this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
81 points (85.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35981 readers
1391 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Etterra 11 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] Dorkyd68 4 points 1 hour ago

Fuck it, imma say it. Some questions are hella stupid

[–] ChronosTriggerWarning 12 points 2 hours ago

"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.

[–] ilinamorato 12 points 2 hours ago

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?

[–] Mango 5 points 2 hours ago
[–] Feathercrown 1 points 1 hour ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago

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??

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Unless you got hundreds of thousands in assets to invest, you are only gambling on the suffering and slavery.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Apparently the left stops somewhere about right of centre - what a quaint political system the US has.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 hours ago

“As left as they come”.

Doubt.

[–] inclementimmigrant -1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I say who the fuck cares what some Internet randos think. I bet you ten shares that more than a handful of the people taking about ethical conundrum didn't even vote this past election.

The only thing that matters is can you live with it? If you can, go for it and make a buck working within the confines of Americans values because if you don't, someone else will.

I'll tell you that I don't regret buying into the reddit IPO despite its various ethical scandals and going forward here my family and future matters more at this point than anything the average American says since they voted or say on their asses and literally didn't vote for all of this.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

"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.

[–] SkunkWorkz 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

Buying stock is not funding the company though unless the company is issuing new stock. The company already took the cash during the IPO. The only thing buying shares does is affect the price. So it will make some evil shit stain who is the founder of the company wealthier.

[–] olafurp 4 points 2 hours ago

It's a bit more nuanced. Buying the stock increases the stock price which makes issuing stock a better deal for the company in case they want to expand operations. It also makes stock buybacks less likely.

So if they issue stock OP is indirectly funding the company. If OP prevented a buyback and the money went into investments such as a new prison OP has an different effect. Otherwise there's no effect.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I was coming to say that also.

The stock market is nothing more than gambling on the public (rich people) sentiment about how well that company is going to do. It's similar to how there is gambling on who will win the presidency, and does not affect the outcomes.

Buying stock is not investment, the money that the company recieves comes from issuing the stock. Your money does not fund the evil things that the company does, unless you are paying for goods/services from that company. But, I have seen that stock price influences the decisions of leadership inside the company. Your individual action will not influence the stock price.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

While I admit that I used to think trading was gambling I now know that while there is an element of gambling, there are a lot of measurable factors that make the "gambles" much more informed, even market psychology to some extent.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 hours ago

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.

[–] HootinNHollerin 30 points 11 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 hours ago
[–] BowtiesAreCool 48 points 13 hours ago

“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.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 14 hours ago

I mean you're straight up buying shares in plantations so yes.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (29 children)

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

load more comments (29 replies)
[–] aesthelete 41 points 16 hours ago
[–] alquicksilver 132 points 19 hours ago (18 children)

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.

load more comments (18 replies)
[–] [email protected] 64 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

"Would I be a bad person if I loaned the neighborhood pusher some money to re-up his fentanyl package?"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] njm1314 30 points 18 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 18 hours ago
load more comments
view more: next ›