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Comment by jsiepkes | Hacker News Reader

Whether you think this a bad thing or a good thing it certainly proves most large companies stand for little more than shareholder value.

If it's advantageous to raise a LGBTQ+ flag they'll do it, if it's advantageous to burn one they'll do that as well.

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I guess the proper way for the movements is to not make it advantageous then. Because it’s a well-known phenomenon and forcing a change this way never worked, despite all the make believe.

How was shareholder value affected positively or negatively by LGBTQ support internally? I don't understand the connection. Prior to the president change, I don't feel there was much influence for or against, other than attracting worker talent.

Blackrock investment money affect share value, if they invest in you for supporting LGBTQ then supporting LGBTQ is the most direct way to increase shareholder value.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_g...

We've been calling this "rainbow capitalism". The sneer is implied

It’s most commonly called pink money too.

Pink money is a marketing term, it's attracting sales from gay men. Rainbow capitalism is pro-LGBTQ virtue signaling in order to make your company more palatable to investors and/or the public

The only people who thought companies were sincere in their support for LGBTQ rights or black rights or anything else were right wingers who thought it meant every corporation was run by "woke" Marxists. Everyone else knew it was a cynical marketing ploy at best, but there would still be little if any visibility for these groups at all if they didn't represent a market segment that could be exploited by capitalism. It was better than nothing.

I thought it was at least a good sign that /that/ was the "cynical marketing ploy" they felt was what people wanted to see, and which had the broadest appeal. Maybe it actually reflected, or at attempted to pander to, a broad cultural ideal. Now it's not.

I think it’s more that they understand which side their bread is buttered on and are sucking up to the new admin. It isn’t like the political demographics of the United States magically changed on Inauguration Day.

The demographics haven't changed, but the power center has. Previously, business was pandering to the masses, now it's pandering to power.

The left wing also has enough followers who thought that yet another corpname “adopting” the idea was a real step towards it. A little wishful to claim that crazy believers exist only at one side of the fence. It’s actually hard to make demographics that different at the scale of what we are talking here, so that it would exclude particular statistical segments.

>The left wing also has enough followers who thought that yet another corpname “adopting” the idea was a real step towards it. A little wishful to claim that crazy believers exist only at one side of the fence.

That isn't crazy, though, that's just naive.

Believing that American corporations - especially tech companies - are controlled by an organized cabal of Marxist elites engaged in a conspiracy of white genocide and oppression of Conservatives through the use of "wokeness" and "DEI" is crazy.

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