OUR NEWLY STRANGE CORPORATIONS – OVERNIGHT:  We are in a time when Americans are justly asking about the state of just about every institution we have.  Can we depend on our institutions, especially the press and our universities?  Are the pillars of stability starting to crumble?  And what about corporations, who appear to be getting more and more involved in very public politics?  Where did this come from?  Is it dangerous?

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has written a fine piece questioning the new corporate role.  It's a fake, he says, and he won't make many friends saying it.  From the New York Post: 

I used to think corporate bureaucracy was bad because it’s inefficient. That’s true, but it’s not the biggest problem. Rather, there’s a new invisible force at work in the highest ranks of corporate America, one far more nefarious. It’s the defining scam of our time — one that robs you of not only your money, but your voice and your identity.

The con works like a magic trick, summed up well by Michael Caine’s character in the opening monologue in Christopher Nolan’s movie “The Prestige”:

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called The Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. … The second act is called The Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call The Prestige.”

Financial success in 21st-century America involves the same simple steps. First, the Pledge: You find an ordinary market where ordinary people sell ordinary things. The simpler, the better. Second, the Turn: You find an arbitrage in that market and squeeze the hell out of it. An arbitrage refers to the opportunity to buy something for one price and instantly sell it for a higher price to someone else. That much is well known.

But here’s the dirty little secret underlying the third step of corporate America’s act, its Prestige. Here’s how it works: Pretend like you care about something other than profit and power, precisely to gain more of each.

All great magicians master the art of distraction — flashing lights, smoke, beautiful women on stage. Today’s captains of industry do it by promoting progressive social values. Their tactics are far more dangerous for America than those of the older robber barons: Their do-good smoke screen expands not only their market power, but their power over every other facet of our lives. As a young 21st-century capitalist myself, the thing I was supposed to do was shut up and play along: Wear hipster clothes, lead via practiced vulnerability, applaud diversity and inclusion, and muse on how to make the world a better place at conferences in fancy ski towns. Not a bad gig.

The most important part of the trick was to stay mum about it. Now I’m violating the code by pulling back the curtain and showing you what’s really going on in corporate boardrooms across America.

Why am I defecting? I’m fed up with corporate America’s game of pretending to care about justice in order to make money. It is quietly wreaking havoc on American democracy.

COMMENT:  Definitely read the rest.  He provides a very good picture of what many have suspected – that all this corporate "woke" business is just that, business.  It has nothing to do with contributing to society.  It is a con in every sense, but a con with a great deal of money behind it.

June 21, 2021