Shell's kind of got a point that the purpose of the shareholder meetings isn't to create a forum for political activists, but to report to shareholders how the company is doing. I mean, it's going to be disruptive to them doing that, because they've got a finite amount of time for that.
If you buy a share of an oil company specifically because you don't like oil companies and want to show up at the shareholder meeting and complain about oil companies, the shareholders who are interested in the thing as a business probably aren't going to appreciate it much.
If shareholders were saying "I don't agree with the CEO pay package" or something, okay, that's within the realm of the company's operations.
I'd also add that if you don't want oil extraction, Shell isn't the party to talk to, even via another route than shareholder's meetings. Shell is gonna do what regulators permit if it makes financial sense for Shell. You aren't gonna convince Shell otherwise. If you want to say "no crude oil extraction", then you want to talk to regulators and lawmakers, not to the companies operating within the bounds that they set. Hell, even if you did convince Shell, it'd just mean that another oil company would step in to do the same.
If crude oil extraction causes problems to people other than Shell or Shell customers, then that's an externality, and internalizing that is what regulators are there for. That's not the job of companies.
I’m not sure if we are on the same side, and honestly in this case it doesn’t matter, since you are right: a corporation only has to care about the externalities as much as they are forced to and not even an inkling more than that.
People who think that an enterprise in a free market will respond to any other force than economic force are wasting activism time that could be better used elsewhere.
If you want a corporation to stop performing a socially harmful business, you need to make that business unprofitable.
I agree with your sentiment, but I wouldn’t call activism (and especially not journalism) a wasted effort in that regard. Bringing issues to light is the first step in creating a visible dent in the balance sheets. Public perception shapes consumer behavior to some degree and can put pressure on lawmakers to introduce legislation against harmful conduct. On the other hand, if the general public only hears the company’s side of the story underlining how clean and ethical they are, there will never be any pressure for change.
Again though, Shell aren’t going to push for that. Their beneficiaries aren’t either, unless the rest of us make it untenable for legislators to fail to ban such donations.
It’s not a conflict of interest to report on something you have a financial stake in? Just because the stock is at $60 doesn’t mean you wouldn’t profit if it went to $80.
Such a small amount of money is easily explainable in the journalistic report. In fact, I did so right now. “In order to gain access to this event and be allowed the provelidge to ask follow up questions, this reporter was forced to buy one stock of Shell at $60 a share. I did my best to not let this influence my journalism in any way.”
It’s proper that a journalist should put a disclaimer in their article, stating the conflict of interest. That does not mean the conflict of interest is suddenly done away with - it’s still there.
Having a conflict of interest also doesn’t mean the person cannot be trusted. However buying shares in the company you’re reporting on would be introducing a significant doubt that isn’t really worth the minimal benefits they’d get from attending shareholder meetings.
My guy buying one share of a company to gain access to a stockholder only event is not a conflict of interest. Think about it critically for any length of time and you’ll realize this.
Mate, it’s called a conflict of interest. By owning a share in the company, you have an interest in the company’s success, and therefore an inherent bias in any reporting you do. You might not act on that bias, but it’s still there - and most importantly for journalists it’s perceptible to any and every reader.
I’m sure most journalists would not let it influence them. However the issue is it affects the quality of their writing towards their audience. It’s not about whether or not they will act on their bias, but their appearance of bias.
Ultimately, it’s just not worth the hassle. Otherwise we would already have journalists doing this - just because Shell are no longer letting journalists into shareholder meetings doesn’t mean it’s a new thing.
You’re not arguing against me thinking this isn’t a good idea, you’re arguing against the entire journalism industry thinking that.
It’s not a conflict of interest if you buy a share as part of the investigation, literally I have no clue how to tell you this in any other way. If you need to own a share to ask questions, it is only proper to buy a share and ask the questions. You are the reason journalism is dying.
The reason you buy it does not matter. Owning a share in a business you’re reporting on is a de facto conflict of interest. You merely saying it isn’t does not make your statement true. Coming up with excuses for why it was bought doesn’t either. A good journalist will at least still declare their conflicts of interest, but that declaration does not dispell it.
If only reporters had some way of telling readers about their potential conflicts of interest. Like, I don't know, telling readers you had to buy shares to participate and report on it? But that just seems to crazy to exist....
