Socially Responsible Investment - SRI

Before we go over what a socially responsible investment is, let’s look at what it’s not.

Investing in oil companies (if you love polar bears and love driving your car cheaply). Investing in alcohol, tobacco, or gambling. The vices of our time. Because those things are mostly run via the exploitation of people’s addictions. Kind of like how everyone’s addicted to social media, except it leads to more deaths (and bankruptcies and lung cancer).

A socially responsible investment is an investment that takes into account social impact, worker safety, environmental justice...all that rosy stuff.

If you feel guilty about investing in oil (hey, a lot us do), you can balance it out with a socially responsible mutual fund, ETF, or stock. Like carbon credits for the soul. And yes, we note that the whole notion of wanting to be socially responsible brings with it massive hypocrisy. If we really cared about our human brethren, we'd go one month without Hulu or Netflix or gobs of other things we don't really need, and for that 10 bucks in savings, we could literally save someone's life in Africa. But we don't. We love us some Netflix and chill. It'll take our mind off of being only notionally socially responsible.

Yeah, yeah, it's fine. Ooh! Friends reruns!