The Practical Mechanics of ESG and ‘Stakeholder’ Capitalism

I’m going to be blogging about ESG a lot more because it’s pretty much the only thing ‘going on’ at the moment. I.e. lots of ‘transformation’ but vanishingly little in the way of GDP growth or increases in quality of life. Some might it say it tends quite a lot to the contrary.

It’s funny how representatives of each niche (affirmative action, green, etc) all think that ‘ESG’ means their niche, none of whom though have a sense for the bigger picture, the why, as in, why is it an aggregate score? It makes no sense on its face - unless you like communism.

I majored in history and consider myself a lifelong student of history in general, it’s something I enjoy giving consideration to all the time, so it bothers me how obvious this all is, while the individual commissars work at too low a resolution in their niche to see the wood for the trees. They are driven by ‘purpose’ after all - it says so on the wall and, if we’re lucky, in their 60 sec black and white financial services ad that looks like every other financial services ad because these companies just don’t care to differentiate any more. Because they have purpose instead.

The Western world, HR departments, energy ‘transition’ people, and many more, need a good old talking-to mano-a-mano. Unfortunately there are just so many different fronts on which the extremely communist war of incentives is being fought - and as we know, It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.