Comment by petterroea
9 hours ago
In Norway the oil fund are actively arguing against boycotting these kinds of companies saying, and I paraphrase: "but our job is to earn money and we can't do that if you hippies keep standing in the way with your morals"
Good to see it isn't necessarily the case.
For some context, this Norwegian cartoon by a group that used to make satire for the government run news agency is a pretty decent summary of how things were discussed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mkuP6kQwNs.
The old man is a caricature of Jens Stoltenberg (who seems to be running the Norwegian economic machine rather well nowadays, controversial or not)
The secondary market isn’t where morally dubious choices get made.
There is a huge difference between funding oil extraction that is happening anyway, and funding a company to start extracting oil.
However, this is the intersection of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue theory.
> our job is to earn money
Which is exactly why you wouldn't put it in a company with a ridiculous valuation.
I don't know the AUM of this pension fund but if the managers were doing their jobs they should have had at least a tiny bit of exposure to SpaceX years ago.
If you want to make money, buying SpaceX stock isn't the way to do it
This is about valuation not ESG
The sovereign fund of Norway also researches a lot of the state of the companies and then invests into the whole market vs the ones they dont consider good according to some metric. Sounds like this Danish example.
It's maddening how quickly ESG and similar programmes have been thrown in the dumpster once the political climate in the US swung back to "anti-woke".
> "but our job is to earn money and we can't do that if you hippies keep standing in the way with your morals"
What these clowns conveniently forget is that their job is not just "to make money" but to make money over a span of decades and centuries in the case of the sovereign funds. A long term investment fund that optimizes for the next quarter at the expense of the long term is a bad fund.
And so the ESG and woke "hippie bullshit" is nothing more than the basic capitalism of maximizing your gains by 2100 by not destroying the one planet all your companies are on.
Long term funds do not have the luxury of being passive owners. If they take no role in management, that role will instead by taken by whatever short-term owner walks in next. They don't care about the value by 2100, they just want the company to tear the copper out of it's own walls so they can sell with a profit by next quarter, retail even sooner.
How is Tesla destroying the planet? In my mind, Tesla is one of the most important companies in transition to clean energy. Yet it got dropped from the S&P ESG index.
ESG is just another phony way for someone to manipulate stock prices, because it's decided by some committee with arbitrary and opaque ways. And that's why no one takes it seriously any more.
> How is Tesla destroying the planet? In my mind, Tesla is one of the most important companies in transition to clean energy. Yet it got dropped from the S&P ESG index.
ESG is more than just the environment. In Tesla's case, Elon Musk's governance is a serious risk to the corporation.
> ESG is just another phony way for someone to manipulate stock prices, because it's decided by some committee with arbitrary and opaque ways.
Right now as we speak, a bunch of "arbitrary opaque committees" are deciding to rush SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI into the major stock indexes.
Even completely passive investment leaves one at the whims of said committees.
[dead]
Yeah, there is lot talking out of both sides of their mouth here.
If nothing else, at least these should be choice of users to let them choose based on their values and requirements.
By who exactly ?
The pension fund is the user of the stock here.
Pensioners should get the same amount regardless of investments, as long as there is enough funding, which it seems there is for the moment.
Of course, if someone wants to risk their own money, they can invest in whatever they want. They can even sell their pension for a cash lump sum and invest that.
That’s exactly what you would want your money manager to say. It’s their job to turn a profit.
In turn you also want democratically elected politicians above that saying “yes, but the people want their money made ethically, so you can’t do that”.
> That’s exactly what you would want your money manager to say. It’s their job to turn a profit.
The job of the police is arresting people who break the law, but similarly to your money manager, you really don't want them to do this regardless of anything else, there is more things to consider than just "do everything you can to arrest people", and hopefully the same for your money manager. But also, I might be too European to understand the true value of "money grow regardless of society cost at large".
Of course, some back-and-forwards is healthy.
In a good system both sides fight for their interests, and the outcome is some middle road compromise that optimizes for everyone's benefit.
sorry, but i wouldn't want my money manager to attempt to engage in unethical or illegal practices in order to turn a profit...
The point is that it's the job of the democratic legislature to codify what you just stated here into law, so that all money managers have to abide by this standard, not just those that have a personal conviction for it. That's the essence of rule of law.
2 replies →
[flagged]
SpaceX is headed by a person who is a strong ally of a politician who openly challenges Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland. Guess you wouldn't mind selling your organs to the same group of powerful people for a few bucks because you're not virtue signalling?
Yeah, but they say it is because of weapons and climate change and not because of all of this
2 replies →
It’s not virtue signaling if they’re actually doing something, it’s virtue action. They’re acting according to their virtues.
Any evidence for this? Norway shows as 13th on the list of arms exporters, and is 1/42 of US exports [1]. If counting total manufacturing, Norway is 1/100th to 1/150th of US volume, based on how you count. [2]
Kongsberg is a conglomerate with non-defense businesses [3]. The volume of defense-related product is not called out but Norway's total is just around $2.5B [4] compared to US at $334B [5] or about 1/133. Your point does stand as hypocrisy at the state level; though management decisions are likely separate between the two entities and not coordinated at the state level.
That is two claims: that the Danish fund lacks judgment, and that its policy is performative. Any evidence?
'Oil fund' is fair shorthand - it's funded by petro wealth. 'so called Oil Fund' seems to be a sneer. Combined with 'some sense' and 'virtue signaling,' it reads less like argument and more like contempt.
Choosing to not invest in something is the complete opposite of virtue signaling... stop using words you don't know the meaning of
Based on any rational indicator SpaceX is extremely overvalued though.
Of course it does not mean that its stock price will crash after the IPO, stock markets in the US especially are not exactly behaving rationally.
> Norway is the 5th largest weapons and defense manufacturer
What's the issue with that? Unilateral disarmament would be an exceptionally stupid idea for any country and then you do need need someone to produce weapons for your military and those of your allies.
It’s not about virtue signaling. It’s that SpaceX (or xAi like it should be called because that’s most of the company) is a shitty deal where they changed the rules just to make large funds bail out Elon.
> Glad Norway's oil fund has some sense and is above the virtue signaling of the Danes.
How would you know if they are doing those moves because it's what they believe in, vs it's just a position they'd like to broadcast publicly?
In my mind, a symbolic gesture would be to speak against Tesla and SpaceX without actually doing something, that'd be "virtue signaling" in my mind, but since they're actually doing something, a practical action to not just speak but also not invest into those companies, doesn't it stop being "virtue signaling" at that point?
Railing against virtue signalling of some people is the preferred virtue signalling for some other people.
I've always wondered, do people who complain about virtue signaling just simply not believe in the concept of virtues or integrity at all? Human nature is pure vice mediated by violence and contract law, that's it.
I get the cynicism about performative acts vs. authentic values but where's the line? Putting your money where your mouth is has to count for something.
You have a point. I'd hope most of us actually do care about virtues and integrity, but 90% of the time it doesn't need to be said. It's how we were raised. Now, true virtue signalling is saying X to change the perception but yet doing 100 evil things in the background.
1 reply →