When you buy an index you're buying stocks with no research into the underlying companies. This only works if the market is working efficiently and prices represent all knowledge available to the market. If most money is invested passively then the market can't work efficiently anymore because most of the buying and selling pressure is divorced from the underlying fundamentals of a company. This allows active managers to buy or sell stocks that are priced incorrectly in order to beat the market.

Their US PAC donations and leadership. They're like cartoon bad guy sometimes, and their peers listed here are tame or even decent by comparison.

Vanguard is a successful fund however I think their issue with the fund is that they contribute to defense and fossil fuel stocks that one could argue are not acceptable/sustainable for the future of mankind.

By using a royal we, do you mean to assert that consumer demand is the sole market force that perpetuates the existence of oil and guns?

He did not make the same assertions as you have. None of what he said is surprising to me nor contrary to my existing knowledge on the topic.

I recognize he points to an error in my "fossil fuel and defense free" statement, that it rarely/never is so cut and dry.

Being flatly unwilling to trade in blood money is a fundamental values-based approach that requires no economic justification.

SPDR has $SPYX, also not listed. QQQ doesn't seem to have energy or defense represented in any great proportions, so my prior assertion about fossil fuels and defense may not be right.