By Bruce Pardy, special to Financial Post, January 18, 2023
For years, the World Economic Forum, an unholy alliance of political leaders, corporate elites and wealthy aristocrats, has championed ESG, the “environmental, social, and governance” model of business administration, whose central premise is that private business should be compelled to achieve social good.
The agenda for this week’s WEF meeting in Davos is chock-a-block with ESG themes and messages, including that corporate leaders should use their companies’ resources to tackle the social and environmental issues of our time and change the way capitalism works. But the label “ESG” itself does not appear. Perhaps they are feeling a backlash, and for good reason. Also known as “stakeholder capitalism” and “corporate social responsibility,” ESG is a terrible idea that represents the end of apolitical commerce. ESG is corporate socialism.