Off the top of my head (and slightly worried that this will become a major culture war thing, but I will answer the question that was asked):
There is a principal-agent problem. If pursuing wokeness comes at the expense of profits, the latter doesn’t necessarily affect the people who make those decisions very much.
My impression is that many of the executives are in fact woke, and others are at least unwilling to say otherwise.
Wokeness seems pretty optimized for shouting down and intimidating opposition. (I think much of the specifics of the ideology were and are determined by some people successfully shouting down others within the woke movement.)
At least in the entertainment industries, when a distinctly woke thing is made, there tends to be a narrative that evil people hate the thing, and therefore anyone who hates the thing is evil, and therefore lost profits should be treated with an attitude of “good riddance” rather than “maybe this thing was made badly”. I think this tends to be the woke narrative, and generally promoted by media—and, as per the previous item, any opposing narrative would tend to get shouted down.
I’m thinking of tech companies that tend to be based in the SF Bay Area, and the most prominent entertainment companies are Hollywood—both of which are known for being more lefty. Also, CEOs are one thing, but other executives matter too; and writers and directors especially in entertainment.
Regarding shareholders, I don’t really know how that works. I do think it’s a general fact that getting a zillion people to coordinate on expressing their wishes is difficult. There’s a board of directors, who I guess nominally represent shareholders? Looks like every company can have their own rules, though I assume they’re mostly similar; looking at Disney’s bylaws, it says:
SELECTION OF NEW DIRECTORS The Board shall be responsible for selecting its own members. The Board delegates the screening process for new Directors to the Governance and Nominating Committee.
Although “Each Director shall at all times represent the interests of the shareholders of the Company”, I suspect this is difficult to enforce. If the board ends up dominated by a woke narrative (with at least a vocal minority of woke people and a majority of people who shut up and go along with it), leading to unprofitable decisions, what can the shareholders do about it, other than sell their stock? “Shareholder revolts” are a thing, which implies that the divergence between shareholders’ desires and what the board is doing can indeed get pretty wide (though also implies that they can eventually get their way).
I do suspect that the profit motive will ultimately reassert itself, but it seems to have taken a long time and doesn’t show major signs of happening yet. It may take an “everyone knows that everyone knows that the woke decisions have gotten really bad” moment, which the woke narrative promoted by most media is probably delaying.
Typically board members are elected by shareholders, and an attacker can win a proxy fight with a relatively small portion of the shares if he can convince other shareholders.
Off the top of my head (and slightly worried that this will become a major culture war thing, but I will answer the question that was asked):
There is a principal-agent problem. If pursuing wokeness comes at the expense of profits, the latter doesn’t necessarily affect the people who make those decisions very much.
My impression is that many of the executives are in fact woke, and others are at least unwilling to say otherwise.
Wokeness seems pretty optimized for shouting down and intimidating opposition. (I think much of the specifics of the ideology were and are determined by some people successfully shouting down others within the woke movement.)
At least in the entertainment industries, when a distinctly woke thing is made, there tends to be a narrative that evil people hate the thing, and therefore anyone who hates the thing is evil, and therefore lost profits should be treated with an attitude of “good riddance” rather than “maybe this thing was made badly”. I think this tends to be the woke narrative, and generally promoted by media—and, as per the previous item, any opposing narrative would tend to get shouted down.
Aren’t CEOs mostly Republicans? And what’s stopping the shareholders from insisting on prioritizing profit?
I’m thinking of tech companies that tend to be based in the SF Bay Area, and the most prominent entertainment companies are Hollywood—both of which are known for being more lefty. Also, CEOs are one thing, but other executives matter too; and writers and directors especially in entertainment.
Regarding shareholders, I don’t really know how that works. I do think it’s a general fact that getting a zillion people to coordinate on expressing their wishes is difficult. There’s a board of directors, who I guess nominally represent shareholders? Looks like every company can have their own rules, though I assume they’re mostly similar; looking at Disney’s bylaws, it says:
Although “Each Director shall at all times represent the interests of the shareholders of the
Company”, I suspect this is difficult to enforce. If the board ends up dominated by a woke narrative (with at least a vocal minority of woke people and a majority of people who shut up and go along with it), leading to unprofitable decisions, what can the shareholders do about it, other than sell their stock? “Shareholder revolts” are a thing, which implies that the divergence between shareholders’ desires and what the board is doing can indeed get pretty wide (though also implies that they can eventually get their way).
I do suspect that the profit motive will ultimately reassert itself, but it seems to have taken a long time and doesn’t show major signs of happening yet. It may take an “everyone knows that everyone knows that the woke decisions have gotten really bad” moment, which the woke narrative promoted by most media is probably delaying.
Typically board members are elected by shareholders, and an attacker can win a proxy fight with a relatively small portion of the shares if he can convince other shareholders.