Vivek Ramaswamy was featured in not one, but two Wall Street Journal articles on the same day a couple weeks ago. Why? Because he is lightyears ahead of everyone else in discussing vital issues affecting the future of American business and free market capitalism.
According to Mr. Ramaswamy, “woke” is damaging American business, capitalism, and our way of life. Describing the woke industrial complex, he writes: “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 choice and your identity.” He continues, “I’m fed up with corporate America’s game of pretending to care about justice in order to make money.”
Our nation faces loads of problems, and many are the product of “woke” companies. Among the many problems addressed by Mr. Ramaswamy, five deserve particular attention.
Problem 1 – The Goldman Rule
Mr. Ramaswamy tells a story about “planting trees” while working at Goldman Sachs. The company wanted to improve its public image, so it volunteered to have employees plant trees for the community. When Ramaswamy arrived, the company had a professional photographer snap pictures and the Goldman team headed to the bar instead of planting trees. That experience, he writes, is illustrative of Wall Street’s business model.
Whoever has the money makes the rules – that’s the Goldman Rule. If you have enough money, you can do whatever you want and trick the public with photo ops and clever branding.
What concerns Mr. Ramaswamy most is that the majority of Wall Street cronies are full of it. He writes, “when they create a system in which business leaders decide moral questions, they open the floodgates for all their unscrupulous colleagues to abuse the newfound power. And there are far more CEOs who are eager to grab money and power in the name of justice than there are CEOs who are agnostic to money and power and care only about justice.”
Coca-Cola fuels diabetes, for example, which is devastating to the black community, but if they do “anti-racist” training and fly a BLM flag, then everyone forgets the actual harm they are doing to people. The same is true of Nike’s horrible work conditions for its employees and its partnership with the Chinese Communist Party: Partner with Colin Kaepernick and the folks who would otherwise hammer the company, turn a blind eye.
Problem 2 – The Purpose of a Corporation has Changed
Wokenomics is how Mr. Ramaswamy refers to the pervasive and shameless virtue signaling going on in corporate board rooms across our nation. According to the author, these executives use woke causes to hid crimes, excess, and shady deals. It’s all a trick. They donate money to distract you or make you forget. Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Nike, Coke each virtue signal as a screen to hide their abuses – Nike’s obsession with the Chinese Communist Party and poor labor standards or Amazon’s mishandling of black employees.
Behind the virtue signaling is not only a trick to hide corporate misdeeds, but also a shift from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism. Traditionally, companies owe a duty to their shareholders and profits have been the primary purpose. Recently, “stakeholders” have become part of corporate life – the community, environment, employees, but that can extend to lobbyist or elected officials. The argument for stakeholder capitalism is that companies owe society something in exchange for limited liability. That argument has been mostly ignored by classic capitalist, to their peril.
The reason shareholder capitalism should remain is because it protects “democracy from managers and shareholders.” As he argues, “The creation of the limited liability corporation was a potent tool to unlock not only productivity through the private sector but also potentially limitless corporate power that could infect other spheres of society beyond the marketplace for goods and services. By limiting the focus of corporate boards to shareholder’s’ financial interest alone, corporate law is actually confining the sphere of influence of corporations. That protects our democracy and other civic institution from corporate overreach.”
For Mr. Ramaswamy, this is the deal: the company has to agree to sell goods and services, nothing more, and in exchange it receives limited liability. Additionally, the Business Judgement Rule has shielded executives and board members from liability. Is it time to re-think unlimited liability protection and immunity from legal, but should it when they take political sides? Shouldn’t they be personally liable when they thrust their political ideas on employees or promote candidates through their platform?
Problem 3 – The Rise of the Managerial Class
The managerial class, like Washington bureaucrats, have wedged themselves into companies. They lobby the government, corral employees to stand against the company, promote the stakeholder idea, and push woke.
“America’s identify was always about the power of the people overcoming the managerial class – in democracy and also culturally, in our universities, companies, and government. The rise of the managerial class is a disease afflicting the soul of our most important institutions. History teaches that what begins as an accountability crisis for individual companies, if left unchecked, becomes a crisis for the system as a whole.”
