For some odd reason, I follow the MN Chamber of Commerce on Twitter. Probably because I had to in order to do work on some campaign I wrote speeches for long ago.
Well, I am sort of glad and sort of disgusted that I do. Because I ran across this:
NEW! The Minnesota Chamber Foundation just released its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Playbook. This details specific steps businesses can make to impact positive change, providing Minnesota businesses with a simplified and attainable approach to DEI. https://t.co/bn3KLzTDpd pic.twitter.com/ziN7va8vZ7
— MN Chamber of Commerce (@MN_Chamber) February 9, 2023
How exciting.
I was worried that they might be focused on ensuring that the economy doesn’t keep going to hell, that layoffs don’t keep piling up, and that small businesses (those that are left) can recover from the disaster the government created during the COVID pandemic.
But no, they have their eye on the ball. Just as Disney does. Somebody has to ensure that the alphabet people control a greater proportion of our society every day.
I clicked over to the “inclusion playbook,” and it was filled with worthless platitudes promoting the BS notion that populating businesses with people who are primed to sue them into oblivion for microaggressions is the key to growth. Hiring a more diverse workforce, ensuring racial and gender quotas are met, and having struggle sessions in between trips to HR for retraining turn out to be the key to profitability.
Clearly, this was written by a Sociology major who minored in Ethnic Studies. I’ve read the studies before and they are masterfully manipulated statistical gobbledygook. They rely on people not knowing basic statistics, and not having a lick of common sense. Big business tends to be more diverse because they are big; it is not being diverse that makes them so.
I’m certainly not disputing that people from all walks of life have talent and that even some people whose hair color gives off a radioactive glow can be talented. If a transgendered queer person who dresses as a dog in their free time is the best coder in the world, hire them. That’s how you make money: hire talented people who work hard.
Just don’t hire them because they are a transgendered queer who likes doggie masks. See how that worked out for the Department of Energy.
The DEI initiative is apparently being pushed by the US Chamber of Commerce, which for some reason thinks that in the midst of an economy that is wracked by inflation and layoffs DEI issues belong at the top of mind for corporate executives.
It clearly has worked well for Disney, so why not export the model to the rest of corporate America?
Actually, it already has taken over corporate America. If there is one thing I know about the Chamber of Commerce, it’s that it doesn’t lead business, it follows. The Chamber exists to promote the interests of big business. So apparently big business thinks that virtue signaling is the path to success.
And with Joe Biden in office, perhaps it is. Big business now relies on big government to get big profits.
Corporate America long ago gave up any pretense of being the vanguard of capitalism; major corporations as often as not are the first ones to push regulations, as long as those regulations serve to hinder their smaller and more nimble competitors.
Once a corporation gets large enough it tends to stagnate, preferring to hamper the growth of competitors rather than outcompete them. Innovation often becomes a last resort. This isn’t always true, but there are more Boeings than Apples in the corporate world.
So these corporations become partners with the government, and the safest stance to take is aligning with the cultural and political elite. That means going woke these days, even if many average Americans don’t like it. Pleasing government matters more than pleasing customers as often as not.
It took a long time for Republicans to learn that corporate America left the free market behind long ago; for too long Republicans thought that pro-market meant pro-business.
That may once have been true, but isn’t now.
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