ESG

It’s Saturday. You just rolled out of your MyPillow Giza Dream sheets, spent a little extra time trimming your beard with your Jeremy’s Razor, and brewed yourself a fresh cup of MAGA Dark Roast COVFEFE. You call your best friend on your Patriot Mobile cellphone to shoot the breeze. Hell, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Go ahead and crack open an Ultra Right beer and waste away the afternoon. Welcome to life in the patriot economy — the parallel economy being developed by conservative entrepreneurs and investors. Or at least an exaggerated version of it. The idea of the patriot economy is fueled by two convictions. The first is that the right needs its own economic infrastructure so consumers aren’t forced to buy goods from “woke” corporations.

Over the years since the financial crisis, economic power and wealth has become ever more concentrated in fewer hands. This is something leaders have acknowledged, and policymakers have tried to do something about. And yet, despite brave talk of breaking up mega-giant companies, anti-trust efforts have been anemic, as most recently demonstrated by the failure to stop Microsoft from swallowing game maker Activision. The future looked a little brighter in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. There were signs of a grassroots resurgence, with a strong uptick in new business formations in the United States. But since then, as interest rates have risen and regulatory pressures have increased, there has been a slackening off of new firms.

In some ways, Larry Fink is an unsurprising villain. Wall Street titans aren’t in the business of being loved, and as the Chairman of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager assets, Fink isn’t a Master of the Universe. He’s the guy they work for. Paradoxically, though, it isn’t good, old-fashioned greed that has made Fink a figure of popular contempt, but his quest for political approval. With a foray into win-win talk of responsible capitalism and ethical investing, Fink has turned himself, and his firm, into a punchbag for both the left and the right.  In recent years, Fink has become the face of ESG — the multifarious push to put environmental, social and governance concerns at the heart of investment decisions. At first, Fink leant into the role.

Larry Fink is unhappy. The grand panjandrum of BlackRock, the world’s largest and most odoriferously PC pile of pelf, can’t understand why the Lilliputians of the world are singling him out for abuse. Having jetted in on his private plane to the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos in order to join the squads of beautiful people warning about the environmental dangers of gas stoves, the moral virtue of eating bugs not meat, and the need to “recalibrate” our understanding of free speech, the poor little rich boy is pouting because people are waking up to the totalitarian reality of what the WEF stands for. What is that reality?

Woke corporatism has taken over America. Nike nixed a sneaker launch featuring the Betsy Ross flag after noted anthem-kneeler Colin Kaepernick claimed it was offensive. Coca-Cola and other companies threatened to boycott doing business in Georgia over the state's new election security legislation. Levi's allegedly booted its president over her anti-school closure views during the pandemic, and nearly every major retailer features pro-Black Lives Matter or Pride Month messaging on its storefronts and websites. It can seem impossible as a conservative to avoid giving your hard-earned money to businesses that hate you. Even for moderate or apolitical consumers, it can be frustrating and tiresome to be hit with a wave of political messaging when you're just trying to purchase a product.