Video-sharing platform Rumble recently announced that it has no intention of pursuing environmental, social, and governance , or ESG, standards, a catchall term that refers to corporations pursuing liberal goals when it comes to climate change , race, and sexuality.
The right-leaning alternative to YouTube is right to reject ESG; it creates a distraction from a company’s main mission, and a few recent examples show that it does not make a company better.
“By pushing back against cancel culture and creeping censorship, we help facilitate a free exchange of ideas between our content creators and users,” Rumble stated in a March 9 news release.
The company noted its primary goal is to maximize “shareholder returns by developing and continuously improving our product, growing our user base, and attracting top content creators.” The company said it will not let “outside groups that seek to advance goals or agendas” sway it from its mission.
The purpose of Rumble is to provide a high-quality video-sharing platform that allows content creators to share their ideas and maximize the returns for its investors. ESG does not make a company better governed and can make it worse, as seen in the recent controversies surrounding Silicon Valley Bank, FTX, and Norfolk Southern.
For example, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation recently had to step in to guarantee deposits for SVB and stop a bank run. A company such as SVB, which was all in on ESG, should have done a better job of stress testing its models to minimize the risk of a bank run. But it instead hired a woke executive to oversee its financial modeling.
Jay Ersapah, the company’s United Kingdom head of risk management, boasted on her profile that she was a “queer person of color” and “first generation immigrant.” Ersapah said she was “privileged” to lead an LGBT task force to “help spread awareness of lived queer experiences.”
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, a clearly accomplished business leader, said , “These banks are badly run because everybody is focused on diversity and all of the woke issues and not concentrating on the one thing they should, which is, shareholder returns.” He said the Biden administration, which is firmly in support of ESG, could be pushing many corporations to embrace this dangerous system.
Woke financial companies are great at getting plaudits for high ESG ratings while putting customers’ assets at risk. FTX, led by crypto bro Samuel Bankman-Fried , had a high ESG rating . Bankman-Fried poured millions of dollars into all the right causes, such as climate change and COVID-19 planning. He is now holed up in his parents’ house at Stanford University while he faces multiple criminal charges and investigations. That is not good “governance.”
It is also not a good environmental standard to release more than a million pounds of a carcinogen into the air and surrounding environment. But Norfolk Southern did it in Ohio — despite the top shareholders all being woke investment firms such as Blackrock and Vanguard.
Companies should focus on delivering a high-quality product and maximizing returns for investors. That does not mean good values do not play a role; Chick-fil-A is one example of a company that is values-based and delivers a good product. But a corporation is headed for a train wreck when it embraces liberal politics over its mission as a business.
Rumble is right to reject ESG, as history shows it does not make a company better and, in fact, may make it worse by distracting from what should be its primary objectives.
Source: Washingtonexaminer.com
