A friend asked my opinion on Socially Responsible Investing. My reply:
its fine as long as you realize that you do it for your own
self-focused moral reasons and don’t have foolish notions that socially
responsible investment has any impact on the world. It doesn’t and
can’t. Every dollar you don’t invest in something will get investment
from elsewhere.
I played a key role in starting the Socially Responsible Investment
movement. In 1971 I organized the first conference on the subject in
Inverness (California). Later I funded the key organizations in the
movement. I was the first corporate-foundation treasurer (I was
at
Glide in S.F.) to make Socially Responsible Investments and to
personally visit all the main foundations in New York to encourage them
to do the same.
I soon came to realize that the idea was pretty much a farce. There are few if any pure companies on any issue. Issues keep changing (from hiring minorities, to protecting rabbits, to napalm, to whale oil, to South Africa, et cetera).
In addition to the issue de jure problem, investments are fungible. When I sell a stock some else will buy it. As the New York foundation people so rudely told me: ‘if you don’t like a stock don’t buy it.’