Electing to Speak
I’ve never won an election.
Seriously, not one. Not even a vote for class rep at school. I did conduct a kamikaze run for Imperial College Union President in 2000 – a full time, sabbatical position – and came in a very close second. This was mostly down to the excellence of my campaign guru, Mr. Ofori, and possibly represents one of my life’s sliding doors moments. If nothing else, it provided my best man with ample fodder for his character assassination speech at my wedding, but there were no prizes for second place.
As such, I’m possibly ill-qualified to comment on politics… but we’re in a supermassive election year, so everything is political. Here we go.
Business and politics have been forever intertwined. In the era of my last campaign, political bets by businesses were hedged; in recent years, the trend is towards sides being taken. This is demonstrably true through a cursory analysis of company donations to political parties.
We’ve seen many business leaders embark on political crusades; over time, such crusades colour the organisations that they lead. An excellent example of this is Google’s recent embarrassment with their Gemini AI image generation – which, among other things, refused to produce images of the US founding fathers as the group of white men that they were. When asked for images of WWII German soldiers, it didn’t exactly follow the history books.
Perhaps it might have been more accurate depicting the Last Supper than Da Vinci, but I digress…
You’ll be glad to hear that I’m not going to disappear into the identity politics cess pit; rather, I’d like to focus on a comment attributed to a recent Google staff meeting. “If I had pointed this out 2 weeks ago, I would have been called a racist. What’s changed?”
What a great question.
Imagine being a junior accountant at FTX and trying to square the circle to collateralise SBF’s magic beans. Imagine working in Looney-era BP, wishing to raise concerns about the value destruction associated with the pet projects.
Imagine being a Blackrock fund manager, instructed to vote for ESG motions that you know are contrary to your fiduciary duties to act in the best interests of your clients. I have seen reports of other pension funds avoiding Nvidia due to “weak ESG performance”… it’s one of the so-called magnificent seven, the cornerstone of the great white hope/fear that is AI, and is up more than 300% in the last 12 months…
These are all situations created by business leaders taking public and prominent political positions, all with questionable alignment to the businesses that they purport to lead. Call me old-fashioned but making an honest buck and returning it to shareholders always worked for me.
Now let’s flip the script and think about how this tune is played through a governmental ensemble[1].
The issue of regulatory capture is a part of this – rather than try and cover it here, everyone working in (or considering entering) a heavily regulated business should watch this Bill Gurley talk.
Governments are complicated beasts with more competing demands than most businesses, with the difference being that we theoretically get to elect – and fire – the boss. In between these two events, there is plenty of potential for ideological positioning with a similar effect.
Imagine working in the DoE’s hilariously named ‘Department of Fossil Energy’ when a White House moratorium on new LNG export permits is handed down.
You stand up. You have an armful of data showing how US gas prices have not escalated due to LNG exports. How the magnitude of exports is suppressing seasonality and volatility in the US gas market. About how many jobs are supported.
You clear your throat. You say “Excuse me, Madam Secretary, how does this support energy security of the US and her allies? Doesn’t this hand an advantage to Qatar, to Russia, to…”
… you trail off, deafened by a chilled silence. An awkward pause follows. People shuffle in their seats, and someone mutters something about 18- to 29-year-old voters in reply. You’ve been defeated by TikTok.
You spend the rest of the day listening to erstwhile silent colleagues saying that they agreed with you. That they appreciated you saying something. Well, you could have said something at the time…
You start to wonder how this voter group became so influential. Influence usually needs money, and at that age, all you are supposed to be worried about is finding love and your student debt.
3 weeks later, Qatar announces a large expansion. In response, Iran decides it needs to pull harder on its side of the North Field / South Pars lest the Qataris suck it dry. Any real or perceived environmental benefit of the US moratorium has just gone up in smoke.
You remember that Qatar is amongst the largest overseas funders of US higher education. You recall the role Russians were accused of playing in funding anti-fracking groups. Follow the money, indeed.
Regular readers will know that I lean a little libertarian – and would prefer businesses to stay out of politics, and for politicians to stay out of business. But I’m also a realist, so one thing we can all do is make sure that there is at least a conversation.
Stand up. Clear your throat. Deep breath. Go.
[1] As a musician this thought has me giggling like an idiot. I doubt a government ensemble could even agree on how to tune themselves – the irony of which is that an orchestra always tunes to the oboe as it can only be tuned by changing out the reed. If we were to pick an analogy for the economy, we may well choose energy policy. But I digress…