Skewing ETF investing to meet political goals instead of return to shareholders is a breach of fiduciary responsibility.
I’ll be checking on my ETFs to see if this foolishness is affecting them.
ESGs – Woke Mind Virus comes for your 401K
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Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Is your issue that several massive firms effectively control what is supposed to be a free market, or that those firms are responding to consumer demand in a way you don’t personally like?
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I think that most ETF owners are unaware of the trend, but as they learn of it, investors will flee to profit driven management.
One of my favorite mutual funds is the VICE fund (VICEX) which invests in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and firearms. and my favorite individual stock is Rick’s Hospitality (RICK) which is a franchise of high end titty bars.
Virtue funds do not perform as well.
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RE: “Skewing ETF investing to meet political goals instead of return to shareholders is a breach of fiduciary responsibility.”
That’s one way to put it, but I wonder if there is a more fundamental principle of economics in play. The returns on politically correct investments might be described as rents, but a rentier economy is not productive in an industrial sense.
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“The returns on politically correct investments might be described as rents, but a rentier economy is not productive in an industrial sense.”
Could you elaborate on this? I think you may be on to something interesting but I don’t quite understand what you mean with the first part.
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This may help:
https://infogalactic.com/info/Rent-seeking
There are a number of ways the returns on ESG investments might be described as rents:
An ESG investor with sufficient interest in a company can control the board of directors and force the company to serve the investor’s goals. The investor is like a landlord to whom the directors pay a “rent” of obedience.
An ESG investor might lobby for government regulations that harm his competitors more than himself.
Generally speaking, rents differ from profits in that rents redirect pre-existing wealth into the hands of the rentier, whereas profits derive from creating new wealth.
(I’m sure I’ve made a hash of this, but you can at least see my thinking.)
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No I understand the distinction between rent and profit—it’s very important in left economics. I just wasn’t clear on how “woke funds” or whatever were rent seeking to a different degree than non-woke funds.
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