el gato...you need to factor in that this is the plan....like the plethora of banks in the us, most companies need to go, and get owned by the STAKEHOLDERS not the shareholders...
Fox and Bud did this deliberately, knowing the outcomes....
This is a signal that they are not in control anymore....and no longer answer to shareholders.
They answer to STAKEHOLDERS....like BlackRock. ESG dontcha know?
people love to throw this around, but it seems implausible that vanguard 1.58% holder and blackrock 1.39% holder are somehow dominating the company when Stichting Anheuser-Busch InBev owns 33.4%.
Does money matter when the government will just bail you out if you go broke? Do customers matter? What came first in 2020, the bailouts or the lockdowns? What were most of the outcomes in 2020, financial or medical? If your company can't survive without bailouts, what do you do? 2008 showed that most major corporations cannot survive without .gov support. This is the largest cost of the 2008 crisis, you don't bite the hand that feeds. .gov is the one pushing woke, not the corporations, they're just doing what they need to do to get that next bailout.
Its all connected, which is why i would suggest you look into the 2008 mess more. Think of our system as an ecosystem for mega corporations, they can't sustain themselves anymore because the ecosystem is shrinking. If it wasn't, why were interest rates set at 0% for almost a decade? Do you borrow at 0? I don't, what kind of advantage do you have when you can? Why did the pandemic require bailouts that were larger then everything from 2008 up to 2019? I save money for a rainy day so i'm not beholden to anyone, why did mega corporations require bailouts for a "pandemic"? What is the largest motivator in our society el gato? Knowledge? Family? Religion? I'd argue none of those these days, its money. You really should read this if you haven't:
"In 2019, world economy was plagued by the same sickness that had caused the 2008 credit crunch. It was suffocating under an unsustainable mountain of debt. Many public companies could not generate enough profit to cover interest payments on their own debts and were staying afloat only by taking on new loans. ‘Zombie companies’ (with year-on-year low profitability, falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflow, and highly leveraged balance sheet) were rising everywhere. The repo market meltdown of September 2019 must be placed within this fragile economic context.
When the air is saturated with flammable materials, any spark can cause the explosion. And in the magical world of finance, tout se tient: one flap of a butterfly’s wings in a certain sector can send the whole house of cards tumbling down. In financial markets powered by cheap loans, any increase in interest rates is potentially cataclysmic for banks, hedge funds, pension funds and the entire government bond market, because the cost of borrowing increases and liquidity dries up. This is what happened with the ‘repocalypse’ of September 2019: interest rates spiked to 10.5% in a matter of hours, panic broke out affecting futures, options, currencies, and other markets where traders bet by borrowing from repos. The only way to defuse the contagion was by throwing as much liquidity as necessary into the system – like helicopters dropping thousands of gallons of water on a wildfire. Between September 2019 and March 2020, the Fed injected more than $9 trillion into the banking system, equivalent to more than 40% of US GDP."
My current thinking is that Stakeholder Capitalism is a re-imaging of the goals of corporations by re-defining who the customer is. Traditionally the product is something like fizzy soda-pop, the customer is the fella that plonks down his fifty cents for a small cup of Nehi grape soda at the diner, and all the advertising is done to convince that guy to buy fizzy pop, buy Nehi grape soda in particular, convince him that it will not only taste good but will also make his life better, and maybe act as an informal brand representative to get his buddies to drink Nehi too.
Stakeholdersim considers the true customer to be the investor, the manager, and the other vendors in the system of production, and the product is the consumer. The goal is to manage the customer in his purchases and his life to make sure he continues to buy, and continues to be "useful" in shelling out money and acting a brand representative, and as far as possible militarize it. After all, when you sell fizzy water you make the best you can of it, it is going to be drank by somebody. When you are selling access to the consumer, you sure as Hell don't want independent thought, individual taste, or qualms about personal agency to get in the way.
The reason this seems like some techno feudalism is because it is awfully similar to the Italian states' sumptuary laws to enforce class distinctions by dress and support local cloth guilds and Elizabeth I's degree that the English were to eat fish three times a week to support England's fishing and commercial fleet as she was trying to rebuild her navy in the 16th Century.
I first heard the term “activist shareholder” in 2014 when I was working for a publicly traded real estate company who had decided to expand into shale oil drilling. Within 2 years, these < 2% owners with ESG bent shut that company down & we were all laid off. They have only expanded this playbook since then.
Well Steve had a lot of reasons for being ejected from Apple. And come on, he was ousted by someone who sold sugar water before for a living. Sugar water is hardly transformative.
I don't know. Without him getting ousted, we would not have the new Unix based OS we have today on the mac, or maybe even PIXAR, or even the very entities which are now corrupted by Wokism. Steve was not the best guy in the world personality wise. He didn't bathe, he parked in handicap spots, he was rude and ran hot and cold on people, treated his daughter like S. I think being ousted gave him time to grow up in some ways.
so like the controlling interest doesn't have to align with the actions of those hurting the company while not controlling ownership if those in possession of the company don't intervene with idiocy working against them
vanguard, blackrock et al get to vote all the shares that individual shareholders don't...this gives them massive voting power. Plus they can manipulate who meets index criteria for inclusion.
why else would murdoch settle for 3/4 billion with dominion when they could have easily won the suit? and then fire carlson to see the share price drop and lose another billion the next day? same as elon smoking a joint on rogan and watching the share price drop.
they control more than that by imposing ESG through the boards. it's intentional corporate seppuku. when the share prices tank, who gets to buy up the heavily discounted shares? it is a hostile internal takeover.
Yes, you can add in the fact that sports leagues mysteriously all went woke. Always hesitant to appear political, they jumped in bed with BLM, seemingly against the beliefs of the fan base.
That Americans continue to support these leagues is a disgrace.
I see that indifference in a few friends and former ones who got jabbed. They don't seem to care they have been injected with poison. They are completely apathic to what is going on. It should be them standing everywhere, protesting that they have been misled, like that doctor whose dad died and suddenly woke up. It should not be us (alone), the uninjected, the uninjured. But apathy is all around!
I think the apathy in large part is because “we” or at least I feel that my objections to pretty much everything that has transpired in the last three years are censored and or considered “ dead f*cking wrong.” El Gato nails it with this “when all the world is a cage for speech, all speech is cagey and unworldly.” Look at the reaction to the Trump CNN “town hall”... people are outraged that CNN gave him a platform (never mind that he mopped the floor with Collins). The spin is that Trump showed himself to be a “formidable enemy” that needs to be silenced....I’m sorry, what country is this? When the media, big tech and our elected officials have partnered to disallow any opposition ( to their agenda of madness) it’s hard not to be apathetic.
Apathetic for survival! My blood pressure soars every time I hear about more wokism, and the tiny minorities being cowtowed to, changing language for them, changing laws for them. It's DISGUSTING!!!
15 homeless veterans were just evicted from a Hotel in Newburgh, NY to house a bus load of immigrants shuttled there from New York City. That’s where we are…
I've felt this way for years whenever I see Spanish printed along side English, especially in government related documents. Or multi-linqual (mostly Spanish)translations in automated phone messages. It makes me furious.
or terminally ill? I don't know. Some are not like that. Some do ask questions, but some are so brainwashed they obviously can no longer think. My best friend and my dad are in that category. Dad used to be very critical of govt etc. now just following orders. So sad.
I've always been critical of government and industry. Apparently it was only a fashion for my boomer cohorts, they fell in line quickly during the 80s. I tried to raise my children to question everything, and they do, up to a point. But as adults, they all got the jab and were terrified to visit us, only sitting outside while masked. And they embrace almost every woke concept. Any attempt to probe the logical basis for any of that is met with defensive anger and changing the subject. Yeah, I'm crazy old dad, I get that, but it's the absolute shutdown on any topic that puzzles me.
Same here. Dad a retired cop-became-attorney who spent a career in all ways sceptical and wary of self-serving interests believing their own bull manure -- only to face his end of life fears as a triple? quadruple? jabbed legacy media-quoting automaton who gets angry that the offspring he trained in scepticism wishes him to re-engage his brain. I'm still struggling to find peace around what this is doing to all of his loved ones while he is vocally lamenting how he's been abandoned by his "conspiracy theorist Trumpists "
The collective bottom has been demolished is so many ways....
Maybe just pragmatic. Let’s say you are a man in the latter years of middle age. You weren’t particularly concerned with Covid but neither were you particularly concerned about the vaccines. You learned long ago the government didn’t care about you but aren’t really expecting it to wipe out large segments of the population. So after some low level of coercion you get the jab, to see a loved one in the hospital, get onto an airplane, or go to a sporting event. Even though it was becoming apparent the entire thing was a farce you went ahead and got a booster because your elderly mother has been diagnosed with cancer and her doctor said she shouldn’t have unvaccinated visitors or because your doctor suggested it would be harder to get necessary medical procedures without being current or because you still thought the vaccines were mostly safe and did some necessary amount of good.
Eventually though it becomes apparent that the medical industry and your government have poisoned you and has taken years off your life. At first you are mad, water the tree of liberty mad. But then you look at it practically. How do you want to spend the time you have left? Sure you can spend it by spending hours on the internet learning exactly how diabolical the plan was and how screwed you are. You can spend it at protests and rallies or by joining a lawsuit. But in the end what does that get you? Even in the best case scenario is there such a thing as a desirable or worthwhile outcome? Whats more there is every likelihood that your fight will accomplish absolutely nothing worthwhile.
Or you can accept your lot, and your inability to do much to change it and focus on the changes you can effect. You can spend more time with your kids and grandkids. Take that trip even though you don’t really have the money. Spend more time in the garden or working on your hot rod. Get right with God.
I’m not jabbed, but if I knew the number of my days and it was less than I’d hoped I wouldn’t spend those days seeking either justice or vengeance. Instead I would want to fill every day I had left with the best things in this world, with beauty, love, kindness, joy, and fellowship. Maybe that’s the only hope of true change actually happening, that it comes not from the courtroom but from the softening of 270,000,000 hearts intent on making their little corner of this world better.
