There's something to this, but it's also possible for shareholders to divest from companies that don't share their political views (in the same way that you can refuse to work for or buy from a company whose views you hate.)
I would be surprised if it did as well monetarily standard index funds, though that would be rather beside the point. The set of companies in which a morally aligned index fund may invest is, by design, smaller than the set of companies in which an amoral index fund may invest, and so they may be intentionally passing over profitable companies.
One of my favorite quotations is from A Man for All Seasons, with Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More. "If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes."
Then if you have a big enough problem, forego the benefits of index funds.
A liberal, globalist politics really IS best for Google, Apple, Microsoft and many others, and thus it is correct for their leaders to say so. If you on the other hand dislike liberal globalism, then you have the choice to divest from/not profit from those companies. (Alternatively, you could invest in them as a kind of personal diversification.)
Why not? It would just mean getting out of those funds, and taking a hit putting your money somewhere less friendly to your wallet but more friendly to your ideology.
To the extent that that's true, I'm not sure what the standard for "relevant to the original issue" should be. Taxi drivers are disproportionally Muslim and Sikh and disproportionally immigrants. (noted here: http://democracynow.org/stories/17050 ) Does that count as relevant enough? If not, what would? If so, what else would?
I think that protestors should be careful about their tactics, but I don't think they should have to invent ways to tie a protest's theme to its objective. We protest when our moral values are offended, and that's enough of a reason.
A narrow point: Trump is not Obama. It is possible that the differing reactions to their policies, administrations, and signalling are based in the actual differences between their policies, admininistrations, and signalling, not just from differences in the amount of hypocrisy their opponents engage in.
I imagine that people of high intelligence would be more likely to understand the greater implications of using ad blockers (driving the creations of paywalls, etc.) and so would be less likely to block ads, even when they know how to do so. It's hard to draw conclusions, though--who knows if this chain of speculation actually leads back to a significant confounding factor?
They would also be aware of game theory, and may choose to use adblock but not tell anyone, or even actively campaign against it while using it themselves.
I'm not suggesting smart people are unethical, but rather that ethicality and intelligence are fairly orthogonal, and that your proposed means seems to have more to do with the former than the latter.
As to the speculation, you are of course right. I'm just putting off studying. Speaking of which...
It's also potentially the case that intelligent people recognize that it's silly to be completely upset over ads and that few sides with really obnoxious ads have good content in the first place. Perhaps, to them, it's just not worth the trouble.
But neither is trying to convince anyone on the internet that you're smart in the first place.
"If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011."
That only stops Google+ internal search from returning your profile given your name. Your page is still public (and linked to by, for example, your friends' pages) so any search engine can index it.
The option of having your username in the URL is still there, but it looks like the setting needs to be toggled again for the new profile scheme. Check near the bottom on https://profiles.google.com/me/about/edit/d .
Edit: Strangely, the option shows up only sometimes when I click the edit button.
