#collective-agency — Public Fediverse posts

As old assumptions loosen, the effects of distance become easier to feel.

Separation doesn’t just isolate us from one another — it often dulls our own sense of presence and agency. What comes next doesn’t start with answers, but with rebuilding the relational ground where capacity can grow again.

Full reflection for this week here: https://emotus.substack.com/p/when-we-stop-pretending-part-i

#WhenWeStopPretending #RelationalInfrastructure #CollectiveAgency #PostCollapsePractice #BenKadel

Once the pace softens, the strain of maintaining old expectations becomes harder to ignore.

This piece frames disillusionment as a threshold — a passage through grief into sobriety — where agency relocates into relationship, regulation,and shared capacity.

The emphasis isn’t on fixing the system, but on standing together on what’s real.

Reflection here: https://emotus.substack.com/p/when-we-stop-pretending-part-i

#WhenWeStopPretending #DisillusionmentAsThreshold #RelationalInfrastructure #CollectiveAgency #PostCollapsePractice

Chasing Returns Leaves a Big Carbon Footprint

This chart is from the World Inequality Report 2026, published this week by the World Inequality Lab.

The authors explain:

Most emission estimates traditionally attribute greenhouse gases to the final consumers of goods and services. This “consumption-based” approach highlights differences in lifestyle and consumption patterns. However, it overlooks another critical dimension of responsibility: capital ownership.

Focusing on ownership highlights investor agency:

While many consumers have limited ability to alter their consumption, due to constrained budgets, a lack of information, or limited access to alternatives, owners of productive assets actively decide how and where resources are invested. They directly benefit from the profits generated by emission-intensive industries. An ownership-based approach, therefore, assigns emissions from production to those who own the corresponding capital stock. 

Under this framework, an individual owning 50% of a company’s equity is attributed 50% of that firm’s emissions, whether directly or via intermediaries such as investment funds….

Accounting for emissions through this ownership lens reveals a high degree of concentration. In France, Germany, and the United States, the carbon footprint of the wealthiest 10% is three to five times higher when private ownership–based emissions are included….

The extreme concentration of private ownership–based emissions stems from both the amount of wealth owned and the investment choices made. Wealthy individuals not only hold larger asset portfolios but also allocate them disproportionately toward high-carbon sectors. 

As shown in Figure 6.3, every $1 million invested in business assets in the United States corresponds to roughly 143 tonnes of carbon emissions, compared with 75 tonnes for equities (Chancel and Rehm (2025a)). Similar patterns emerge in France and Germany.

The global top 10% allocates about half of their wealth to such carbon-intensive holdings, often seeking higher-risk, higher-return investments that coincide with higher emissions. Hsu, Li, and Tsou (2023) find that high-emission companies yield, on average, 4.4 percentage points more in annual excess returns than low-emission peers—an implicit “pollution premium” that further incentivizes carbon-heavy investments. 

From this ownership perspective, the nature of emissions changes across the wealth distribution. For low- and middle-income groups, nearly all emissions are linked to essential consumption — transportation, heating, or electricity. For the top 10%, and especially for the top 1%, emissions from capital ownership dominate, accounting for 75–95% of their total footprint in France, Germany, and the United States. This also means that the wealthiest have a far greater capacity to reduce emissions without compromising their living standards. [emphasis mine]

And, note, this chart is drawn from 2019 data, and does not take into account the investing trends, governance failures, or policy retreats of the last several years.

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Against Converting QQQ from a Unit Investment Trust to an Open-End Fund

I’ve been receiving mailings (surface mail, emails) about the upcoming vote on Invesco QQQ Trust for a few months now, urging and imploring me to vote Yes on converting the QQQ fund from a Unit Investment Trust or UIT to a so-called Open-End Fund ETF.  So has everyone else invested in the fund.

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They’re flooding the zone with this stuff, and I can’t help but wonder why. 

One flyer, a letter from Invesco CEO Brian Hartigan, promises that the proposed change in classification of the Trust under the Investment Act of 1940 will “modernize” and “optimize” the way the fund operates and “improve the shareholder experience” – whatever that is supposed to mean. When he gets around to spelling things out, Hartigan says that the conversion “will decrease” QQQ’s expense ratio by two points. 

As a part of the modernization of QQQ, and based on information as of the Trust’s most recent fiscal year end, the Trust’s total expense ratio will decrease from a maximum of 20 basis points per year (i.e., 0.20% of QQQ’s average annual net assets) to 18 basis points per year (0.18% of QQQ’s average annual net assets), which represents an estimated cost savings to the Trust and its shareholders of more than $70 million based on QQQ’s assets as of July 1, 2025.  

On the face of it, 70 million dollars sounds like a pretty significant cost savings. Whether the “estimated” savings the reduced ER “represents” will be realized is another and more important question, and it’s one that goes unanswered. This carefully-worked sentence never says explicitly that the lower .18 percent expense ratio will actually save the fund more than $70 million – or, for that matter, that it will save the Trust and its shareholders anything at all. 

However, according to the schedule 14A filed with the SEC, the conversion of the Trust to an open-end fund will “benefit Invesco in the form of revenue and potential profits (neither of which are available to Invesco serving as Sponsor to the Trust with the Trust operating as a UIT).” At present, the Trust only reimburses Invesco for marketing and administrative expenditures; after the conversion, Invesco says,”it is likely” to do “significantly” less in the way of marketing, and the firm “believes” that the lower expense ratio will “offset” or make up for “any potential negative impacts associated with less marketing of the Trust.” These are vague promises. The only thing certain here, it would appear, is that Invesco is going to seek profits. 

The fund’s governance model will change, too. Why, I cannot tell – or, rather, I am unable to tell what specific governance problem or area of governance they might be trying to fix. In any case, if shareholders approve the conversion, the fund’s existing Trustee (BNY) will be replaced with “a slate of individual trustees” – nine people, all of whom seem, on paper at least, well qualified for the position. My problem is not with their resumes. I worry, instead, about the coordination and agency problems that are likely to come with this new management layer and the risks associated with the move from a relatively impersonal Trustee (a bank) to nine persons.

Notably, these nine are not going to take on the custodial and administrative work the bank currently does. Invesco will still have a Trustee handling that work. What are they going to do? They are going to take “discretionary actions,” according to the SEC filing. QQQ will be taken out of the hands of a Trustee with “limited discretion” and subjected to the “informed business judgment” of a Committee of Nine. 

the transition of QQQ’s governance model would nonetheless represent a movement away from a governance model providing limited discretion on the part of an institutional Trustee to a governance model that permits discretionary actions to be taken by the board of trustees in accordance with the terms of the governing instruments and the board of trustee’s informed business judgment.  Such shift [sic] may introduce new governance and oversight risks that are not presently experienced by the Trust and its Shareholders, and could allow the Trust to take actions it is not presently able to do.

So the improved shareholder experience promised by CEO Brian Hartigan sounds like it’s going to be a riskier experience. Who signed up for that? (Not me, and I’ve been holding QQQ since 2002. I’d be much more supportive of measures to mitigate risk.)

Among the actions the Committee of Nine could take after the conversion is to decide that they no longer want to work with BNY, and hand the custodial work the bank is currently doing to another institution. That could be a good thing – maybe there are better Trustees out there – or it could be a situation where the Committee of Nine try to fix what ain’t broke, or put their own self interest above that of shareholders, or demonstrate less than good business judgment. It’s been known to happen.

Then there’s the matter of securities lending. As a UIT, QQQ cannot lend securities; as an open-end fund, it can. Invesco and the Trustee chosen by the Committee of Nine stand to benefit from fees and revenue splits associated with these loans. But as the SEC filing acknowledges, lending securities “entails a risk of loss” to QQQ. Think short-sellers and hedge funds; think defaults and gap risk, too. 

So in light of the misgivings I have about the Committee of Nine and the improved shareholder experience on offer, I vote no, and encourage others to read the SEC filing carefully and consider doing the same.

Update 25 October 2025: Yesterday, Invesco announced that it would adjourn the shareholder meeting and postpone the QQQ vote until 5 December, because they did not have a quorum.

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