The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has created a firm to take on woke businesses, using a technique known as “excellence capitalism.”
Conservative Competition
Strive will compete with asset managers BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which Ramaswamy labeled an “ideological mafia” in an appearance with the Journal.
Strive will be headquartered in Ramaswamy’s native state of Ohio instead of on Wall Street.
Strive will also encourage businesses in its holdings to pursue increasing profits for its shareholders, instead of supporting “stakeholder economics” and other progressive ideas.
“We’ll tell oil firms to be great oil businesses, fossil fuel companies to be great coal companies, and renewable energy companies to be great solar companies,” Ramaswamy told the Publication.
Ramaswamy claims to have received $20 million in funding thus far. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, as well as Pershing Square Wealth Management CEO Bill Ackman, are investors, according to the Newspaper.
“Stakeholder capitalism” is the past. Excellence capitalism is the future.
Let’s get started folks.https://t.co/ApZqECI5xl
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 10, 2022
“The majority of Americans want businesses to stay away from politics,” Ramaswamy added.
In an op-ed late last season, Ramaswamy, the former chief executive of biopharmaceutical firm Roivant Sciences, and writer of “Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Hoax,” detailed how major corporations deceive both liberals and conservatives.
Division Politics
“The power of this new woke-industrial Leviathan comes from separating us as a people.”
“When companies tell us about what social norms we should accept, they split us into tribes as a whole,” Ramaswamy argued.
“This makes it simpler for them to generate money. However, it also encourages us to accept new identities based on superficial features and flimsy social causes, which displace our underlying collective identity as Americans.”
Vivek Ramaswamy announced the launch of his new firm that will focus on “excellence capitalism” rather than encouraging corporations to get involved in social issues. https://t.co/8Bh63fGeHO
— National Review (@NRO) May 11, 2022
“Corporations triumph. Wise activists triumph. Celebrities are victorious.”
“Even the Communist Party of China manages to triumph. The Americans, including both honest liberals who are used as players, and average Republicans who are silenced, our hollowed-out organizations, and American democracy altogether, are the losers of this game.”
Other corporate executives, too, have raised concerns about stakeholder economy and ESG (Environmental, Socio, and Governance) norms.
As per Investopedia, ESG criteria are “a set of guidelines for a company’s activities that socially aware financiers use to analyze possible investments.”
For example, a corporation may stress its use of renewable energy, its affiliation with LGBTQ vendors, or other aspects of its operations that make earning shareholder profit inextricably linked to a socialist or communist goal.
Marc Andreessen is a computer programmer and businessman.
He also recently ridiculed ESG funds for their willingness to “make the weapons needed to fight wars with hostile dictatorships we buy power from,” while refusing to invest in energy firms.
Following this, Tesla, as well as SpaceX, CEO Elon Musk tried to point out that “ESG regulations have been distorted into insanity.”
