I’ve been funding genocide
This is not a happy post. It won’t make you feel good. Fair warning.
If you have a mutual fund, you probably get proxy voting notices too. They want you to “vote” for board members….from their candidates who have names like Mortimer J Buckley and William McNabb, III. It’s a merry little farce of democracy, but what are you gonna do?
My question “Are there any people of color on the list?” confounded the poor earnest young man, so I capitulated and voted their list. (Note, there actually was an African American man this time! Progress?)
The acknowledgment of “voting” came in the mail, and was headed straight from the envelope to the recycling when a little paragraph caught my eye:
“A shareholder proposal to ‘Institute transparent procedures, to avoid holding investments in companies that, in management’s judgement, substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity, the most egregious violations of human rights. Such procedures may include time-limited engagement with problem companies if management believes that their behavior can be changed.’”
That is: “a shareholder proposal to maybe admit when we heavily fund incredibly immoral companies committing full blown genocide and crimes against humanity. If management says they are. And even then we’ll just give them money for ‘time-limited’ periods, though we won’t say what that means or provide any pressure not to just keep on funding murderers and tyrants forever. If that’s okay with management.”
And the official recommendation of Charles Schwab? Against this incredibly tepid murmur of conscience, this statement so wimpy and easy to ignore that it makes the whole thing kinda offensive?
They voted no. Didn’t want it. Opposed a simple non-binding statement that maybe funding genocide is less than awesome. Cuz profit. Cuz capitalism. Cuz greed.
I am disgusted. And I am ashamed.
When I set up my investments I did it specifically with ethics in mind. No oil companies, no Monsanto, that kind of thing. Schwab was supposed to be the more ethical choice, better than the conquistadors of greed over at Goldman Sachs or HSBC. But this. They oppose the wimpiest anti-genocide statement I’ve ever heard.
And what really bums me out is that Schwab is possibly still better than average. Because our capitalism doesn’t seem to have understood that immorality is a bad thing. That’s profoundly awful. But what are you going to do?
I can’t just leave it awful. I need the reminder of Goodness. Because even if our corporations are sinister immorality machines, most members of our species are not. I’m not teaching at the IRC these days, since Trump is not among the kind-hearted humans so has blocked the US from helping those in need, so I ran out of students. But the wonderful people at the IRC are still going, and are currently doing a fundraising campaign, featuring one of the families I worked with on the explanation page. Give them a look, they are truly wonderful people, and if you want to vote that America (or your country) is not defined by the sort of immorality that runs our economy (and current administration), the link is right there.
Shit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ain’t it just.
LikeLike
Awesome…we have Schwab too and must have missed that comment during our “immediately delete all voting emails before opening them” process. Thanks for the heads up.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I called them and left them a complaint. They sent back a “We’re sorry to hear that, feel free to contact us with further questions” form letter. I meant to take them up on their offer, vociferously, but time slipped away once I went back to work. Never too late to call and give them a little firmly worded and well thought out feedback! (Their customer service line is 1 (866) 855-9102)
LikeLike
I’m so sorry, but now at least you know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Quite right. It’s like hearing that a clothing manufacturer uses sweatshop labor, boycotting them, and crossing your fingers when you go to the next place.
(It makes me thankful for things like https://ethicaltraveler.org/ that can help us make some decisions, like where to travel. Not that I actually have… oops.)
LikeLike
It is likely because defining what is “genocide” is nearly impossible since that term and all related terms are so highly politicized as to be objectively meaningless. Hence, they voted to avoid lawsuits and such for violating their own policy, “binding” or not.
LikeLike
You make a good point that such terms can be hard to pin down…. But I’d prefer a company have enough character to sign on to avoid anything that a reasonable mind might consider genocide. It seems like the sort of thing one could err on the side of caution with, and still come out right. (Or if in doubt, go with conflicts officially designated as genocide by the UN, that’s a smaller piece of the genocidal pie!)
LikeLike
Yeah, we’d need to rule out the “reasonable” mind idea right away. Like genocide itself, “reasonable” has no meaning in society. e.g., “microaggessions” on one side and “any reasonable officer” on the other. The UN list might work, however, if inherent biases of the UN were taken into account.
Even so, you’d then run into the issue of the “White Privilege,” “American Exceptionalism,” and the issues with “multiculturalism. In other words, other peoples don’t have the same standards as we do and many of them would be “harmed” by the loss of those quasi-slave-labor jobs, which actually pay above normal rates for those countries.
Remember – globalism means we, as 1st Worlders, can’t win because most of us can’t begin to understand the peoples of many countries.
LikeLike