I didn’t say it would invalidate their reporting, but even with a disclaimer the conflict of interest is still there and still undermines the article. A report without the conflict of interest is always better.
Is that really worth it, just to go to their shareholder meeting and try to turn it into a mini press conference? I think most professional journalists would say no.
American oil and gas companies ExxonMobil and Chevron also don’t hold press conferences
I mean, I’m sure they’ve thought about this with regards to these other companies, yet we don’t have journalists buying shares to report on them. Maybe I’ve not hit the nail with their exact reasoning, but whatever their reasoning is no one in the industry seems to think it’s a good idea.
Yeah, I’ve read a bit more on it, and it’s not good. The regulations haven’t been changed since 1985, they need to be reformed with more power given to individuals.
Problem is most people buy shares from intermediaries where you don’t actually get registered as a shareholder with the company.
Yes of course long term we will need to get rid of privately owned (but not shared) cars, but time is far in the future. Even here in NL the infrastructure just isn’t there for it. Yet.
And we have no real government at the moment, and god help us with the elections coming up.
Which is why shared cars as opposed to everyone or every household owning one makes sense. You’ll be more thoughtful of when you need it rather than using it because it’s always there.
This creates availability issues for me and demand of cars issues for the market which translate immediately in loss of jobs for those who work in the sector, even mechanics and the ones who change your tires. Also the sentence “you’ll be more thoughtful of when you need it” doesn’t make sense. If I need it and it’s not there what am I supposed to do? Oh, well I should have thought about it. How could I know when I needed it? And I’m not too fond of people in general. Having some stranger drive my, ehm, our car? No.
Mechanics are going to be downsized with all the EV sales anyway. They just don’t need as much maintenance. I have had a Chevy Bolt since 2018. I haven’t had any routine maintenance, and I’ve just had to take the thing to the dealership once for a major recall, where they just flashed the BIOS. Admittedly, I don’t drive near as much as I used to, I’ve only put 60,000 miles on the ODO so far.
That leaves out a ton of people from dealerships to engineers, from body repairs shops to carwashes, from manufacture to after market components. And we’ve got two cars per household. Let’s see how it goes with a quarter or less that. No.
I love statements like this. It’s basically someone just deciding that gravity is inconvenient, so it won’t apply to them.
The world is on fire dude, and the only way it doesn’t get worse (we’re not even talking about fixing it at this point) is to dramatically change the way we live. Private car ownership is a big part of that. Your preference for living in a way incompatible with life on the planet does not entitle you to it.
But here’s the good news: you can still have a private car. You can even live in a distant suburb and the car can run on gasoline… but you’re going to have to pay for it. And you’re going to pay the actual cost to society for that preference, so it’s going to be very, very expensive.
Or you know, you can just take the train and plan your roadtrip holidays in advance.
Let’s share everything then: PCs, pianos, houses. No, a car is something too personal to be shared. I smoke, the stranger doesn’t what happens? Or vice versa. He breaks the car who pays? Legal disputes. I need the car he’s using it, what am I to do? It can work for workers from the same office. One car brings 4, it’s ok. Other than that, forget about it. Not to mention the economics at play. A whole industry would collapse. If there’s something I learned in this life is that money comes before everything else. Trying to save this planet as I watch more and more people install AC in their house is hilarious. Colder for you, hotter for everyone else. And the planet. We’ll never save ourselves. There’ll be harsh selection. And lastly, if even EVs are a problem I dunno what else to try. Public transport doesn’t get everywhere, it never will, so it’s not a solution. Oh, and we’re not talking about gravity.
The sharing concept is more like a Uber type deal, there is always a car available sort of thing. It’s not really a sharing with a neighbor or family member type thing where you are SOL if the shared car is not in your driveway.
Dutchman here. Our government has been systematically gutting funding for public transport. I have to extend my commute from 40 minutes to 2 hours if I want to take public transport. It’s also unreliable and outrageously expensive since they run it through the “free market”.
Fuck cars but there’s also no way in hell I will sell my car before they introduce some massive changes to our public transport.
I used to live there back in 2015. What’re the prices for intercity trains these days? I remember NL trains being very cheap (€20 Amsterdam to Mastricht). Here in the UK is £50 from Cambridge to London (roughly a ⅓ the distance) so I hope you’re still doing better than here
With that said, I hope you get some more green/left types in government this time around. I’m watching your election closely from here!
