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Why Corporate America REALLY Went Woke
In this in-depth discussion, the speakers explore the shift in political alignment of big businesses from the right wing in the 90s to the left wing today. They delve into the memetic virus of urban monoculture and how it spreads within bureaucracies, the mistaken assumption that businesses naturally align with lower taxes and less regulation, and how businesses actually prefer regulations that protect their interests. They also address how big business and dominant cultural groups like theocratic coalitions in the 90s seek to impose their value systems through the justice system and laws. The conversation touches on the psychological and structural reasons behind why big companies are more sensitive to criticism and how this affects their alignment with societal values. Furthermore, they discuss the influence of consumerist culture, the impact of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies, and the broader implications for corporate America.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Simone! I'm excited to be talking to you today. Today, I wanted to deep dive on one subject that has been something that has come up in other things that we have talked about, but we've never really done a deep dive on it. And I've noticed some common misconceptions people have around this, which is, I think that everybody broadly knows that in the nineties, big business was predominantly right wing.
If you were, you know, we always use like the Jack Donaghy stereotype here. If you were a big business guy, you were a right wing guy. If you were a big corporate guy at like some, you know, whether it's Black Rock or whether it's, you know, McKinsey the stereotype was, is that you would be right wing. Today the stereotype is that you'd be extremely left wing.
The core Republican party used to be made up of an alliance of a theocratic faction in the United States and a big business faction. And it broke apart making way for the new right alliance with big business departing the [00:01:00] Alliance in the early two thousands. Now. The question is, is why? And the answer that I have always given historically is that this happened because the memetic virus that we call the urban monoculture, some people may call it wokeism, whatever you want to call it, spreads better and faster within bureaucracies.
And I think I think that this is a part of it, but I don't think it's everything. Secondly, I think a core mistake that a lot of people make when they're looking at this is to assume, and I've heard this from so many people, that, well, it's natural that big business was a Republican aligned party in the 90s because It wanted lower tax rates.
It wanted less regulations. It wanted all of that stuff. And this is a very naive understanding of what businesses actually care about, especially large businesses. It is actually just as perplexing [00:02:00] that big businesses align themselves with the right in the nineties as big business aligning themselves with woke as today, because generally big businesses prefer A large amount of regulations and taxes and other barriers to entry.
There is a reason why Sam Altman is going around trying to get everybody terrified of AI so that you can get additional AI regulations because he knows no matter how big the regulations are, they'll never be enough to shut down open AI, but they may prevent his competitors. Do you want to talk on this before I go further?
Simone Collins: No, keep going. This resonates, though.
Malcolm Collins: And so, I was thinking about this, and I was talking to someone about this, and I was saying, well, here's a really interesting thing. When I look at what the Democratic Party represents today an alliance of, and I always use the word urban monoculture, but if I change the definition, an interesting pattern emerges.
It is an alliance [00:03:00] of big business interests and the dominant cultural g
Published on 1 year, 1 month ago