Socially Responsible Investing

Companies strive to survive and prosper.  Unfortunately the destructive excesses of shareholder companies arise because, as rapidly as possible, they must increase profits (or more accurately, grow one or more of such financial yardsticks as: revenues, cash-flow, return on investment, market share, and/or profits).  As long as the shareholder model is predominant, another way to curb the excesses of shareholder model companies is for investors to withdraw, sell their shares, and invest instead in companies that operate more closely in the stakeholder model.  

Socially responsible investing has been the most rapidly growing sector of the investment industry in recent years.  Millions of people are already socially responsible investors to a significant degree.   The Social Investment Forum, www.socialinvest.org, estimated that $2.1trillion is invested with such social "screens" in the USA alone. 

Think of a socially responsible spectrum as a vertical scale.  One can be anywhere on the scale – at the bottom with no knowledge or interest in social responsibility or at the top with so much intense interest and knowledge that no move is made unless it is very socially responsible.  The concept of becoming socially responsible needs to be viewed as a lengthy process of individuals at their own pace rising up the spectrum.