How to Stop the Corporate Virtue-Signaling Before It’s Too Late
quillette.com
quillette.com
Ok, so there is one paragraph that mentions the "Community Pluralism Principle" and that shareholders should hold their company accountable for politicization, then throws a pithy quote that "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”
The issue with this kind of statement is that it falsely implies that politicization is adverse to profit. Are we to believe these companies like Nike or Ben & Jerry's are pursuing politicization purely for social motives, or has someone done the math to determine that this politicization can actually translate to higher profits? Likely it's somewhere in the middle
It's reminiscent of the psychopath world-view, actually.
"virtue signalling" has been quickly turn into a dog whistle within the alt-right.
They're saying that you're shouting about how virtuous you are. That's unrelated to how virtuous you actually are. Same goes for political correctness.
Just because I say I'm awesome, it doesn't make it so.
"Politically correct" used to be a highly ironic term, with the implication being there was "actually correct" and "politically correct." I've seen people recently advocate for the term "politically compliant," and I like that term much better.
The lead example given is Ben & Jerry's anti-Trump ice cream, which is being painted as "virtue signalling" because Unilever apparently sells skin-bleaching creams in India.
Let's just dwell on that for a second... Josh Dehaas is accusing Ben & Jerry's of cynical motivation, claiming that their "virtue" is performative, based on the actions of another part of a multi-national organisation.
A multinational conglomerate is not a single entity with singular motivations. The framing is flawed... almost certainly designed to appeal to people who already believe "lefties" are "virtue signalling".
And to be fair, there is a point there: corporations will back progressive social ideas that explicitly aren't anti-capitalist.
Politics should not be a part of what companies and (to a lesser extend) organizations do, out of self-interest alone.
At risk of blasting straight through Godwin's Law, this is the logic of 1930s IBM... and it should be resoundingly rejected.
Are you saying that's happened here?
I live in Europe, but my understanding was that Trump fans were in a minority (based on the fact that Clinton got more votes but rural states have more electoral college votes per capita), which would make being anti-Trump more likely to be a successful marketing strategy.
I'm not sure, probably not. But I think in similar cases in the gaming industry this has definitely happened. BF5 just as a recent but non-ideal example. So it's dangerous for them, and hence my baffling.