You’ll probably be disappointed. It’s a coin flip if they even decide to hand contracts to publicly traded companies vs handing contracts to private companies (and getting their backs scratched in the process) and since everyone and their brother is thinking the same thing you are, you’re already paying a ridiculously huge premium, which would eat into any profit.
Look at $GEO, popped like 100 fucking percent in the 2 weeks from November 5 to November 29, just doubled overnight. Seriously doubled on news of Trump winning.
Soooooooo you buy now and sell the news? They’re selling the news right now, to you, a bagholder.
FWIW I have a GED, 2 houses, and a dozen corporate finance textbooks, and I wouldn’t even buy puts on prison stocks because the IV is fucking nuts.
You’re gonna get mauled, kid
Yes.
I don’t think so - the stock market is extremely detached from fundraising in the modern world and if that company decided to fundraise it’ll mostly do so on the back of mutual funds and uni endowments.
I personally find divestment is a pretty ineffective personal action in terms of individuals.
You are benefitting from incarceration and forced labor
The stock market is so detached from reality that the impact you’re having is nearly nil. You’re much more directly supporting forced labor and incarceration when you buy a t-shirt, Chinese garlic, register your car, eat pretty much any fast food, enjoy chocolate, or do literally anything connected to Walmart.
My point in the comment above is that Divestment (outside of retail investment) has almost no impact. If you live in America you’re already evil as fuck and profiting from the misery of millions. The stocks you own are some of the least evil shit you’re doing.
If you live in America you’re already evil as fuck and profiting from the misery of millions.
Yeah
Regardless this is something you can vert easily not do. I can’t not pay my taxes, eat, drink, and consume energy very easily but I can very easily not profit off prison labor in this way.
The question of morality in investments is not absolute; it depends on how one frames responsibility and agency.
Markets are amoral tools. Financial markets operate independently of moral judgments. When individuals invest in an industry, they are not necessarily endorsing its practices but recognizing an opportunity within existing systems. One can argue that targeting an investment does not equate to creating or exacerbating the problems within that industry.
The existence of private prisons and deportation schemes reflects systemic issues, not individual investors. Policies and demand for incarceration stem from government choices and public sentiment. As such, targeting investors as “bad people” shifts focus away from the policymakers and institutions enabling these systems.
Some may justify these investments pragmatically: by securing financial stability, individuals can later support progressive causes, donate to charities, or fund organizations fighting for systemic change. For example, an investor might use the returns to support immigrant advocacy groups or lobby for prison reform.
There is algo “Separation of Investment and Values”. Not every decision must align with one’s ideological framework. People often compartmentalize their personal lives from their professional or financial strategies. A leftist could rationally engage in capitalism as a survival mechanism within an inescapable capitalist framework while still advocating for systemic change.
Many industries—tech, energy, or agriculture—have problematic practices, from exploitative labor to environmental harm. Singling out private prisons overlooks the broader complexity of investing in any sector. Most portfolios inadvertently include industries with ethical concerns, such as fossil fuels or fast fashion.
Defending this investment as not inherently immoral hinges on the premise that financial actions alone do not define someone’s character. Morality lies in how individuals balance their actions, mitigate harm, and contribute positively to society. However, ethical investments often require introspection and alignment with long-term values. While investing in private prison contractors can be defended on pragmatic or systemic grounds, it’s worth questioning whether the financial gain outweighs the potential ethical compromise.
Hmmm, are you saying workers are alienated from each other via the market? Social relations are mediated by commodities and money??
I swear I’ve heard this somewhere before…
Are you saying is not? When applied to investments, the abstraction becomes even more pronounced. As investors, individuals might focus on profit potential (commodities and returns) without directly engaging with or even acknowledging the human or social costs underlying those profits. The market acts as a buffer, depersonalizing the consequences and further alienating participants from the broader social implications of their actions.
So, yes, you’ve heard this before, and it’s a classic critique of how capitalism distorts and reframes human connections in terms of profit and exchange! Marx argues that under capitalism, commodities take on a life of their own, obscuring the labor and social relations that produced them. The true connections between people—worker to worker, worker to consumer, are hidden behind the veil of market exchange.