You have confined your comment to Covid/ vaccine. And, Dr. Tara, while your comment initially sounds nice, I just don’t buy it. History shows us too many occasions where pragmatism would have been very costly. I’m sure the guys who stormed the beaches on D Day would have hoped for a softening of hearts too but it didn’t happen. I am attracted to your idea but then I remind myself that the Dalai Lama resides in India not Tibet. I’m for beauty, love, kindness, joy and fellowship too, but, many times justice must be meted out.
A pragmatist also knows the value of time. And how much time is wasted walking around a fire hydrant three times every time one encounters one on the street, or sticking a banana in their ear to keep the alligators off the street. Wear a mask, stay home/stay safe, flatten the curve, bend the line, bend the knee. Vaccination is safe and effective!
A pragmatist of another sort would see a lot of these measures as impractical. A virus that only infects those who are walking and not sitting and eating? A virus that only infects people who are strangers and not friends? A pragmatist that sees that 6 ft. is an arbitrary number and means nothing, and looks with many questions at the person sitting alone in their car, masked...or outdoors on a motorcycle, without a helmet, and yet sporting the face covering.
A pragmatist that also knows that the government just didn't start lying to you three years ago. It's been going on for decades. The food pyramid for one thing. That AIDS effects all people equally. That we are in whatever country we are in to liberate it. That WMD's in Iraq were real. That the government is here to help you.
A pragmatist does know that a lot of this is an exercise in futility. But at the same time, also does care, not only for himself, but for others. And he can care about others for very selfish reasons. He knows that if they don't protect others, what treatment is worthy of them? What good is it to sit around, and feign caring about others, when you watch them walk into foolishness? Better is hidden love than open rebuke?
What good is time with loved ones and friends if you are faking it? If it is riddled with disingenuity? The only recourse would then be to take the blue pill. To rationalize their way into their reality. A reality where there has been a deadly virus and so,,,that would make them a bare faced plague spreader.
The problem is, we can't unsee what we have seen or unknow what we have known. Although maybe some of us can. Many already seem to have forgotten virology 101.
I don't seek justice or vengeance, but at times I have an impulse. If I could sentence Fauci and the other lackies, I would make them have to listen to their own voice 24/7 in all of its contradictory facets. And they would have to abide by their own inconstant rules in perpetuity.
What happens when the things you thought you valued don't even exist? When those you love are lost because of a difference in narrative? All things serve the narrative. And one of those things is loved ones. They will be sacrificed if they dare speak heresy against it.
I think that comes with the mass formation. Even those that are injured will not see it from the vaccine. I asked someone who still thinks we should be masking for her because she is immune compromised if she was vaccinated and she said yes, but the vaccine prevented her from worse symptoms.
Of course! Something she can never prove! NO ONE CAN EVER PROVE!! my covid was short-lived. Was it because I took ivermectin? Hydroxychloroquine? Both? I never got the vax, never got covid again. Is that because I take ivermectin once a week? The vaccine is poison. All vaccines are poison in my new estimation. And the medical community doles it out in all its flavors.
I've often stated this. The best we can hope to prove is that people of a similar demographic with similar histories and comorbidities were followed who were both vaccinated and unvaccinated. As anyone marinated in the narrative will tell you "it would be unethical to do that." And my answer is "not if they volunteered. 25-30% of us are unvaccinated. I am sure a cohort can be derived from this.
I don't think all vaccines are poison, but they aren't benevolent elixirs either. There are side effects and long term effects. Anyone who tells you different is selling you something.
I got Covid twice in 2020, once in February and again in December. It was like the flu, the second time it was milder, but I did lose my sense of smell (but even that happens with other viral infections).
Join us!!! Please! You are welcome! We have amassed over time in several spaces and the convergence has begun! This is why we left paradise! What could be more exciting? All it took, ironically was the OUTSPOKEN to refuse to ‘go sit down and shuthefukup!’ Betrayed, confused, bewildered, desperate, the true haters bounced to other platforms and they dug deeper, and talked louder and sent up smoke signals and found their tribe. Low and behold, the tribe is a Nation! Come to the circle! The dance is begun! Dr. Naomi Wolf is the long house where some of us made our camp. Join us there!
Followed by, "OMG! How did this happen without our noticing?", as they finally look up from their phones and begin to comprehend all that has been lost.
And the sports industry accepted all the Covid restrictions as well. They did a lot of things that were counter to making money. How silly is it going to age to see the carboard cutouts of fake people in the stands at an outdoor baseball venue. It already sounds patently ridiculous, and it did when I first saw it.
It was downright eerie. Like there had been a mass-death event and they were cargo cultists continuing to play the game hoping it would bring the world back. I couldn't watch it, I was too creeped out. Fake crowd noise was tolerable, but the cardboard cutouts, no way!
That's exactly what it was. They were colluding with the media giving us this ridiculous impression we were in the middle of a horribly imminent dangerous "mass-death" event. An event we already knew the answer to as the virus had been here for months. It's like a lifeguard blowing a whistle 4 hours into a swim at a pool declaring there was a "mass drowning event" because one person swallowed wrong.
And all the freaking masked players, owners, and managers OUTSIDE.
Do they though? Yes, the sportsball fans where I live still follow the local football team, and have superbowl/world series parties. But their general interest in sports doesn't seem as all-encompassing as it was before woke. Basketball, the wokest, has almost vanished, 'march madness" stirs a brief interest, not the wall-to-wall obsession it used to.
Agreed. I stopped watching and was pleased with the amount of my life I got back, no longer investing hours of my life into the useless activity of watching my favorite team.
I understand why it’s hard for people to divorce football, baseball, etc. There is a tribal element that does not exist when you switch to a different brand of beer. The tribal aspect hits an ancient part of our brain and is difficult to ignore. I still agree that it’s a disgrace, but I also understand why it’s hard. The whole weak men create hard times thing.
I was a huge fan of the NFL and my beloved Packers. No more. Wokeness is a poison that threatens our nation and, truly, Western civilization. Anyone advancing it is an existential enemy.
And you're right. I can't believe how much time I have on my hand in the fall.
I will never forgive the Orioles for rubbing out my "Winnin' Ugly" White Sox in '83. To this day, the name Tito Landrum raises my heart rate and blood pressure...
MLB lost me during the steroid era. Record books forever tainted by the juice.
Years ago I took my kids to a local AA team game and was surprised how much fun it was to watch. Yeah there were errors, and the pitchers and batters weren't the best, but it felt like how baseball should be.
Sweet Swinging Harold Baines, hailing from MD's Eastern Shore (and an O's alum for a spell) was on that team. So I looked it up: Future HOFer Carlton Fisk was on that squad and the coaching staff - kinda big deal guys like Jim Leyland, Dave Duncan, and Charley Lau.
Good squad. I'm not sorry we won the World Series that year!
If the profits take a hit, it's not a problem, since in the end, they're owned b y STAKEHOLDERS, not shareholders.
Remember when Target allowed men into women's bathrooms? Well, they're still in business, and now their children's department has a section of "pride" clothing.
DEI and ESG stuff can survive when profits are up, when the economy is humming along.
But when it's time to tighten the belt, sensible companies start by trimming the fat. Woke doesn't keep the lights on or cover the costs for those Team Building Keggers in the Parking Lot.
still in business - barely. But that has other economic factors as well. I was at a Walmart last week and took pictures of the Pride clothing they display in the childrens and teen/young adult section - one was from the mouse house pride collection another was from care bears. But if sales drop there it may also be because most of the chothes are now cheaply made and priced too expensive
Plus they will be able to get money from alternative sources to traditional costumers. For example, let's say all the bars in public buildings start offering just bud.
Even if this is true, and I agree with gato that generally it is not, it would still put these woke entities at a severe competitive disadvantage, eventually leading to their demise and the reallocation of their capital and assets to those more attuned to reality.
They are at a competitive disadvantage. I think they can survive for a bit because they have so many other fires getting ironed. Or something.
Like how Ford lost $1kabillion in their EV (maybe just truck) market but can carry on because people are still willing to drop $75k for an F-350 Diesel. That's still what people would prefer.
The EV absurdity is a perfect case in point, and will likely result in the demise of those auto makers that entirely, or even largely, embrace it.
EVs are neither "green" nor economic, having severe disadvantages vs. ICEs too numerous to list here, which is why they require large subsidies and government coercion to have much of a "market" at all.
Like so many things these days, the whole thing boils down to yet another corporatist scam.
As long as Uncle Sugar keeps doling out Cash - which these days isn't necessarily as good as Money - to both the buyer/drivers and the manufacturers then everyone will Love Them Some EV.
People have to stop buying them and, for that, people have to cut loose from the idea that the world is boiling away.
The "carbon credit" grift is basically just a redistribution scam, whereby lower income people buying $20K Kias and Corollas subsidize people buying $100K Teslas and other electric toys.
How does a company destroying its brand benefit the stakeholders?
Whether one denominates the benefit desired by the "stakeholders" as profit or as political power, eviscerating any brand for any entity works against that benefit.
If this is all "by design", how do the stakeholders gain? Where's their payout?
If there is no payout, why are these stakeholders not wielding their influence to get the payout that they want?
Good questions. Could it be that we have entities with sufficient wealth and power to keep companies and their leadership afloat even while driving their market value down? Then buy up more of the company cheaply, ease off on the woke, and regain profit for themselves when the customers come back?
While not impossible that scenario seems implausible.
Most hedge funds and Warren Buffett/Carl Icahn types of investors do not seek a majority ownership of a single company, but significant stakes in a multiple of companies. That is how they maintain equilibrium between investment risk and investment reward.
It does not benefit a stakeholder in such circumstances to alienate a sizable portion of the customer base, because it cannot be presumed that customers will return when the obnoxious woke policies are abandoned.
The one who would benefit would be an outsider looking to establish or increase a stake in a company at reduced share prices. However, such an individual investor by definition lacks the influence to implement the woke policies necessary for such a strategy.
