American government sponsored slush-fund disguised as a business rating metric. The outgoing Obama administration put this in place as an 'alternative' viability metric for the investment in a company for 401k (retirement pools that are invested en masse largely without the input of their owners) fund managers to consider. Previous metric was demonstrated solvency and profitability. This new one is basically "or be dedicated to mushy ideals."

These ideals are 'diversity,' 'eco-friendliness,' and every other kind of leftist wank you can guess at. Qualification under this guideline means that 401k funds are free to be invested in you despite any performance you show or quality you exhibit that would make the investment good for the stakeholder (the guy whose money is being invested). As you can imagine, qualification for this is considerably easier than opening up your ledgers and showing how your business works, you just have to plaster platitudes over all your PR materials and hire a 48.22765% black and indigenous board, or a female CEO, your pick.

This inverts the relationship of what 401k investment is about, adding value to retirees so that by the time they retire they have money that has atleast beat inflation, but hopefully has added good value too. Instead this new qualification places the onus of investment on "saving the world" by shuffling the funds into the hands of self-proclaimed do-gooders (by extremely Democrat party standards and values).

I've heard argument that this isn't long-term viable as 401k managers will be steered away from unprofitable investments by their stakeholders, but that is naïve. Because the architects of this system hate 401k investments and want them to burn, this just happens to be a double-win for them. They're stealing money from the people they hate (those tax-evading rich bastards who work a job that lets them set their earned money aside for the future) and giving that same money to themselves via their DNC donor-fodder fly-by-night wind-farm boondoggles.

Triple win if you factor in the net-effect it's had on all big companies who want an easy check-off for access to these kinds of giant collective investment pools. I kind of doubt that was counted on being such a major effect, because it's THAT that has alerted the Average Joe to what is going on. Everyone going woke simultaneously when there is no good business sense for it. Turns out there IS good business sense getting a 'woke' investment firm to shovel you money for simply being woke yourself.

Stock investment portfolios use environmental, social, and governance (esg) as a rating for “wokeness” in the workplace. Basically the more “woke” a company is the higher it is evaluated and traded in. It’s basically a woke matrix that places you higher or lower depending on how much you toe the line.

It's credit score for corporations. The more they participate in promoting the woke ideology, the better in the eyes of investors. I also learned about the basic gist of it a few days ago.

ESG (environmental, social, governance) is basically a wokeness score used as an investing metric, by people who believe the opposite of us: "Refuse to go woke, go broke."

Adopt 'green' policies? Corporate investors will boost your stock price as a reward.

Promote your DIE initiative? Cash money.

Ban right-wingers from your platform, cease doing business with low-ESG-score companies, generally act like another extension of the collective leftist hivemind?

They'll boost your stock price with that sweet, free gubmint cash that keeps getting printed, to make it look like a good idea.

Institutional investing based on ESG scores completely offsets any potential fror individual investors to provide market feedback. With enough market penetration (large firms using it as a metric), they can arbitrarily set stock prices so there's not even a cost to the institution for using an objectively shit metric that ignores profitability.