UNIFIED FIELD THEORY OF ESG- 55 Year-Old CEOs Are Terrified Of Their 25 Year-Old Woke Employees (YaBoiZack)

ESGs do play a bigger role in investments than Zack thinks in the video. Sure, the CEOs are afraid of their employees, but the system is set up to include ESGs as part of an investment criteria - so they unlock wealth/capital. You have things like 'ethical investment' funds where their customers will invest their capital into stocks that tick numerous boxes. And so ESGs play a role here.

Best comments on You Tube:

ResCyn
I work fairly high up in a UK bank and we literally got a brief on Friday that our ESG has ticked up and we now have access to x new funding. One of many over these last several years directly concerned with ESG. The exec may not believe in 'woke' (or even understand it like most people!), but they very much believe in the need for high ESG scoring and the activity that has to be in place to attain it*. Those extra-regulatory ESG levers assess management firms can pull are most definitely not a conspiracy theory. Our main ESG scorer is Sustainalytics. Sounds all nice on the face of it. But they you read up and they're owned by Morningstar. And then you read up on them and, oh, right...
*Our diversity training this year is that bad I've flat out refused to do it for the first time in 20+ years of having to do mandatory training. You can literally play Intersectional bingo if you know the subject matter.

Paul
CEOs and investors might not care about social causes, but many HR workers and middle-managers certainly do. Many even treat it as a religion and they’re willing to gatekeep talented people away from an industry if they don’t take part in the sacraments. Middle managers like Heather Antos do this all the time.

warewuff dupree
i think you're almost there with ESG. it is all about appearance. its PR, its marketing and its voluntary. having an ESG rating is basically saying to the world and possible investors look how virtuous we are! just like they've always done.
some studies show it helps and other studies show there is no effect or a slight negative efffect on business. what ESG caters to are those 25 year old employees that the CEO is terrified of, as well as a whole generation of like minded gen z'ers that will be in charge in 20 years. most of them are extreme leftists who infiltrated the corporations by turning HR departments into DE&I departments. then they made them separate departments, controlling both. they spread their tentacles into recruitment and marketing and advertising. now they control that corporation. the CEO is right to be terrified. he or she is basically a hostage in his or her own company.
i work for a fortune 100 company. occasionally we have town hall meetings. when the CEO makes his speech, he reminds me of the videos you see from the prisoners of war from the Vietnam War. thats not hyperbole.
i imagine a higher up in DEI wrote it for him and he was advised to read it verbatim, or else. thats what it seems like anyway.
to summarize, ESG is real, not a conspiracy. for now its voluntary. as the gen x generation starts to retire in 15 years or so, it will become a more important rating factor, based on the political leanings of the next generation. maybe a required rating factor. its not set in stone, we'll just have to see

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, August 15, 2022.]