Ok, I own gaming company shares. It’s true that this makes me a bit hypocritical. I don’t approve of many aspects of the company I have shares in. It is certain that the people running gaming companies care only for profit and take little responsibility for their encouraging of behavioural addictions. Same can be said of many companies from computer games to (gods forbid!) Ebay.
Buying shares as a whole is a tricksy business. I have shares in Coles-Myer and yet they are perpetrators of the worst kind – Smoggies. They sell Orange Roughy fish in their seafood sections – something I have written to them about a few times and the fact that I own a tiny block of their shares seems to make no impact upon them whatsoever. They assure me that Orange Roughy are sustainably fished…. I assured them that the Victorian Parks and Wildlife Service website disagreed with them. Probably this is not an argument I can win. (I don’t think I have purchased anything from a Coles Seafood dept. in years because of this. Admittedly our local shop is not a Coles so it makes it easier).
Really, I am much happier owning the gambling shares by comparison.
Why do I own shares in large companies at all when I disapprove of them and the things they do to society? I also own shares in smaller companies. I believe that buying shares helps me in the long run have a more stable financial future and it helps the economy too.
True, I don’t have a lot of money to invest so I tend to buy fairly ‘sure things’, which means I haven’t supported all the environmentally friendly up-and-coming companies that I favour. However, as I build my portfolio, I will include more green companies and not just because of my political leanings but because they are the future and they will make money, if only I pick the right ones.
If every Australian invested in ‘green’ companies then these companies would advance more quickly and ‘green agendas’ would advance more quickly too. The expression ‘Put your money where your mouth is’ comes to mind…. And I need to do that too.
Meanwhile the standard mid-range Smoggies are not going to cease to exist whether I buy shares or not – let’s face it; there are not a whole lot of people like me out there and even if we all got rid of our shares in these companies or never bought them it would make no difference whatsoever. Is this a bad argument? It may be. I do not knowingly buy shares in companies that are Smoggies or those that have anything to do with uranium or armaments. I had the shares in Coles before I found them selling an endangered fish. A grocery store – who the hell knew it would turn into an ethical dilemma?
However, I did know that the nature of big companies is such that they all have something doggy about them. If you are going to try and make money in our society the chances are you are supporting something less than ethical - property investments destroy historical architecture, lifestyles and the environment. You just try to walk the line between ethics and economics; it’s a very hard line to walk.
At least with me, if not the large companies, economics doesn’t always win or I’d be out buying uranium shares this minute.
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