Business Pants – 2023-01-19

Live. From the Black Rock Man Cave. I've always wanted to be in that. We've never been there. I never invited. It's a yes, Mom. We're gonna play the good game in 2023 episode of business pants. Yeah. Join as always, by the Lord of BS. I'm the guy who Larry Fink keeps mistakenly referring to as one of his least favorite Uber drivers. What's the deal with that? Why you driving an Uber, why I thought I was pretty nice hilarious. And today's Barry the lead please ESG stained back of Excellence. Centered nuggets called January 19th 2023. The good game featuring our first fancy expert of the Year strive asset managers co-founder and executive chair Vivek ramaswamy. Matt. What you don't know? That Vivic needs a lot of introduction to our audience. We talk about Vivica A lot. We talk about you all the time because we simultaneously like and hate half the things you're doing just like that. That's what we think about everybody though. That's that's all what I say to my wife. So it's win-win everywhere, besides a pretty good, pretty good ratio I'll take that. Yeah I know we're winning but yeah Vivek is is a startup Founder, he wrote woke Inc. He founded strive Asset Management. Vivix the you're the well, would you call yourself the tip of the Spear of the anti-wolf? The tip of the spear wow. Like this. I don't like to think of myself as being anything. I think of myself as being as the tip of the Spear of the pro Excellence movement. That's wow. Excellent. Okay. Like that refreshing guys before we get going, who exactly is anti Excellence. Is there a person a little bit, really. A lot of people who are against excellent apologetic pursuit of Excellence, because they're in favor of other affirmative values. Like Equity has been Equity, is it? We're already getting into it. Equity is anti Excellence. I find Equity. Excellent. Okay, good. We have a lot to discuss them. Let's do this thing. We're gonna play the good game Vivek. I'll explain to you, I'll explain to our audience. Here's how the good game started. Very simply my mother, my actual mother. Who is who was an avid listener? I don't know. Sometimes are our charting goes up. Goes down one time. She said to me, what do you guys complain so much? I want you have some good stuff. Good stories. So we developed a good game and this is how it works. I pick headlines that feel good to me. And then I and then I asked experts, like yourself like Matt to tell me to actually weigh in. Is it actually good? Is this really good? Or am I just an idiotic snowflake? All right. Mostly that I'm wearing a winter hat so maybe I don't go into options so yeah. Well, we don't know me that. Well, if we could do this in all binaries, that's you. Yeah. It's funny that most labels describing me start with the adjective idiotic. I'll have to look into that but you're you're, you're screenplay used to be just Damian roles. Comma idiot. All right enough, flattering? Yeah, that's good. All right. Does that make sense to you Vivica? Are you ready to handle this? I know you have a time time, constraint. So let's just get into it. Yeah, that's good. Here we go. Just throwing Matt little Little game show music there for you, Matt. Oh God, here we go. The first headline, Microsoft is giving, this is a softball. Microsoft is giving it some us employees. Unlimited time off. See, these are all ESG. Adjacent headlines. Vivic es org. Yeah, go ahead, Matt. So I'll go first, um, just to set the tone so research by some random company that I don't have never heard of namely found that employees when given unlimited time off by their companies. Actually only took 0.73 days off on average more than they already had. They took less than one extra day. This feels like the ultimate corporate head fake. Like if it feels like here we're gonna give its like internal greenwashing. It is good. You were gonna give you unlimited time off. You should love us. And then we're gonna give you twice as much work in your camera. Gonna score. Just giving this a two out of 10. I don't like it. Vivek, I'm giving it a five, straight down, the Fairway. And here's why. Yeah, let's hear actually don't mind the policy and I've run a, you know, biotech company before it's a, you know, multi-billion dollar company today, I've stepped aside to CEO, but I had experiences as an entrepreneur before. My experience was different. I actually found that experience that employees took less vacation when you offer when you got rid of vacation limitations in the first place. So certainly vacations were a forcing function to force. Now that's the kind of the culture we had, it was the younger companies startup, it's not Microsoft but what I would say is I don't have a problem with the policy but why not a five is, I have a problem with announcing it and making a big fuss out of it, right? Because that's about sending a signal about something else, then what the policy can actually be, which is about autonomy and about the fact that we make decisions based on Merit and as long as it's Pro meritocracy, I'm in favor of it to say that we don't care what an easy. Take we you get ahead of the company based on the continent was signal. Do you think they're trying to send I think they're trying to send a signal that is apologist to a generation of Americans that believe that hard work is somehow an assault on their identity. And I think there's a big epidemic of laziness in the country and I think that they're trying to send a smoke signal saying that don't worry, we're on your side. When in fact it doesn't have to be that it can actually be a policy that enhances personal autonomy and agency. Know, did you develop this theory on laziness just when you join this show, just when you just like five minutes ago or is this something? You know? I I it's a subject of it's a core pillar. In my second book actually came out. This is so walking was the first one you mentioned. I had a second book that came out this last September and my basic premise, one of my basic premises that book is Success. Our national success breeds entitlement, entitlement then