It is a far simpler explanation, a far more parsimonious and economical explanation, to apprehend the woke policies as a misreading of the marketplace.
I hope you're right. But I'm not sure how having significant stakes in a multiple of companies contradicts the scenario I suggested.
Acquiring significant stakes in all companies would be the start. After that, the interest would be in increasing their ownership. Unlike the outsider, they do have the influence to implement policies customers don't like in individual companies they target, while balancing their own position and keeping the targetted company viable through subsidies from the other companies. They could do this round-robin, crashing, buying, and rebuilding one company after another, and always staying profitable because they are still invested in whatever other companies the angry customers defect to. Their end should be complete, monopoly control of all companies.
One way to check, I suppose, would be to see what proportion of the company is owned by the hedge investor before, and then after, a cycle of wokery.
"They could do this round-robin, crashing, buying, and rebuilding one company after another"
This presumes the rebuilding is a fairly straightforward and natural process. It is not, and it is not at all guaranteed to be successful. Such a strategy would be an high level of risk with a very low prospect of reward.
How badly do you think the company would be wrecked, if staffing and infrastructure are preserved through subsidies, and only the customers are driven away for a period, largely to other businesses the hedge investors also have ownership in? Would there be much real rebuilding to do?
There are plenty who subscribe to that theory about cities. Make them unlivable enough to drive out many, buy distressed real estate, reclaim as yours.
The flaw in that theory is that cities tend to be inherently "unlivable", and without compelling reason to the contrary, people generally prefer to live outside of them. This has been the tendency of mankind since the emergence of the very first cities at the dawn of history.
The archaeological sites of the world are overwhelmingly of cities which were abandoned for various reasons.
The great cities of the Maya were abandoned during the Mayan Collapse of the 12th century.
Indianola, Texas, was a town of 5,000 inhabitants abandoned in 1886 after multiple hurricanes and a catastrophic fire left the town largely unlivable.
Detroit, Michigan has lost over half its population in recent decades, following the decline of the US auto industry and its contribution to that city's economy.
China's "ghost cities" are a stark monument to the inherent "unlivability" of cities--entire urban areas, complete with infrastructure, that have failed to attract any significant influx of people from China's rural areas.
It is no challenge to make cities unlivable. They are that by nature. The challenge is to make them livable enough for people to remain there. Whether modern cities have fully met this challenge is a question not yet fully answered (although a great many are trying).
There are financial products which have sales pitches in which the plebes are alerted to “the miracle of compound interest.” It is interesting to consider that there are banking families that have been in the position of being able to take advantage of this “miracle” for hundreds of years. While doing so, hugely complex systems of interlocking bets and promises have developed with all sorts of papers and tokens that shift back and forth in exchanges for “real” goods such as gold, silver, timberland, farmland and “voluntary” human labor and productive thought. This shifting is a big part of what many people think of as “life.” Within it there are all different degrees of success in attempts to “guarantee” “survival” and “invulnerability” into the “future.” This keeps everyone “busy.” But what I wonder is, if you are in the position of collecting compound interest for hundreds of years and using the proceeds to acquire any and all real assets, could you regard this system, as huge and elaborated as it seems to be to the plebes, as nothing more than an aquarium fish tank in your living room that needs cleaning now and can be drained at will without any risk to yourself?
Couldn’t happen to a worse group of pretentious assholes. The woke (mostly white, mostly wealthy, college educated mind numbed libs). I love it when the market actually speaks!! Three cheers for freedom and the silent majority!
Exactly. And guess who fills the void of keeping your options open?
All those people who have the largest delta on the Y axis of a Dunning–Kruger graph.
They'll be happy to make your choice their priority, based on Dear Leaders decision, and be absolutely certain that is the only choice because it's easier to not make a choice.
Agree, but the left won’t kill you if you publicly disagree, but they’ll make sure to destroy you financially to their best ability. It’s a weird turn of events in America. Most people are still moderately in the middle, but the extremism of the left essentially runs out country - transsexualism for children, open borders, massive debt, giving up our energy freedom to save the earth…. We are run by compromised idiots so silent majority is what we have.
Trouble is, speaking out has become a crime, a social crime at minimum. (Why else is the I R S posting job openings for armed agents in all 50 states? Why else has the bureaucracy that reports to the executive branch become if not the largest, among the largest, and most well-armed on the planet?)
And so, as individuals, we are unable to provide a unified voice or an organized resistance. (The playbook is the fallout from the riot in early 2021.) Just as planned, an individual must take great risk to speak out almost anywhere. So, I can’t fault anyone for silence. I am a coward. The only thing that I know to do is throw sand in the machinery.
Doesn’t excuse Bud Light though. They knew their customer base for years, their previous advertising and marketing demonstrated it. Then, along comes an Ivy League overeducated, “expert” marketing guru and their entire brand is upended.
Yeah, that was the epic marketing fail until this one, but that happened pre-social media. And it was relatively easy to fix, just bring back “original” Coke. Not sure how Bud Light ever recovers from this one.
The day that the term “Ivy League educated” becomes a punchline and these peoples’ credibility is zero, the Beers are on me! Their supposed intelligence is painful.
Which was so blindly stupid of them because the My Pillow is what got a lot of people into the store! Then they decided to go almost exclusively to their own private brand.....Karma baby!!
It’s interesting that Bud held a special election - “woke or not”. Joe Sixpack voted and the results are in. The cultural revolution workers clearly have their work cut out for them, so it’s back to the drawing board.
Extremely important read this. Bravo. The writing is superb, thank you for the insight. Agreeing with this policy makes your company a ticking timebomb, ready to go broke. Though one part is maybe missing in this analysis: somebody is going to benefit and I guess that somebody is probably shorting the stocks who have the highest ESG / Woke scores.
That depends on too many factors I don't know about unfortunately. Currencies and their worth, the worth itself of the company, the money supplies around the world. Maybe black swan events will give hope. But main thing is collective truth IMHO. Too many secrets and too much power and unbridled manipulation of masses of people
These woke companies all have globalist primary shareholders like BlackRock or vanguard. The question then becomes: are they just trying to push the transhumanist agenda or are they deliberately trying to bankrupt certain companies? You could interpret Bud’s downfall as yet another attack on our culture.
blackrock and vanguard are in the biz of making money, not wrecking their portfolios.
i think they legitimately inhabit echo chambers so recursive that they have mistaken their own babble for base reality so they follow the horrifically bad maps they have drawn right off the edge of the world.
you cannot just "change people" like this. they push back and in the end, consumer sovereignty wins.
"blackrock and vanguard are in the biz of making money" --- I used to think that, but now I'm not so sure any longer.
I really hope that you are right, gato! Coz the alternative it too scary to contemplate. The most powerful groups and individuals being driven by fanatical idealism rather than profits would be very bad news.
I hope you’re right too, Gato. I don’t believe “mistakes” have much to do with anything after the last 3 years. If we’re seeing actions, I think they’re deliberate.
Maybe. Is Blackrock/Vanguard willing to sacrifice brands for their agenda? Maybe. We're assuming that we see everything that is going on in the world. Perhaps there are "deals" made in the dark and people are compensated for sacrificing their business. Crazy, I know, but we left normal in 2020.
And as I said elsewhere here, big companies have other funding sources so, if they take a hit in one place they can stop it up with profits from another arm. Like how the Ford EV line lost something like $700M last year but they can keep going because people still buy their ICE trucks.
But I agree that there might be others offering true financial incentives.
But they own all the competition too, except for independently owned companies. Listened to Larry Fink recently on a New York Times thing. One quote that stood out, “The last thing we want is the money to be moved to private hands, so when a company divests, it’s just going into private hands. It doesn’t mean the Net Zero footprint of the world changes.”
Add that to another quote I now paraphrase:
We must force new behaviors.
It’s not about money to them. It’s about control.
Have to love our purchasing power to small and local to have real impact against these conglomerates. Otherwise, they are just consolidating.
The echo chamber’s are very real. These people still think that the filthy unvaxxed are dying in droves. They believe everything they were told the last 3 years. They still believe natural immunity doesn’t exist. They think the unjabbed caused the variants. They think masks work. They think the vaccines were a huge win. I have a friend who says the puppet masters need to go. He hates war. But he won’t discuss RFK Jr’s campaign. What can you do with these people???
but blackrock is pushind eid through the backdoor of govt coercion and regulation and trying to frontrun it. you know, we have to save the planet from.....therefore we will end fossil fuels, create unicorn playgrounds for transpecies, and ...........
Is consumer sovereignty winning in China or Hong Kong or North Korea? The difference over here is that there are more layers of velvet disguising the iron fist. Those are rapidly being peeled off.
Yeah, but the business model changed. Now, they don't seek greater and greater efficiencies for themselves in order to outpace their competitors, they instead seek to hamstring every company with the same nonsense, so everyone is running the 100 yard dash with a ball and chain tied to their ankles.
What if they are in the business of making money, and are pursuing a strategy of temporarily wrecking companies they have some influence over, in order to lower share prices to take more control of the companies, cheaply. Then ease off on the wrecking, and enjoy the perks of monopoly when those companies regain the market they briefly lost?
Wrecking companies and institutions may be just a feint in a larger movement to take greater control and profit than they could otherwise.
So you're saying maybe BigBudInc would be better off if they had someone in Marketing who's had experience doing Keg Stands in the Infield at The Preakness?
when you're Cantillon'd up next to your buddies with the money printer the scope of "making" the stuff isn't as interesting if they can come back later and just reinflate whatever other assets held to make whole. tadda
The political implications of the hallucinatory censorship feedback loop are ultimately far more interesting than a beer boycott. An elite that fully loses touch with popular sentiment, thinking its unpopular policies popular, its unloved personalities loved, its despised experts admired, is in for rough times when the water gets choppy.
The Target closest to me did a remodel recently that’s apparent only purpose was to make it seem like they had full shelves when they have literally half of what they used to (except more woke crap). It’s awful. I don’t shop there anymore except in an emergency (it’s 1/2 mile from my house and the closest for meds or milk in a pinch).