No, I agree wholeheartedly. My point was rather the abstraction of it just means it’s easier for the investment-minded human to justify their lack of direct connection to the mass jailing of innocents while actually being directly connected to the horrors of it. They feel like they’re not connected to it by the abstraction of the market.
I get what you’re saying, and I don’t disagree that the abstraction makes it easier for investors to detach themselves from the reality of what’s happening. But at the same time, isn’t that part of how all markets work? Investors don’t make the rules—they just operate within them. When it comes to private prisons, for example, the wrongful imprisonment of innocents or mass deportations aren’t supposed to be part of the “business model.” That’s a failure of the state, not the investor. In theory, these facilities exist to meet state demand for detention, which should be lawful and just (even if we know that’s not always the case).
And honestly, this kind of abstraction isn’t unique to private prisons. Look at almost any other industry:
Investing in food companies? You’re indirectly supporting things like worker exploitation, environmental damage, or factory farming (which involves a lot of animal suffering). Transportation? Cars, planes, and ships pollute the planet on a massive scale. Tech? There’s often exploitative labor behind those shiny gadgets, not to mention privacy violations or harmful social media algorithms. Fashion? Fast fashion profits off sweatshops and massive environmental waste.
If you zoom in on any one of these industries, the moral complications are everywhere. But most of us don’t expect investors to shoulder the blame for all of this—they’re operating within the system as it exists. To me, the real responsibility lies with governments and regulators to set the rules and hold these industries accountable. Investors aren’t actively making the decisions that harm people; they’re just responding to opportunities in the market.
At the end of the day, if we reject every investment tied to something morally gray, we’d have to swear off almost everything. I think that’s where the abstraction helps—it lets people focus on their role (whether as investors, consumers, or workers) without taking on all the guilt for how the system fails. Is it perfect? No, but it’s how the world works right now.
The world won’t be any better if you don’t. The only difference is what you’d feel about it yourself.
Depends on how much you’re investing. Is it an amount that is not a drop in their bucket? Congrats, you’re evil.
Is it chump change to any millionaire? Don’t sweat it. You’re literally incapable of changing the course with your buy in.
Lots of people saying it’s bad to do as a blanket statement might be in horror if they find out the labor practices that go into any of the goods they purchase. There’s no ethical consumption in capitalism. Doesn’t matter if you’re investing shares or buying a cheeseburger.
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.
In a culture where almost everyone is wearing clothes made by children working 14 hour days who occasionally burn to death because fire exits would cost too much, this seems to me, an odd line to draw.
Might just be me but I’m not sure I see much of a difference between slave investor and wearing slave labour.
Difference is, if you invest in Apple and find out they use slave labor, you are still primarily investing in a phone production industry. Investing in prison labor is just that, slave labor. A phone company can eventually stop using slave labor, but prison labor is always slave labor.
I don’t disagree with you that slave labor is bad regardless of who, what, where, how. I disagree, however, that there’s not much difference between purchasing products you need and investing in a business.
Some folks can’t afford anything except cheap clothing/household goods from overseas, where they are often made in sweatshops with slave and/or child labor; it’s not their fault that they can’t afford to purchase ethical products. No one needs to invest in a business, though, so choosing to invest in one that deals in slavery is that investor’s fault.
For those of us who can afford ethically-sourced/made items, though, I agree that it’s quite similar. I have no excuses other than people are, as a whole, not good to each other. :(
I fully excuse folks who are really struggling. Though given thrift shops are a dime a dozen, I don’t entirely think it’s a free pass.
Sorry, this one just bugs me. I absolutely hate that our culture has this huge blind spot to the very real exploitation that so many people engage in but we’ll simultaneously get furious about sins that are, in comparison, fairly minor.
Investing in something evil is reprehensible but I put it on about the same realm as buying an expensive slave made product. At least for the investment, maybe it’s for your kids or something rather than looking cool.
Really appreciate the reasoned response though!
Huge difference between not being able to afford the right thing, and being able to afford the right thing and instead investing in the really bad thing.
Kind of like how I have to gas up but I would never invest in the oil industry.