breeds laziness, and that's what leads to victimhood because victimhood basically, you know, fits laziness like a glove. Sounds like you're talking about rich, kids and suburbs, that's what I'm thinking about when you talk, it does feel. It it's one of the places where you see, it's not the only place you see. All right, moving on. Matt you got something to say you look you look anxious over there, can I move on? All right, limited time limit. It's like I used simultaneously agree and like epidemic is strong Vivek is maybe a future politician because if he's answering five I think he's playing, that's good. That's a good for me. Actually, I don't get a lot of playing both. I'm gonna want a 10 on that. I'm actually love the policy. Okay, I like that moving on. Next headline, 97% of top Executives. Expect climate change to impact companies, strategy, and operations. This is from Deloitte 97%. I mean, yeah. So this is one of those surveys. They survey 2000 c-suite Executives in 24 countries, but almost half of them were basically European. So there's already sort of slant in it, but most of the companies more than half of them were two billion plus Revenue. So they're big companies for the most part. I my actually I had to cheat and read the survey. Sure. Because the bottom five things like. So they listed in there like the positive impacts of sustainability. What were the top five? Positive impacts of their sustainability efforts and in the bottom five responses. They included investor returns new Revenue, asset values, cost of capital and like old Revenue, effectively, recurring Revenue effectively. They said by doing sustainability, they're saying climate change is going to have an impact on our strategy and by doing it it will cost us money which to me is the incentive Gap. You're just you're just you just described like you're not, you know, what's going to have an impact and you're not going to do anything about it most likely or you're just going to do the bare minimum because of the potential cost to Capital and revenue in the short term. That was there a number in there somewhere? Yeah. Why not? I don't know. I yeah I feel like it's it's good that they expected but fucking do something. I'm gonna go with the three. Okay. Just so you know in this show I run up to all whole numbers. I don't play Dustin. I would just give You one point four. So you can make okay before I'm stymie. I go ahead. Why why one Vivic? Yes, so look, I think that there's a little bit of a Heisenberg uncertainty dilemma going on here. Okay, what I mean by that? Yeah, by observing actually phenomenon, right? They're changing the underlying phenomenon. They're leading the witness. And so I I would venture to Guess that if you actually deductively conducted that survey and ask people, what are the top issues that you expect to impact your business or whatever is the way they want to phrase it as unbiased as they can. You get examples from Executives that are specific to their business. One, two, three, four, and five. I don't think climate change shows up on most of those lists. I just don't think it does. I think that if you're Semiconductor Company, China, invading Taiwan might show up, which isn't a particularly popular Trope, in the ESG movement, that would show up on should show up on an Intel or Nvidia list. But anyway, there are other business, specific risks and opportunities and and issues that would show up. But you lead the witness with the question about climate change. What else do you expect to get? Well, I think it's a big part of what's going on. Here's what I understand, whether you're, what are your four climate change? Or, again, blah, blah? I don't care. This, there's political size, all this, isn't there? Money to be made from it, from both sides. This is why I don't get. Even if you think it's nonsense money to be made from what from the pr around it from the picture money, who cares? I don't perception for sure great. But money is made around the perception of many things. In our society, let's be real, right? Look, if the executive, I also think that the bias in a survey like this is like take Get to the c-suite, you are generally on average in your 50s or 60s, right? You tend to be older, right? Unless you're like a young startup and you're in the c-suite or whatever but we're not. So we're talking about two billion plus revenue and we're talking about European companies where everyone's basically like dinosaur. Those aren't people who are going to live to see the impacts of climate change. Therefore, their lists might be different based on just their life, the experience of their life, and what they're worried about because they're worried about tomorrow. But if you asked Intel because you use Intel as an example, Intel is interesting to me because right, they just turned off water to a municipality outside of Phoenix in Arizona. And Intel has one of their major plants, their semiconductor plants in Arizona, whether there's no water. I actually think some of these things are more top of mind. It depends on to your point, the biceps, the question who you're asking and where they are. I I do think that like I I don't think that it's Top of mind for 97% of Executives. Like it's not like the thing that they go home and they're like a honey. I'm really worried about the climate today. There's no fucking way in Phoenix. They might be, I'm not I'm living in Corporate America, I've been asking manager, investing companies talk to some of them but Here's here. I'll say there's two separate questions and I got to be careful. Not to conflate my views on the two, the question of number one is. Should it be on their top five lists? And second question. Is it is? There is it, is it? Yeah, we're talking about. So I'm gonna try to try to leave my own views on the first question Out In fairness to this, I still think this is leading the witness and it is just sociologically my view. That if you ask that blank slate, question for somebody shows up at work on a given day, even if they're European, you know, you know, it would say educated Aristocrat in the ways of modern lexicon even still. If you ask them on a given day, what are the top five issues in your mind for your business or how you want to frame the question climate change is just not going to show up on that top five list until you lead. The witness that they know exactly what they're supposed to say. Well, of course, it is hot, that's that voice is that is what I think. They're like at home with their monocle on the voicemail moving on and feel free to not to filibuster. Oh shut up play. A good game. With Vivica promise me and Matt mascardi. Yes, she expert. He even has the did I did MSI. Give you that t-shirt know. I retired msci. Didn't give me this. All right. Here's the headline, women, CEOs, other, otherwise known as female CEOs, you could do either interchangeable, women female, whatever you want, run more than 10% of Fortune to 500 companies for the first time in history. 