Summary of Woke Inc., by Ramaswamy.
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Summary: The author, entrepreneur, CEO for biotech firm, etc., Vivek Ramaswamy covers the dangers of corporations trying to dictate morals, signal virtue, and participate in stakeholder- (citizens, usually a vocal minority) rather than shareholder-driven decision making is a threat to capitalism and democracy. The merger of woke movements and companies, "Wokenomics," worsens tribalism, polarization, and provides a platform where corporations hide their profiteering via corruption and greed behind the veil of liberal values. The author provides many examples, from firings, to discriminatory trainings, to financial agreements. He lays out claims on how Wokenomics results in threats to democracy, worsens signaling and splits in society, and has become the place where woke movements that want money and money makers that want a shield for their wrongdoings meet. Silencing dissent, demanding adherence to a way of thinking, and concentrating political and social power in the hands of a small group of corporate elites, Ramaswamy warns we need to confront and deflate woke movements now. From the book, "The way we as citizens choose to describe America changes the way America actually works."
Intro and Chapter 1
Author Vivek Ramaswamy, serial startup entrepreneur and multi-millionaire, took an internship at Goldman Sachs when at Harvard ... At the end of an internship, they had a "service day"; once he arrived at the park in Harlem where they were supposed to plant trees, the group leader was an hour late. Once he arrived he told everyone " let's take a picture and get out of here". They went to the bar.. the Golden rule: the guys with the gold make the rules.
In 2020, Goldman Sachs made the announcement that they would refuse to take companies public unless they had at least one diverse board in the prior year approximately half the open board seats at s&p 500 companies went to women. July 2019 the last remaining all mail board in the s&p 500 appointed a woman. In other words every single company in the s&p 500 was always and already abiding by Goldman's diversity standard. That is to say they weren't really taking a risk here but rather virtue signaling based off of momentum.. they also came out with this messaging at the same time as they had just agreed to pay $5 billion dollars in fines around the world for its role in a scheme stealing billions from Malaysian people. Goldman paid more than 1 billion dollars in bribes to win work raising money for the one Malaysia development fund..
After George Floyd's death, Coca-Cola implemented corporate programs teaching employees to " be less white" and that "to be less white is to be less oppressive, less arrogant, less certain, less defensive, and more humble" and that " white people are socialized to feel that they are inherently Superior because they are white"... Which is just one of many examples from Apple to Uber to L'Oreal and Starbucks..
Shareholders have been abandoned for what is called stakeholder capitalism, even though CEO who may have been trained to run a business is not trained to direct society. And he also reinforces the Goldman rule, the guys with the gold get to make the rules.. weather en macon para hoy en Richmond en mall of the Américas canal Street Forest is waiting y coma this is now the most mobility
Those that eminently proclaim that corporations aren't people are now the people demanding that corporations act like people. Coca-Cola mandates training for to be less white, virtue signaling, while at the same time substantially contributing to diabetes among the black community. "The 'I'm just trying not to hurt anyone' version of stakeholder capitalism provides intellectual cover for the real Poison at the heart of the modern wokenomics" There are woke executives, who use their corporate managers to advance a particular social agenda, creating a principal-agent conflict. An agent is supposed to represent the principal and their agenda. There are woke investors who demand CEOs use their companies to advance social causes. Then there are woke consumers. It divides people on potentially singular issues, weaponizes buying power and stiffles discourse or debate. It also opens up a convenient opportunity for CEOs to run to the place that "consumers are demanding it so we're just giving them what we want". It provides two points of hypocrisy, as top down power grabbing by influential executives and investors occurs for strategic benefits, while few investors in the stock market really choose one mutual fund over another based on social values. Wework CEO example, where he touts social values and "elevating a global consciousness" while flying s $60M private jet, bragging that he liked to hire females because they go home early, and having the company by his own copyright. Amazon supports BLM while blacks die in their warehouses .. How capitalism changed India, it went from free exchange economically to penetration of the values and perspectives leading to social change. Eg, author's Grandma lived in the family home all her life but after a western living niece invested heavily in updating the home, where her dad lived, they set the expectation that the grandma should go live with her son Ch 3 purpose of a corporation Story of the author's time as CEO reflecting his focus on the aim of his Corp, medicine delivery, vs the social demands placed on him when George Floyd died. Story of the author's time as CEO reflecting his focus on the aim of his Corp, medicine delivery and profitability, vs the social demands placed on him when George Floyd died.
