The Great Reset, Part 7: ESG

A deadly virus has infected capitalism

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

(Note for new readers: Last summer I began a series on the ways in which unaccountable technocrats are initiating a Great Reset of our civilization. I became distracted by the election and other issues, but am now returning to finish the series. Use the links above to read the first six parts of this series then come back and read about ESG.)

The Republican Party has long had a deep respect for private businesses in a capitalist economy. Our ideological forebears saw the way communism nationalized businesses in the service of the state and said it will never happen here. President Coolidge said “The business of America is business,” while President Reagan said “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

The beauty of the free market, we believe, is that we always have a choice. Unlike government, which operates a monopoly on roads, taxation, welfare benefits, social security, the court system, international relations, and deadly force, private businesses must earn their customers’ patronage. If one restaurant has bad food, bad service, or exorbitantly high prices, we have the choice to go to a different one.

But what if nearly every private business was controlled by the same cabal, bent toward erasing our freedom and our way of life?

If SEL is the Great Reset from the bottom up, ESG is the same thing from the top down. ESG is a rubric created to evaluate businesses based on their adherence to social justice causes - environmental, social, and governance. Investors are supposed to prioritize ESG scores over traditional metrics such as profitability. What is most insidious about this scheme is how trillion dollar investment firms such as Blackrock and Vanguard have instituted ESG as a requirement for the companies they invest in. Corporations that want to continue receiving investment must make sure to reach diversity quotas, divest from fossil fuels, and follow the ever-changing dicta of social justice doctrines. Thus our entire society is being re-engineered without a single piece of legislation from our elected leaders.

Former startup CEO turned anti-ESG crusader Vivek Ramaswamy wrote in his book Woke, Inc that:

“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.”

A cursory look at ESG policies shows how much of a scam it really is. Otherwise unemployable activists can market themselves as ESG experts, getting hired at top corporations to find ways to raise their ESG scores and thus continue to receive investment.

Finding political will to stop this process is harder than you might think. Democrats generally agree with the aims of ESG, while many Republicans still believe that interfering with private business is heresy. Republican governors and other elected officials, many of whom enjoy large campaign contributions from the very corporations pushing ESG, retreat to Reagan-era slogans about the free market to defend their lack of action to protect small businesses and citizens from these unaccountable mandates.

Ramaswamy continues in Woke Inc:

“Sincere liberals get tricked into adulation by their love of woke causes. Conservatives are duped into submission as they fall back on slogans they memorized decades ago - something like “the market can do no wrong” - failing to recognize that the free market they had in mind doesn’t actually exist today. And poof! Both sides are blinded to the gradual rise of a twenty-first-century Leviathan far more powerful than what even Thomas Hobbes imagined almost four centuries ago.”

ESG is currently being used to punish businesses that are not onboard with the Great Reset agenda, while promoting those that are. Rest assured, it will not stop there. Consider the idea of credit reports. Once upon a time, if you lived in a small community, your banker would give you credit based on his personal knowledge of your situation and your character. In today’s atomized world, that is rarely possible, so banks and other financial institutions outsource the determination of your credit-worthiness to outfits such as Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. They collect data on your financial history and distill it into a number that shows how willing and able you will be to pay back debt.

Right now, reporting agencies only consider financial data - how many credit cards you have, how much debt you carry relative to your limits, how often you pay your bills on time. Under an ESG regime, these same reporting agencies could soon compile information about your political positions, the candidates you support, your opinions about movements such as Black Lives Matter, and how much you spend on things such as gasoline and firearms. Imagine being denied a mortgage because you donated to Donald Trump. Imagine your smart refrigerator reporting that you ate too much meat. This is not a sci-fi dystopia, but a very real future that is just around the corner.

The end result of ESG is a Chinese-style social credit system where American citizens will be permitted or denied access to society based on their political viewpoints. The ball is already rolling. ESG has the backing of trillion-dollar investment firms like Larry Fink’s Blackrock, massive unaccountable NGOs and forums like the WEF, and bureaucrats throughout our government. They are all seeking to impose a totalitarian controlled system without bothering to use the legislative process.

Our entire society rests on a republican system of government. We elect representatives who make laws on our behalf. We don’t always get what we want, but in theory the majority of the people generally decide the direction of our country. ESG is an end-run around democracy. A handful of elite technocrats - so-called experts - have given themselves a mandate to rule us for our own good. They are implementing an entirely new society without bothering with legislatures or constitutions, rather they are doing it by controlling the market itself. Reagan-era conservatives who shudder at the thought of interfering with private businesses are under the misconception that businesses still operate according to a profit motive, following the rule of the invisible hand of Adam Smith. But things have changed, and ESG threatens to condemn us all to a totalitarian dystopia if we do not stop it now.

Who is standing up against this tide?

Last summer, Ada County GOP Chairman Victor Miller and State Representative Barbara Ehardt of Idaho Falls sponsored a resolution in which the Idaho Republican Party declared its firm opposition to the use of ESG, even calling out IACI for claiming that it is merely a tool of the free market. I am gratified that the Convention adopted this resolution, giving more ammunition to our elected officials in this fight.

WHEREAS, Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry has advertised ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) scores as a feature of a free market, indicating its position,

WHEREAS, E.S.G. scoring is actually the opposite of free market capitalism, which leaves the power with the customer, and is instead a system of coercing compliance with a set of values imposed by a group of the world’s most powerful elites,

WHEREAS, a system where the power is reserved to the top, and control is imposed from the top, is the antithesis of our constitutional republic.

Excerpt from Resolution 2022-11, adopted at the 2022 Idaho GOP Convention

Perhaps the person most invested in the battle against ESG in Idaho is State Treasurer Julie Ellsworth. In the past year, she has networked with state legislators here in Idaho as well as state treasurers and other officials in red states throughout the country. Together they are looking at options for our state government to divest from firms that promote ESG as well as refuse to do business with firms that require it. I worry that it might be too late - the corporations that are pushing ESG are more powerful than any single state government - but I hope that an alliance of freedom-loving states can stop this movement before we are fully under the technocratic yoke.

If we are to have any hope of fighting ESG, of staving off the technocratic dystopia on the horizon, we need men and women in our state government who are not afraid of taking on the big business interests that are pushing this nascent social credit system. I am thankful for the work of Miller, Ehardt, Ellsworth, and everyone else willing to stand up and say stop. I urge you to contact your own representatives and senators and ask them to continue this fight. Our freedom, and our children’s freedom, is literally at stake.