10% come on. Is that good or bad or or neither? Or come on someone help me out. I mean, I don't care. Is the answer? I think that's not a score, just well. Okay, let me, let me put it this way. Let me from a different perspective. As we know, women are much more educated than men as it turned out average on average. Yeah. So was maybe this is a good thing. So can I just ask a question, why isn't the headline about what percentage of educated people run companies? And why do we have to use a low resolution heuristic if that's actually what we care about, right? I mean that's not what this is about. This is not about a heuristic of our, more competent people running companies because they would have been plenty ways to do to get that question other than retrofitting it and shooing it into two. Well, two binary genders. And then there's a question of whether or not there are, you know, other versions of genders that your shoehorning it into. But why she wanted the question of competence into gender. If that's really the thing you care about competence, talk about competence. If you care about diversity of experience screen people or talk about the diversity, so, Yeah, but the reason why the headline, the reason why the headline exactly before we talked Vivica, is there a score there? I mean, like I just, I, I just like, I would just take up, I don't care about this question. So if that puts me out of one, okay, that's you know what you're doing a, you're joining a good group here because Matt often doesn't care about me, I don't care about the things. They fix that. What do you think here? Matt, my problem with it is the reason why the heuristic exists so that the focus is on gender and not competence is because if you flip this headline and you say just under 90% of CEOs are white men, effectively white men and it's not going to be 90% is gonna be like, 806% right. There is no way mathematically or statistically that 86% of white men are more qualified to be CEOs than any other cohort. Like I just can't it's maybe it's a can't be possible. Can maybe it's that. I can't believe that. I give you a possibility. Go ahead. He could react to it maybe it's right. Maybe it's not, right? And I'm not, I'm not advancing this Theory, but I'm offering it as something possibility, okay? That for 50 years in this country, as you said, many of these people are going to be their 60s. So like, let's Trace back to when they were like 10 years old or younger. Were there differences in the 1960s and 1970s with respect to how people got an educational Head, Start based on the color of their skin or based on their gender? Yeah, probably were sure. Were those differences, big. I think they probably were right. So if you roll that forward into the present and competence and Effectiveness, and whatever your soul Arbiter, and that those early starts do, make a difference over the course of one's educational Arc and then ones entry into the marketplace that it wouldn't shock me that if the groups that were ahead 50 60 years ago, even getting that Early Head. Start did indeed. Be the people who and members of groups that were over-represented in those that were so that you. So the new would agree that in 10 to 20 years we should see this figure even out then I think. So if only metric and Merit the only metric I think we're going to naturally see an equilibration without a quota driven top-down system. Another not to weigh down my wonderful games. I know we have limited time and I'm already pre inviting you back to join us again. Join us regularly if you want. But but let me just ask you this how and I go, maybe this is not this, definitely not enough time for you to answer this so you can just shoot me a dirty look or whatever you want, but how does it? How does one, even Define competence Excellence? Merit like, who gets to find that? Do I get to the find that? I would love to get a crackhead? We made, I think each institution should Define it for itself. Okay. Purpose out of what is its core purpose? Okay. If you're a, if you're Disney, they say. They're so they're goal is to be the world's premier. Entertainment company. If you're a university, presumably your mission is to educate students and and sure, you know, students, whatever age they are. Whatever your purpose is, Excellence means Merit means hiring the kinds of people that best help you advance that purpose. Seeking out, the diversity of individuals and attributes and Views that allow you to best advance that purpose. And it would be curious to me if the same forms of off-the-shelf formulas that showed up in three letter, acronyms from ESG to Dei happened, to be the exact same formula for institutions that had Divergent diverse purposes in their own, right? And so that's why that's why I have a little bit of interest in skepticism. As you probably guessed to the three letter formula off the shelf model of borrowing, corporate purpose as a post to each institution incorporation, defining itself, they've got to Define Excellence means to them, that's what is he, right? Yeah, he gave a one I'm looking for your number Matt I'm giving it a five because it's really hard to sell a real life but a 10%. Like, It's