Limited liability is a privilege and superpower given to corporations. A necessity in order to stimulate both business formation and entrepreneurship and to gain investors to scale / build out large ambitions. It protects owners and shareholders. The author makes the case that this in part is why CEOs and board of directors are guided to / mandated by law to focus on profitability and in effect have a swim lane, which does not include and should not include setting social norms.. (though corp. have for years been involved and manipulated political systems, which is in part a manipulation of social norms)
This is countered by the liberal movement that corporations must make decisions based on society at-large and that the privilege of limited liability comes with the requirement to adhere to larger liabilities like climate change, etc.
In the absence of keeping corporations in their products and services swim lane, we should hold any social activity liable and not protected as in an LLC
Ch 4 Managerial Class
The author uses examples, like wework, Volkswagen, and the pharmaceutical industry, to show how companies can hide their unethical or fraudulent business dealings behind a smokescreen of social signaling. "Stakeholder capitalism has created a world in which ordinary people not only expect but also assume that companies pursue their own interests along with societal interest. When we make that assumption we as consumers are less likely to question business decisions."
The author describes a level of people that are incentivized to propel their reputation more than the company profit and operation, thus any social signaling can be a game for them while a loss for the company. It creates a conflict of interest between their duties and between their incentive to further their reputation at the literal company expense when they cut a check for BLM.
From 1987 to 2012 higher education sector added more than a half million administrators.. Mark Perry an economist at the University of Michigan recently calculated his university has 100 diversity administrators which cost the university 14 million per year, or an extra $300 per student.. these diversity administrators have a vested interest in perpetually preserving the perception that we have a diversity problem, otherwise their job is not necessary..
When companies, via employees, become servants of social causes then their mission is muddled. Serving all social needs then becomes serving no focus and end .. no accountability
Ch 4 ESG
Environmental social governance
Short term thinking and acting creates opportunities for others, such that in aggregate there is no loss that isn't someone else's gain.
E.g., the author's biotech company bought drug R&D cut from pharmas that would seek optimizing an annual balance sheet over continuing a particular drug (to show gain). He'd buy it for pennies on the dollar and then finish and market the drug. Cost cutting for one company creates an opportunity for another - capitalism.
Al Gore released an article in the WSJ on how companies that properly implement ESG in their business lines are more profitable. A
• No Real Scotsman Fallacy ("No Scotsman wears red socks." There's Seamus over there, he has red socks. "Yeah, but, no *real* Scotsman wears red socks.")
.. as Gore and his team can determine who "properly" implemented ESG and thus show profitability in his cherry picking. Actual data on whether companies with ESG are more profitable is inconclusive.
AstraZeneca announced their plan to use $1B over 10 years to fight climate change ... then 2 months later were given a $1.2B grant - not loan, but grant - of US tax money subsidizing their for-profit vaccine business. Senator Kerry stated he would "use his connections in Wall Street" to advance a zero-energy banking sector and climate change movement. It is government implementing its agenda, without vote or democratic process, through the corporate sector... while much of the ESG work is hypocritical.
The book "the anti-capitalist mentality" touches on the nation's largest wealth transition in history, boomers to millennials. It postulates that the son of a self-made man has an opportunity to exceed his father's accomplishments in one of two ways. The first is to beat his father on his own terms, which is unlikely, and risky. The second is to be morally Superior to one's father, a goal easier to achieve because moral superiority is subjectively defined.. thus anti capitalism from capitalism..
