https://www.wsj.com/articles/glorifi-how-new-anti-woke-bank-...
Meanwhile, despite a noisy "backlash", ESG investing stays strong.
The anti-woke do not have the numbers on their side when it comes to either population or economic power. Lots of sizzle, no steak.
They have political power though, and gained quite a lot of it since the radicalization of the GOP in the post-Obama years.
DeSantis and Trump are just the tip of the iceberg, they are backed by an insane amount of not just Senators and Representatives (MT Greene and friends), but also a host of locally elected officials ranging from school board members all the way up to sheriffs (Joe Arpaio). On top of that comes their voter base, fanaticized by years of Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, Alex Jones and the other far-right figureheads: a lot of old people with a distinct demographic advantage over young people.
Besides: economic power is one thing, but deeming it relevant for political discussion raises other very serious questions. Let's for once assume Disney were the "anti-woke" company. Would we accept that a large company could simply trample over the law or buy themselves special treatment? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they are standing up for those with no widespread voice - but it's nonetheless dangerous.
The thing is, most Republican (and also most Democrat) voters will vote for whomever has the R or D next to their name. All that matters is who wins the primary - and there, the far-right has the clear advantage, with Trump polling at 50% and DeSantis at 20% [1].
It's no longer about "who makes better politics", it's "doing anything just to not let the other side win". Honestly a wonder that the debt ceiling got raised.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/us/politics/desantis-trum...
My point is where there's right wing themed or supporting businesses the will also be left wing, albeit the left is more ideological, so the right might get further faster because they used old school capitalism where the left will be more pragmatic and focusing on how to create a more balanced equitable co-op structure that's merges aspects of socialism and capitalism.
The first is when you say "left wing" you probably mean something more like liberal democrats, which are not meaningfully leftist in a global context and not as far left as the american right is far right. Something like the black panther party or sandinistas is left wing, and more or less necessarily incompatible with the sort of engaged business-centric capitalism you're expecting. You can have a thin blue line bank but not a redistributionist one you see what I'm saying? To the extent something like that exists it is just left-themed, which definitely do already exist, and will eventually collapse under its commitment to capitalism and become functionally like any other agency in its domain.
The second is that it's probably not true that the left is more ideological than the right. Both groups will believe this about the other probably, and I certainly have my opinion. But for example undermining a high-value public good merely to deny access to an opposed group is a classic right-wing tactic that is deeply ideologically motivated.
The right's ideology especially around economics & money tends to be a lot closer to the mainstream of american culture. This is a distinct advantage in business! Again, a thin blue line bank has no ideological inconsistency and may thrive in the right environment.
In particular, banks make extremely political decisions in how they evaluate risk of loans and who they choose to loan money to and on what terms. Which is one of the reasons that the fall of SVB will have such long lasting implications for startups! Good luck getting the traditional banks to understand your startup enough to loan you something now.
Decisions are made on the estimations before the bottom line is realized. And reevaluating counterfactual outcomes from investing in something else is also not a quantitative decision, but one that is highly subjective.
Because that's the only game in town, mind-share wise.
> The anti-woke do not have the numbers on their side
for now. but as you move to digital currencies and when banks start to punish you by kicking you out of your account for having non-mainstream discourse online, things may change. Those days are not too far.
Anti-woke options are there, they failed due to their unpopularity, not because ESG investing anlready exists.
Which demand? I can't imagine that suddenly shareholders woke up and considered that "we don't care about making money anymore, now we are going to add metrics that have nothing to do with making profits"