doesn't sound good. Yeah. But I honestly the, the acronyms, the funny thing about the acronyms is they're they're pointless. Like I'll tell you from the inside and this is a conversation, we should have like again. Yeah, next time having built these things like there. It's data sets, it's randomly organized data sets, and it's just data sets. But the marketing gimmick, we live. We lived through the combination of es and I started as GMAT started his ass. It's a marketing gimmick. That's, I mean, as I couldn't give me, but that has in my opinion, a discursive impact on the way, people actually think. So, the people who originated and know how to use it and interpret it, like you all may see through the fact that it's a marketing gimmick, right? That has a, it's like back to that. Heisenberg affect the Heisenberg principal, you have an underlying impact on the supposed thing that you're describing or measuring including a new generation. That is so hungry for a cause and Purpose and meaning that join these companies that actually take these as cues for how they're supposed to think largely because they were cultivated in a generation where they weren't talked to think independently. Anyway, so this goes to deep-seated cultural issues, but what begins as a marketing gimmick can actually have cultural externalities for just so, you know, Vivic, we're the only ones, who were the only ones who come from this industry who are willing to call it a marketing again. We're the ones. Yeah. Yeah. I mean but and I also like taking the best of versions of why, you know, these with exist. Which if I made just finish that on the finish that point here, sure. I think that I talked about those inequalities or whatever, 60 years ago, that could account for a meritocratic decision-making system, that was still resulting in those kinds of disparities but should naturally close, I think core part of the authentic, not the marketing. I don't think, I don't think it's all a marketing gimmick, personally. I think that there are certain authentic Believers in advancing social agendas that say, you know what, those are inequalities that we need to address by rectifying and penalizing, the groups of people who perpetrated them, and we need quota systems. That elevate, the victim groups that were harmed. I don't really agree with that. I think it's a coherent and interesting point of view because actually, going on in the authentic version of this. But what I, what I sort of chafe at in this industry is that largely because the law demands it in certain cases, you retro fit that into some justification about this being about value creation or marriage or, you know creating value. That's the marketing angle. Well, it's an issues. It's not. Motivation. It's an ex post justification that stops us from having the real debate about how you Rectify historical Injustice, which is a much more interesting debate. Just not one, we're allowed to have because this is dateability decided it's about value Creation in the last 18 months. Let me translate that for you, what? He's, I'll put in terms of you'll understand. So like if you're playing basketball and you get fouled, right? You can then go to the free, throw line, to make up those points. And all the funny part about isg to me or Dei even is the the reason why we talk about it at all, is because a bunch of morons and I was one of those morons. And so it's Damian like 20 years ago, collected as much of the data as we could not. Because we had. And I could tell you this from the people, I knew in the way that we did it, right? So this is like it's relatively apocryphal in as much as my experience. We collected everything without necessarily knowing what had value disclosure nerds, we were disclosure nerds. We were still alive the more Know better. I love a decision and then when you hand that data to anybody else, I used to say to this this the clients all the time, like the the ESG movement was all was all about disclosure and as soon as you heard you hand Gordon Gekko, a bunch of information, he's gonna do something with it and it may not be what the nuns of Saint Francis do with it. There's just gonna do it differently with that argument and I think it like it's a great and I think you mean it when you say it I think it's a great package to appeal to people who have capitalist instincts in our Traders. I'm gonna I'm just you know, having fun and you know please you don't have to apologize for being here. I, I think that that's basically like a macho sort of veneer that you're wrapping around something that you don't have to apologize for either. Sure. Okay. I think that the, the disclosure wrapper around this I think is mostly fake because the question of what you select as an attribute for involves a normative choice. True of course, of course, questions are descriptive, but the selection of questions is not descriptive. It's normative. And so that don't buy the Gordon Gekko. It's supposed to design to like appeal to people who are like, presumably my old hedge fund friends. And like, yeah, we're cool. We just want to make money and we just care about the stuff environmental and social stuff, not because we have a heart, but because we want to like, make money. It's about like disclosure I guess mostly BS. And I'm very familiar that argument. I just he and you maybe you'll just I'm really curious maybe answers. Yes. Did you collect data on? Political viewpoints and whether or not they were registered members of one major political know, but we would have. But we, if we could have done it for information Gordon Gekko. Yeah. If we could have got, I would like, like, I'll tell you the. One of the first things that blew my mind, contribution, this public information. It's all information. That's not trackable to to corporations easily. Yes, that is trackable to corporations variously, because one of the things you're required to do, when you make a political donation, is actually, if you made a political donation, if and we made it a day, don't only works. If you have to scale for the entire board for every, for