Texas Is Coming for 'Woke' Insurance Companies Next | Hacker News Reader

Texas Is Coming for 'Woke' Insurance Companies Next

gizmodo.com

29 pointsrbanffy55 comments

By bundling S and G together with E, we've doomed E. It's almost like that's what the oil companies wanted.

Even if you agree with some/all of the "ESG" goals though, it almost doesn't matter, because when you look at the ETFs that've been marked with that word, you see they're full of Exxon and Philip Morris like all the others -- just with a larger fee on top, for all the suckers.

Excellent point. I fully agree.

It disenfranchises environment/energy/natural resource conservation efforts to associate them with woke topics such as "social equity" and related "governance" efforts.

I am personally a conservative environmentalist. Virtually 100% of "woke" related concepts to me, represent inculcation by foreign governments seeking to destabilize western societies.

The environment must not be politicized. It is the foundation of all biota including humans of course-- it is the matrix we live within.

What's the problem with the "G"?

Most of the oil companies score pretty well on the "G" - since it's really just a measure of how well-run they are and how responsive they are to shareholders.

ESG is and never was anything but a buzzword

Texas Republicans sure do love their "free market" and just hate regulations...

Okay, do California and Walgreens next.

What about it? Why would a state want to do business with a pharmacy that refuses to provide necessary healthcare to women?

They canceled a single contract based on a fairly simple principle that Walgreens is not providing medical service equitably.

The Walgreens situation is actually completely ridiculous on Walgreen’s part because they are not just not providing service where that service is disallowed by state law, but also where it might be disallowed by state law and a handful of lawmakers complained.

Also, there is literally no equivalence between ESG (which unlike what Elon Musk and Republican Senators who have no clue, is not about investing to improve the environment, for example, but instead is about investing in a way that considers environmental, social, and Governance risks to the business, so, for example, when investing in a new ski lodge, factoring the fact that the number of snow days have dropped and will continue to drop over the next few years when doing their projections) considering investment firms, which have tons of competition, and pharmacies, which sometimes are the only pharmacies in a region, refusing to provide essential medicine.

In reality, because they don’t have an understanding of what ESG actually is in the investment world (it’s not about making the planet better, unfortunately), what this will mean is that Texas will end up having to invest its money in tiny bespoke investment funds created just for Texas which are not allowed to factor a whole universe of risks, and will therefore almost certainly have much poorer performance relative to their ESG counterparts.

Which kind of raises why this bill is actually being put in place besides performative politics. It’s so their small time donors who would otherwise not be able to compete against the larger well run funds can get a slice of that Texas donation pie.

I guarantee when these contracts are rewritten they will go to mid sized hucksters who have donated individually to Texas State representatives.

How is this type of legislation not government restrictions in free speech? While I disagree with citizens United, it’s currently defining the law and most likely supported by these groups. This seems like a similar disallowed restriction.

I guess one difference is that they’re not explicitly banning the companies from those investments, they’re banning the state of Texas from doing business with the companies.

It’s really hard to tell anything about what’s going on here - the article is too busy telling you to get outraged, and it’s talking about legislation that apparently hasn’t even been proposed yet. It does quote one speaker as saying “if they’re going to mess with money that belongs to Texas retirees and undermine the very Texas economy, we’re gonna teach them some manners” which gives some indication of why Texas might have the right to interfere with the choice of investment and might care to interfere. But even then, once you null out the outrage, there’s so little here to go on.

Thank you for pointing this out. I had to really wrestle with my initial reaction to my first read of this article.

The Texas law on ESG is so poorly written, hard to imagine this one would be any different. Any Texan should be outraged that their state is wasting time and money on this sort of nonsense (suing blackrock because blackrock doesn't invest enough in Oil co's, except of course for the fact that it's the #1 investor in Oil co's).

Citizens United was that spending money on getting a message out about electoral candidates - "express advocacy" - is protected. That doesn't mean spending money on other topics is protected.

Now I can easily see the argument being extended - and it has is some small ways (e.g. FEC vs Cruz) - but Citizens United is pretty controversial even in the legal academy so I don't think it's a given that it would be.

So they are expanding the definition of "woke" to include caring about the climate now? It's almost like they're trying to create a blanket phrase for "everything we don't like" regardless of whether those things have anything to do with each other.

If I can hypothesize: I think what is going on is that conservatism posits that the world is ordered according to a strict hierarchy and order, and rules given by an authority. There is a purpose for everything and a plan for everyone, and that plan is simple and laid out according to specific rules that are easy to understand. And the promise is that if you follow those rules, then you are by definition virtuous, and if everyone follows the rules, then everything will be OK. The social order is not seen as having emerged gradually or having been created by humans- instead it is seen as eternal, unchanging, and sacred.

