Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Ask Peter: What Are My Thoughts on Environmental Social Governance (ESG)?" video.

  1. Step 1: Buy large stakes in various companies Step 2: Force activists for Leftist causes onto their boards, who will reorient the company towards ideology rather than profit Step 3: Buy politicians, who will pass legislation that advantages companies following those Leftist ideologies (and hurt companies with a good business plan) Step 4: Profit
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  2. But then no one would take Dylan Mulvaney seriously, and the cultural Left would have their feelings hurt.
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  3. It's the social circles he moves in.
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  4. ESG is a way for investors to make sure that their stock portfolio goes up, by forcing companies to comply, then buying politicians to pass laws that will benefit the companies who comply. It's basically a way to make buying politicians and profiting from market control through regulatory capture, into a virtue.
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  5.  @rfjohns1  Disney is pioneering that step, aren't they?
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  6.  @careylymanjones  Even based on actual ability, it can lead to actions against the interests of everyone but the elites, as we see today. Only, we also see today that their estimation of their abilities is not borne out by their performance.
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  7.  @rfjohns1  Yeah, it's amazing how much pain it's taking for companies to learn that simple fact. Disney has lost over a billion-with-a-captial-B dollars on Woke movies. It's almost as if customers are important in all of this -- as if customers will pay for quality, and not just anything on your "platform". The other weakness? Step 1 should be, "Buy large stakes in various companies mostly using someone else's money ", without realizing that conservatives are likely to pull their money out, now that they know how it's going. By the way, looking it up, apparently State Street and Blackrock are only required to carry enough liquidity ("Total Loss Absorbing Capacity") to cover 5-10% of investments. If Conservatives take their money out of those funds en masse -- especially during a market dip -- then Blackrock and State Street are totally f**ked.
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  8.  @steve_m2473  Oh, there are people "with the balls to do" something about it. Otherwise, Larry Fink wouldn't be scurrying away from ESG as fast as his little legs can carry him. First Bud Lite, then Target -- a boycott of Blackrock and State Street is up next on the priority list. =D
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  9.  @janepavlis22  By uniting big government and big business? That's fascism, my friend.
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  10. Human beings are born knowing how to suck, and that's about it.
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  11. You left out the part where banks are making commercial lines of credit contingent on ESG compliance. And you left out the names "Blackrock" and "State Street" when you mention activist investors using their institutional capital (i.e., the conservatives own money ) to push Leftist activist members onto company boards.
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  12.  @seamarsh3756  You know, I wouldn't blame you for missing that one viral clip where Larry Fink talks about forcing cultural changes on America. But missing corporations decorating for "Pride Month" for the last decade? At that point I have to ask, what planet are you from?
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  13.  @steve_m2473  Banks are unpopular enough, relying on the Fed to print them money. A private equity firm getting that treatment, because they're attempting (failing) to impose their morality on half the electorate?... The country would melt down.
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  14. Apparently Larry Fink is retreating from ESG. Now's a great time for a counteroffensive against all that is offensive in ESG. =)
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  15. I dunno. Purely corporate overlords wouldn't be siding with such a stupid, anti-performance concept. I suspect that when he's around anyone with a non-Establishment point of view, he's doing a lot of talking and very little listening. The only people he listens to have drunk the Kool-Aid themselves.
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  16. "People considered them very respectable ... you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him."
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  17. Not so. Fink is in retreat already. If Conservatives all pulled their money out of Blackrock, he'd be completely screwed.
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  18.  @yellow4563  Their customers are not "right" and "left", they are "care" and "don't care". Their sales have dropped over 50% already, so most of them "care". A lot of the "don't care" are only sticking with the brand because they haven't heard of the boycott, and a lot of the rest are only sticking with the brand because A-B is giving away $15 rebates on $16 cases of beer. if A-B apologized for the Mulvaney ads, said they were deeply wrong, and pledged never to go Woke again, they would get back up to at least 90% of their previous numbers, if not more. The reason they're NOT doing this is because their banks have told them their lines of credit would be shut down if they did.
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  19. They went from #1 beer in America, to falling off the top 10 this week. Get Woke Go Broke
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  20.  @yellow4563  Have you checked out the latest numbers? Still falling.
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  21. No. If their employees and managers are brought up to behave morally, they will.
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  22.  @jklappenbach  It helps to have well-brought-up stockholders and judges, too. Too bad the late 60's and 70's happened. At this point we're probably going to have to roll them back. This generation needed a sense of purpose, right? =)
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  23. That's because he's sympathetic to at least one of those activist communities. Read the acknowledgements of his books, he's very low-key about it, which helps him reach a bipartisan (unipartisan?) audience.
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  24. And that, my friends, is called totalitarianism.
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  25.  @gtw4546  The fact that sane, principled investors see ESG-type behavior as contrary to all good sense, this means there is less upward pressure on the price. At least until the incredibly stupid and shortsighted regulations kick in, which bankrupt the sane companies and drive the price of the stupid companies into the stratosphere.
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  26.  @ent1311  But corporations donate MORE to Democrats, especially Big Tech corporations.
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  27. Except, this would be feasible even without government participation. It's just more effective when bigtime investors can buy politicians to make sure laws are written to favor ESG-compliant companies, when they start to Go Broke because they Got Woke.
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  28. Also, large-scale fund managers. There's nothing "grassroots" about ESG, unless you're talking about grad students and their grass.
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  29. So you're against Blackrock and State Street, the largest shareholders in most Fortune 500 companies?
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  30. "There are no regulatory guidelines [unless you contract for a government agency that practices some form of Affirmative Action] and each company does what they like [unless their bank makes ESG a condition for extending you a line of credit]" Let's see if Peter covers this in his "What ESG really is" segment, because he's being just a bit disingenuous here.
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  31.  @alecd.3377  Yup. What we're seeing now in America is an attempted (and so far largely successful) takeover of the country by the Master's Degree class -- meritocracy turned to oligarchy. The populist backlash that has followed, is what naturally happens in a democracy when this happens, especially when the oligarchy shows itself to be radically incompetent, like in San Francisco, or Kabul, or with massive inflation, or with a falling standard of living for the vast majority of Americans...
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  32. ... Which is why everyone who is skeptical of it should take their money out of Blackrock and State Street, ASAP. As far as Vanguard is concerned, they've supposedly renounced ESG. It would be interesting to know if they were telling the truth.
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