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Adding to this: - As more banks participate in ESG and experiment with what they can get away with, people may lose access to their funds if they hold the wron

Adding to this: - As more banks participate in ESG and experiment with what they can get away with, people may lose access to their funds if they hold the wrong beliefs or lack good social credit score. This is already in place in China and all the big banks are looking at dipping their toes into this game. PayPal already experimented with this and back-peddled when their stock dipped as a result. A few dozen big banks in the US are now participating in ESG. Only time will tell what they dare to implement.

Ruthalas 4y ago
What is 'ESG' in this context?
- klyrs 4y ago
  "Discriminating" against the oil industry
  - junofan 4y ago
    Strangely the oil industry is doing great. And their ESG metrics look great, too.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    They love it. To oil companies, ESG offers a way to offset their environmental crimes using cheap social activism.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  ESG's are environmental, social, and governance metrics. It is a method of altering the behavior of businesses and individuals through incentives or in some cases disincentives. Rather than altering group and individual behavior through legislation, banks and financial institutions can alter the behavior of businesses and people using a social credit score. The legislators of my state and several other states are actively fighting banks that exhibit this behavior. None of the small banks I interact with will ever participate in that concept. [1] - https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/financial-institutions-are-expanding-esg-social-credit-scores-to-target-individuals-small-businesses https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publication...
  - scarface74 4y ago
    So in other words, conservative states are involved in the “cancel culture” and it’s costing the states taxpayers of those same governments millions https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120457153/texas-ban-on-firms-who-dont-invest-in-firearms-and-fossil-fuels-are-cost-taxpaye https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120457153/texas-ban-on-firms...
- ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
  The core idea is that pension funds should only invest in companies which are socially responsible. In order to achieve this, pension funds/large investors assign (or outsource the assignment of) scores to each companies based on each company's "Environmental, Social, and Governance" practices. As these have become more and more standard, large corporations have started changing their policies to improve their ESG scores. Pushing companies to be more responsible for externalities sounds good and reasonable, but the implementation gives a lot of power to the people who define and calculate ESG scores, and like all metrics, ESG scores are flawed and gameable. (A common complaint is that companies can get away with dispicable behavior by gaming the scores in other categories.) These scores are currently a big deal on the right, since they tend to be based on socially liberal values and tend to push companies into left-leaning policies, but the left should be just as concerned about the trend given that the trend is to reduce the diversity of policies among the very large companies which (seek to) control our lives.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
RichardCNormos 4y ago
You only have to look as far as Canada to see this in action. Canada leveraged banks for political revenge this year: https://yesithappened.substack.com/p/canada-froze-bank-accounts-for-political https://yesithappened.substack.com/p/canada-froze-bank-accou...
version_five 4y ago
This is bang-on. We're seeing daily examples of companies forcing their "values" on users, and it's most acute in big monopolies. It's fine to debate whether people should be kicked off twitter (they can just build their own lol), but depriving people of money in retaliation is a whole other level, only seen in places like Canada
- Asraelite 4y ago
  > only seen in places like Canada Did you mean China, or is there something that happened in Canada that I'm not aware of?
  - TeeMassive 4y ago
    They froze the bank accounts of some Freedom Convoy donors. The worse part of it is that some are denying that it happened, even though the Deputy Prime Minister made an official announcement about it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

Ruthalas 4y ago

What is 'ESG' in this context?

klyrs 4y ago
"Discriminating" against the oil industry
- junofan 4y ago
  Strangely the oil industry is doing great. And their ESG metrics look great, too.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  They love it. To oil companies, ESG offers a way to offset their environmental crimes using cheap social activism.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
LinuxBender 4y ago
ESG's are environmental, social, and governance metrics. It is a method of altering the behavior of businesses and individuals through incentives or in some cases disincentives. Rather than altering group and individual behavior through legislation, banks and financial institutions can alter the behavior of businesses and people using a social credit score. The legislators of my state and several other states are actively fighting banks that exhibit this behavior. None of the small banks I interact with will ever participate in that concept. [1] - https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/financial-institutions-are-expanding-esg-social-credit-scores-to-target-individuals-small-businesses https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publication...
- scarface74 4y ago
  So in other words, conservative states are involved in the “cancel culture” and it’s costing the states taxpayers of those same governments millions https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120457153/texas-ban-on-firms-who-dont-invest-in-firearms-and-fossil-fuels-are-cost-taxpaye https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120457153/texas-ban-on-firms...
ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
The core idea is that pension funds should only invest in companies which are socially responsible. In order to achieve this, pension funds/large investors assign (or outsource the assignment of) scores to each companies based on each company's "Environmental, Social, and Governance" practices. As these have become more and more standard, large corporations have started changing their policies to improve their ESG scores. Pushing companies to be more responsible for externalities sounds good and reasonable, but the implementation gives a lot of power to the people who define and calculate ESG scores, and like all metrics, ESG scores are flawed and gameable. (A common complaint is that companies can get away with dispicable behavior by gaming the scores in other categories.) These scores are currently a big deal on the right, since they tend to be based on socially liberal values and tend to push companies into left-leaning policies, but the left should be just as concerned about the trend given that the trend is to reduce the diversity of policies among the very large companies which (seek to) control our lives.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

RichardCNormos 4y ago

You only have to look as far as Canada to see this in action. Canada leveraged banks for political revenge this year: https://yesithappened.substack.com/p/canada-froze-bank-accounts-for-political https://yesithappened.substack.com/p/canada-froze-bank-accou...

version_five 4y ago

This is bang-on. We're seeing daily examples of companies forcing their "values" on users, and it's most acute in big monopolies. It's fine to debate whether people should be kicked off twitter (they can just build their own lol), but depriving people of money in retaliation is a whole other level, only seen in places like Canada

Asraelite 4y ago
> only seen in places like Canada Did you mean China, or is there something that happened in Canada that I'm not aware of?
- TeeMassive 4y ago
  They froze the bank accounts of some Freedom Convoy donors. The worse part of it is that some are denying that it happened, even though the Deputy Prime Minister made an official announcement about it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]