Posted on 04/22/2023 1:27:48 PM PDT by Texas Fossil
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics are a kind of social credit system designed to coerce businesses—and, by extension, individuals and all of society—to transform their practices.
Through a carrot-and-stick approach, investors and banks (and soon governments) use ESG to push businesses to change how they function, regardless of what the employees and customers of those businesses want. In many cases, however, corporate executives are all too willing to go along, because they want access to the cheap capital offered by investors and financial institutions.
The widespread adoption of ESG metrics, which is also commonly called “stakeholder capitalism”—is meant to radically alter how businesses are evaluated, expanding considerations beyond traditional economic metrics like profit, revenue, debt, customer satisfaction, and product development.
Instead of looking at economic and financial considerations, ESG social credit metrics measure things like, “Percentage of active workforce covered under collective bargaining agreements” (union labor), and “Percentage of employees per employee category, by age group, gender and other indicators of diversity (e.g. ethnicity).”
(To learn more about the basics of ESG, read my ESG primer here, or watch my recorded presentation for The Heartland Institute here.)
Unlike many corporations, which spend substantial time and resources self-reporting ESG, individual investors and most small businesses typically do not produce their own ESG reports. Instead, large financial services companies and banks have produced them for these groups, often without individuals or businesses asking for the reports.
For instance, Merrill Lynch, a division of Bank of America, produces ESG scores for all or nearly all of its individual investment accounts, even for those whose value is $1,000 or less.
Moody’s has created an “ESG Score Predictor” that offers users with ESG reports for 100,000 businesses, many of which have never produced their own ESG metrics. Moody’s algorithm predicts scores by using “company size, location, and industry as inputs.”
When individuals and small businesses have raised concerns about the use of ESG and how it could be used against them—as opposed to merely being applied to corporations for the benefit of investors—banks, investment groups, and their lobbyists have claimed that concerns over ESG are nothing but “conspiracy theories.”
However, the evidence shows that there are very good reasons to believe that financial institutions and banks plan to dramatically expand the use of ESG soon for individuals, families, and small businesses, a move that would dramatically change the U.S. economy and society. Below are the five most important reasons for all Americans to be concerned.
It’s impossible to know to what extent individuals, organizations, and businesses are now being denied access to financial services, including loans, based on subjective criteria because there are no databases nor reporting agencies tasked with compiling denials based on non-financial reasons. However, news outlets have reported many examples of such actions, and some industry reports openly admit that discrimination is common.
This is a small portion of the article, more at link. I searched for a good treatment of the latest threat to freedom and private business ownership and found this article, it is over a year old, but very accurate. If you want to understand the threat this is please read the article at the link.
A little over 2 years ago I had a horrible experience with an insurance company who I found out later that had adopted ESG and used what was obviously the ChiCom Social Credit number system for underwriting customers.
Should has a separate esg rating, freedom index, or libertyscore.
ESG - Extremely Stupid and Gullible!
>I had a horrible experience with an insurance company
Which one?
Texas Farm Bureau
.
Yes. But their intent is clearly to subject, not help.
It is the way of Corporate America. They are big, many are big bullies.
More from same author here:
ESG scores similar to China’s social credit system, designed to transform society, think tank director says (May 18, 2022)
Major financial institutions and global organizations are using a corporate scoring system to create a type of social credit system designed to influence behavior and transform society, according to a director at a conservative think tank.
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