Are ESG’s silly or wrong somehow? In a market economy people are free to pursue and place value on whatever they choose to, including long term structural goals at the expense of short term maximal gains.

People have the right to be complicated and value things other than sheer volume of profits. Heck, I didn’t go into the business I’m in because it’s maximally profitable, but for many other reasons that could be considered “social values”. They have a value to me, and I set that value next to the decreased remunerative value, increasing the total value of my work relative to other fields. My work isn’t just profitable, it’s fun, it provides jobs for young people who I get to choose, it provides a product people don’t need but that is really fun and that I care about, it has a lot of variety, it’s close to home, it’s creative, it lets me have flexibility to be with my kids (and is the sort of work they can be with me at), it gives me freedom and independence, it provides a place for people I care about to meet and make memories, I get to meet a lot of interesting people, and it provides a way to benefit schools and children (which matter to me).

The value story for my work is quite complex. And frankly, maximal profit is not at all a major factor. For some people, that is what matters, and they are free to pursue that. I don’t have a problem with that. We just need to not have a problem with each other and feel free to pursue our own strategies toward our own ends without getting obsessed with comparison and condemnation.

I’ve had employees leave me for better paying jobs, and I’ve warned them that they may be underestimating the non-monetary value of the jobs I provide. And a lot of them change their minds and come back when they realize I was right, that there is a fiscal value you can set on flexibility, sustainability, and a positive environment, that makes it worth working for me instead of somewhere else.

Investors have the right to invest in whatever they value. As long as they don’t then go on to say that other people can’t invest in what they value. So profit and productivity-focused investors and businesses who object to ESVs either need to grow a thicker skin and some balls and not worry about what other people are getting involved in and not be so distracted by the intangibles those other people are pursuing and stick to their own, or ESG people need to learn to be content pursuing their own values without needing to brag about them and force them on everybody else. And people do use a certain kind of guilt and social compulsion to sell ESVs.

Giving that moral cache up as selling point might be tough for ESV investors. There’s a certain moral glamor and status that people are seeking when they pursue certain prosocial, PC, progressive values. They don’t just want to pursue them, they want to be seen as someone who pursues them. They want the superiority. And that means there has to be someone they are are superior to. And they need to make that point, so the comparison can be drawn.

It’s not enough to just do good, not even enough to just say “I am doing good”. You really want to say “look what good I’m doing, and how good I am, and how much better that is than the people who aren’t”. That need comes with the natural pharisaical tendencies of all humans. We love to make large our phylacteries. We wouldn’t invest so much, and talk about it so much, if we weren’t trying to secure our status. And status only registers when you’ve got a comparison.

So I can see why there’s some tension between ESV proponents and their critics. What you have here is a conflict of status systems. Both are definitely seeking status, and both are using some kind of marker they want to deal in and aquire to get it. For one group, it’s money. For another, it’s a kind of highly visible social-moral currency that resides mostly on the internet and on social media. They’re both presumably impressing someone. But I hardly think either side will win an argument with people who don’t share their currency that the other’s is worthless.