Pacifist “Holding on for Dear Life” to His Palantir Stock

By Dan Geddes

SAN FRANCISCO – A Bay Area pacifist is still holding his Palantir stock, despite the company’s symbiotic relationship with the US military, immigration enforcement, and intelligence agencies.

For John Gilligan, a founding member of the “Sausalito Peaceniks for Peace,” owning a six-figure position in a revered firm within the military-intelligence complex involved in the slaughter and/or deportation of innocent people raises some disturbing ethical issues.

Gilligan recently gave a lengthy interview with Late Stage Capitalism magazine about his moral quandaries (excerpts below).

“It’s true!” said Gilligan. “You might as well just call Palantir ‘devil stock.’ They’re evil! But I bought it on a hot tip years ago before its share price went parabolic. And now, even though they are admittedly pure evil, I wouldn’t even think of selling my shares. The shares may climb still higher, all the way to the moon. Their P/E ratio might approach 1,000, but I’m still HODL” (investment speak for “holding on for dear life”).

“Am I thrilled, as a Palantir shareholder, when I read that Palantir is an essential tool used by the immigration authorities to identify and ultimately deport people? Am I excited when I see that Palantir is developing state-of-the-art AI techniques to help genocidal regimes allied with the US government to more effectively slaughter innocents abroad? No, I am not, for sound moral reasons!

“So I have spent many years and thousands of dollars on therapy about this very issue, and also for owning some other perhaps morally questionable companies, such as Monsanto and Shell. And yet, I am ambivalent. Because I am grateful for the financial security that my wise, early investing in these companies has brought to me and my family. I like to think that Palantir and Monsanto are at least indirectly funding my pacifist activities, such as  ‘Sausalito Peaceniks for Peace,’ which recently had a successful wine-and-cheese fundraiser to which I contributed. Thank you, Palantir, for funding both my years of therapy and ‘Sausalito Peaceniks for Peace.’

“I also told my therapist that whenever I check my stocks and see their share price surging that I sometimes get a really powerful erection, stronger than I usually get with my wife these days. If I then go to her in my excitement, she tells me to sell these evil companies, which is a real downer. She just doesn’t get that Palantir is a tech darling, and may one day take Tesla’s place in the ‘magnificent seven’ tech stocks!

“If I’m really honest with myself: it’s just like when I play RISK against the computer and start conquering all its territories. I get this automatic hard-on. As a pacifist, that is very troubling! But I can’t deny the correlation between winning big and big erections. I feel like I’ve run the experiment enough to prove the connection. I definitely don’t get an erection when I lose at RISK. That tells you something.

“It just goes to show how morally ambivalent we all are in this crazy, modern world.”