Blackrock has been pushing for Diversity and Climate change initiatives through shareholder proposals. However Blackrock, through iShares and other ETF/Index products, does not in fact own any of the shares that they vote, as these shares are owned by clients of the firm that own products produced by Blackrock. Yet they vote the shares and thus exert a significant amount of control and determination over publicly traded companies that do not have a majority shareholder (meaning a huge amount of the publicly traded businesses out there)
Berkshire Hathaway was able to fend off Blackrock, but many companies were not and have not been able to and will eventually succumb or be subsumed to the whims of these unelected controllers in a distant office far, far away from the headquarters and communities that are affected by these shareholder votes and proposals.
This behavior also goes on with state run California Pension Funds (CALPERS and CALSTRS) as well as endowment funds of elite universities such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford.
This behavior has created an unelected (by shareholder laws) shadow superstructure of political ideology in the private sphere, which ultimately leaks out into and influences social behavior (advertising, products, media type and of course campaign contributions to politicians, foundations and causes) which inevitably impacts the way our government is run.
This is one of the purest most essential perversions of the capitalistic structure of society as it produces disintermediation between ownership and voting capability, creating aggregated power in the hands of few individuals who through undemocratic means, control the fate of an enormous amount of our nations productive capacity and capital. Worse still; this behavior is also difficult to curtail given the substantial protections afforded by the United States to the private sector. If explained using a biological framework, this behavior is cancerous.
As a result of this disintermediation, Blackrock and ideologically influenced entities like it (Pension Funds, Endowment funds of universities) wields a disproportionate power relative to actual economic ownership and has been aggressively using their power to push for increasingly liberal policies across the corporate landscape.
This type of behavior is extremely pernicious and, over the long term, represents the merger between identity politics and High Finance/Wall Street - much in the same manner that Wall Street manages large university endowments, which then collaborate to use their tax advantages money (a huge advantage for investors) to consolidate power and influence the course of this nation.
Date: May 6th, 2021 11:43 AM Author: Genius Bear on the loose in Japan
shalom, fellow progressive financier oligarchs! anyone else here really concerned with and earnest about "social justice" that seems suspiciously like ethnic warfare against the native population?
I’ve been calling them “the Left” for a decade for this reason
“US” “liberals” have very little to do with real classical liberals, they stole the word “liberal” decades ago as cover for illiberal left wing positions = skin suit
it’s why actual classical liberals had to make up the word “libertarian” because the Left stole the word “liberal” (although libertarians later also went a bit kooky)
Date: June 2nd, 2023 11:51 AM Author: Chest-beating Adventurous Mad Cow Disease
Liberalism and Libertarianism remain the same at their heart. Totalitarian ideology that thinks it has the answer for everything and believes that utopia will be achieved if it’s Vision to transform society is implemented quickly.
Date: June 2nd, 2023 11:16 AM Author: red awkward state jew
Solzhenitsyn: "You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated."
Date: March 25th, 2025 12:29 PM Author: offensive electric haunted graveyard boiling water
Yes, Blackrock is actively trying to advance a Leninist-style dictatorship of the proletariat and transfer the means of production to the workers. This is a very smart statement that someone with a clear understanding of actual Marxist theory would say.
Date: May 7th, 2021 1:55 PM Author: 180 pale crackhouse
Its actually very hard to have a proxy fight. Most proxy fights like this are killed by way of SEC no-action letters. Maybe 1 in 5 proposals raised by a Blackrock end up making it onto a proxy. They have a horrible record of getting raped by the SEC the last few years. Of course, you dont want to piss off a Blackrock by going the no-action route so a lot of shit gets settled behind the scenes but you can read the no-action shit online if you feel like being bored to tears...
Date: May 7th, 2021 2:12 PM Author: harsh at-the-ready plaza persian
Dude, literally every public corporation now spends 30% of their time on carbon emissions and increasing their # of black employees because these ESG initiatives now DOMINATE
This is sophistry, whatever vehicle it is, it disinter-mediates ownership and control of an entity. It’s basically like ballot harvesting on a massive scale and completely ignored by the population.
Shareholders already have a terrible track record of exercising the rights of their ownership, this has just made it worse by an order of magnitude.
Date: June 2nd, 2023 12:49 PM Author: seedy comical parlor
instead of whining about this shit, why not have conservative organizations also pool their capital and battle it out with their own ETFs voting for conservative causes? nobody's stopping them from doing that.