Similarly, kids who needed at once to benefit from their parentally endowed privileges while taking to moral superiority at their parents for recognizing those privileges, where whiteness fits the bill perfectly..
A parallel is Wall Street, acting unethically and exploring all things for profit and then getting bailed out led to occupy Wall street. What corporations were able to move past occupy Wall Street in part by finding moral high ground by joining the woke movement. Corporations are able to do this by assuming responsibilities of democratic government, which is liberal politicians who might have otherwise harmfully regulated or penalized them are now supported by them in such movements as racial inequality, climate change, etc
Ch. 6 henchmen of woke industrial capitalism
UN Women have a mission to advance gender equality and empower women. They often speak very well of unilever, who is a funder of the effort. In 2016 Unilever was facing lawsuits from Kenyan tea plantation workers, as at least 56 women were raped on the plantation. Some of their attackers were their own Unilever co-workers. You'll never protected the management and had guards but not the workers. It's rather than compensate these women, some of whom missed 6 months of work and we're given one month of pay, Unilever donated more than a million dollars a year to the UN Women campaign. They defended against lawsuits and never paid the plantation workers that were killed or raped, and instead hid behind the veil of their woke nature by supporting un Women campaign and advertising it
After the 2008 financial crisis, golden Sachs reached a 5 billion dollar settlement with the Justice department, Morgan Stanley 3 billion, citigroup 7 billion, JPMorgan Chase 13 billion, and Bank of America 17 billion. And yet of all those billions the homeowners and others negatively affected did not receive that money, instead liberal nonprofits received the money, like La Raza and the national Urban League. The Obama doj slammed big banks with massive finds so it could trump it that it was sending tons of relief to consumers, went at the same time it offered these Banks a chance to donate money to their preferred Obama charities and get a discount compared to the fines. So naturally all of the money ended up going to Obama's hand-picked charities. Congress was Republican majority, so Obama was able to bypass them by creating the doj as it's own personal funnel. In effect the executive branch is circumventing Congress, and the checks and balances system no longer exists. Similarly, when Volkswagen was caught cheating on their engines and emissions, the Obama administration again find them, and again use the doj as its money funnel. In this case they required the doj to take money from Volkswagen give it to the EPA and have the EPA create electrical cars charging stations. Congress is supposed to decide how government funding is used, but since they voted down Obama's electric car request, he went on his own through the doj.
Ch. 8 dictators as stakeholders
AirBnb what's one of the first to say that they are making decisions based on their stakeholders, not their shareholders. They even held a stakeholders day, akin to a shareholders meeting, with a chart of all their stakeholders. But they left out the Chinese communist party. Airbnb hired a former FBI agent to run their privacy, and that person resigned within a year. It turns out that the Chinese Communist party had made an agreement with airbnb, and Airbnb was sharing all of its data. The Chinese were getting people's emails phone numbers and where they were staying and when. They were even getting messages between users and the company. The Chinese went so far as to ask for real Time data. And yet none of this was disclosed to the users, who were being surveyed by the Chinese.
Companies like Nike, Disney, Apple, Marriott and the NBA express outage at injustices like "systemic racism" and transphobia in the USA while staying quiet about human rights abuses like concentration camps, for sterilization of religious minorities, and beatings of innocent civilians in China.. because it's about the money not morals.
Disney refused to make movies in the US state of Georgia because of its abortion ban, yet it made the movie Mulan in the XinJiang province, the same one where they were collecting Uighurs and putting them in concentration camps for forced sterilization and re-education. Disney went so far as to thank the CCP propaganda bureau in the province. Further, in the movie Dr Strange in order to get into the Chinese market the character the ancient one, was a Tibetan monk, and China wouldn't have it. So trying to replace the character with a white woman, where white washing the ancient one was good for china, good for feminism, and thus Disney could take the moral high ground.
