Corporate Indulgences

I had a cup of coffee with a friend and neighbor the other day. As usual, our conversation ranged from cars to neighborhood gossip to local and national politics. Among that scattergun-yet-interconnected range of topics was his mention that GM's CEO Mary Barra recently reiterated her commitment to taking the auto maker all-electric in the next decade or so.

We both figure this is a promise that will shatter on the shoals of reality soon enough. Barring a game-changing invention, electric vehicles will not grow out of niche status any time soon. Indeed, the big automakers are rolling back production plans in the wake of lackluster sales and public disinterest.

What has puzzled me about the reckless drive (pun intended) the big automakers have been on to electrify their fleet is the sheer illogic of it. EVs are cool technology, and are well-suited for a certain sort of consumer, but from where I sit they are and will remain a niche product until several precursors are sorted out. Those include the infrastructure to provide their charging power, the infrastructure to distribute their charging power, and the tech breakthroughs needed to shorten their charging times to something tolerable. All that stacks on top of the resource problem (as in the vast quantity of metals and other raw materials needed to scale up from niche to "all"), the unresolved power storage problem associated with wind and solar, and the sheer magnitude of effort and money required to transition the nation to this WASABI fantasy.

Nevertheless, I wondered if the CEOs knew something I didn't. Could they be focused on "getting ahead of the curve," i.e. anticipating the government will force this transition and therefore are acting defensively? Perhaps, but the aggressiveness of "we will be all-electric in a dozen years" doesn't jibe with that.

My neighbor offered a different take. The Best-and-Brightest have figured out that they can establish progressive "cred" by throwing money at favored causes. In the case of such as Ms. Barra, it's Other People's Money (OPM), which is the easiest sort of money to throw around. Just ask the government and a huge swathe of leftist "I care more than you" do-gooders who think that giving away OPM is charity.

With "green" having risen (sunk) to religious (cult) status, the parallels with the Catholic Church's selling of indulgences are too obvious to ignore.

Is there a better way of interpreting corporate DEI and ESG and other forms of woke "capitalism" than as paying off one's guilty feelings? Committing money to the preferred causes not only makes those inclined toward the left's various narratives feel better about themselves, it staves off or deflects the angry social media mobs. And, when it's done with OPM, it's really easy.

Promise your $50B, 167K employee company to the green movement, and you establish yourself in the cool kids' club. No matter that the commitment is starkly at odds with both consumer desires and reality itself. By the time 2035 rolls around, Barra will have pocketed several hundred million dollars in salary. If she even sticks around that long. Or survives the poor decision.

Companies big and small are shrinking or folding up their DEI departments, and quietly deleting ESG from their corporate promises and communications. Seems they're waking up to what the rest of us figured out from the start - all that crap was of no benefit to the companies' health or bottom lines. No matter, the indulgences have already been bought, and the feel-good they provided will linger long after the dissolutions. It's not their fault, after all, that we unwashed heathens have resisted being led by the nose down those paths.

We may be on the verge of a major shift, akin to the Protestant Reformation that emerged in no small part to the corruptness that subsumed the Catholic Church's indulgences. In this, I am reminded of an Eric Hoffer aphorism.

Was there ever a time where indulgences could have been deemed legitimate penance? I don't know, but like anything else involving Other People's Money, their descent into "racket" was certain from the day they were first conceived.

DEI and ESG (and BLM and the rest of the woke alphabet soup) are well into the racket stage. Hopefully, their wane will continue. Unfortunately, the damage they've done, the money they've wasted, and the corrosive effect they've had on both the economy and society itself cannot be erased.

What's the conclusion? Like the old religious indulgences, today's corporate indulgences are far more likely to be disingenuous buyouts than genuine commitment or repentance. To borrow a hackneyed metaphor, the green movement feels a lot like astroturf. Similarly, the alphabet soup tastes like it’s made from chicken stock. As in the DEI and ESG are born of fear, not boldness. The Best-and-Brightest might have convinced themselves they are committed to their causes, but the cynic in me sees a lot of cynicism in them.