every not, just the us but, you know, the entire Globe, you think here's what it's actually going on. And I want to challenge you guys, but this new challenge you I think that the reason you didn't collect that and I'm not super personalizing this, but a lot of people don't collect that data is they don't want the answer when it comes to diversity on other attributes. Yeah, and the answer look at NASDAQ, right? So NASDAQ had. This rule changed, right? You'd explain yourself, you know what I'm talking about, right? If you collect information on, you know, raise sexual orientation, gender, and explain yourself. If you don't have to understand certain attributes. Well, it turns out when you propagate a rule change in this country the SEC which governs NASDAQ, it's the regulator of the exchanges has to go through a notice, and comment period. So public gets to provide comments. Somebody says, hey, how about we add just I'm not against that. How about we just add veteran and disability status to the list. They didn't even say political expression, which I think is an interesting better Arbiter of better proxy for Viewpoint diversity. Supposedly this is about preventing groupthink in the boardroom. Why not just screen candidates for the for boards on the diversity of their experiences or the diversity of their ideas and using these half? Hearted heuristics. But anyway, let's put political expression on one side, which actually think is a better proxy for a Viewpoint. Difference know this people just said, can we add veterans status and disability status because it might be a better heuristic for at least diversity of experience. Here's what they came back and said after consideration we've decided that there's a counterintuitive conclusion that adding more Arbiters or more distinctions of diversity would have the impact of reducing the desire to forms of diversity. So with all due respect, don't get gecko speeds that this is about disclosure and more information. You talking to you, man? Yeah, but but what NASDAQ does and what we collected as two very different things like the like, so, so NASDAQ, I disagree with NASDAQ. I want that information too. And in fact in 2007, you have to, but no, I really don't. I we built something called board saber metrics in which we are collecting political donations to the extent that we can and maping them to individuals on boards to understand what is the political diversity. The whole thing, we build, when we left the machine, when we built in 2007, ESG rating's, there wasn't that much information. I'll give you just helpful. This is less about the argument, what part of the country. They grew up in whether or not whether or not their self-reported with the grew up and not that they live in. They grew up in their house. Told income whether or not it was in the 25th. 50th 70th median percentile or medium percentile 25 to 50 or 75th I think those are interesting Arbiters of what we agree reporting well guess what you're just self-report your sexual orientation anyway. So so I think that I think you have an argument with, I have no problem with it. I just think there's no intellectual honesty in this and it is disclosure as a veneer for advancing an agenda. And the idea that it's just about more information is a bit of a smoke screen in a deflection. For the fact that the selection of the attributes is really just about quietly using an invisible hand, of a different kind to actually guide decisions in a certain direction. I think there's two things that are true. I think you downplay, how difficult it was in 2017 to get the data at scale in a way that was useful, right? We're talking about 15, 16 years ago, the big, the data that we have today didn't even exist. We were, we scraped as much as we possibly could because we literally did not care. We wanted to know Nautique of you because I don't know, I'm telling you the inside guts of a lot of the industry, I think there are a lot of people, I would be disingenuous for me to say that weren't people with agendas. But when it came to like, inside a beast like msci, who's run by a Libertarian who could give two fucks about, like really saving the planet. I think, you know, when we were building we're we were building something with an ethos of what is out there, what don't we know? What can we collect? And I think, inside in particular, like like, are they left or right handed? Because there's actually studies that show, like, people with left and right hands actually have different perceptions of the world. Are they stupid stuff? We look for everything stupid stuff. It might be interesting stuff, but my point is, Can you tell me if this is true or false? Just like honest introspection here, and not yourself, but of your of the industry Collective peers. Yeah, who we don't speak for but go ahead. Yes. Well, you know, I mean, because I'm more of a sure of Foreigner in your. But don't forget, we we left msci to create this creates something that was because we wanted to have a voice. We, you know, we won already in a country where I'm an immigrant. So, this topic just, you know, let's with that troll, people still help me, right? You're bettering what the majority party? Okay. So, I don't here's the I'm gonna offer hypothesis and then you tell me that it's you know, right or wrong. I don't think that we'd be talking about left-handed and right-handed and all of the other stuff that now gets added to that list of the implicit bias and and whatever else we're supposed to track for here and tracking. Proxies for desired forms of viewpoint diversity. If it weren't for mostly an ex post justification to deflect criticisms from people, like me that claimed that the agenda was something other than just dispassionately collecting information about all forms of diversity. My hypothesis is that this is about race, gender, and sexual orientation. There are deep pitfalls and even self-acknowledged pitfalls that the proponents of collection of such data acknowledge and realize that, even if it's not deflection for the purpose of external purposes, even internally to