That's interesting DJ. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't think working for a tobacco company to be an immoral act. Being a spokesperson for one doesn't make a person evil. There's lots of really bad jobs out there. Defence attorneys get a terrible rap. Because I'm such evolved person, I despise all attorneys equally lol.

But a tobacco industry person become an anti-smoking person is objectively a good thing. That's a better job, it's doing more good full stop. I don't think I'd have any issue with that. Marketing people, public relations people, spokespeople are all legit jobs. It's not a spokesperson for the KKK or anything.


What Rob is doing isn't the same thing at all. He just has zero credibility. Whereas a former tobacco company person being an anti-smoking person legit has a TON of credibility, in my opinion.

btw, our firm doesn't invest in tobacco companies at all. It's a business that is in the business of killing people and serves no positive purpose for society. Some people draw that same line for many energy companies and that's RIDICULOUS. Those companies (many of them) have a positive societal benefit. Especially the ones that are trying to do it in a cleaner, better way

What gets me is that I NEVER believe their motivations are good.

Look at me, I took a job at a terrible company that does terrible things =>>> Now I'm an expert on the terrible things they do, you should listen to me over other people, BECAUSE I used to work for the devil. (okay, buddy, are you telling me you found new information that wasn't known by everyone else, and suddenly changed your mind? because if that's the supposed story, I do NOT believe you).

Investing into tobacco companies, or for that matter energy companies, is a completely different thing. You aren't supporting them by investing in them, you are making your clients money. Your job is to make them the most money, by almost any means necessary. I don't think there's much connection here between the two kinds of actions. In fact, quite the opposite, I think investment groups that refuse to make their clients money by investing in the best investments (for some stupid reason like, 'it's an energy company) are themselves taking the immoral actions - not looking out for their client's interests to their maximum ability to do so, by creating false, financially unsound, barriers to investments that have nothing to do with their real promised goals.

You can now TAKE the dumpster with you

to avoid confusion BB, I'm still on the slightly altered discussion that DP started. I'm not talking about the comedian - that discussion is related, but I'm really more interested in the spokesperson discussion.

Schneider is exactly as you said, IMO. I didn't think it was worth agreeing with you, because I think your position is pretty obviously correct.

I mean seriously, he's in an industry that is always seeking protection for what it says, and does. How on earth could he think other art should be censored? I'm sure he's never told an off color joke in his entire career... or said something hurtful... or offended somebody... yeah right, lol. Half of his movies were so bad, I've seriously considered flying to LA to protest the studios that kept hiring him.

He's also an absolute NOBODY so who cares anyway.

Yeah, I knew you were talking about the spokesman thing, that's a more interesting discussion you're right.

And I'm thrilled with your paragraph about investing in tobacco companies. Everything you're saying there has been what I've been preaching to the industry for 15 years now. a decade ago, i went to an ESG/RI conference, and I told a table full of women that asset managers that aren't taking every legal opportunity to meet their clients' goals is breaching their fiduciary duty and breaking their clients' trust in them. You should have seen the white faces lol

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our company actually has a belief system that Europe's obsession with ESG made them avoid investing in energy, which ended up benefited Russia enormously and filling the war chest which funded the Ukraine invasion. We think human rights is a much better barometer for net societal benefit than some wishy washy beliefs around ESG that ends up having bad effects. So our responsible investment policy is shifting to net societal benefit with a focus on human rights.

This keeps things pretty wide open as we can find investable companies in almost every industry now

You should have been a fly on the wall for one of my recent conversations on the subject.

I was trying to explain the difference between ethics for a person and ethics for a company. I think my direct quote was "For a company, Ethics begins and ends with the law." Companies have one, and only one goal: increase long-term profitability (legally, or even up to the limit of illegality where the penalty is exceeded by the profit. That's the worst part of the analysis, btw. Sometimes the Ethical position for a company is to break the law, because breaking the law is more profitable even after you include the fine.). If you want to incentivize them to do specific things, you either need to pay them to do so (a more complete analysis would include penalizing them for not doing so, but those two things are basically the same thing), or you need to make laws that force them to do so. Otherwise it would be unethical for a company to do anything other than the best things they know about to improve their bottom line.

The same is true for investment managers, only probably even more so.

You're right about companies. But only in the sense if you think the ONLY stakeholders for a company are the owners/shareholders. Then growth of the company is the only important thing.

But there are two other groups of stakeholders that need to be considered:

- clients
- employees/staff

maybe suppliers, but I don't think so.

Once you include their needs/happiness/loyalty, then ethics gets a little murkier. Now Ethics doesn't just end with the law. Firm culture will come into it, reputation/trust will come into it.

But a shareholder normally shouldn't care about any of that, they just want the growth. (activist investors being an exception, but they're rare)

I'm well aware of that analysis, but I firmly disagree with it. Let me explain why:

1) those other stakeholders are ONLY considered when the company can take positive actions that will improve its bottom line. It's always with that caveat.
2) they are always secondary to the primary goal - making more money.

