John Hinderaker this morning looks at what he calls “woke capitalism” , (not exactly accurate but a reasonable label) and says:
So, what is going on here? I don’t get it. We obviously are not
dealing with traditional assumptions about corporate behavior. These companies are not appealing to a substantial customer segment. They evidently don’t mind incurring the puzzlement, if not wrath, of much of their customer base. They can’t possibly be profit maximizing, as economists tell us they do, and ought to do.Some say that companies are being dominated by left-leaning HR and
marketing departments. Maybe so. But HR departments don’t make decisionso of this sort, and the normal assumption is that marketing departments
are trying to market. That is, to maximize sales. These days, that
doesn’t seem to be the case. And the worst offenders are often CEOs who
have been hired as PR face men, not nuts and bolts managers.
What’s going on here really isn’t all that hard to guesstimate. The large investors in places like Target are not the average American whence all this angry reaction to woke marketing is coming from.
The large investors are people like Bill Gates, George Soros, to name two possible examples … All appropriately hidden behind mutual investment firms of course. I have no doubt China has their hand and this as well.
Market Realist is kind enough to provide the numbers this morning:
Mutual funds own over 42 percent of Target, while other institutional investors own more than 39 percent of the discount retailer. The Vanguard Group and SSgA Funds Management, Inc. are Target’s top two shareholders. They own an 8.88 percent and a 7.18 percent stake, respectively, in the company. Another top shareholder is Capital Research & Management Company.
Now, obviously this is speculation, but it does fit the available facts, rather snugly.
I mean, think about it: average Americans are reacting to something that’s as popular with them as a skunk is at a church picnic. Their voices are being heard but it doesn’t seem to be changing much of anything in terms of what the corporations want to do. As an example we have the Target CEO, one Brian Cornell, claiming that we’ll capitalism is just great for Target, and he says just the thing for society as a whole. (Yeah, right.)
While this seems a rather blatant appeal to morality, while embracing immorality, it should be said that corporations, particularly those involved in sales, have never been particularly moral in the past. They tend to lean where the money is. For as long as I’ve been alive anyway, the money is with Middle America. But now suddenly they seem to be ditching Middle America in favor of leftism as embodied by the Uber rich leftists who seem bent on taking over everything. And places like Target, Disney, Budweiser,etc, all seem to be acting as if it’s a coordinated script.
Which raises the question:
What would explain them all marching off to the same drummer? What else would explain the coordination of all of these now woke businesses, besides direction / threats from the group of large scale investors who also happen to be left leaning?
And isn’t it interesting that the leftists among Us who traditionally have been against the Uber rich now suddenly find themselves aligned with them?
As for the title of this post, please excuse my paraphrasing Pogo. But it does seem clear that the origin of this lunge to the left by some American corporations, talking among them, is not coming from Middle America.
I’ve been saying for quite some time that there is an anger brewing in Middle America that will be difficult to control if not impossible. But by golly, these people are trying. They don’t seem to care very much about the anger being directed at them which tells me that there is a larger motivation than the money of Middle America.
Having watched this stuff for 60 years and more, it’s my take the these moves are being directed by the larger investors… Who all see their political aims coming to fruition through these moves.
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