Few things I find more creepy is targeted advertising. It attempts to “target” based on machine learning, which looks at interactions on social media, webpages browsed and search terms to find what is most marketable for the user, not what is most relevant to the user.
The amount of data that feeds into targeted advertising is quite creepy. And often it makes judgements about a person that are quite wrong, as it’s only looking at population averages with a similar profile, and trying to make an educated guess at what products can be sold to that person. Yet, one isn’t defined by what advertisers think they can sell to you, and you shouldn’t take too seriously what people are paid to put in front of you.
Every time I mention my anxiety, I am fed a steady diet of advertisement for Better Help online mental health services, and the free-to-call 988 anti-suicide hotline. Targeted mental health advertising is downright creepy! When I was concerned about my excess peeing and pooping — from all the water and fiber in food — I was fed a steady diets about prostate and stomach cancers. Maybe because of my google searches, but long after my doctor visit and tests confirmed I was mostly clean, it was still creeply messaging to me. And then since I’ve gotten interested in healthy eating, I see constant advertising for services for people with anorexia, and granola bars and other highly-processed “health foods”. Not foods that are actually healthy, but come with good mark-up for the food processors.
Since I’ve mentioned my issues with new landlord and my search for rural property, I’ve now been getting fed a steady diet of advertising about landlord tenant management software and speculative real estate investments. Then there has been a steady batch of advertising I’ve been consuming about moving services, and extended stay places, as if soon I am to become homeless. I don’t think my current living accommodations are sustainable forever, but I really don’t think I’m in immediate risk of homelessness, despite the bit of a game my new landlord played over the rent check. Clearly if I got notice of the upcoming rent increase in June, my landlord isn’t seeking immediate eviction. He just wants my money and $100 a month more of it come June. Ironically, no advertising for land or property, despite all the time I spend on Zillow and studying the property tax rolls.
Then there are conflicting advertisements I keep seeing between investing for high-net worth individuals and services directed to the poorest of poorest people, such as those on welfare and section 8 housing. I’m not neither — I don’t have a million in investable assets, nor do I get welfare benefits. I’m closer to the prior then the later but not there, yet — and I’ll probably blow it on land and livestock. Some of it’s my personal interest in ways of being frugal and a responsible investing, but it’s fascinating to see the conflict. Discount cellphone providers like Mint Mobile still really want my business, and so do discount internet providers for low-income persons. But the real reason I choose not to have internet at home isn’t poverty, but it’s for the sanity of not having all that commercial crap in my apartment and to save a bit of money.
I know I’m not defined by commercial advertising, which exists solely to sell products to me but it creeps me out how much it knows about me and how it tries to sell me things based on things I have searched or explored on the internet.
I keep seeing reports that Elon Musk is the wealthies man on earth. Typically such reports use net worth – a fairly simple calculation that takes assets minus debts. As he’s considered in his current role in government – a private citizen – his actual bank account balances are unavailable but his stock ownership is publicly reported as part of his compensation package of the publically traded companies he owns.
The problem with wealth calculation is it assumes that assets are fully liquid and accessible, and that if Elon Musk wanted to fill up his bank account tomorrow, he could sell all his stocks and have a $234 or so billion dollar balance. Of course, that is not a realistic calculation – as many of shares may be restricted by his contract on how quickly he can sell them to avoid depressing the value of stock he owns, not to mention if he were to sell of a big block of stock, it would trigger a reduction of value to stock as the market became flooded with shares. The tax man would also take a large portion of proceeds as Capital Gains taxes when such stock was sold off.
Wealth is werid in that way. Many people who have net assets of significance don’t actually have access to that much case. An extreme example might be farmers and especially dairy men, who might have multi-million dollar holdings when you consider land, cows, equipment and crops. But they struggle to feed their own family off that limited milk check they get, with necessities of supporting the business like repairing and replacing broken farming equipment and paying property taxes on land taking a fair greater priority then their own needs, if they want to their business and ultimately their farm operation and income to continue.
Net assets is a valuable comparison in sense it gives some kind of estimate between groups of people about wealth. People can sell off illiquid assets, even if it comes at a steep cost compared to on paper value. But does it provide the great ability of comparison that people often give it? Assuming Elon Musk doesn’t want to canabalize his assets, how much money does he really have? How much money is actually in his bank account that he can draw upon today, without selling assets? We really do not know.
Lately, there has been a growing interest in people investing in various Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance (ESG) funds. They are usually sector funds, that only invest in businesses that have been selected based on their environmental, social, and corporate governance performance or actions. The idea is you invest in things that make the world a better place, rather then a worse place.
ESG funds are heavily marketed. It’s hard to open Facebook without a targeted ad, trying to play on your emotions and feel good about investing in these kind of businesses. But often if you look more then skin deep, they are highly scammy with few environmental and social benefits, despite the marketing hype. Often the products sold by ESG companies are hardly better then sold by those businesses not chosen by the ESG fund marketers.
But a bigger problem is that ESG companies aren’t well diversified compared to most market indexes, and that investing doesn’t actually decide which businesses have good business models and make money. Ultimately, it consumers, not investors that decide if a business is profitable and make sense. By buying an index fund, you end up with both ESG and non-ESG, and will profit when either one makes money. Risk is lower, because you have a wider range of stocks then only the ESG funds.
