We've successfully campaigned to make many of those same investors divest from fossil fuel investments. I don't see why investments in crazy surveillance tech should get a pass (and yes, Meta absolutely falls in the same bucket)

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repelsteeltje 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This. Giving markets free reign, usually doesn't result in alignment with long term best interests or political objectives.

It took years of activism and voting with our money to get banks, pension funds and similar institutions to stop funding cluster munitions, land mines, nukes, oil, tabacco. Now big tech and some AI companies are on the radar.

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nradov 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

Land mines and cluster munitions have been essential for Ukraine to defend itself against the Russian invasion. Several other European countries including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have recently withdrawn from the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty. It's cheap and easy to for activists to pretend to be morally superior when they're sitting safely behind computers and don't have to deal with real world consequences.

https://apnews.com/article/poland-land-mines-ottawa-conventi...

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ffsm8 15 minutes ago | parent [-]

Urm, that they're invaluable in an active warzone is unquestionable.

The issue with this tech is that they - at least historically - didn't have an expiration date. So if that war ends and you let your children play in the woods... Maybe occasionally one won't be coming back anymore.

That's the reason why they got a bad image. Because that's literally what happened post ww2 - for decades.

Maybe nowadays they could built them with a forced timer for exploding - if they did, great! If not, your descendants may consider you insane for that opinion in a few decades

	▲	nradov 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		So then we agree that it's morally positive for European investors to put money into companies developing advanced land mines. As for descendants, well the people killed by Russian attacks won't have any more descendants. So that point is kind of moot.

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tclancy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've been regularly thinking about Apartheid-era South Africa. It was a massive Thing for me as a Catholic school kid in the '80s because it seemed (to me) so clearly wrong yet accepted. There were clearly "lefties" making it visible without a lot happening but then "How did you go bankrupt? Two ways: Gradually, then suddenly" happened. And a lot of it started with university students petitioning their schools to divest and that spreading. It will not be fast, but these things can happen and we should start to build a framework for it.

And yes, yes, Enemies Lists are fraught with problems and have a history of eating themselves, etc. But the one thing I know is worse is not trying.

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newsclues 2 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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tclancy an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If you're asking me to rate things on a scale where human freedom comes behind some economic measure, you are asking the wrong person.

On edit: it would be nice when these GOTCHAs are offered, if the offerer stopped and asked themselves, "Did centuries of colonialism denying education to the natives have any bearing on what I am asking?"

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swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> South Africa is really thriving these days eh?

I know you meant this sarcastically, but unironically yes. GDP has more than doubled since the end of apartheid, and it has the strongest economy on the continent

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mothballed 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

LMAO, now normalize it against world change in GDP since the end of apartheid. Pre-apartheid they were beating the world average, all times after apartheid they have been behind world average.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/DG...

Especially the last 20 years, it is falling off a cliff in relative performance. Yeah the post-apartheid peak was 10% above the apartheid peak from the 80s.... unfortunately if you can only get 10% better in 40 years it actually represents a massive failure relative to the rest of the world.

I'd agree that apartheid was bad, but it seems to be coupled with other factors that led them to fall behind on the world stage. I'm guessing the kind of ideology that accompanies literal filled stadiums shouting "kill the boer farmer" is not so far fetched from the kind of ideology that resulted in Zimbabwe going for broke.

	▲	tclancy 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>I'd agree that apartheid was bad At least we have finally settled that. >I'm guessing the kind of ideology that accompanies literal filled stadiums shouting "kill the boer farmer" is not so far fetched from the kind of ideology that resulted in Zimbabwe going for broke. Zimbabwe's failure is pretty clear: total corruption under one man. South Africa, post-Apartheid, has an unhappy history of corruption as well. But it is confounding how one reaches for the "anti-white racism" explanation before considering how centuries of colonial "oppression" (which a fun euphemism for violence and denying education) might lead to a situation where government functions poorly when you abandon ship and leave your government setup in place for people with no experience and no mentor to figure out.

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gljiva 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How dare they not solve _all_ the problems, instead of only contributing towards solving one!

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bigyabai an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> (and yes, Meta absolutely falls in the same bucket)

s/Meta/FAANG

Decoupling Meta and Palantir from your 401k would not derisk your retirement from surveillance technology. You'd have to kick out Microsoft and Apple and Google next, at which point you've already forfeit most of your portfolio's growth.

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newsclues 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]