The supply chain shutdowns during the early phase of the pandemic are still reverberating through the supply chain infrastructure - ports, rail cars, trucks, drivers, manufacturing plants, etc. Plus now there aren't enough workers anywhere - "Now Hiring...". A manufacturer has to stop making some products. The inventory/ordering systems have to be modified because too many SKUs are not available (timely) and the store has to rearrange products and order what can be delivered. They are adapting, but slowly. Last year new automobiles were full of "deletes" - you can get the SE model but this VIN has the XXX feature deleted...that VIN has the YYY feature deleted... It can't quite go back to normal.
Yeah - my sister recently bought a new Prius. She had to put down a $1000 deposit just to test drive it - and did so as soon as it came off the boat. She'd been waiting months for something configured in a way she wanted.
What I've noticed is they cluster everything in the middle in an attempt to give the illusion that the perimeter is not full of empty shelves.
It's the same for us. The closest place to grab something you have to have that day is Target. Otherwise we have tried to be intentional when we consume products. Including Disney, Netflix, etc.
I did notice about six months ago when I was in a Tuesday Morning, that they had taken out shelving and the aisles were wider, so less product. Now, of course, they are gone - nationwide.
Did you guys see this? I was chuckling away while reading the middle section of this stack which addresses a meltdown at Target this week. Watched JP Sears expose the tucking swimsuit on his channel and then this crossed my feed for almost instant gratification.
Sometimes that bums me out, but I suppose it's good to focus on the written word in one corner of the internet at least!
I sent the "investigative" video posted by Heritage Foundation to my sister via Messenger to ask her if she had seen it in her local Target (I'm overseas) and Fuckerberg fact-checked my private message! Said it wasn't true that the tucking swimsuit were for kids. Mmmmmm, you could clearly see it was a kids' suit with a tuck friendly label. Unless we are already awash in deep fake videos, I'm not buying what fact checkers are selling. Just torches their credibility even more. This is not a scientific paper not everyone can parse, it's a freaking video everyone can understand, plus most can just walk to Target and verify for themselves. Ugh.
Very true. The woke boards and CEOs either genuinely really do believe that if you repeat a lie often enough the wallets will follow. Or - and this option is real scary - they really do care about tailoring the society to their warped ideas more than they care about profits. "Sod fiduciary duty, we have bigger fish to fry here." Shareholders should sue.
Has anyone else noticed the same thing I've noticed? That in all these cases we are basically talking about products that are not necessities. When things get tight, what gets cut? You don't need to drink Bud Light or any Bud product--you don't even need to drink beer at all. You don't need anything the Mouse has to offer. You don't need to buy Pride clothing for your kids--heck, you can go to thrift shops and garage sales, maybe even learn to make your own (my mom did!). You don't need to buy that brand new Ford F-150 EV, you can make do with an older, smaller vehicle.
The companies that are going "woke" are riding on the assumption that people are not only willing to buy their products but they also have enough disposable income to do so. They don't see the people who are "disappearing" from that section of the economy, because this kind of "boycott" isn't being announced.
I think there’s a healthy portion of the country that would disagree that you don’t need to drink beer at all. Ever notice that the chronically homeless are more likely to go without meals than without booze? I don’t like beer but I think historically alcohol sales tend to be pretty solid or even increase during times of economic decline.
Well, they might disagree but I stand by my statement. Beer (or any kind of alcohol) isn't necessary for life. Same goes with other kinds of drinks. You can survive quite well drinking only water. Most people, including myself, don't want to. That the chronically homeless are more likely to go without meals than without booze says more about their priorities and choices than actual physical needs. The trouble is most people confuse want with need. Most so-called "needs" are actually wants. This is the first thing that you learn when taking a course on budgeting. Now, are wants bad? No. I myself choose to drink beer, in fact, I prefer IPA's from local breweries. Right now I can afford it. But if I had to cut back on my spending that would be one thing that would have to go. It's a want, not a need.
Beer can be assumed to be safe to drink, almost anywhere; water not so much. Also beer is deceptively cheap (other than the prohibitive taxes many places add on). Local water is different everywhere, even between wells in the same region sometimes. Beer has it's merits, even for the poor.
I get what you are saying. My point was more that because a sizable portion of the population feels that beer is a need and that typically alcohol sales are recession proof alcohol companies are shielded from the negative effects of recession more than say car companies or other luxury goods companies.
Part of the problem is the way social media works in marketing. Companies, especially entertainment companies, discovered that they could get free advertising from outrage. Create a “woke” angle to the marketing, like “first gay relationship in a children’s cartoon”, scour Twitter for outraged comments from conservatives, feed outraged comments to the MSM, and watch the articles defending DEI flow out. Free advertising! It has stopped working as shown by Buzz Lightyear, but it still allows the company to blame the deplorables when a product fails.
It’s a psychological problem not an intellectual one. Their claims and assertions are non-evidence based, often contrary to the evidence, Faith. It is the same psychology as religion. Belief in God relies on Faith. Faith itself us the virtue not actually the worship of God. And there is none stronger in Faith than a convert. Any attempt to rational, logical, evidence based challenge to the existence of God is ‘a test of Faith’. You confirm your Faith by refusing even to consider any logic or evidence, and in any case it is Satan’s servants who are trying to undermine your Faith, so they must be cast out destroyed.
We canceled Disney a while back for reasons but then resubscribed so we could watch the polar bear movie: it was beautifully filmed but totally followed the climate narrative, which is at odds with the alternative source research we did for my kids research paper. Then we watched the new Peter Pan and Wendy movie and my kid straight up said she didn’t like how the different the characters looked. Which is weird because I try REALLY hard to NEVER talk about appearances with my kids. That all being said, I was pleasantly surprised and I actually really enjoyed the movie. I love remakes of classics because it always gives you a new perspective. I can value both original and new. But that’s just me. And I have seen it done well and I have seen it so contrived as to be vomit worthy. I can’t explain the secret sauce that is make or break, but if pressed I would say subtlety. Bludgeoning people with morality has never been appealing.
el gato...you need to factor in that this is the plan....like the plethora of banks in the us, most companies need to go, and get owned by the STAKEHOLDERS not the shareholders...
Fox and Bud did this deliberately, knowing the outcomes....
This is a signal that they are not in control anymore....and no longer answer to shareholders.
They answer to STAKEHOLDERS....like BlackRock. ESG dontcha know?
people love to throw this around, but it seems implausible that vanguard 1.58% holder and blackrock 1.39% holder are somehow dominating the company when Stichting Anheuser-Busch InBev owns 33.4%.
i just don't buy it.
Does money matter when the government will just bail you out if you go broke? Do customers matter? What came first in 2020, the bailouts or the lockdowns? What were most of the outcomes in 2020, financial or medical? If your company can't survive without bailouts, what do you do? 2008 showed that most major corporations cannot survive without .gov support. This is the largest cost of the 2008 crisis, you don't bite the hand that feeds. .gov is the one pushing woke, not the corporations, they're just doing what they need to do to get that next bailout.
anheuser bush and disney certainly seem to be able to.
i'm not sure how this "bailout" issue applies to them.
Its all connected, which is why i would suggest you look into the 2008 mess more. Think of our system as an ecosystem for mega corporations, they can't sustain themselves anymore because the ecosystem is shrinking. If it wasn't, why were interest rates set at 0% for almost a decade? Do you borrow at 0? I don't, what kind of advantage do you have when you can? Why did the pandemic require bailouts that were larger then everything from 2008 up to 2019? I save money for a rainy day so i'm not beholden to anyone, why did mega corporations require bailouts for a "pandemic"? What is the largest motivator in our society el gato? Knowledge? Family? Religion? I'd argue none of those these days, its money. You really should read this if you haven't:
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-systemic-collapse-and-pandemic-simulation/
"In 2019, world economy was plagued by the same sickness that had caused the 2008 credit crunch. It was suffocating under an unsustainable mountain of debt. Many public companies could not generate enough profit to cover interest payments on their own debts and were staying afloat only by taking on new loans. ‘Zombie companies’ (with year-on-year low profitability, falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflow, and highly leveraged balance sheet) were rising everywhere. The repo market meltdown of September 2019 must be placed within this fragile economic context.
When the air is saturated with flammable materials, any spark can cause the explosion. And in the magical world of finance, tout se tient: one flap of a butterfly’s wings in a certain sector can send the whole house of cards tumbling down. In financial markets powered by cheap loans, any increase in interest rates is potentially cataclysmic for banks, hedge funds, pension funds and the entire government bond market, because the cost of borrowing increases and liquidity dries up. This is what happened with the ‘repocalypse’ of September 2019: interest rates spiked to 10.5% in a matter of hours, panic broke out affecting futures, options, currencies, and other markets where traders bet by borrowing from repos. The only way to defuse the contagion was by throwing as much liquidity as necessary into the system – like helicopters dropping thousands of gallons of water on a wildfire. Between September 2019 and March 2020, the Fed injected more than $9 trillion into the banking system, equivalent to more than 40% of US GDP."
This is what happens when you build your entire economy on sand (fiat dollars).
Excellent point.
What is the government but the largest corporation? The one ring if you will ;)
perhaps not the largest corporation so much as the strongest warlord.
My current thinking is that Stakeholder Capitalism is a re-imaging of the goals of corporations by re-defining who the customer is. Traditionally the product is something like fizzy soda-pop, the customer is the fella that plonks down his fifty cents for a small cup of Nehi grape soda at the diner, and all the advertising is done to convince that guy to buy fizzy pop, buy Nehi grape soda in particular, convince him that it will not only taste good but will also make his life better, and maybe act as an informal brand representative to get his buddies to drink Nehi too.
Stakeholdersim considers the true customer to be the investor, the manager, and the other vendors in the system of production, and the product is the consumer. The goal is to manage the customer in his purchases and his life to make sure he continues to buy, and continues to be "useful" in shelling out money and acting a brand representative, and as far as possible militarize it. After all, when you sell fizzy water you make the best you can of it, it is going to be drank by somebody. When you are selling access to the consumer, you sure as Hell don't want independent thought, individual taste, or qualms about personal agency to get in the way.