feel like to actually honest. After the fact, they added a bunch of other attributes. But let's say we were all the same race and and sexual orientation and gender were not an issue that we would not be tracking these other attributes but for a little bit of a tail that came on and joined for the fun of actually making us feel like this was an election on. Tell me that's not hold on, I'll let Matt answer this. It but can I just give you the sobering reality of where this actually started? I know I know that people are really fixated on things like gender and sexual orientation on it. Great, that's great, but the sobering reality of worth that at least the G and ESG was started, was the collapse of Enron. Right? And and how can we identify? Hold on. No, we are. We're talking about all of it. This is because this is a part of it. The G is what you're just described. If you're just describing gender stats and it's part of it. It's who is running the company, right? So the sobering reality is that people wanted a way to, to maybe, potentially identify risk going forward. But you're the one fixated on these things, and I'm glad that you're well, I think that women who run companies, you're fixing it on competence, I don't even know where you get that. Frankly, I don't understand that. I think there's a history lesson piece of this which is I already got a whole disclosure movement. First of all, it started 3,000 years ago, with religious investors, right? Like it was about like what business lines or whatever. The The birth of like modern ESG was was gri, which is the disclosure tool built off of environmental issues and the Exxon Valdez spill it had nothing. In fact, none of the early Gris asked anything about, like, gender there was no gender politic well with all of that was, right? Yeah. It was, it was the people piece of this actually wasn't interesting until Enron when people started asking whose running these companies, who's doing the audits, why are they doing it this way? And then, you start Gathering the data on those kinds of things. What happens afterwards and I'm telling you this from the Viewpoint of people who built the thing, right? What happens afterwards start, that is the unintended consequence. Because when you put the data out in the world, there are millions of people are going to see it and attach their own agendas to it, as in as they will have any region. Anything, like Eminem's, whatever they'll put under their lands, we can't help we read these Headlines. Some of our reactions are actually very similar to yours like yeah. Why are we focused on this way? Instead of, like, 10 years ago, we were focused on the other way and we have like some of the same reactions, the use the using, it is a different sort of his experiments at a plot, and you draw some straight lines through and you drew an interesting one. I'll draw you another one and, you know, I mean, again, the lines you drop through a scatter, plot are often in normative choice. Right? I would say they always are, but yeah, go ahead. Almost always are unless it's unless it's Tethered to some sort of formula derived from a law of physics in the universe of how you were talking about finance and public. Yeah, right. Yeah, one the same page there. So self-admittedly I'll draw your different one that that's it, you know. got objective, but it's a narrative but it's a but it's a narrative that It's nonetheless supported by the fact that everybody as much as your narrative just was, I think what happened was after the 2008 financial crisis, there was a need for financial institutions, capitalism broadly to apologize for the Gordon get-go model of capitalism and they didn't they wanted to do it without actually submitting and bending the need to the Occupy Wall Street demands, which called for decimating, the whole system and they saw fissure in two wings of a progressive movement, that both of which were after accountability. And by the way, I was also in of the bailouts like many movements in the Progressive Movement or that time I got my first job at a hedge fund in the fall 2017 that earned an honorable mention my closest book, The Big Short I love the stuff I watched it. Okay. What happened was that Occupy Wall Street wanted to take money from those wealthy Banks and redistributed to poor people to help poor people. Because after all the money, their balance sheets was largely the money provided by the public, you know, 84 by taxpayers, I think there's an interesting class. And one that I at least had some sympathy for, even if that wasn't The policy solution I would have favored. But right around that time there was the birth of a new Neo Progressive Movement that said well there's other problems that we need to deal with racism misogyny bigotry, climate change on the list, right? And if your financial institution That's a much more appealing solution to embrace, those causes rather than to submit to the most. Naked demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement. And that's exactly what happened to embrace those causes. But by name only, or an actual, an actual, because they didn't know action, as you could take to plausibly. Support the the green, what you mean by embrace it in a green Washi way? Is that what you mean? And I don't think Total greenwashing Works. So embrace it to whatever minimal level of action. You need to take to support the alleged green label, or the three letter acronym eyes label to get them off, to get the left off your back. They did it and I think that's effective. What happened is that they lend as little of their corporate power as they could. But lent, corporate power nonetheless to defend Occupy Wall Street and Elevate this new racial gender identity climate change of set Progressive Movement. Well, I didn't love each other, right? It's kind of like, Mutual prostitution, but there are bed fellows, they each got something out of the trade and that's the story. The last 14 years. I don't think that I will. First of all, I Think that you're the timeline is way like shorter than you think as in they didn't do that until much more recently, but I'll say that the old stuff was something different. I'm saying that it did the character of it changed, even though ESG came out in 2004 and an sort of responsible investing before that, that's fine. I'm aware of some of this history. I'm talking about their Embrace of it like they're Embrace of the products, the product launches didn't happen really in Earnest, like the green Washi. Like, let's, let's all remodel ourselves to sustainable. We, we actually launched this company in part to make fun of how fucking ridiculous. Like some of these like because you get these, you know, it's like oh now we're saving the world. Oh yeah. Yesterday you were not though. That stuff actually didn't have you feel or Jamie Diamond. Yes. Yeah. We call them healer it. That was like 20. 