Ex: you want your clients happy, because keeping them happy increases profitability, but you would limit making them happy. For example, you would not give your 100K tool away for free, even though your clients would be very happy if you did. You would also not add features to your product that make your clients happy, despite decreasing overall profitability (this could include analysis on the impact of new features on additional sales, obviously... Profitability is not limited to profit per unit sold, but rather overall, so more sales at a lower margin may still be more profitable. I know you know this, but I'm trying to avoid obvious potential misunderstandings). A well managed company will have profit as the thing being maximized and everything else as independent variables in an optimization function of some kind.

I would say the same thing about staff. You want them happy, exactly up to the point where their happiness continues to increase productivity enough to increase profitability. You would not, for example, triple their salaries just to make them happier, unless someone could point to a profitability justification for that action. (example justification: we aren't paying enough, so we aren't attracting/keeping the top talent, so we are starting to fall behind. This is a profitability argument with a different name, but it's still the exact same thing.)

I would say, that at least from my perspective, those kinds of analyses still fall into exactly the same ethics buckets I proposed above, they are just a tiny bit more nuanced, or harder solve for.

What is the CEOs job? Increase profits, or make people happy? I'm pretty sure it's basically always the former, and I think examples of the latter are few and far between in any company that isn't currently experiencing massive growth, based almost entirely on hype. Meaning, almost every established company follows what I'm describing. Even Amazon, for example, with its recent switch to pay-to-remove ads on their shows is doing exactly what I'm describing. They are **** over their clients, and there's only one possible reason why -> They've realized that by annoying you with ads, they can probably convince you to pay them an extra buck or two for their monthly service to avoid the annoyance. And if that doesn't work, they still get an additional penny or two every time you watch a show (those pennies will NEVER add up to the fee they get to remove the ads, btw. The add removal fee is probably an order of magnitude larger than their ad revenues.).

I’ve wondered why so many male priests SA alter boys and why so many female grade school teachers SA their students and I suspect it’s for the same reason: predators choose careers that give them easy access to their prey

Just go to the frigging dumpster already and spare us from this money grabber jibber jabber.

You live in this world, I'm just explaining it.

ah Christ, this is a very timely message in a bad way for me.

I'm watching Berlin Syndrome last night. The guy in it is a teacher (I don't know if it's high school, college or university, i have trouble telling apart ages from these groups), and he's leading some basketball drills with the boys team. Across the gym is the girl's gymnastics program. And this one student of his keeps looking at him, and he keeps looking back. She's stretching and showing off, and he keeps stealing glances.

Later in the movie, she finds out where he lives and shows up at his place, sort of playfully mentioning that she noticed him looking....

Her intentions are never made clear cuz things turn south real fast, but my FIRST thought was.... "I should have been a teacher" lol

but i'm very glad i'm not


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hey btw, is that true about female teachers assaulting GRADE school boys?? I've never heard that before. I've heard of lots of high school female teachers hooking up with boys, but not grade school stuff. For sure the pedo priests are 100% choosing that career for access. I don't think the women are cuz it's not happening in large numbers like the priest thing. I think it's probably just a normal % of women that have major mental illness/issues/depravity manifesting into assault (not excusing the act at all, btw)

From the boy's perspective, and I'm only half joking here, where is the line for Assault?

For example, does the line end where the boy/teen/whatever would tell his friends to high five him?

I'm not talking about legality, and I'm definitely not talking about appropriateness...

But did South Park get this roughly right?

Also, is this far more common than we think? I'm not sure it would always get reported, or even frequently get reported.

As soon as there is inappropriate touching between adult and pre-pubescent minor, I believe it’s always sexual assault

When it’s adult and teen, it’s statutory rape unless they’re within three years of each other (this one varies widely)

I think that’s basically it. It’s much more cut and dry with children (as it should be)

Note that neither high fives nor consent are relevant in either case


I don’t think the kid thing is common at all but the teen thing is super common. I have friends that know guys who had lots of this stuff often

more random **** posting

Oh boy Mad Men is back on Netflix. So happy. Never got to see most of it

I just blocked the account posting this meme on Facebook, thanks for posting it here. I’m so glad you think sharing this kind of thing is a good idea.

@BB I specified I wasn’t talking about legality or appropriateness… those questions are obvious.

Sorry DJ, I gave the boring answer you weren’t after. I should have read your post more carefully

I’m not sure how to answer or voice a thought on it considering assault is a legal term which can only be measured through a legal definition.

I guess if I understand what you’re getting at, Is if both parties are happy after, then it’s never assault. That sounds about right

I suppose that is the rough idea. I actually have a story about that, with the roles reversed, that resulted in prison time, no bs, and marriage for 15 or so years afterwards (maybe longer, they stayed together a long time).

K-12 is grade school in the US. Or at least that’s what I always call it cause it’s grades K thru 12

Most of the news reports of female teachers sleeping with students that I read about are jr high or high school tho. I think the physical realities of sex differences make it much harder for that to happen prior to hitting puberty

It happens in surprisingly high numbers imo. Enough that it caused me to take note of it and wonder about the reasons

Sure it’s different than SA of prepubescent kids, and I would agree that male sexuality is more receptive to it (sleeping with an older woman) but it’s still wrong - these kids are still minors in almost all instances and I consider, say, a 34 yo teacher sleeping with a 12 yo student an act of pedophilia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay_Letourneau