A short, opinionated monologue by Scott Adams arguing that Republicans view ESG (environmental, social, governance) criteria as harmful to free-market competition, while Democrats view ESG as a moral critique used to shame and reform companies. Adams contrasts Republican preference for shareholder-maximizing competition with Democrats’ emphasis on diversity, climate action, and governance, framing the latter as burdensome and insulting.
Chapters
Do you know why ESG is a looks like a nightmare to Republicans, but looks like the best thing in the world for Democrats? It's this. Republicans look at the system and they say, wait a minute. We had a system where there would be a company competing for its shareholders and it would do whatever it could as an independent company within the law to maximize. And then that worked. We had the most dynamic economy. So that's a Republican system. And then the Democrats are people who only exist to insult other people. And they say, we're going to insult you in three different ways. We're going to call you a racist because you don't have enough equity and inclusion. We're going to call you a science denier because you're not doing enough about the environment. Basically, we're going to come up with some insults and then we're going to destroy your system by creating this confusing set of entities that are judging you and trying to determine whether you're worthy of investment and buying their products. So basically, all Republicans know that if you add this extra burden of three different preferences, it's not even one thing. It's not even just about the environment. It's about governance plus the environment, plus social responsibility. So there's all these murky things. If you put that on top of free markets, is that a better system or a worse one? Every Republican knows that's worse. Now. It's hard to explain why it's worse to people who don't understand the systems have to be designed to work with human characteristics, etc. So you're always going to have the Democrats saying, let's find a new way to insult people. I got it. We'll say that they don't have enough diversity, therefore they're racist. How else can we insult people? I got it. They're not doing enough for climate change, so therefore they're science deniers. But basically, the Democrats are always looking for the angle to insult you. And the Republicans, if they framed it correctly, would always be looking for the way to make a system that works for everybody and invite the Democrats in. Invite the Democrats in.