17 28. Like it later. It's a crescendo, I mean, I'll take you back to 2012. Okay? So this is traces directly to 2008 origin story perhaps that. I'm gonna about to tell you, you may not know in most audience members, won't know, but it's interesting. I think at least Interesting to people like me who are into this stuff, right? So the big Banks had reached Mega like publicly announced settlements with the Obama justice department. The doj 5 billion for Goldman is like 13 billion for some of the other Banks big Dollar settlements for the alleged sins. Heading up to the 2008 financial crisis. It turns out the Obama Administration wanted to fund a lot of causes that a tea party. Congress said they're not going to be willing to fund including donations to nonprofits like the National Urban League and La Raza and a bunch of others. Anyway, they made it closed room deal with those big Banks where they said actually you know what, here's the press release, we put out for how much your fines are but we can give you a two-for-one discount or even in some cases a three-for-one discount for every dollar. You give to one of these non-profits you owe three less three fewer dollars to the public fisc Banks. Being fond of money took that trade and actually makes for much better. Press release to say that you're donating your non-profit rather than paying a criminal penalty. Oh and by the way many of those are five ones to get you taxed enough to go you know shared action on your net income. So Everyone got something out of that trade but it was the beginning of again this trend of advancing substantive social agenda at some cost. But at a cost that was still smaller than what the alternative would have been and you a trend like this four or five years isn't really that long of a time. It's just a crescendo that I would I would actually one Trump pulls out a pair of climate, then then, you know, then there's a new Reawakening that says, you know, Business Leaders. If government leaders are not gonna solve the problem Business Leaders have to step up into the void, then they start believing their own lie and start feeling sanctimonious about it and that gets us to where we are. Big. I would argue with you that this I call this like the pitch, the Pitchfork on fire Theory, I would argue that this is been going on forever and that is that the leaders of our world and our nation. And they realize that they sense they feel when people are starting to come for them. Right? And they need to kind of dull out Pitt's or statements or whatever to keep the masses to quell the masses to quiet, but this has been going on forever. This is not a new thing. Well, so social media is a new thing and it but pushes out the narrative in a way that makes you think there's a cacophony of this, but this is not happening for all of human history. This is just the version that's happening now. So, one of one thing, it's very people who think people outside things, right? Like here, see Smoke Filled Room, it's what I call emergent conspiracy. It's well, there could be a conspiracy. Let's not forget about that. When we first started this in 2019, was it? That are the first Target we made fun of was the Business Roundtable for pretending for pretending to support that was bulshit. For pretending to support stakeholder capitalism, we was bulshit and that was really our first Target. So in this sense it, what it was, a kind of a collective effort to pretend to be in to stakeholder capitalism, but I think actually that you have to draw a line between what is said by the corporations and and honestly, there are ability. That's our shout, The Narrative on social media is actually the biggest differentiator like because the crescendo doesn't exist without a way to get that message out and so social media is the way and it's controlled by three people, right? Like the entire social media hours on social media. I have so much. They have tempted to. I got a role, but you got about this. Well, you are coming back, right? You are turning just fine. Yeah, this is the real conversation. Wait to see our bill, the way to see how much we charge you for this. You can bounce Damian, and I will wrap up the first thank you to destroy my good game. You completely destroyed my game so I think, but yeah, that's okay. To do it. We'll talk to you soon Vivek. Thank you. I'm Matt. Do you want to do you want to reflect on our visit from our fancy expert? Or would you like to? Yeah, I think before like four, you wrap on that and our first ever a bridge, good game. I want to report I still want to report the scores because we have a lot of Geeks at home that like to know these things do we? Yeah. Matt you came in at a three and Vivid came in at a two so you're both pessimistic a holes. Okay. So he's not great. Yeah I I think I think there's a lot. First of all, I don't understand the focus on Dei. I look, this is something that I don't, I find it fascinating that he went right from a headline about female CEOs, into competence. I it is a weird and it's not just Vivic, it's it's this entire the entire movement of this theater. It is a. Yeah, I don't get the, it is a little alarming that like the over focus on Dei and I don't, I don't know why we would fight against like, it presupposes that that anyone diverse