The reason this seems like some techno feudalism is because it is awfully similar to the Italian states' sumptuary laws to enforce class distinctions by dress and support local cloth guilds and Elizabeth I's degree that the English were to eat fish three times a week to support England's fishing and commercial fleet as she was trying to rebuild her navy in the 16th Century.
Frederick Hayek would have enjoyed your analysis. I know I did.
"the product is the consumer".
Yup.
I first heard the term “activist shareholder” in 2014 when I was working for a publicly traded real estate company who had decided to expand into shale oil drilling. Within 2 years, these < 2% owners with ESG bent shut that company down & we were all laid off. They have only expanded this playbook since then.
They vote the proxy shares...which total the rest of the percentage. That makes them in effect the majority share votes
But Fox...?
i also "don't buy it" but am sensitive to Apple getting rid of Steve which was in nature also a retarded idea
Well Steve had a lot of reasons for being ejected from Apple. And come on, he was ousted by someone who sold sugar water before for a living. Sugar water is hardly transformative.
reasons or not it was a huge mistake for the company, his mistake for losing control.
bullish on sugar water bubble carbon credits
I don't know. Without him getting ousted, we would not have the new Unix based OS we have today on the mac, or maybe even PIXAR, or even the very entities which are now corrupted by Wokism. Steve was not the best guy in the world personality wise. He didn't bathe, he parked in handicap spots, he was rude and ran hot and cold on people, treated his daughter like S. I think being ousted gave him time to grow up in some ways.
You just described the typical narcissist.
tangential to the interest of the apple which to lose Steve proved detrimental but i agree with spirit of your points
so like the controlling interest doesn't have to align with the actions of those hurting the company while not controlling ownership if those in possession of the company don't intervene with idiocy working against them
vanguard, blackrock et al get to vote all the shares that individual shareholders don't...this gives them massive voting power. Plus they can manipulate who meets index criteria for inclusion.
why else would murdoch settle for 3/4 billion with dominion when they could have easily won the suit? and then fire carlson to see the share price drop and lose another billion the next day? same as elon smoking a joint on rogan and watching the share price drop.
they control more than that by imposing ESG through the boards. it's intentional corporate seppuku. when the share prices tank, who gets to buy up the heavily discounted shares? it is a hostile internal takeover.
Yes, you can add in the fact that sports leagues mysteriously all went woke. Always hesitant to appear political, they jumped in bed with BLM, seemingly against the beliefs of the fan base.
That Americans continue to support these leagues is a disgrace.
Yup. Indifference is the actual enemy - the inflection point -from a historical perspective.
It is preceeded by "silence" and followed by apathy.
Then manacles
I see that indifference in a few friends and former ones who got jabbed. They don't seem to care they have been injected with poison. They are completely apathic to what is going on. It should be them standing everywhere, protesting that they have been misled, like that doctor whose dad died and suddenly woke up. It should not be us (alone), the uninjected, the uninjured. But apathy is all around!
I think the apathy in large part is because “we” or at least I feel that my objections to pretty much everything that has transpired in the last three years are censored and or considered “ dead f*cking wrong.” El Gato nails it with this “when all the world is a cage for speech, all speech is cagey and unworldly.” Look at the reaction to the Trump CNN “town hall”... people are outraged that CNN gave him a platform (never mind that he mopped the floor with Collins). The spin is that Trump showed himself to be a “formidable enemy” that needs to be silenced....I’m sorry, what country is this? When the media, big tech and our elected officials have partnered to disallow any opposition ( to their agenda of madness) it’s hard not to be apathetic.
Apathetic for survival! My blood pressure soars every time I hear about more wokism, and the tiny minorities being cowtowed to, changing language for them, changing laws for them. It's DISGUSTING!!!
15 homeless veterans were just evicted from a Hotel in Newburgh, NY to house a bus load of immigrants shuttled there from New York City. That’s where we are…
I've felt this way for years whenever I see Spanish printed along side English, especially in government related documents. Or multi-linqual (mostly Spanish)translations in automated phone messages. It makes me furious.
Do they think that they are affluent enough to always be okay? Are they apathetic or terminally discouraged?
or terminally ill? I don't know. Some are not like that. Some do ask questions, but some are so brainwashed they obviously can no longer think. My best friend and my dad are in that category. Dad used to be very critical of govt etc. now just following orders. So sad.
I've always been critical of government and industry. Apparently it was only a fashion for my boomer cohorts, they fell in line quickly during the 80s. I tried to raise my children to question everything, and they do, up to a point. But as adults, they all got the jab and were terrified to visit us, only sitting outside while masked. And they embrace almost every woke concept. Any attempt to probe the logical basis for any of that is met with defensive anger and changing the subject. Yeah, I'm crazy old dad, I get that, but it's the absolute shutdown on any topic that puzzles me.
Same here. Dad a retired cop-became-attorney who spent a career in all ways sceptical and wary of self-serving interests believing their own bull manure -- only to face his end of life fears as a triple? quadruple? jabbed legacy media-quoting automaton who gets angry that the offspring he trained in scepticism wishes him to re-engage his brain. I'm still struggling to find peace around what this is doing to all of his loved ones while he is vocally lamenting how he's been abandoned by his "conspiracy theorist Trumpists "
The collective bottom has been demolished is so many ways....
My brother and sister are both government employees...guess how they responded in the last three years.
Maybe just pragmatic. Let’s say you are a man in the latter years of middle age. You weren’t particularly concerned with Covid but neither were you particularly concerned about the vaccines. You learned long ago the government didn’t care about you but aren’t really expecting it to wipe out large segments of the population. So after some low level of coercion you get the jab, to see a loved one in the hospital, get onto an airplane, or go to a sporting event. Even though it was becoming apparent the entire thing was a farce you went ahead and got a booster because your elderly mother has been diagnosed with cancer and her doctor said she shouldn’t have unvaccinated visitors or because your doctor suggested it would be harder to get necessary medical procedures without being current or because you still thought the vaccines were mostly safe and did some necessary amount of good.
Eventually though it becomes apparent that the medical industry and your government have poisoned you and has taken years off your life. At first you are mad, water the tree of liberty mad. But then you look at it practically. How do you want to spend the time you have left? Sure you can spend it by spending hours on the internet learning exactly how diabolical the plan was and how screwed you are. You can spend it at protests and rallies or by joining a lawsuit. But in the end what does that get you? Even in the best case scenario is there such a thing as a desirable or worthwhile outcome? Whats more there is every likelihood that your fight will accomplish absolutely nothing worthwhile.
Or you can accept your lot, and your inability to do much to change it and focus on the changes you can effect. You can spend more time with your kids and grandkids. Take that trip even though you don’t really have the money. Spend more time in the garden or working on your hot rod. Get right with God.
I’m not jabbed, but if I knew the number of my days and it was less than I’d hoped I wouldn’t spend those days seeking either justice or vengeance. Instead I would want to fill every day I had left with the best things in this world, with beauty, love, kindness, joy, and fellowship. Maybe that’s the only hope of true change actually happening, that it comes not from the courtroom but from the softening of 270,000,000 hearts intent on making their little corner of this world better.
that is lovely and makes sense.
OR
You can rage against the machine. Make it tougher for them to do it to your grandchildren
You have confined your comment to Covid/ vaccine. And, Dr. Tara, while your comment initially sounds nice, I just don’t buy it. History shows us too many occasions where pragmatism would have been very costly. I’m sure the guys who stormed the beaches on D Day would have hoped for a softening of hearts too but it didn’t happen. I am attracted to your idea but then I remind myself that the Dalai Lama resides in India not Tibet. I’m for beauty, love, kindness, joy and fellowship too, but, many times justice must be meted out.
Depends on the pragmatist.
A pragmatist also knows the value of time. And how much time is wasted walking around a fire hydrant three times every time one encounters one on the street, or sticking a banana in their ear to keep the alligators off the street. Wear a mask, stay home/stay safe, flatten the curve, bend the line, bend the knee. Vaccination is safe and effective!
A pragmatist of another sort would see a lot of these measures as impractical. A virus that only infects those who are walking and not sitting and eating? A virus that only infects people who are strangers and not friends? A pragmatist that sees that 6 ft. is an arbitrary number and means nothing, and looks with many questions at the person sitting alone in their car, masked...or outdoors on a motorcycle, without a helmet, and yet sporting the face covering.
A pragmatist that also knows that the government just didn't start lying to you three years ago. It's been going on for decades. The food pyramid for one thing. That AIDS effects all people equally. That we are in whatever country we are in to liberate it. That WMD's in Iraq were real. That the government is here to help you.
A pragmatist does know that a lot of this is an exercise in futility. But at the same time, also does care, not only for himself, but for others. And he can care about others for very selfish reasons. He knows that if they don't protect others, what treatment is worthy of them? What good is it to sit around, and feign caring about others, when you watch them walk into foolishness? Better is hidden love than open rebuke?
What good is time with loved ones and friends if you are faking it? If it is riddled with disingenuity? The only recourse would then be to take the blue pill. To rationalize their way into their reality. A reality where there has been a deadly virus and so,,,that would make them a bare faced plague spreader.
The problem is, we can't unsee what we have seen or unknow what we have known. Although maybe some of us can. Many already seem to have forgotten virology 101.
I don't seek justice or vengeance, but at times I have an impulse. If I could sentence Fauci and the other lackies, I would make them have to listen to their own voice 24/7 in all of its contradictory facets. And they would have to abide by their own inconstant rules in perpetuity.
What happens when the things you thought you valued don't even exist? When those you love are lost because of a difference in narrative? All things serve the narrative. And one of those things is loved ones. They will be sacrificed if they dare speak heresy against it.
"Terminally discouraged"...yeah, that's it. The vibe here in mordor
I feel discouraged because no one is riding to the rescue!
