Opinion

OPINION: Can The Value Of Social Justice Be Quantified? Bono Thinks So

Jared Whitley Contributor
Font Size:

A few years ago, The Onion lampooned rock icon Bono’s philanthropy by noting that he was tirelessly dedicating himself to ending Third World debt — no matter how many magazine covers he needed to appear on in the process.

Bono is still on his well-meaning, somewhat conflicted, and facile quest to fix the world. In January, the U2 front man and his business partners at private-equity firm TPG announced a new company called Y Analytics, which aims to quantify the value of social and environmental change created by investments.

“Math is music here,” Bono said. “If capitalism is to be a force for good we have to be able to measure when it’s doing good and when it’s doing harm, fuzzy thinking just won’t cut it. We need cold hard facts.”

While Bono is doubtless a more honorable man than the average celebrity virtue-signaler — and has certainly made a difference with his efforts to alleviate poverty in the developing world — his foray into the investment world promises to be a bit more complex than he appears to realize.

Bloomberg’s Matt Levine posed a few obvious questions. “Do you agree with Bono and TPG about what ‘social and environmental change’ is desirable? Do you agree with their methods of measuring it, and their results? A lot of responsible investing comes down to personal priorities and preferences, and efforts to create objective quantitative indexes of social goodness are mostly a category mistake.”

Companies such as Nike have been forced to confront these pickles before, such as when college students protested the low wages and dismal working conditions of people working in foreign factories producing their shoes and clothing. Nike responded by improving wages and seeking to improve working conditions, but it also closed several factories operating in countries where it could not enforce improved wages and working conditions.

A comprehensive social welfare metric would inquire as to what would happen to the men, women and children employed there — typically, these people do not win from the closure of such factories.

Presenting a social welfare metric as objective and the matter of simple arithmetic misrepresents the moral complexities facing us today. While those who support the creation of such metrics undoubtedly advocate from a good place, there simply is no consensus on many such issues that such metrics need to account for.

While many deride the focus that companies place on profits, or that governments place on economic growth, each does have the benefit of being straightforward to measure. Measurable benefits are needed to protect retail investors from the virtue signaling of institutional investors and proxy advisory firms.

Last year, two leading economists published research on “social justice” shareholder resolutions — including those on environmental, social and political issues — and whether they created value for stock-owners. They found that such resolutions produce no discernible benefit to shareholders. The findings are especially concerning when one considers how often proxy advisers recommend that their clients vote for the resolutions.

Those who feel compelled to “invest with their conscience” and are willing to take a lower return to do so certainly have that freedom, and they have many funds from which to choose. However, we cannot objectively quantify the social gains from socially-responsible investing. We can only quantify the internal costs of doing so, for better or worse. Pretending otherwise is a recipe for confusion.

Jared Whitley served as press liaison for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and as associate director in the White House under George W. Bush. He earned his MBA from Hult International Business School in Dubai.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel