25 Aug 2021 ESG and the Corruption of Democracy

Corporate America’s embrace of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing “is a true threat to the democratic process.”

So wrote National Center Research Associate Davis Soderberg in a Washington Times commentary about how ESG has co-opted much of the business sector to join the woke side.

This alleged socially responsible form of investing subverts the fiduciary responsibility that businesses have to their shareholders – those who have put up their hard-earned money with the expectation of a return on their investment. As Davis explained:

ESG investors portray themselves as politically neutral forces attempting to make companies greener, fairer and more honest through “ethical investing.” But this is only a guise. In reality, their efforts are often hard-left initiatives that would, among other things, return race- and sex-based discrimination to American corporations while bankrupting them in the pursuit of agenda-driven zero-carbon targets based not in economics or science but in hysteria.

ESG investing undermines the idea that business is to be conducted primarily for the benefit of the shareholders – the company’s true owners – and instead claims to consider the interest of all possible stakeholders (consumers, employees, the community, the environment, etc.).

This scheme is controlled from the very top of the corporate ladder. Davis noted that the ruse of ESG “creates… an ability for C-suite business executives to enact any policy they see fit to satisfy their own agendas,… and then cherry-pick which one of these so-called “stakeholders” is the beneficiary of the implemented policy.”

These business leaders are eager for this power to implement unpopular policies through pressure tactics when elected lawmakers can’t do so legislatively:

As a result, these corporations play a much broader role in influencing decisions regarding environmental issues, workers’ rights, racial equity programs, and other important political topics that ought to be decided through our democratic processes. Because these asset management companies are so enormous, their wishes – the wishes of their CEOs, actually – are becoming nationwide commands.

This leads to unchecked power for CEOs and corporate board members while skipping over any kind of democratic process in policy-making – like passing legislation in state and federal lawmaking bodies.

And the left, the self-professed guardians of democracy, are all too happy to be the benefactors of this corruption of the public policy process:

The left seems entirely fine with this, so long as ESG activists embrace all of its goals. But if it truly cared about “democracy,” wouldn’t it denounce putting policy-making power into the hands of a few billionaires on Wall Street?

Click here to read all of this commentary – “Woke CEOs are Undermining the Democratic Process” – at the Washington Times website.