Corporate Cowards
In the standup comedy world, calling someone a "hack" is an insult. "Hack," short for "hackneyed," means unoriginal and trite. Good examples from times of yore (ok, not that yore) would be telling jokes about George W. Bush in a San Francisco club. Or, for those who are too young to recall the ubiquity of such, goofing on Trump in some similarly true-blue city. There's nothing edgy or risky in appealing to the en vogue sentiment, and if everyone else is doing it, you're not breaking any new ground by hopping on the bandwagon. A comic can be funny doing hack material, but no new ground will be broken, and none of it will be memorable.
So it goes with many social positions taken by Big Business nowadays.
Corporate America jumped on board the Russia divestiture bandwagon, once it became clear that Americans overwhelmingly chose Ukraine's side after Russia invaded.
Good, but not really much of a risk.
Russia is a relatively small economy and small market - not trivially so by any means, but not one whose loss would have a major impact on most multinationals. Moreso, there’s a ton of public goodwill to be had from divestment, making it the safe choice. Not divesting would prompt negative public reaction, given the public's widespread pro-Ukraine stance.
In other words, it's a hack move.
Contrast this with some other corporate behaviors and non-behaviors.
China's various behaviors, from Tibet to the South China Sea expansion to the persecution of the Uyghurs, have drawn... zip, nada, zilch response from Corporate America. Ditto for her demands for censorship and "final cut" of entertainment products such as movies, television, and music. And double-ditto for Xi's rather obvious aggressive authoritarianism overall. Corporate America's thirst for China's 1.4 billion consumers is far greater than whatever 'social conscience' prompted such as the Russian boycotts.
Ditto for domestic wokeness. Disney, a company that racks up billions in revenue from its theme parks in Florida, decided that it needed to chime in on Florida's parental rights bill. Not on the side of parents, whose children are the primary target of those these parks, but on the side of the cultural activists who apparently think that inculcating prepubescent grade schoolers about the current en vogue re sexual identity is more important than the three Rs.
Why?
Because most of Corporate America is scared snotless of the raging Twitter mob - a mob that tallies less than 2% of the nation, but has such out-size influence that its whims and vagaries drive the Democrats' policies. Rather than keep out of the push-pull over woke in education, Disney opted to side with the side it's most scared of. Woke may not be the common man’s worldview, but that man’s ‘betters’ have taken control and are driving the bus.
Do I for a moment believe that Disney's public statements are born of "the right thing?"
Not a chance in hell.
The Florida bill dubbed "Don't Say Gay" has been mischaracterized by the activist Left and the mainstream press (but I repeat myself). I'd rather the government didn't meddle in education in this fashion, but better that elected people do rather than unelected, unaccountable, insulated activists atop the culture wars and the teachers' unions. The label stuck, so much so that people in positions of public authority are relying on it more than on actually reading the law.
"Stakeholder capitalism" is a recent entry in the euphemism Olympics. It purports to be "a system in which corporations are oriented to serve the interests of all their stakeholders," with "stakeholders" being anyone who has any multi-degrees-of-separation connection with the company. 'My wife's cousin's best friend bought an Aladdin DVD, and the Amazon truck that delivered it burned some fossil fuels and emitted some carbon dioxide, so I'm a Disney stakeholder.'
The truth: it's an excuse for people who bear no financial risk in the company (i.e. not shareholders) to legitimize their demands for certain corporate behaviors. Of course, the only 'stakeholders' that matter are those who have the proper viewpoints and correct demands, i.e. the social arbiters that dominate cultural viewpoints today. Trump-loving, pickup driving, fracking leathernecks Jimmy and Billy aren't going to be given any credence should they assert "stakeholder" demands. Corporate cowards get to use this buzzy catchphrase to justify elevating the demands of the torch-and-pitchfork crowd over their obligations either to shareholders or to 'doing the right thing.'
When Corporate America divests from China to protest its illiberal, authoritarian, autocratic, and murderous ways, then I'll tip my had and accept they walk the talk. Until then, I remain steadfast in my conclusion that they're all hack chickenshits bending with the winds at all times.
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Yours in liberty,
Peter.