If only our public transport was affordable. We pay way more than other European countries (besides maybe Germany and the Scandinavian countries), especially when you consider how little distance you’re really travelling. As an example, to get from Eindhoven central station to Amsterdam central station you take 1 train, it takes you 1 hour and 20 minutes and you pay €22,70 for a one way ticket. If we’re looking at distance, this is about 120 km. This means that to get there and go back home you pay €45,40.
If you travel by yourself you can argue that it’s worth it to take the train there since parking + fuel isn’t that cheap here either. However, as soon as you have more than 1 person the car quickly becomes the cheaper option, even with parking included. As long as they don’t solve this issue I don’t see any success in their push to get people to use public transport. And I know the solution will probably be to make everything even more expensive but that’s not going to help in the long run either…
A lot of people only tend to look at the fuel costs and maybe parking. However you’re forgetting a big part of the costs of driving which is that every km adds to the depreciation in the cars worth as well as requiring more maintenance.
It’s very easy to say just buying fuel is pretty cheap, but those costs are easily doubled if you look at the full costs. Check out www.anwb.nl/auto/autokosten for examples of how much variable costs/km actually are.
That said, this is for solo travelers… It’s true that when you add more people the costs become much lower / person if you go by car since the costs just get multiplied with public transport. Exactly why my next vacation with 4 people will still be by car…
However I’ve started taking the train for work now which still comes out a lot lower (40% discount outside of rush hours helps a lot too!)
Thanks for the link, I never had a look at that before. If I look at my car, the variable costs per km (without the fuel) are €0,15 per km. The fixed costs are only interesting if you don’t have a car and are looking at getting one, I have to pay those costs regardless of whether I leave it at home or not. That means that taking the car in my example above would add another €18 which does change things a little bit.
However, my main point was that people would flock to public transport if they were using the prices you sometimes see in other countries. For example, in Italy it costs me around €10 to get a return ticket from Florence to Pisa. The trains are slightly less fancy of course but they’re still very serviceable. If they could make it so you pay maybe €30 for a return ticket from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, it would make it a lot more enticing to take the train.
If I were to drive my car to work I would double the amount I drive per year. If you don’t think this adds a lot of costs then I don’t know what to tell you. If you drive somewhere incidentally sure, it doesn’t really matter.
In most countries the maintenance costs for highways are funded from the budget of the country, and thus split on the whole population. Those amounts are not included when someone makes a cost calculation for driving from A to B, unless one has to pay for a vignette for using the highway.
Also the cost of the car maintenance per kilometer is often not taken into account.
What is also annoying is that the budget allocated for the maintenance of the railway infrastructure is in most countries a lot less than that allocated for road infrastructure, further increasing the costs of train tickets (and thus the apparent cost of train travel) when compared to road travel.
The trains and subways are already very full. Just making things cheaper will not be enough. We need to massively invest in new lines and more frequent trains everywhere.
One of the train companies here are using a 3 coach commuter train for long intercity travel. It’s extremely unpleasant, people are always standing in the aisle and sitting on their suitcases by the doors.
I honestly have no idea why they can’t just… make the train longer?! The 30 min frequency is not an issue for me, although it isn’t great. The constant overcrowding on the other hand is horrible.
Germany has monthly local public transport passes for 49€ for all local public transport including regional trains. So if you wanted to go that kind of distance, you propbaly buy that instead and use public transport for some trips in the city or for some other trip. For groups some states have state passes, which can be very cheap as well. Lower Saxony for example has the Niedersachsenticket, which is 25€ for the first person, another 6€ for the next and then 5€ for each of the next three people. That works for a day after 9am for all regional public transport in the state. So you could get everybody within a normal sized car on a similar distance for 46€.
In other words, I am sorry, but public transport in the Netherlands is more expensive then in Germany. At least it is on time thou.
That pass doesn’t cover trains you actually want to take between regions. It’s basically a subway pass equivalent.
Source: I still pay €25 to go to the nearest city because it’s a 1+ hour train ride and going local station to local station sucks. Yes I have been busted by the Deutche Bahn employee checking Tickets and thought the country wide pass worked.
Ulm- München is abou 120km and it takes to 2:00 by regional train. Berlin - Magdeburg is also similar and at about 1:45. Both can be used using that pass.
Aalen to Stuttgart can’t. Stuttgart to München Can’t.
