mean ol’ corporation the business by not buying their product but buying their competitor’s product” or the like, is the very same kind of trap that this fake “democracy” of the western world produces, where effectively everyone who votes with any sense of that being an effective activity, simply does not understand that the whole system is captured and rigged against them. It’s all a managed illusion, a carnival game, a flashing, dinging, blinging, chiming slot machine that makes you think “I’m do close, I can tell…oh, well, better luck next time” when the behavior and signals are all programmed to play on well understood patterns of psychological behaviors of hope and despair.

It’s precisely why the ruling class cheers on and supports democracy so much … because it really is so great for them… and it makes the commoners think it’s great for them at the same time. So rather than the “activists” of the 60s having had billions upon billions in wealth they could have used to prevent wars and corporate evil we see all over the place today (assuming they would have done that, which is a bit of a stretch considering the “boomers” today), they have little more than moralization and virtue signaling.

[rsync]

"... a stock is like if you went to some second hand/thrift store and bought a brand of clothing that was reviled for some reason or another, i.e., use of child sex slave labor, you giving a thrift store money to wear the second hand clothing not only does not benefit the reviled company ..."

This is incorrect and, frankly, ridiculous especially in light of your own scoffing at the "foolishness" of others.

The secondary market value for company stock has a direct impact on current and sustained operations in areas including, but not limited to:

- the ability to sell debt and the interest rates at which it can be sold

- the ability to attract and retain executive "talent" with stock compensation

- the ability to attract - or ward off - takeovers and buyouts from other firms

- the ability to expand operations, or development, through follow-up offerings

Your observation of this basic truth (that company shares purchased by at-large market participants don't yield funds directly to the firm) is, of course, correct.

However it is not as profound a factor as you think it is.