A prominent rating system has gone “woke.”
“Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500,” Elon Musk tweeted a few weeks ago, “while Tesla” — the billionaire’s high-end electric car company — “didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”
We could quibble. Is “phony” the right word? “Social justice” has always been slippery. It’s a “mirage,” explained Hayek, really just a stalking horse for power.
What Musk is objecting to, though, is worth thinking about. The ESG standard is supposed to mean something . . . based on objective criteria. The reasons to eject Tesla from its Top Ten and place Exxon at the pinnacle are laughably transparent. It’s a woke power grab. The leftist ideology has taken over another capitalist institution, the better to create . . .
What?
Socialism? Fascism?
Michael Rectenwald, in a fascinating essay, calls it “woke corporatism.”
The plan is, he writes, to “establish a woke monopolistic cartel.” Musk’s company has been “subjected to the S in ESG — the ‘social’ or ‘social justice’ quotient.”
Musk, Rectenwald argues, “has been deemed a deplorable, and thus his company does not pass ‘social justice’ muster.” In other words, the putatively pro-inclusion folks are excluding him from the ranks of the favored.
And all because he wants free speech on a social media platform!
Laissez-faire grew out of economists’ objections to the grinding inefficiency and over-politicization of business. Adam Smith, back in 1776, called the pre-liberal, insider-based trade system “mercantilism.”
The leftist mob now pushes a neo-neo-mercantalism, mobocracy capitalism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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