The Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest Presbyterian denomination in America, has voted to divest its funds from Israel bonds and begin a process to encourage companies contributing to human rights abuses against Palestinians to change their practices. Alongside the financial decision, the church also passed a resolution condemning Christian Zionism, and thus rejecting the messianic ideology that views the takeover of Palestine to be part of a Biblical promise.
Votes were cast during the church’s General Assembly in Salt Lake City, Utah. The assembly, comprising 422 delegate commissioners and 82 advisory delegates, passed the resolutions as part of a broader package of legislation governing church activities.
The resolution to divest from Israel calls on the Presbyterian Foundation and Board of Pensions to divest from governmental debt held by countries maintaining prolonged military occupations and subject to UN resolutions. While this includes Turkey and Morocco, the focus has primarily been on Israel. The church, which has approximately 8,800 churches and 1 million members, has been sharply critical of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians for decades.
In addition to divestment, the church voted to begin a dialogue with General Electric and Palantir Technologies, encouraging them to end practices that harm Palestinians. The church contends that General Electric sells fighter jet engines used by Israel’s air force, while Palantir Technologies provides Israel with artificial intelligence technology for surveillance of Palestinians.
Moral or ethical concerns aside, the military-industrial sector is a solid investment. They’re reliable companies that are “vital” to their respective countries’ “national security”; and will always be propped up.
Yeah, but if you’re a church you’d think moral and ethical concerns would be at the forefront of how you invest. But of course, we’re in an age where everything is basically a hedge fund: banks, car companies, governments, universities, churches, etc.
Most churches invest into some sort of hedgefund, or some other kind of investment firm- You don’t want Pastor Joe running the investments. the market is basically a zero sum game, so, any time you make a profit, somebody else loses profit and it’s arguably inherently unethical to invest in the market.
which means anyone whose good at investing isn’t going to be nearly as concerned with ethics or morals.
What are you talking about? Why would you think the market is a zero sum game?
Because it (basically) is. In order for a pair of trades to be profitable, somebody has to give up that value.
Even if you’re literally just holding for dividends, that dividend’s value is coming from the company. (And it’s also reflected in the share price basically immediately. A $1 dividend per share would see the share price drop by a dollar.)
When you make money on the stock market, somebody lost that money. It might be another investor, it might be a day trader, it’s probably a market maker.
Stocks don’t magically grow. The market doesn’t magically make value. It all comes from somewhere.
The argument against it being a zero sum game is basically that everyone has their own objectives and might consider it a win, regardless if they didn’t time their trades perfectly and left money on the table.
But that doesn’t change the basic reality that they gave up value for some one else to (hopefully) profit.
There’s ethical funds you can invest in and still make a profit. Stuff like renewables, worker -owned companies etc are all options, and will typically actually outperform index funds.