What's the ESG movement, and how is it making you poorer? How are things like "triple bottom lines" destroying human flourishing? And how has government coercion increased the power of this "socially conscious" movement?
If you've noticed the move to so-called "ethical investing" and "divestment," and wondered where it came from -- and where it might be going -- then this is the interview for you. And if you're an investor (or you have a pension plan) , and you haven't yet noticed it, then this is definitely the interview to get you up to speed.
In this segment from Alex Epstein's Power Hour, he and Yaron Brook discuss this influential and destructive movement, how the culture of altruism and so-called "stakeholder theory" give it wings, how helps destroy economic value, and what you might do to challenge it.
A great demonstration of how philosophy (even bad philosophy) has the power to move the world.
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2 comments:
It appears to me that "Ethical" investment is communism by stealth, it represents central planning based on someone else's idea of ethics, some else's plan. It undermines an individual's right to choose on the presupposition that the right "Ethical" person can choose "better" than thousands, or millions of individuals.
The result is child labour mining rare earth materials for "Ethical" Zero-Emission cars, Forests cleared, bio-spheres ravaged, to erect windmills which continue to kill wildlife for the duration of their operation.
The felled forest is then labeled Bio-fuel and burnt to power those damned cars ethically.
I would say it's fascism in drag (or by stealth, as you put it alloytoo).
Whereas Communism nationalises the means of production outright, fascism nationalises the people and, though it does not obstensibly strip them of their property rights, it charges them with managing their property for the good of society (as determined, arbitrarily, by the authorities). Fascists charge that this is both a moral duty and a legal requirement - see the fascists' quotes I link to below, compiled by Leonard Piekoff and Stephen Hicks.
ESG is consistent with this so called private property rights environment - not outright nationalisation, but property rights vested in individuals who are charged with the socially responsible management of 'their' property for the 'social good'.
"German socialism had to overcome this ‘private,’ that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.”
—Ernst Rudolf Huber, official Nazi Party spokesman, 1939"
https://www.stephenhicks.org/2009/12/04/appendix-2-quotations-on-nazi-socialism-and-fascism-nietzsche-and-the-nazis/
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