Wokenomics allows the abuses of dictators abroad to be skimmed over or ignored while condemning actions of the government at home, which makes the US less safe. This elevates the moral standing of China as compared to the US on the global stage, which is a security threat. This weakens the geopolitical standing of the US by creating a false moral equivalence to countries like china. Wearing March of 2021 Chinese diplomats and the Chinese president claim that black Americans were being slaughtered and that the US should "do better on human rights..". Whereas US people have the freedom to criticize the government whereas in China that would never happen. But now US people only criticize their own while severe abuses occur abroad.
Ch 9 silicon Leviathan
.. a chapter that well documents how the media, such as Facebook, twitter, and Google readily manipulate and bias political opinions of the people. Whether it's MailChimp refusing email distributions from right-wing causes, or the way that both Facebook and Twitter suppressed articles on Hunter Biden during the 2020 election, including going so far as to prevent people from sending private messages to each other with the hunter Biden article.
This chapter makes the distinction between the inauthentic practices of corporations that use the woke movement to accelerate their profits and whitewash their reputations, to corporations that use their power to change society. Further, . corporations like Google and Facebook shape public opinion by controlling narratives, censoring media, and deciding what bias to present to whom.
Facebook repeatedly halted accounts for things like "he is risen" from congressperson Greene or Ron Paul, the libertarian presidential candidate, without a specific citing, among others, we're under screwed me the only "standard" that Facebook has is if the person does not agree with their ideology. When brought to public attention, each time Facebook blamed an "error" though no such errors for liberal voices... Akin to communist purging of any political dissent.
When individual investors were putting the short squeeze on GameStop stocks, which is to say trapping hedge fund investors that were shorting GameStop, they used Reddit and robinhood. As the investment industry realized what was happening Robin Hood prevented all of its users from buying GameStop stock, which would have driven the price further up and made money for these individual recreational investors, but it still allowed them to sell, which would drive the price down and protect the hedge funds that were shorting the stock. That kind of forced selling panicked other retail traders into selling, further helping the institutional hedge funds. Then discord shut down a WallStreetBets discussion server with $250,000 members, using hate speech as an excuse though they're not able to point to the hate speech in question. Facebook shut down a 150,000 strong discussion page for Robinhood traders over adult sexual exploitation, which it refused to substantiate... This is corporate collusion to protect corporations using the woke movement. When the White House was asked about GameStop drama (trauma) the White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded "I'm happy to repeat that we have the first female treasury secretary and she's monitoring the situation".. in other words we have a female breaking glass ceilings here so who cares about anything else?
Congress endowed big tech with the special corporate privilege of section 230 that immunizes technology companies from any liability for censoring or regulating content. The author makes the legal case that section 230 of the telecommunications decency act in combination with threats, which are overt, from Congress people is a method by which politicians are forcing corporations to become state actors. The first amendment prohibits the government from censoring and allows individuals free speech, but then Congress threatens corporations and makes them censor speech that they find unwanted. The social media companies are effectively privately hired censoring agents for the government, which is unconstitutional.
It's a dangerous precedent. For instance what if the government decided to press companies for private citizen data for the purposes of spying and control? Further what if the government granted immunity to corporations or private actors (which is the right section 230 does) to block access to abortion clinics, then Democrats and the liberals would certainly show the unconstitutionality of it.. But when "hate speech" or other woke censors block conservative speech, it's good.
Ch 10 woke is a religion
John McWhorter, Columbia professor: "antiracism movement is a profoundly religious movement in everything but terminology."
Author "wokeness sacrifices true diversity, diversity of thought, so that skin-deep symbols like race and gender thrive." ""Diversity" has become a symbol, one so powerful that the symbol is now more powerful than what it was supposed to represent." The author makes a comparison with Dostoevsky's depiction of Christ in Brothers Karamazov and the Spanish Inquisitor. In that telling, Jesus had become a threat to the institution of the church, just as intellectual diversity has become a threat to American corporations, universities, and the woke movement. Just as the grand Inquisitor sentenced Jesus to death, today's corporations and movement sacrifice intellectual diversity in the name of gender, race, and sexual diversity.
