ESG falls short, Bitcoin is socially responsible money – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Mickey Koss, a West Point graduate with a degree in economics. He spent four years in the infantry before transferring to the finance corps.
This is the follow-up article to “Bitcoin is ESG, ESG is not.”
Second part
When you make a clear overview of the top 100 environmental, social and governance (ESG) companies for 2022, you start to get the feeling that things might not quite add up.
“These are the 100 best companies across all industries for 2022, evaluated across a wide range of metrics, including efforts to combat climate change; diversity, equity and inclusion; worker welfare and local job creation; and customers’ privacy.”
Coming in at No. 1 is Alphabet, the parent company of Google, notorious in Bitcoin circles for their politically biased censorship regime. Not to mention all the privacy issues involved data tracking and ad targeting. It seems to leave a lot to be desired for socially acceptable behavior and yet they are ranked #1.
PepsiCo Inc. comes in at No. 12. While diabetes is the direct cause of death only 4% of the time, it is listed as a contributing cause of death as often as 11.5%, placing it third—behind heart disease and cancer at list of America’s greatest murderers. I guess pushing liquid sugar is considered a socially responsible business practice compared to something like cigarettes?
When it comes to banks, Bank of America Corp. in at No. 5, Citigroup Inc. at No. 15 and Wells Fargo & Co. at a funny No. 25 considering the Wells Fargo Fake Account scandal they were hit with just a few years ago. The most ironic part is how any of these companies made the list at all. US-based banks alone have been fined $200 billion over the past 20 years. All can be forgiven if you say the right things, I guess.
The crux of the matter is that the score is based almost entirely on subjective values masquerading as objective measures. Impact Investor seems to place a lot of emphasis on not investing in fossil fuel companies, thereby pushing up their cost of capital and ultimately raising prices for those who can least afford it.
Policies have an impact; it has consequences for decisions that are made. Europe is experiencing a growing crisis due to energy inflation. Maybe it had to do with shutting down nuclear power plants in ESG’s name? I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t feel very “fair and inclusive.”
Bitcoin is a permissionless, peer-to-peer value transfer network with increasing functionality on the growing stack of application layers. It has a native resource, undiluted by nation-states and resistant to seizure and censorship.
It banks the unbanked and it banks the banked, protecting them from the ravages of global hyperinflation – a phenomenon that those in the developing world know all too well.
Bitcoin has no agenda, no values to force on its user base as a means of appeasing the capital allocation gods of the likes of BlackRock. Bitcoin is just that. Bitcoin just does. Without judgment, without discrimination, without redlining, without opening fake accounts on your behalf, without paying billions of dollars in fines every year, without giving you diabetes or censoring your search results.
Bitcoin is rules without rulers – where everyone is treated equally, because it is not possible to do anything but. Bitcoin is socially responsible money.
This is a guest post by Mickey Koss. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
