The theory that companies that are expending resources on high profile virtue signaling are doing so at the expense of profits depends on a pretty strong assump

The theory that companies that are expending resources on high profile virtue signaling are doing so at the expense of profits depends on a pretty strong assumption that the executives don't know where their paycheck is coming from. Companies can blow money on many different things and still be highly successful. Tweets and other empty promises are extremely cheap and stapling your brand to fashionable kumbaya is a well established way to self promote and distract attention from your core businesses externalities. If you go look at ESG funds mostly appear to just be an excuse to extract higher fees out of what are essentially just broad market index ETFs (with a couple companies filtered out). ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/tidal-wave-of-esg-funds-brings-profit-to-wall-street-11615887004 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tidal-wave-of-esg-funds-brings-... ) It makes sense that this successful grift would be repeated in every applicable flavor. I find it amusing to see the large amount of overlap between ACVF and various ESG funds -- Microsoft, Visa, Costco... the fact is that if the funds don't produce market returns people won't invest in them in large numbers, and the only way to get market returns is to invest in the market, overall, in one way or another.