George Rebane
Al Gore and David Blood have written ‘A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism’ in the 14dec11 WSJ. This is a remarkable tour de farce that demonstrates conclusively the gross ignorance that both authors have of human nature and capitalism. We recall that both are also with Generation Investment Management, a private lobbying and investment firm that uses something it calls “sustainability research” to identify enterprises in which to invest. In their own words –
Generation has built a global research platform to integrate sustainability research into fundamental equity analysis. … We focus on key drivers of global change, including climate change and environmental degradation; poverty and development; water and natural resource scarcity; pandemics and healthcare; and demographics, migration and urbanization.
From their website one quickly concludes that Blood and Gore (an appropriately named pair) are in the business of profiting from almost every dimension of human misery available – manmade and natural. (You remember Big Al, the guy who couldn’t convince anyone that he invented the internet? But he did invent Anthropogenic Global Warming, and for that they gave him a Nobel prize.) Now all these two need is to have some witless government guarantee markets for and then subsidize certain private enterprises which can then capitalize on a supposedly sustainable approach to alleviating the problem. And their considered bet is that witless governments abound – who can forget Solyndra et al?
In their ‘manifesto’ these two socio-political mavens propose to revamp capitalism into an economic system that addresses “real needs while integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision making process.” These TBD metrics are supposed to incorporate the “true value” of a business activity, and meld ESG with the traditional profit motive. However, all of this will take place in future managed markets (with “established fair prices”) in which the new sustainable capitalism is to deliver its returns in the “encouraged longer term” through “incentivized” investing with “loyalty-driven securities”.
Apparently through the more than nudged “embrace (of) environmental, social, and governance metrics”, things will be worked out so that governments can easily identify and justify commensurate public policies which assure that the metrically correct corporations will succeed. As anyone familiar with utility theory knows, such metrics or utilities can be fashioned and cobbled together to justify damn near any preferential policy desired. The main thing is to control the manufacture of the metric, and that presumably is where Generation Investment Management’s boys and girls and their “sustainability research” will come in to lend a hand.
Now I don’t know why Big Al and his sidekick wanted to have their manifesto published in the op-ed section of the WSJ, arguably the most read newspaper pages in the world. You may respond, well there you have it, they wanted the most eyeballs exposed to their newest road to a socialist command economy. But here’s the rub, WSJ readers know all about Big Al, the manic mental midget. To them the manifesto is an entertaining (read laughable) form of ‘forewarned is forearmed’.
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