Do you have a horse?
I think that comes with the mass formation. Even those that are injured will not see it from the vaccine. I asked someone who still thinks we should be masking for her because she is immune compromised if she was vaccinated and she said yes, but the vaccine prevented her from worse symptoms.
Of course! Something she can never prove! NO ONE CAN EVER PROVE!! my covid was short-lived. Was it because I took ivermectin? Hydroxychloroquine? Both? I never got the vax, never got covid again. Is that because I take ivermectin once a week? The vaccine is poison. All vaccines are poison in my new estimation. And the medical community doles it out in all its flavors.
I've often stated this. The best we can hope to prove is that people of a similar demographic with similar histories and comorbidities were followed who were both vaccinated and unvaccinated. As anyone marinated in the narrative will tell you "it would be unethical to do that." And my answer is "not if they volunteered. 25-30% of us are unvaccinated. I am sure a cohort can be derived from this.
I don't think all vaccines are poison, but they aren't benevolent elixirs either. There are side effects and long term effects. Anyone who tells you different is selling you something.
I got Covid twice in 2020, once in February and again in December. It was like the flu, the second time it was milder, but I did lose my sense of smell (but even that happens with other viral infections).
Join us!!! Please! You are welcome! We have amassed over time in several spaces and the convergence has begun! This is why we left paradise! What could be more exciting? All it took, ironically was the OUTSPOKEN to refuse to ‘go sit down and shuthefukup!’ Betrayed, confused, bewildered, desperate, the true haters bounced to other platforms and they dug deeper, and talked louder and sent up smoke signals and found their tribe. Low and behold, the tribe is a Nation! Come to the circle! The dance is begun! Dr. Naomi Wolf is the long house where some of us made our camp. Join us there!
"...Then manacles"
Followed by, "OMG! How did this happen without our noticing?", as they finally look up from their phones and begin to comprehend all that has been lost.
Or a part of a firing squad who mowed down dissidents that were in the way of their 3 meals and 4 manacles.
Or that the "vegan" meat substitute they've been conspicuously and smugly consuming for years is actually comprised of insect protein.
Lolol!
Indifference is a sinkhole.
One does NOT wish to be in The Sink.
And the sports industry accepted all the Covid restrictions as well. They did a lot of things that were counter to making money. How silly is it going to age to see the carboard cutouts of fake people in the stands at an outdoor baseball venue. It already sounds patently ridiculous, and it did when I first saw it.
It was downright eerie. Like there had been a mass-death event and they were cargo cultists continuing to play the game hoping it would bring the world back. I couldn't watch it, I was too creeped out. Fake crowd noise was tolerable, but the cardboard cutouts, no way!
That's exactly what it was. They were colluding with the media giving us this ridiculous impression we were in the middle of a horribly imminent dangerous "mass-death" event. An event we already knew the answer to as the virus had been here for months. It's like a lifeguard blowing a whistle 4 hours into a swim at a pool declaring there was a "mass drowning event" because one person swallowed wrong.
And all the freaking masked players, owners, and managers OUTSIDE.
Do they though? Yes, the sportsball fans where I live still follow the local football team, and have superbowl/world series parties. But their general interest in sports doesn't seem as all-encompassing as it was before woke. Basketball, the wokest, has almost vanished, 'march madness" stirs a brief interest, not the wall-to-wall obsession it used to.
This is 100% true. Virtually all of my friends were sports fanatics before the Woketopian's took over.
Now not so much. Although they do still watch NFL when they're on TV. but not much else.
Agreed. I stopped watching and was pleased with the amount of my life I got back, no longer investing hours of my life into the useless activity of watching my favorite team.
I understand why it’s hard for people to divorce football, baseball, etc. There is a tribal element that does not exist when you switch to a different brand of beer. The tribal aspect hits an ancient part of our brain and is difficult to ignore. I still agree that it’s a disgrace, but I also understand why it’s hard. The whole weak men create hard times thing.
I was a huge fan of the NFL and my beloved Packers. No more. Wokeness is a poison that threatens our nation and, truly, Western civilization. Anyone advancing it is an existential enemy.
And you're right. I can't believe how much time I have on my hand in the fall.
I want to be mad at MLB but it seems like Woke is cooling. I hope.
*sporting Orioles Hawiian Shirt at office; it's Friday, gawddammit*
I will never forgive the Orioles for rubbing out my "Winnin' Ugly" White Sox in '83. To this day, the name Tito Landrum raises my heart rate and blood pressure...
MLB lost me during the steroid era. Record books forever tainted by the juice.
It's a beautiful game, though.
Years ago I took my kids to a local AA team game and was surprised how much fun it was to watch. Yeah there were errors, and the pitchers and batters weren't the best, but it felt like how baseball should be.
This is still available in many markets. An oasis
"Winnin' Ugly" White Sox in '83"
Sweet Swinging Harold Baines, hailing from MD's Eastern Shore (and an O's alum for a spell) was on that team. So I looked it up: Future HOFer Carlton Fisk was on that squad and the coaching staff - kinda big deal guys like Jim Leyland, Dave Duncan, and Charley Lau.
Good squad. I'm not sorry we won the World Series that year!
But, yeah. Beautiful Game for sure.
Yes, that was a fun team. Baines, Fisk, Luzinski, and a great rookie season by Ron Kittle weren't enough to get past Ripken and Murray.
It's not about profit; it's about the agenda.
If the profits take a hit, it's not a problem, since in the end, they're owned b y STAKEHOLDERS, not shareholders.
Remember when Target allowed men into women's bathrooms? Well, they're still in business, and now their children's department has a section of "pride" clothing.
"If the profits take a hit, it's not a problem"
DEI and ESG stuff can survive when profits are up, when the economy is humming along.
But when it's time to tighten the belt, sensible companies start by trimming the fat. Woke doesn't keep the lights on or cover the costs for those Team Building Keggers in the Parking Lot.
They care now.
I’m from Missouri on this point.
Chief's have been very limited in their wokeness. About the only team that has really taken a stand.
still in business - barely. But that has other economic factors as well. I was at a Walmart last week and took pictures of the Pride clothing they display in the childrens and teen/young adult section - one was from the mouse house pride collection another was from care bears. But if sales drop there it may also be because most of the chothes are now cheaply made and priced too expensive
Plus they will be able to get money from alternative sources to traditional costumers. For example, let's say all the bars in public buildings start offering just bud.
Good point. Sort of like CNN at airports
When I was in (public) college we found every morning a neat pile of a certain left-wing newspaper for us for free. Who paid for them?
USA Today used to have great sports sections.
They were something before the internet.
Well, that shit finally stopped!
"costumers"
So... kinda like a Two-Bagger?
I mean, who wants to be seen drinking a Bud?
Even if this is true, and I agree with gato that generally it is not, it would still put these woke entities at a severe competitive disadvantage, eventually leading to their demise and the reallocation of their capital and assets to those more attuned to reality.
They are at a competitive disadvantage. I think they can survive for a bit because they have so many other fires getting ironed. Or something.
Like how Ford lost $1kabillion in their EV (maybe just truck) market but can carry on because people are still willing to drop $75k for an F-350 Diesel. That's still what people would prefer.
The EV absurdity is a perfect case in point, and will likely result in the demise of those auto makers that entirely, or even largely, embrace it.
EVs are neither "green" nor economic, having severe disadvantages vs. ICEs too numerous to list here, which is why they require large subsidies and government coercion to have much of a "market" at all.
Like so many things these days, the whole thing boils down to yet another corporatist scam.
As long as Uncle Sugar keeps doling out Cash - which these days isn't necessarily as good as Money - to both the buyer/drivers and the manufacturers then everyone will Love Them Some EV.
People have to stop buying them and, for that, people have to cut loose from the idea that the world is boiling away.
"Tesla Sales Fall to Zero in Hong Kong After Tax Break Is Slashed"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-hong-kong-sales-gutted-by-tax-change-1499598003
Pretty much says it all just in the headline.
The "carbon credit" grift is basically just a redistribution scam, whereby lower income people buying $20K Kias and Corollas subsidize people buying $100K Teslas and other electric toys.
To Save the Planet™, don't you know.
It's as though, without incentives, the appeal of EVs perhaps less appealing.
But also true that We the Little People always subsidize the marginally wealthy who can't afford to look rich on their own.
How does a company destroying its brand benefit the stakeholders?
Whether one denominates the benefit desired by the "stakeholders" as profit or as political power, eviscerating any brand for any entity works against that benefit.
If this is all "by design", how do the stakeholders gain? Where's their payout?
If there is no payout, why are these stakeholders not wielding their influence to get the payout that they want?
Good questions. Could it be that we have entities with sufficient wealth and power to keep companies and their leadership afloat even while driving their market value down? Then buy up more of the company cheaply, ease off on the woke, and regain profit for themselves when the customers come back?
While not impossible that scenario seems implausible.
Most hedge funds and Warren Buffett/Carl Icahn types of investors do not seek a majority ownership of a single company, but significant stakes in a multiple of companies. That is how they maintain equilibrium between investment risk and investment reward.
It does not benefit a stakeholder in such circumstances to alienate a sizable portion of the customer base, because it cannot be presumed that customers will return when the obnoxious woke policies are abandoned.
The one who would benefit would be an outsider looking to establish or increase a stake in a company at reduced share prices. However, such an individual investor by definition lacks the influence to implement the woke policies necessary for such a strategy.
It is a far simpler explanation, a far more parsimonious and economical explanation, to apprehend the woke policies as a misreading of the marketplace.
I hope you're right. But I'm not sure how having significant stakes in a multiple of companies contradicts the scenario I suggested.
Acquiring significant stakes in all companies would be the start. After that, the interest would be in increasing their ownership. Unlike the outsider, they do have the influence to implement policies customers don't like in individual companies they target, while balancing their own position and keeping the targetted company viable through subsidies from the other companies. They could do this round-robin, crashing, buying, and rebuilding one company after another, and always staying profitable because they are still invested in whatever other companies the angry customers defect to. Their end should be complete, monopoly control of all companies.
