22 Jun 2023 Woke CEOs May Play Dumb, But Judges Will Know Better
You would think that corporate executives would be smart. After all, they have been given powerful positions and a lot of money to make good decisions for their companies. And yet those justifying their woke positions seem to be completely ignorant of reality.
Scott Shepard
In a RealClearMarkets commentary, Free Enterprise Project Director Scott Shepard offers Target as a recent example:
Target has continued to claim that its hard-left partisanship is good for its bottom line. In order to do that, it has asserted that it just can’t tell what has caused the downturn in stock price since the start of the controversy, which despite some recent recovery still represents a more than 10 percent decline.
The thing is, though, in order to make the claim that such provocative and partisan moves are “the great thing for the brand,” Target has to assert that it does know that taking these political positions now is going to have significant medium- to long-term benefits for the brand.
It’s very difficult to see how both of these claims could possibly be true at the same time. If Target executives don’t really know what causes significant shifts in the current and recent share price, that might be a reason to consider replacing them or for them to consider replacing some members of their staff. But it makes it nearly impossible to believe that they can know with any degree of certainly what’s going to happen years and decades from now, so as not only to justify but necessitate their taking significant risks and spending great piles of shareholder money to take highly controversial positions today.
While these woke leaders may think they are protecting their reputations by talking out of both sides of their mouths, courts of law are not likely to be fooled by such chicanery. Scott concludes:
Rejecting replete current evidence to believe something about the future contravened by that mounting pile of real, on the ground evidence is not objective analysis. It’s faith – or it’s deliberate falsehood.
The courts may not be able to establish which of those two options apply (though they may well be able to), but they should have no problem concluding that there is a legally fit way to run a railroad – or a retail chain or investment house.
Read Scott’s entire commentary here.