Rob's Blog

Scott Burgess quotes Chris Martin from Coldplay saying that “the greatest evil of the modern world” is shareholders.

If Martin thinks investment for personal gain is evil, he must logically think that all personal gain is evil and that the only legitimate use for money is for altruism, making him a character from an Ayn Rand novel.

Alternatively he sees shareholders not as investors but as people who simply take profits that would otherwise be spent on making railways safer or feeding starving children. It’s the same mindset that is disgusted when companies announce record profits. They see money flowing towards rich people but fail to understand what happens to the money after that. What do they think rich people do with their money? I’ll tell you what they do do: Rich people spend it, which employs people, or invest it, which employs people and creates more money.

Shareholders aren’t even just rich people. Most shares are owned by banks who are investing money from people’s savings accounts and pension funds. So nearly everyone is shareholder. Does Martin think we’re all evil?

No, Martin is not really saying that shareholders are evil because he doesn’t understand what shareholders are or what they do. He doesn’t realise that shareholders provide the money that makes large scale ventures possible, and thereby help to increase the total wealth in the world, making us all richer. He’s just another celebrity using his position to spout off nonsense about subjects he does not understand.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 19th, 2005 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Introspection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.