One way to check, I suppose, would be to see what proportion of the company is owned by the hedge investor before, and then after, a cycle of wokery.
"They could do this round-robin, crashing, buying, and rebuilding one company after another"
This presumes the rebuilding is a fairly straightforward and natural process. It is not, and it is not at all guaranteed to be successful. Such a strategy would be an high level of risk with a very low prospect of reward.
How badly do you think the company would be wrecked, if staffing and infrastructure are preserved through subsidies, and only the customers are driven away for a period, largely to other businesses the hedge investors also have ownership in? Would there be much real rebuilding to do?
There are plenty who subscribe to that theory about cities. Make them unlivable enough to drive out many, buy distressed real estate, reclaim as yours.
The flaw in that theory is that cities tend to be inherently "unlivable", and without compelling reason to the contrary, people generally prefer to live outside of them. This has been the tendency of mankind since the emergence of the very first cities at the dawn of history.
The archaeological sites of the world are overwhelmingly of cities which were abandoned for various reasons.
The great cities of the Maya were abandoned during the Mayan Collapse of the 12th century.
Indianola, Texas, was a town of 5,000 inhabitants abandoned in 1886 after multiple hurricanes and a catastrophic fire left the town largely unlivable.
Detroit, Michigan has lost over half its population in recent decades, following the decline of the US auto industry and its contribution to that city's economy.
China's "ghost cities" are a stark monument to the inherent "unlivability" of cities--entire urban areas, complete with infrastructure, that have failed to attract any significant influx of people from China's rural areas.
It is no challenge to make cities unlivable. They are that by nature. The challenge is to make them livable enough for people to remain there. Whether modern cities have fully met this challenge is a question not yet fully answered (although a great many are trying).
Exactly!
I think they thought that pleasing the Stakeholders was more important, than the pleasing the Shareholders. So they chose them over the bottom line.
They chose... poorly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubw5N8iVDHI
There are financial products which have sales pitches in which the plebes are alerted to “the miracle of compound interest.” It is interesting to consider that there are banking families that have been in the position of being able to take advantage of this “miracle” for hundreds of years. While doing so, hugely complex systems of interlocking bets and promises have developed with all sorts of papers and tokens that shift back and forth in exchanges for “real” goods such as gold, silver, timberland, farmland and “voluntary” human labor and productive thought. This shifting is a big part of what many people think of as “life.” Within it there are all different degrees of success in attempts to “guarantee” “survival” and “invulnerability” into the “future.” This keeps everyone “busy.” But what I wonder is, if you are in the position of collecting compound interest for hundreds of years and using the proceeds to acquire any and all real assets, could you regard this system, as huge and elaborated as it seems to be to the plebes, as nothing more than an aquarium fish tank in your living room that needs cleaning now and can be drained at will without any risk to yourself?
Couldn’t happen to a worse group of pretentious assholes. The woke (mostly white, mostly wealthy, college educated mind numbed libs). I love it when the market actually speaks!! Three cheers for freedom and the silent majority!
"that is the literal data they need to understand their market and their customers."
My impression is that they don't want to understand their market. They want to dictate to the market. They sneer at truth as wrong. To be overridden.
And when they go woke, they don't go broke. Not really. Somehow, they get bailed out, and stay in business. There is a decoupling there.
Silence hasn't worked out so well lately.
Seems like if you stay silent too long you might as well fasten a "scold's bridle" over your head.
Kinda like Not Choosing is still a Choice?
Exactly. And guess who fills the void of keeping your options open?
All those people who have the largest delta on the Y axis of a Dunning–Kruger graph.
They'll be happy to make your choice their priority, based on Dear Leaders decision, and be absolutely certain that is the only choice because it's easier to not make a choice.
The irony.
"largest delta on the Y axis of a Dunning–Kruger graph"
I understood each part of that reference.
It was just for you
*fist bump*
Agree, but the left won’t kill you if you publicly disagree, but they’ll make sure to destroy you financially to their best ability. It’s a weird turn of events in America. Most people are still moderately in the middle, but the extremism of the left essentially runs out country - transsexualism for children, open borders, massive debt, giving up our energy freedom to save the earth…. We are run by compromised idiots so silent majority is what we have.
Indeed. What's worse having a bullet buried or having thousands of digital bullets reigning down on you for an extended period of time?
I'm not cheering for those choosing to remain silent. They are as much a part of the problem.
Silence buys complacency. Silence buys the erosion of our societies common values and our democracy.
Silence is only admirable when choosing to listen.
Trouble is, speaking out has become a crime, a social crime at minimum. (Why else is the I R S posting job openings for armed agents in all 50 states? Why else has the bureaucracy that reports to the executive branch become if not the largest, among the largest, and most well-armed on the planet?)
And so, as individuals, we are unable to provide a unified voice or an organized resistance. (The playbook is the fallout from the riot in early 2021.) Just as planned, an individual must take great risk to speak out almost anywhere. So, I can’t fault anyone for silence. I am a coward. The only thing that I know to do is throw sand in the machinery.
AMEN
Doesn’t excuse Bud Light though. They knew their customer base for years, their previous advertising and marketing demonstrated it. Then, along comes an Ivy League overeducated, “expert” marketing guru and their entire brand is upended.
i mean, so did coke. remember the travesty of "new coke"?
never underestimate how stupid these people can be.
Yeah, that was the epic marketing fail until this one, but that happened pre-social media. And it was relatively easy to fix, just bring back “original” Coke. Not sure how Bud Light ever recovers from this one.
So disappointed in Target's new "clothing line."
And I don't see the Impossible Whopper on the menu at Burger King anymore.
At least that didn't involve changing an already-loved item.
Like, say, if they start f#@&ing around with my BK Stacker, OTOH, we're gonna have our selves some Regicide, I tells ya.
Honesty you should just stop eating the goyslop.
BK closings hundreds of stores this year.
I wasn't aware of that but they're having problems with staffing at the one near my office. And the prices went way up in the last year or so.
Times are tough all over.
"Don’t ascribe to malice what can be plainly explained by incompetence."
~ Hanlon's Razor
And a chick, to boot! (says a brewing chick)
The day that the term “Ivy League educated” becomes a punchline and these peoples’ credibility is zero, the Beers are on me! Their supposed intelligence is painful.
Bed, Bath, and Beyond just went broke.
They alienated a ton of customers when they cancelled the selling of MyPillow products.
True. I didn’t spend a dime there after they did that.
Which was so blindly stupid of them because the My Pillow is what got a lot of people into the store! Then they decided to go almost exclusively to their own private brand.....Karma baby!!
It’s interesting that Bud held a special election - “woke or not”. Joe Sixpack voted and the results are in. The cultural revolution workers clearly have their work cut out for them, so it’s back to the drawing board.
"Bud held a special election"
That's a great analogy.
Extremely important read this. Bravo. The writing is superb, thank you for the insight. Agreeing with this policy makes your company a ticking timebomb, ready to go broke. Though one part is maybe missing in this analysis: somebody is going to benefit and I guess that somebody is probably shorting the stocks who have the highest ESG / Woke scores.
Shorting stocks, indeed.
Seems like everything's being shorted nowadays. Anyway to prevent this from happening?
That depends on too many factors I don't know about unfortunately. Currencies and their worth, the worth itself of the company, the money supplies around the world. Maybe black swan events will give hope. But main thing is collective truth IMHO. Too many secrets and too much power and unbridled manipulation of masses of people
https://twitter.com/naturallyftw/status/1656871975686381570?s=42
Maybe I should ask George . . . .
Who is George?
George Short-os
Yes he became it still is financially famous with that. Nice!
Blackrock, vanguard, et al shorting....devious and wouldn’t at all surprise me 👹 the devil is in the details
These woke companies all have globalist primary shareholders like BlackRock or vanguard. The question then becomes: are they just trying to push the transhumanist agenda or are they deliberately trying to bankrupt certain companies? You could interpret Bud’s downfall as yet another attack on our culture.
blackrock and vanguard are in the biz of making money, not wrecking their portfolios.
i think they legitimately inhabit echo chambers so recursive that they have mistaken their own babble for base reality so they follow the horrifically bad maps they have drawn right off the edge of the world.
you cannot just "change people" like this. they push back and in the end, consumer sovereignty wins.
"blackrock and vanguard are in the biz of making money" --- I used to think that, but now I'm not so sure any longer.
I really hope that you are right, gato! Coz the alternative it too scary to contemplate. The most powerful groups and individuals being driven by fanatical idealism rather than profits would be very bad news.
I hope you’re right too, Gato. I don’t believe “mistakes” have much to do with anything after the last 3 years. If we’re seeing actions, I think they’re deliberate.
Mistakes were made just for you, but not for them.
They love us.
Agenda > Profits
Until Profilts < Operating Costs.
Then Out of Business > Agenda.
Maybe. Is Blackrock/Vanguard willing to sacrifice brands for their agenda? Maybe. We're assuming that we see everything that is going on in the world. Perhaps there are "deals" made in the dark and people are compensated for sacrificing their business. Crazy, I know, but we left normal in 2020.
And as I said elsewhere here, big companies have other funding sources so, if they take a hit in one place they can stop it up with profits from another arm. Like how the Ford EV line lost something like $700M last year but they can keep going because people still buy their ICE trucks.
But I agree that there might be others offering true financial incentives.
But they own all the competition too, except for independently owned companies. Listened to Larry Fink recently on a New York Times thing. One quote that stood out, “The last thing we want is the money to be moved to private hands, so when a company divests, it’s just going into private hands. It doesn’t mean the Net Zero footprint of the world changes.”
Add that to another quote I now paraphrase:
We must force new behaviors.
It’s not about money to them. It’s about control.
Have to love our purchasing power to small and local to have real impact against these conglomerates. Otherwise, they are just consolidating.
Zappa was out in front of this 50 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCQcEW98OY
"I'm the tool of the government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you"
"Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold"
"It’s not about money to them. It’s about control."
