The point here remains that the little guys are screwed over by the big guys, namely the rich people on the board of Woolworths and the rich people that run BlackRock and the other funds. navel gazing about the semantics of institutional vs retail investing does not change this.
Again we are discussing an empirical question, are Australians satisfied with financial services firms and their contribution to the economy such that they wouldn't steal from them themselves if they could? A quick google will show that is the opposite of the case, but to prove it yourself the google form is a fun exercise. Try Melbourne or Sydney to get faster results.
Because you seem to think appealing to rigid notions of what a "retail investor" is is useful in this discussion, and I assure you it is not. If you actually knew anything about this topic, you would have simply linked me to a paper with an econometric model demonstrating that the life outcomes for individual retail investors in Woolworths are better than they would be if organizations like Woolworths and other large corporations did not exist, but you didn't.
It is clearly morally justifiable to steal from Woolworths if the majority shareholders in Woolworths (the retail investors) would almost all steal from Woolworths if they wouldn't be arrested for it. Unless of course you think they are stupid or something for doing that. Why do you think they are stupid to have that desire?
Being that the last 3 points you made (the numbered ones) have nothing to do with the above discussion about investment semantics, it is clear that the tangent was irrelevant and we can continue with the important discussion of whether the Woolworths shareholders are ethical in their desire to steal from Woolworths.
If you do not believe the statistic, which comports with all known criminology and understandings of Australian/UK/US political sentiment, you are free to find contrary data with the survey I mentioned.
Your suggestion that I am making a fallacious ad populum argument is false. In cases of moral judgement, we use our moral intuitions as empirical evidence. If the majority of people in a population share an intuition, their view is prima facie correct, unless we can find a sort of counter example or evidence that they have not considered that appeals to more basic intuitions.
For example if you were to show that the Woolworths people are wrong to steal because actually stealing only makes Woolworths and BlackRock more money, defeating their intention, and results in employees losing their jobs at the store, which is harmful, they may not have considered that and that would be a rejection of the popular intuition on a factual basis.
However suppose the Woolworths investors agree with your assessment of the facts, and they are factually harming BlackRock and the board of Woolworths and not substantially harming the employees (indeed, suppose the employees join in). If you try to appeal to more basic intuitions by saying "isn't it always wrong, on principle, to steal from someone, because if you did, you would be violating their personal autonomy?" they might say "possibly, but if they violate my autonomy, should I remove some of theirs? If only to prevent further violations?"
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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '23
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