Radicalisation and the economy

Do you think the biggest, baddest CEOs in the world have been spending too much time on Twitter?

We've got Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, who's gone from being an ESG-loving, crypto-skeptic to a crypto-loving ESG-skeptic. How can someone 180 from being so badass to so soggy-assed? Did he lose his balls in the latest Blackrock investment confidence crisis?

Or Jamie Dimon, the Big Swinging Dimon. The guy who didn't get trapped in the 2008 crisis. Someone who used to be kind of a maverick thinker. A few years ago JPMorgan was singing from the rooftops that they would be putting upwards of $5 billion into ESG (not trillion as one wide-eyed Nutmeg employee insisted to me again and again at a party - yes, I do go to the best parties). Now look at him. He's oily and proud. Dimon's not putting shit into the saving planet, he's the one destroying it. While ranting about why remote working is killing finance. He's turned into such a belligerent old man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuYoedJUwZo

Musk. I mean. What more is there to say? 😳 He went from a kooky "save the planet" type that Democrats liked, to a total nutjob, promoting fascism, nazi-salutes and proclaiming that the UK is in a civil war. At this point, he really needs help. Kayne West-level of help.

Trump's social media addiction

At a conference around 2021, I first heard that Trump surely has a Twitter (sorry, X, sorry TRUTH SOCIAL) addiction. He lives for the dopamine and adrenaline of his tweets being either adored or abhorrent. Each post is a gamble and its lighting up every little bit of his bleached-blonde, fake-tanned brain.

Famously, he doesn't drink. But you can see he is addicted to a different poison, social media. And its clear to see how he is becoming more and more radicalised by it. Pumped-up by groupthink, dog whistles and echo chambers of his own opinions. In that tiny little screen he can write something crazy like, "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!!" and the whole algorithm will agree with him... It's programmed to, he owns it. We also have to ask if he's seeing the same engagement as the rest of us. We are in the age of misinformation after all, and he may be the victim as well as the perpetrator.

Trump's social media madness has meant that he's totally lost touch with reality, or any sort of balance in his discourse. And it's clearly soaking into geopolitics too. He applies the same clickbait and ragebait techniques to tariffs as he does Truth Social.

Radicalisation spreading into the economy

These other CEOs. It don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but are they also marinading in their own self-indulgent groupthink? A big sloppy stew of incels and manosphere madness?

People like Dimon, Fink, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk are surrounded by yes-men (and maybe like one or two yes-women, and definitely no yes-trans). When they tell what can only be described as a truly shit joke, the whole room absolutely falls over itself crying with laughter. When they say they have an idea, the entire room nods and says, "what a genius you are!". That's their normal life.

Now add-in the online world. The social media algorithm which blows digital smoke up their butts, and introduces them to evermore extreme content. Are they getting radicalised?

... Or, plot twist, are they the radicalisers? Are they the ones pushing this horrible, "let's be mean and destroy the planet" crap onto us? After all, they benefit from it more than we do.

Trad-wife, anti-abortion, back-to-the-office... gives CEOs a free ride

With the AI-surge, there are going to be less human jobs. We all know this. And historically, what tends to happen when there are more jobs than people (post WWII) is that governments try to force women back into the kitchen and out of the workforce. To stop civil unrest getting out of hand, they prioritise the voting men (which can often mean kicking non-voters like immigrants to the curb). Sure enough. They are all slamming and banning remote working, something which has been proved to encourage more women into the workplace.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are radicalising young women with stay-at-home tradwife, or tradgirlfriend content. Dude. We're not "resting in our feminine energy", we're making it really easy for the AI revolution to take our jobs and give what's left only to men.

Big fund managers need people paying into their pensions over the next century. This means that they need more babies being born. Even though unchecked capitalism has made this very difficult for Millennials who have to shoulder thousands in healthcare and childcare costs, with stagnant wages and high rents. Making abortions illegal means people will have more babies, without any change to the capitalistic structure.

Our futures are at risk of corporate radicalism

Honestly, I could go on and on and on.... Especially about crypto and metaverse trends. But I think its clear, right? These radical policies that are seeping like a virus into our economies do not benefit us.

There is something that we can all do. Just take a second to double check the philosophies of our usual brands, to see if we agree with them. Sometimes it involves a bit of digging, which is annoying. But the feeling of cognitive dissonance makes it worthwhile. We have some really good examples in the USA, where consumers boycotted mega retailer Target because it rolled back diversity policies and seems to be siding with ICE. The boycotts have led to a 33% share price drop, a lot of class action, one disgraced CEO stepping down and 9% loss of sales. Same with Musk. Europe stopped buying Teslas, which was a strong signal for him to shut the fuck up about promoting fascism in Europe.

Corporates are ruled by one thing, money. And who's money? Ours. Where we chose to put it can change the rest of our lives.