Hacker News Reader

Comment by mxschumacher | Hacker News Reader

I see what you mean.

A more general question about capitalism can be considered here: Who holds responsibility, consumers or producers? Both?

In my view, consumers who choose to lower their demand of fossil fuels (by using the bike instead of the car and reducing their vacationing on different continents) actually make a difference. If people stop consuming, companies go out of business.

Investing on the other hand is a zero-sum game: If a promising opportunity exists, somebody will finance it. Anything else is unstable in a game-theory sense, it's like asking people to not pick up $100-bills from the street.

In simpler terms: If you own Exxon shares you are not making climate change worse, but if you eat meat and own a car, you do.

View on HN

I think this is pretty reductionist.

My alternative viewpoint is that it is really one of choice and substitutes.

For the last century, fossil fuels by in large had no generally viable substitutes. Now, substitutes are coming online to replace previously heavy fossil fuel uses (think, electric cars powered with renewable energy for getting around town or the emergence of plant based burgers to replace beef burgers -> fossil fuel related as a primary input to agriculture is fertilizer, which is sourced from natural gas. Real meat requires significantly more fertilizer for the same amount of calories).

And - is investing really a zero-sum game? What about the opportunity for primary energy production to be substituted by renewable energy sources? Is that a promising opportunity that will be financed? If that does amount to an opportunity, wouldn't it be better to invest in that then Exxon? Particularly if you use the fuller definition of investment rather than just buying public shares?

the stock market is a secondary market, so buying the shares doesn't inject capital into the company itself.

I suppose you could make an argument that investing in the primary market gives you more power/moral responsibility.

The extremely high valuations of Beyond meat and Tesla show you that many investors are willing to shower these companies in money.

As unbelievable amounts of capital are moving into solar and wind, it becomes marginally less attractive for additional funds to be deployed into these industries.

Well, it does in some ways. It makes it easier to pay employees in stock, which could be seen as an operating expense. A company could issue equity for financing at high prices like Shopify and Twilio did recently. Debt to equity is also used as a leverage characteristic.

There has always been choice and substitutes. The general public chooses to do what is cheapest and most convenient.

For transportation, they could take the bus or ride a bike.

A local electric utility offered green energy options for a premium cost. No one signed up.

Consumers hold the responsibility. Their choices on where to spend money determine what kind of producers can exist. They can only make the right choices if they have the right education and data though, and that requires the government to step in.

I agree. One huge caveat is advertising.

Companies implant desire into human minds, a few implicit examples:

-"If you buy this sports car, women will find you attractive and you will have more sex"

- "Going on this beach vacation will make you happy"

- "Getting this alcoholic beverage will allow you to have fun with your friends"

It's extremely hard to avoid being influenced by ads, for me it's a moral reason to use an adblocker. I want to come with my my own desires, which are mostly not about consumption of products or services offered by for-profit enterprises.

There will always be advertising, fake news, scams... again it's on the consumer to make the difference by not only being aware but to change their behaviour.

If enough divest from Exxon they become a penny share, Greenpeace could buy them purely to sit the reserves away from use. Ridiculous, but being bought as the share price drops low enough is not. Every time a currency drops markedly businesses there are exposed to another round of international buyouts.

Similarly regulation and impact fines and levies will come. Maybe Exxon gets bought by someone looking to asset strip or use the remaining oil to pivot them elsewhere...

Would you pick up $100 and put it in your wallet in front of a police officer?

Note on meat - American and Argentinian meat specifically - other parts of the world manage to raise livestock in a far less destructive manner.

"The Greenpeace buying Exxon for pennies" scenario is deeply unrealistic for the moment. It's like finding $295.000.000.000 on the street.

Exxon doesn't change if it's share price declines, the lower the price goes, the more attractive the opportunity from a risk-reward perspective.

With pension funds and hedge funds hungry for yields, somebody will always buy.

To go with your police scenario: In the oil industry, the police officer protects you while picking up the $100 bill and takes a 25% cut. That's the story of many oil-rich nations.

Of course it is - yet governments and investments are showing early signs of divestment, including by pension schemes. If regulations to require carbon impact become a consideration in investment, or market listing - there's early signs some are thinking in those directions - then those pension schemes will start voting inconveniently or divest more significantly. If one of the top 5 blocs bakes climate into their approach trade, things could change fast.

Exxon have the mass that it will take a great deal to actually impact, but large industries have been abolished or turned into niche industry before. No reason to believe it won't happen again.

I entirely disagree. By buying and owning shares of Exxon, you’re contributing and supporting the oil and gas industry. It’s completely a choice, as opposed to driving a car which is a financial necessity to some.

By not buying the shares, you make it more attractive for somebody else to buy them. For you to not buy the shares doesn't make any difference for Exxon. You should need one detractor who's interested in money. That's why the equilibrium is not stable.

If you want to kill a business, stop buying from them.

I'm not opposed to car ownership, but office workers don't need 450hp, 2.5t street tanks to cruise around in cities.

Sure, but the price at which the shares are available decreases with fewer available buyers. Let’s not give oil companies the money or collateral to finance their expansion.

As I've elaborated in other responses to this thread:

the lower the price is, the more buyers there will be. The company does not change as its price moves. Every decrease in price means investors will get more for less.

That is true to some extent, but if a stock tanks the company's value goes down, and lenders will not give them the same access to capital they had previously [1]. So they can't grow at the same rate, and in extreme cases will fail. For oil and gas, this effectively means locking some of it in the ground for the time being, while society (hopefully) works to reduce the demand via development and deployment of alternative technologies.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/investing/why-do-companies-care...

The scenario you paint is purely hypothetical and far removed from reality. Markets are believed to be mostly efficient. If a business is highly profitable and conservatively leveraged, it will be able to attract capital (either equity or debt)

Finding a business where the fundamentals and the price converge is extremely profitable, it's what all investors, especially hedge funds, do. A large convergence is unlikely to exist in a market system.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com