a couple of obvious problems with this worldview
1: THIS IS NOT INVESTING. If there is no profit, if there is no business or outcome you're specifically getting paid to achieve, you have no guarantee of making the world better in any concrete way. When you invest in a factory, and that allows the factory to buy a new widget-maker which increases profits and pays you dividends, you are causally and concretely part of making the world a better place. When you give money to a hobo, no matter how sympathetic he looks or how convincing his cardboard sign is, maybe he's increasing his quality of life for the next 10 minutes by buying a sandwich, but he's NOT decreasing worldsuck in any systematic way.
One could perhaps argue that it helps stabilizing the world which can be beneficial for yourself with small probability (which would be sort of an investment) or beneficial for your children with slightly greater probability (which would be sort of an investment with offspring empathy reward as a strong proxy).
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.