Problem 4 – The Birth of ESG
The “marriage” as he calls it, between big business and wok culture, “certainly wasn’t born form love. It was arranged by necessity. Wokeness needed money. Wall Street needed moral imprimatur. So, Wall Street eagerly embraced the new identity-based hierarchy and used wokeness to shield itself from the harsh glare the financial crisis had shed on it. That was the dowry of this arranged marriage.”
Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is the mechanism through which all the ills of corporate life have been born. The goal of ESG is making the corporation seem caring, and culturally sensitive. “By adopting these new ‘woke’ values, America’s business leaders stumbled upon a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leap from heresy to sainthood. Corporations were no longer the oppressors.” In essence, “Corporations embraced wokeness to give themselves cover from the financial crisis and to direct anger toward white men instead of capitalism.” ESG is how they virtue signal to the world.
Problem 5 – When Dictators Become Stakeholders
One of the largest issues facing the United States today is the partnerships between large corporations and dictators. As Ramaswamy describes, the the ruse of stakeholder capitalism gives cover to companies dealing with China. Airbnb, Disney, Marriot, Apple, and the NBA for example, use ESG and shout about stakeholder capitalism the most, yet, they deal with ruthless dictators. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gives these companies so much money and business that they are forced to “virtue signal” when and how the CCP dictates. China knows the issues dividing America, and a weakened America is great for them. So, they turn these mega corporations into Judas.
China has mastered the game: “First, Black Lives Matter activist – or environmentalist or feminists or whoever – become the front for American technology companies to win consumer trust. Second, those companies monetize that trust by generating clicks, selling ads, and charging fees – generating a treasure trove of sensitive personalized data about each of their consumers. Third, the CCP demands access to that data as a condition of entry for companies to do business in China. Forth, these companies supplicate to the CCP and make a killing in China. Fifth, they keep mum about their dealings in China while continuing to issue wok proclamations through their corporate megaphones. BLM wins. Silicon Valley wins. The CCP wins. The real losers of this game are the American people.”
Aside from the five problems above, Mr. Ramaswamy tackles bad actors like Saudi Arabia, Silicon Valley, and big tech. The takeaway, however, is the solutions he proposes to these enormous problems.
Solutions
Mr. Ramaswamy is on a campaign to bring awareness to these crucial issues. Aside from waking people up to the “woke” companies, he suggests practical solutions. As mentioned above, rethinking the limited liability deal and how to apply the Business Judgement Rule are two ways to encourage companies to leave politics and culture alone.
His big idea is replacing ESG, woke, and critical race theory with “Critical Diversity Theory.” The idea is replacing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with Excellence, Opportunity, and Civility. As part of the plan, he lists five pillars:
1) Excellence First – Diversity is not an end, but a means of achieving excellence.
2) Institutional purpose – What is your purpose?
3) Institutional Pluralism – Diversity of thought is a strength.
4) Separation of Corporation and State – Companies should focus on goods and services not social and political agendas.
5) End Discrimination – The best way to stop discriminating is to stop discriminating.
The Big Picture
We have separated ourselves into neighborhoods with people who agree with our politics. And we associate online with only people who agree with us. We generally seek only likeminded news and entertainment. We no longer interact with people who think differently than us, which has led us to tribalism.
Ramaswamy concludes that woke rejects the idea that we are each the authors of our own destiny. Woke “posits that your genetically inherited attributes are the true essence of who you are” and you therefore must identify with the values of people who look just like you. Woke rejects that we are each the sum of many parts – our intellects, emotions, upbring, environments. It suggests we have no agency over our lives. Woke rejects the idea that we are each responsible for ourselves, the good and the bad.
The leaders of the Woke cult would have us all divided into a few different camps and then dictate how we are all to act based on gender and color and other silly ideas. The reality is we are all many things and our nation is full many different types of people. Mr. Ramaswamy concludes by reminding us of our national motto: E plurabus unim – out of many we are one. We must use our diverse ways of thinking as a unifying element, not a dividing point. The place to start is by making companies stop their crusade to remake America in their own image.
For more reviews, visit https://www.youtube.com/@conservativebooksociety/videos or find us on Instagram. You can also find book reviews of these candidates and more on our website: Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott.
You can purchase, Woke, Inc. through our Amazon link: https://amzn.to/43Vrgnt
