A financial adviser and friend of Noreen's sent me a message a couple weeks ago as a sort of follow up to previous conversations we'd had in the past. Obviously, he was looking to expand his client base and had found my name while flipping through his contact history and so I got a polite email asking if I was interested in investing with him any time soon.
Knowing that having an investment portfolio is supposed to be the smart thing, I gave it a shot. I replied that I had reservations about investing any of my money in funds where my money could be used for "evil", so if I were to do any kind of investment, I'd need fine-grained control over what money went where to ensure a clear conscience.
Like a professional, he responded with a few suggestions based on my tastes, but then he let that professionalism slip when he went on to defend Microsoft as a liberator of the impoverished. He did point out though that even the most ethical of funds he could find leaned heavily on Canada's "Big Five" banks -- institutions which would only re-lend my money to companies like Bruce Power, Shell, and Sony. This, coupled with my less-than-mainstream ideas of "good" and "evil" corporations leaves me with few options.
So I won't be joining the investment train. At least, I won't be going there until I can find a way to square it with my morals. Two things just keep repeating themselves over and over in my head, and until they're satisfied, mutual funds and the like are pretty much off limits:
- Capitalism rarely, if ever, does the Right thing
- The money we get from investments isn't free. Someone, somewhere is paying for that dividend and it just doesn't feel right to profit from it.