Now it might actually be psychologically healthy to believe that everything is going to be ok, even if it's not necessarily true. But the problem is that if you think that if you follow the rules of society then everything will be ok, then if things are not ok, it has to be because someone is breaking society's rules- by being gay for example. This leads to a bizarre conflation of social categories and norms with macroeconomic forces and scientific facts, which is why you see the right wing making otherwise baffling political connections between things like climate change and transgender identity. There's no logical reason those should be connected, but in the mind of the right, they are, because a) the existence of climate change contradicts the promise that if everyone adheres to the social order, nothing bad can happen and b) any non-traditional identity is crossing social boundaries. This also explains why you see things like monks flagellating themselves to repent in order to make the bubonic plague go away. It's the same logic.

I think that's what is going on. And despite the tendency of academics to try to frame this in value neutral language, I really do think that this is an inferior way to see the world. A worldview built on simple rules is really the worldview of a person who has not built layers of abstraction beyond the immediate and obvious. You might follow the rule "thou shalt not kill", and that's good- but if you understood why that rule is good in terms of more abstract concepts, you might also be able to predict other similar rules. And when there is a new situation that nobody has faced before, you can make good choices where there are no rules to follow that apply. Abstraction is flexible. Conservatism is not, because it is a shallow understanding of the world. It is more like the moral understanding of a child than an adult, in which the parent is always right and it is the duty of the child to obey without understanding.

>if you understood why that rule is good in terms of more abstract concepts

Can you explain what good is in your abstract concepts?

That’s a question that philosophers have been writing about for centuries! There is no simple answer.

I suppose the best answer I could give is: try to think about the downstream effects of the choice you face, and think about what the world would be like if everyone made a particular decision.

Politically speaking, I think the best answer is: decisions should be made by the people affected by those decisions. People more affected should have greater say.

> And the promise is that if you follow those rules, then you are by definition virtuous, and if everyone follows the rules, then everything will be OK.

Is this not the promise of every ideological movement that isn't pure nihilism and wants to see the world burn (though I guess it would be for them too for some definition of "OK")?

Though I'd associate it more in an abstract way with organized religion ("if everyone follows these rules, we shall have paradise on earth") and progressive politics. Conservatives usually recognize that not everything will be OK for everyone, they just believe that you have some/more influence on whether it will be OK for you.

> which is why you see the right wing making otherwise baffling political connections between things like climate change and transgender identity

I don't think that's a connection they'd make outside of political tribalism. These days, you'll have progressives typically arguing both for gender-fluidity and climate change (and lots of other things), and conservatives take the opposing role on principle. Similarly, conservatives aren't fond of Islam, so in response progressives embrace Islam. They'll often switch sides with regards to specific issues as the larger front is moving this way and that and power shifts.

It makes a lot more sense to consider these things in a tribal way first and not try to wrap your head around how on earth someone's ideology drives them to do X. There's a lot of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and "the friend of my enemy is my enemy" going on all the time.

>So they are expanding the definition of "woke" to include caring about the climate now? It's almost like they're trying to create a blanket phrase for "everything we don't like" regardless of whether those things have anything to do with each other.

Yeah, they've been doing that for years, attempting to poison the well of progressive discourse by redefining its terminology through bad faith usage - it's all but impossible, now, to even use "woke" in its proper context.

Let us know when you find one.

She complains about what Texas is doing like it's a bad thing.

What do you see here that’s a good thing?

Speaking as a pro-environmental and mostly "woke" Texan, but one who has lived here my entire life and more or less understands the perspective of type typical conservative here:

The destruction of the fossil fuel economy is an existential threat for the Texas economy. Imagine policies that threatened the tech industry in California or the tourism industry in Hawaii.

> insurance companies: the Texas Legislature is here to protect you...

> ...rolling out legislation this year to punish insurance companies

I get you want to have a compelling lead but seriously did anyone proof read this? It's contradictory in the same breath.

I read the "the Texas Legislature is here to protect you" as a sarcastic joke rather than a statemement. If that was the author's intention then it would make the article consistent.

Err, I mean, I guess. But that only works if the author actually cares about the well-being of insurance companies. Not what I was primed to read.

This is an absurdly biased article that would have been flagged off the front page if it were in the other direction. I don't see any reason to trust the substance of the reporting when the article is adorned with such sanctimoniously juvenile attempts at humor.

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