Robin D'Angelo, author of white fragility a 2020 bestseller, defines whites as an undifferentiated racial collective, socialized to "fundamentally hate blackness and institutionalized prejudice and politics and culture." Further D'Angelo and the woke movement believe that the scientific method, grammar and punctuality are hallmarks of whiteness that perpetuate supremacy for employers and teachers.
As with religion some words are sacrilege.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley: "We don't need any more Brown faces that don't want to be a Brown voice. We don't need any more Black faces that don't want to be a Black voice." in other words, narrowly defining what a person is supposed to think and say by demographic. There's no diversity within an ethnicity - "they're all the same" - and diversity is not wanted by the woke liberals.
The firing of James Damore (Google), Kevin Cernekee (Google), David Shor (civics analytics) (who tweeted in support of an article that violence in protests is counterproductive) among others are case examples of the church of diversity excommunicating members.
Ch 10 woke is literally a religion
Author makes a legal argument to protect against wokeness. There are two steps to the Bostock-based argument. First, start with Title VII's protection from being fired over religious beliefs.
Assume that a company has two employees, X and Y, who both say Z and that the only relevant difference between the employees is that X is religious and Y is an atheist. It's clear that employee X can't be fired for saying Z, assuming they have a religious basis for saying it. Easy enough. Here's the tricky second step, the part where Bostock comes in. If the company fires Y for saying Z, then, according to Bostock's method of identifying discrimination, the company was discriminating against Y on the basis of Y's lack of religion. That's because the company didn't fire X for saying the exact same thing and the only difference between X and Y is that Y lacks a religion.
The bottom line is that the mere fact that the company fires Y for saying Z and wouldn't fire them if they were religious and said the same thing means Y's lack of religion is a but-for cause of their firing ..
Consider "Onionhead." In 2007, a company called CCG adopted a program known as "Harnessing Happiness" or "Onion- head" to boost morale and cooperation. CCG employees had to attend "positivity sessions" during which they were taught that "choice, not chance, determines human destiny," just as employees at woke corpo- rations today are forced to attend "diversity and inclusion" sessions in which they are taught that systemic racism determines human des- tiny. Employees at CCG who rejected Onionhead were fired, and the EEOC successfully sued on their behalf under Title VII, claiming this was religious discrimination even though CCG insisted Onionhead was secular. In the 2016 case of EEOC v. United Health Programs of America, the court found that Onionhead was indeed a Religion.
Ch 12 critical diversity theory
Harvard president was fired for presenting, with a caveat that is coming through intended to be an "attempt at provocation", three potential reasons why a higher proportion of men end up in science and engineering, and among one option was that men do better in math and different types of studies cognitively.
A few academics fought the rising tide. In what has been dubbed "the grievance studies affair," a trio of liberal academics, Helen Pluckrose, Peter Boghossian, and James Lindsay, successfully published several purposefully farcical academic papers in peer- reviewed journals in fields like cultural studies, queer studies, fat studies, race and gender studies, and so on. Among the highlights were an article using observations from dog parks to prove that dogs engaged in rape culture, one arguing that men could reduce transphobia by anally penetrating themselves with sex toys, and a version of Mein Kampf rewritten in feminist jargon. The trio had many similar articles under review; the hoax only stopped after journalists at The Wall Street Journal uncovered it. All of these authors were exiled from academia..
Jodi Shaw, an administrator at Smith college, was removed from her position because as part of her planned orientation program she was going to wrap, and wrapping with forbidden for white people. They moved her to a new position where she was told she needs to discuss her thoughts and feelings about whiteness and any refusal to discuss her privilege was white fragility. Shop lightly refuse to speak about her race which was dubbed racial aggression.