But there are non slave alternatives all over. For the price conscious, there are thrift shops, facebook marketplace etc. Otherwise, there’s tons of ethical clothing available online and if you live in a city, probably in some stores near You.
I agree and I think there isn’t much of an effort being made, but investing in it seems like it’s making an effort in the wrong direction.
I think the difference is, you can CHOOSE not to invest in slave labor. If 100% of the clothes are made by slave labor, what are the other options? Be naked? You’ll get arrested, and now by US law, YOU’RE the slave labor.
Whereas nothing is forcing you to invest in slavery.
Not 100% of clothes directly benefit slave labour. For the price conscious, there are thrift shops/second hand clothes almost everywhere and ethical clothes available online for a bit more (but generally less than brand name stuff that’s expensive and still made by child slaves.)
Whereas nothing is forcing you to invest in slavery.
We all have to do something to survive.
There are other industries that are very profitable to invest in, and is much less unethical.
If you have money to invest, you aren’t struggling to survive.
You can invest money for your childrens future and still be struggling. Many people choose to forego a lot for their children but know investing for their education etc is a sacrifice they’ll make.
But they aren’t all made by slave labor. You only have to spend 3-5x as much. Not a problem if you buy %80 less clothes.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. There is no ethical investing, either.
Orlly now?
Yeah, there are a lot of big cheaters right nowz doesn’t mean All of it is
*yawn
Yeah, it’s pretty boring, that’s why they call it “a boring dystopia.”
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.
Of course.
Thought so. Just making sure.
There are other investments that are less… morally questionable…
Like, even investing in real estate is still less morally wrong than literal prison labor.
The way I look at it, someone is going to profit off a that suffering, might as well be me.
That makes the world worse though. Do you really want to make the world a worse place?
My not owning shares of a company doesnt make them any less bad, at least if in own shares I can vote on who is elected to the board and what direction they take things.
If enough like minded people with money wanted to do to corecivic what elon musk did to Twitter the way to do that is by owning enough stock to do a hostile takeover and force the company to shut down.
Thats how you use capitalists lack of ethics against them.
Are you organizing in any way to see that you can cooperate with like minded people? I’m not trying to be rude, but you should really think about the effect you want to leave on the world (not just you, everyone should).
I wish I could find like minded people but I’m not a skilled organizer, I’m too much of a pessimist.
Then it really seems like you’re providing funds for slavery and wishing it wasn’t harmful.
How do you think companies like core civic actually get funding? The reason their stock is booming on trumps win is because the government is who’s gonna be paying for all those bunks and cages to get filled, yet I doubt many people are going to refuse to pay their federal taxes.
Your money gets used for harmful stuff at some point no matter what you do, I’m just accepting reality. Capitalism is unethical at every level, some people draw a line at prison labor while others have no problem eating chocolate from child slaves or using a iPhone made by suicidal workers in a factory that pays them next to nothing.
Unless you live the life of a monk who grows all their own food you are most likely benefiting from some kind of human exploitation, more then likely the history of the device you use to read lemmy is filled with suffering workers being exploited at every step of the way, does that mean you should give up having electronics or a phone?
Entropy is ever expanding, so there’s no way to do no harm, though ideally we each try to do as little as possible. There are some parts of our lives where there’s no perfect answer, like technology or clothing, because for the most part, those are both generally exploitative and necessary to support yourself. In these cases, buying second hand can help, but it’s still a secondary market for products that benefit from slavery and/or it’s a separate, new evil like Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Taxes are also necessary, and the only workable remedies for the awful things that are paid for by those taxes are petitioning and electing as representative a government as possible or bringing it all down (which would itself include quite a lot of violence).
This is a totally different thing. This is investing excess money into an evil thing so that you can profit. There’s no requirement here, it’s an entirely voluntary worsening of the world.
Short freedom
Short answer: Yes
Long Answer: Good god, yes.
In effect, any gains you make will be blood money. Have fun with that.
In theory if you could use any profits to make counter-investments or buy enough stock to be able to influence them to move in a different direction then your strategy might be viable, but unless you literally just buy 1 share to be able to harass them at stockholder meetings then in all likelihood your money is doing more harm than good.
Best to just straight up invest in organizations that are effective in stopping these things and influencing policy against them.