is not competent. Like, it's a sad thing to admit. Oh, adding diversity. Are adding them because they're less competent and they feel like they have to add what company would ever do that. Zero companies would do that, that I can think of like we've studied companies for 20 years and I can't think of a single company that would just be like you know publicly traded Corporation a public CEO. Who we know is stupid, who's an idiot? We know is a product of a bias system against white men but because they're Hispanic, we're gonna make them see. Even though they went to even though they went to Harvard because of our diversity, we know they're an idiot. There's no, there's just no. We and you can't say like things like the pay Gap like oh, that's the competence Gap, right? Like, they're not getting paid is just depressing me. I'm Marcus. I'm excited to keep that. That's the one. That's the one area I do want to continue with him on, is this focus on this, this so-called Merit, the so-called competency. Next I I do want to hear the methodology behind that. I am really confused by the focus on it though. Like, why do we hate? Why do we care that much about it? Like because I think it's part of the theater of these culture wars. I I think you're trying to foment anger, you're trying to Create battle, the upside, like, the date upside, is that you, you guarantee the vote of an aggrieved, white male. I don't get my Republicans do this anyway because it's like a limited audience that they're pandering to. I don't get why. They only want aged white men, it's because it feels like a dying party, if that's what you're going to do, but that, you know, but that's just me the second part I don't get in any way, shape, or form. Is. We spent a lot of time where he really wanted to to discredit the data because he said there was bias and choose who likes the data to I think. But I can't understand like he won the data you want. If you you're in fine, you want the data. If you've been in finance, all I've ever heard from anyone in finance was give me the data. That's that literally msci for 15 years. All they said was you're ratings are nice, give us the data, right? Like yeah I think we can talk about this with him next time. I think he's been the the the the the offices of these companies that we worked at places like msci is like an Occupy Wall Street rally. Where in actuality it is a bunch of dollars to really don't have an opinion one way or the other. I I so rarely got engaged my colleagues at these places so rarely were engaged in politically active conversations that I don't know what people like. Vivica, imagine these places to be and maybe he'll tell me that, okay? You know, the, the average analyst is maybe not this person, but, you know, in the upper levels, they're having these heated discussions. I don't know. I never heard it for him to tell us what it was like for us to go like it. I like it. Like, that's nice. I appreciated that he had a an opinion that he stuck with. I don't appreciate that. He blew up my good game. That's all I'm gonna say. Well, here's the nobody cares about the good game, but I do think I do think that's absolutely not. You can't tell someone who said that, they care about it that. Nobody cares about the focus on those two things. But that's the well, what do you care about? That's the focus of this movement. You might be outraged that NASDAQ sets a quota for, you know, diversity on a board. All right, fine. Like you could be outraged about that. Write your comment letter soon as that and, and move on with your life. But oh, like the whole thing, his point though, I don't understand that or you might be outraged, that I didn't have. The boards aren't aren't women, because they are more educated like, that could be a source of outrage too. Yeah, I don't understand why you would like the the reason why the, like you want to purposefully ignore the reason why the quota gets put in place in the first place because there is Increasingly volumes of evidence that people are systematically eliminated from the pool of board applicants like we, we know that we, I didn't have the heart to tell them that you did. One of the studies. Why, why would you you should have? Why wouldn't you have? Well, I forgot about it because listening about you, the only the I enjoyed most of his opinions. The only opinion that I thought was literally coded in like an off smelling kind of, actually was this bizarre thought that because 60 years ago, which maybe is the average age of a board member, maybe 55 60. Because in that point in history, in the American educational system since women and people call her were not were having a bad go of it, that they're probably less educated that really? I didn't know understand. That one that one wasn't, that was crazy, but that one was borderline creepy, the rest of it, I enjoyed I enjoyed. Yeah, that point that I understand that point. No, there's no there's no evidence to support that. There's no, I'm not saying I agree with that point but like that, that coming at it from that lens being like to describe the reason why there's 80%, or 90% white men in power, is to go backwards and look at what the power structures over. Talk about what we didn't talk about the effects of networking, now we didn't talk about those. Yeah, which is why we need to have him back on. Which. Yeah, I don't even talk about our core products. Yeah, I mean we talked about some of that stuff the weirdest and yet most enlightening, Enlightening, like we've ever played, I mean, like, no, look, I enjoyed nobody on the ESG, like S&P Global. ESG podcast is not gonna have Vivica gone, right? Can I say this before you wrap before you incoherently wrap up? Can I say this? If you are on the ESG side of things, if you are on the antibiotic setup things, let's say. And you too have a passionate opinion opinions. Come join us tomorrow as you wrap up the week. Big, thanks to Vivint ramaswami for showing up and debating with us. What it was it was a debate. Next time, maybe we'll have more fun or we'll just debate more until then. Goodbye.