Author purposes ""critical diversity theory" (or CDT) to reflect its critical perspective on the prevailing narrative of racial and gen- der diversity, in response to intellectual movements such as critical race theory and critical feminist theory, which spawned this nar- y conception of diversity. Critical theory refers to an approach to row inquiry that reveals and challenges power structures. CDT should follow this tradition by challenging the new power structure created by critical race and gender theory itself—one that has weaponized a narrow conception of diversity to implement a monolithic social agenda that is increasingly intolerant of dissent and agnostic to the institutional purpose of an organization."
objectives: (1) define what types of diversity of thought are important to an organization, (2) measure diversity of thought in an organization, and (3) select for diversity of thought when hiring leaders to scale an organization.
Ch 13 woke consumerism
Corporations manipulate by virtue signaling and by falsely offering you things you want with a side order of equality...
"brands have always tried to dress up ordinary goods and services as part of a lifestyle, part of an identity, but what's new is this wide- spread effort to convince consumers that buying these ordinary things is noble and virtuous. Corporations used to try to convince you that buying their stuff would make you cool; now they tell you buying it will make you good."
In 1976, only 26% of Americans lived in a county where the presidential vote was a landslide, which would be by 20% or more. By 1992, it was 38%. 2004, 48.3%. and in 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Donald trump, 61% lived in counties that voted for one or the other candidate by a 20% margin or more. People are now physically relocating themselves to be around those that think and vote the way they do. This is mirrored by the breakup between people on Twitter and parlor, or now with consumerism and whether you buy your coffee from liberal Starbucks or from right wing Black rifle company, as each is a signal of your identity and tribe
Woke consumerism worsens income disparities in unique ways. Becomes an issue of unfairness, as consumer boycotts actually work the same way as shelled holder elected members of a board of directors. The more shares you hold the more of a voice you have, which is to say the more buying power you have. Boycotts give superficially illusion of mass mobilization but they really hand more political power to the wealthy. Secondly fairness aside, when we allow money to determine what happens in non-capitalist fears like family, religion, or democracy, money inevitably corrupts the spheres and cheapens what they mean to everyone. Boycotts also help feed into the mentality that we do not discuss things with people instead we try to punish them, which is to say people with differing opinions are enemies. A boycott is intended to punish and if you don't participate in the boycott then you two should be punished.
In our society boycotts have moved from corporations to individuals. Back in the 40s and 50s senator Joseph McCarthy bertalized his political enemies by framing them as communist and blacklisting them to industries so they lose their livelihoods. After biden's victory in 2020, representative Ocasio Cortez encouraged people to archive who supported and worked for Trump, and after that they project called Trump accountability project sprang up aiming to prevent people who worked or donated to Trump from gaining future employment. It's McCarthyism for the left
Ch 14 bastardization of service
The author makes the case that Americans often do charitable donations or service for the purposes of personal gain, using his experience and those of other young men who went to high school with who volunteered simply to pad their resumes to get into better colleges. He mirrors that experience with what corporations do with woke values, were they really don't believe in them and they just use them as a means to an end thereby bastardizing or commoditizing values.
Ramaswamy advocates for mandatory civil service for teenagers, particularly during the summer break. He points to various studies that show that minority students lose more knowledge over the summer than white students, so by not having a summer break you're actually helping address inequality. Further as the book made a case earlier, the nation suffers from sharing an identity. So charitable service and cross-pollination with other groups can help form a sense of shared identity and values.
Ch 15 who are we
We all have a pluralism of identities within us. Father, doctor, friend, neighbor... Pluralism means rising above the narrow demands of what culture to discover that there's more to each of us than our immutable characteristics, like skin color or the number of X chromosomes. The author's issue with wokeness is that it forecloses the possibility of shared solidarity as Americans if we see each other as nothing more than the color of our skin, gender, orientation or similar...
"Our best shot at making the American dream a reality is through capitalism. Our best shot at making e pluribus unum real is through democracy." Woke capitalism hands over moral questions to corporations that are supposed to be adjudicated through democracy.
With emphasis, "the way we as citizens choose to describe America changes the way America actually works."
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