THIS
The echo chamber’s are very real. These people still think that the filthy unvaxxed are dying in droves. They believe everything they were told the last 3 years. They still believe natural immunity doesn’t exist. They think the unjabbed caused the variants. They think masks work. They think the vaccines were a huge win. I have a friend who says the puppet masters need to go. He hates war. But he won’t discuss RFK Jr’s campaign. What can you do with these people???
but blackrock is pushind eid through the backdoor of govt coercion and regulation and trying to frontrun it. you know, we have to save the planet from.....therefore we will end fossil fuels, create unicorn playgrounds for transpecies, and ...........
Is consumer sovereignty winning in China or Hong Kong or North Korea? The difference over here is that there are more layers of velvet disguising the iron fist. Those are rapidly being peeled off.
Yeah, but the business model changed. Now, they don't seek greater and greater efficiencies for themselves in order to outpace their competitors, they instead seek to hamstring every company with the same nonsense, so everyone is running the 100 yard dash with a ball and chain tied to their ankles.
Does Soros factor into Blackrock and Vanguard? Just asking.
What if they are in the business of making money, and are pursuing a strategy of temporarily wrecking companies they have some influence over, in order to lower share prices to take more control of the companies, cheaply. Then ease off on the wrecking, and enjoy the perks of monopoly when those companies regain the market they briefly lost?
Wrecking companies and institutions may be just a feint in a larger movement to take greater control and profit than they could otherwise.
So you're saying maybe BigBudInc would be better off if they had someone in Marketing who's had experience doing Keg Stands in the Infield at The Preakness?
*sigh* OK. I'll think about it...
when you're Cantillon'd up next to your buddies with the money printer the scope of "making" the stuff isn't as interesting if they can come back later and just reinflate whatever other assets held to make whole. tadda
The political implications of the hallucinatory censorship feedback loop are ultimately far more interesting than a beer boycott. An elite that fully loses touch with popular sentiment, thinking its unpopular policies popular, its unloved personalities loved, its despised experts admired, is in for rough times when the water gets choppy.
That's an interesting way of putting it. I guess companies need to learn how to escape the Matrix that they've built for themselves.
Loving your substack. what a mind you have.
At this point, Coors needs to launch a new campaign with a slogan:
«You might not like me, but at least I'm still the same old s**t.»
p.s. a version of this comment with the s-word spelled out got stuck in the limbo. I still believe the word is appropriate in this context.
Woke Supremacy
I guess the upside is that when you go to grocery store, etc., the shelves will be full and you won't feel like your shopping in Moscow circa 79' .
Has anyone noticed that literally half the shelves at Target for example are empty?
The Target closest to me did a remodel recently that’s apparent only purpose was to make it seem like they had full shelves when they have literally half of what they used to (except more woke crap). It’s awful. I don’t shop there anymore except in an emergency (it’s 1/2 mile from my house and the closest for meds or milk in a pinch).
I must have missed this but WHY are the shelves half empty? I did observe this but thought it was just my store. Thanks for the insights.
The supply chain shutdowns during the early phase of the pandemic are still reverberating through the supply chain infrastructure - ports, rail cars, trucks, drivers, manufacturing plants, etc. Plus now there aren't enough workers anywhere - "Now Hiring...". A manufacturer has to stop making some products. The inventory/ordering systems have to be modified because too many SKUs are not available (timely) and the store has to rearrange products and order what can be delivered. They are adapting, but slowly. Last year new automobiles were full of "deletes" - you can get the SE model but this VIN has the XXX feature deleted...that VIN has the YYY feature deleted... It can't quite go back to normal.
Yeah - my sister recently bought a new Prius. She had to put down a $1000 deposit just to test drive it - and did so as soon as it came off the boat. She'd been waiting months for something configured in a way she wanted.
Thanks for the insight. The store has been pretty well stocked to this point, though.
What I've noticed is they cluster everything in the middle in an attempt to give the illusion that the perimeter is not full of empty shelves.
It's the same for us. The closest place to grab something you have to have that day is Target. Otherwise we have tried to be intentional when we consume products. Including Disney, Netflix, etc.
Not a Target shopper.
I did notice about six months ago when I was in a Tuesday Morning, that they had taken out shelving and the aisles were wider, so less product. Now, of course, they are gone - nationwide.
All I can say is people are getting what they asked for by not asking any questions during covid
Turns out the economy has an "off" switch but not an "on" switch.
If only somebody had been saying this in 2020! :)
Did you guys see this? I was chuckling away while reading the middle section of this stack which addresses a meltdown at Target this week. Watched JP Sears expose the tucking swimsuit on his channel and then this crossed my feed for almost instant gratification.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/existential-wednesday-may-24-2023?r=rsu0y&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Yes. I wish we could send GIF's on Substack. I have the perfect one. You would lol
Sometimes that bums me out, but I suppose it's good to focus on the written word in one corner of the internet at least!
I sent the "investigative" video posted by Heritage Foundation to my sister via Messenger to ask her if she had seen it in her local Target (I'm overseas) and Fuckerberg fact-checked my private message! Said it wasn't true that the tucking swimsuit were for kids. Mmmmmm, you could clearly see it was a kids' suit with a tuck friendly label. Unless we are already awash in deep fake videos, I'm not buying what fact checkers are selling. Just torches their credibility even more. This is not a scientific paper not everyone can parse, it's a freaking video everyone can understand, plus most can just walk to Target and verify for themselves. Ugh.
"fakebook may lie. wallets don’t."
Very true. The woke boards and CEOs either genuinely really do believe that if you repeat a lie often enough the wallets will follow. Or - and this option is real scary - they really do care about tailoring the society to their warped ideas more than they care about profits. "Sod fiduciary duty, we have bigger fish to fry here." Shareholders should sue.
Has anyone else noticed the same thing I've noticed? That in all these cases we are basically talking about products that are not necessities. When things get tight, what gets cut? You don't need to drink Bud Light or any Bud product--you don't even need to drink beer at all. You don't need anything the Mouse has to offer. You don't need to buy Pride clothing for your kids--heck, you can go to thrift shops and garage sales, maybe even learn to make your own (my mom did!). You don't need to buy that brand new Ford F-150 EV, you can make do with an older, smaller vehicle.
The companies that are going "woke" are riding on the assumption that people are not only willing to buy their products but they also have enough disposable income to do so. They don't see the people who are "disappearing" from that section of the economy, because this kind of "boycott" isn't being announced.
I think there’s a healthy portion of the country that would disagree that you don’t need to drink beer at all. Ever notice that the chronically homeless are more likely to go without meals than without booze? I don’t like beer but I think historically alcohol sales tend to be pretty solid or even increase during times of economic decline.
Well, they might disagree but I stand by my statement. Beer (or any kind of alcohol) isn't necessary for life. Same goes with other kinds of drinks. You can survive quite well drinking only water. Most people, including myself, don't want to. That the chronically homeless are more likely to go without meals than without booze says more about their priorities and choices than actual physical needs. The trouble is most people confuse want with need. Most so-called "needs" are actually wants. This is the first thing that you learn when taking a course on budgeting. Now, are wants bad? No. I myself choose to drink beer, in fact, I prefer IPA's from local breweries. Right now I can afford it. But if I had to cut back on my spending that would be one thing that would have to go. It's a want, not a need.
Beer can be assumed to be safe to drink, almost anywhere; water not so much. Also beer is deceptively cheap (other than the prohibitive taxes many places add on). Local water is different everywhere, even between wells in the same region sometimes. Beer has it's merits, even for the poor.
I get what you are saying. My point was more that because a sizable portion of the population feels that beer is a need and that typically alcohol sales are recession proof alcohol companies are shielded from the negative effects of recession more than say car companies or other luxury goods companies.
Looks like it ain't just about the beer.
Parent company signed onto WEF's GARM.
https://mercatornet.com/meet-garm-the-world-economic-forums-swiss-army-knife-for-woke-ifying-planet-earth/84216/
We will be seeing more of the same. Maybe a bit more "subdued" in the beginning. They just started out the gate s little too fast and stood out.
Awesome link. Thank you.
Appears that the WEF needs to be Shaka Zulued.
Yes GARM is the inevitable end of this insanity.
Part of the problem is the way social media works in marketing. Companies, especially entertainment companies, discovered that they could get free advertising from outrage. Create a “woke” angle to the marketing, like “first gay relationship in a children’s cartoon”, scour Twitter for outraged comments from conservatives, feed outraged comments to the MSM, and watch the articles defending DEI flow out. Free advertising! It has stopped working as shown by Buzz Lightyear, but it still allows the company to blame the deplorables when a product fails.
It’s a psychological problem not an intellectual one. Their claims and assertions are non-evidence based, often contrary to the evidence, Faith. It is the same psychology as religion. Belief in God relies on Faith. Faith itself us the virtue not actually the worship of God. And there is none stronger in Faith than a convert. Any attempt to rational, logical, evidence based challenge to the existence of God is ‘a test of Faith’. You confirm your Faith by refusing even to consider any logic or evidence, and in any case it is Satan’s servants who are trying to undermine your Faith, so they must be cast out destroyed.
Faith in no-faith is faith as well.
That’s an oxymoron.
We canceled Disney a while back for reasons but then resubscribed so we could watch the polar bear movie: it was beautifully filmed but totally followed the climate narrative, which is at odds with the alternative source research we did for my kids research paper. Then we watched the new Peter Pan and Wendy movie and my kid straight up said she didn’t like how the different the characters looked. Which is weird because I try REALLY hard to NEVER talk about appearances with my kids. That all being said, I was pleasantly surprised and I actually really enjoyed the movie. I love remakes of classics because it always gives you a new perspective. I can value both original and new. But that’s just me. And I have seen it done well and I have seen it so contrived as to be vomit worthy. I can’t explain the secret sauce that is make or break, but if pressed I would say subtlety. Bludgeoning people with morality has never been appealing.
Guv’nor of the Free State of Florida is working to bring the abomination of Disney World to heel. May he be victorious.