“using that pass” means not taking the direct train line. And stopping locally.
Don’t ask me, ask a DB employee telling me that pass isn’t valid for those connections.
Edit: here’s the carve out
Please note, however, that the Deutschland-Ticket is not valid on trains operated by DB Fernverkehr AG or other long-distance providers such as FlixTrain (e.g. IC, EC, ICE, as well as RE operated by DB Fernverkehr AG). DB Fernverkehr is currently in talks with the German state governments and authorities about exceptions on certain sections of line.
The Deutschland-Ticket is currently also permitted for long-distance trains (IC, EC, ICE) between Rostock Hbf and Stralsund Hbf.
Sounds like a nice concept, I wish we had something like that here. And you might think trains run on time but there’s actually quite a lot of delays recently. Because our network is relatively small and almost everything passes through Utrecht all it takes is 1 minor disruption somewhere around there and it’s mayhem.
Feel free to tell me if I’m wrong but I think it’s cheaper to subsidise public transport than to build and maintain car infrastructure. The way I see it is that every euro spent on making transport cheaper is 2 euros saved.
Oh I fully agree with you, it’s just that it doesn’t seem like they invest much in public transport. It feels like you hear more about lines closing down and capacity on the line going down than new lines being created.
Bristol to London is about 1hr20m, ok it’s 185km so a bit longer, but the cost of a peak time return is £252.80. So it could be worse if your country decided to privatise the rail services, a natural monopoly, while keeping infrastructure and strike costs public.
Oh they privatised it alright. It’s just that the government holds all stocks for the company. So they have to subsidize the losses while fat CEO pigs run off with the profits.
I wish :( The city centers are very walkable and there's plenty of safe bicycle infrastructure, but cars are still very clearly the dominant mode of transport. Every weekend there's queues to the parking garages in every part of the city.
I like the way most city centers are set up but I think public transport coverage should be improved in most places before the government starts trying to push people out of their cars. My local municipality is trying the same thing and making the same mistake, they’re not improving public transport but they are trying to discourage people from coming by car. How is that supposed to work if you can’t even get there properly if you live in a part of town that either has no connection or it takes you 3 to 4 times as long as it would take you by car to take the bus?
Please sell these cheaply to consumers. I would really love to have one that photographs the plates extremely high pitch 50cc scooters on my street. I would pay $€£ 1000 for the ability to launch rotten eggs when someone uses the horn at 2am.
A couple hundred meters away from me, there’s a piece of a two-lane two-lane road that has no traffic lights for a little over 1 km and has the priority of way, too - meaning that at night, you can get a somewhat high speed over there for a little while without leaving the city limits.
There’s only a few bikers in my city, but holy shit do they make “good” use of the opportunity in summer. I really wish we also had this kind of cameras out there, because the noise from just one is insane, especially at dead of night, and sometimes they do this in packs.
The best part is that it never lasts once - they just speed between the two traffic lights for a while, making a shit ton of that noise.
There are also buildings with windows overlooking that same road from a much closer distance than mine. Can’t really imagine what it’s like for people living there, even though we’re basically meters away from each other.
Wish we had that here. I could only afford a home on a busy street and the pollution is bad enough we it is without the modded trucks, muscle cars and motorcycle racing by at 1am. It’s illegal, but uninforced.
And that crying about being spied on… we already have cameras everywhere, actually having them used for something we want would be lovely. This and carpool lane enforcement, regulated in a way that can’t be abused (unlike red light and stop sign cameras, which local governments really abuse given lack of top down regulation).
I hear that the UK is trialling them in England an Wales, and London also had a trial run in 2021/22. Not sure what came of it, though.
Trouble is, the UK has no law limiting the noise a car can make. Only if there is e.g. a modified exhaust can the police even do something.
This is not true. See rule 123 of the Highway Code which says it is illegal to modify your vehicle to make more noise and that the noise of a vehicle should be below 86 db.
The current issue is that enforcement is not proactive and the fines are very low. Most police departments only issue a warning for first time offenders.
For me, it’s worth it. I live next to a forest already, far outside the city center, and there’s still assholes racing at night at the nearby street because it’s quite secluded and straight.
Also, I’m not worried about microphones on busy streets. It’s a public space already, which affects the content of my speech already. Microphones at home should be much more important for anyone worried about privacy.
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