The Difficult Truth about ESG Investing with Aswath Damodaran

[@Toby-oq8cg]

This is spot on. Pretty much all the ESG funds are closing down

[@TheEtrepreneur]

listening while cooking, haven't hear so much common sense minute by minute in a long time. Great talk Aswath, God bless you.

[@mandolorian-nm8vt]

True, ESG is a gravy train mainly profited by consultants who charges companies millions.

[@sumtingyum]

Oof. Powerful ending. “No good person needs a megaphone to tell the world what a good person they are”

[@mihaelaulieru3063]

Genuine assessment! It takes guts to spell out the hard truth 👏👏👏👏

[@vecernicek2]

I feel like it takes extraordinary cowardice and/or stupidity to go with the flow on ESG. This is such a dangerous, toxic, divisive and ridiculously idiotic idea that I would expect many more people to stand up against this. Unfortunately, most people are either cowards, idiots, or both. As someone who was born and raised in a communist country, this is painfully reminiscent and downright scary. People never learn from historic experience, I guess.

[@mikevincent6332]

The ESG score itself is the primary risk

[@rurikmckaiser543]

This lecture is pure magic! I really love the arguments. I'm currently putting together my PhD proposal and this is helping me in a GREAT way 🎉

[@SnapBackCollector211]

This is why I respect Aswath honesty

[@daleparker6308]

ESG will prove to have been a mistake for all but a privileged few. “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”

[@brandoncliffswarts5100]

The guy says big companies score higher than small companies, but he forget footprint takes the size of the business into account.

[@Ralphjons]

Annhauser Busch, Target and Nike. Real proof of this analysis.

[@smcg2490]

The world needs to see this lecture. This man is the canary in the coal mine. Ignore him at your peril. We must decouple the aggregation of ESG and focus on quantitative measures.

[@DeviousDumplin]

Aswanth is the GOAT

[@chefandy72]

As someone who works an hourly position for an very ESG corporation and now being in my fifties i find it to be extremely dystopian. I withdrew from management because of the culture and what i see still disgusts me. Top down management by MBA'S and possible AI algorithms and hands on managers occupied by foolish exasperating things. I have to question the end goal, weather we should be drawing assumptions of its relationship to post nationalism and the WEF. I understand most of the investor class doesn't care but many of them have kids and or would choose to become a prepper or move to puerto rico or some such thing as a necessity. People can talk about supply chains as a topic of inconvenience but eventually hard descions will need to be made, like paying the true costs for avodaos as a bizarre anicdote but which is very relevant and i'm not refering to a carbon tax.

[@gmw3083]

I worked in industrial construction. Somewhat seasonal. Big bucks while working. I figured out quickly that to stick around during the lean season, you had to lick butt and stab backs. I chose layoffs every time. When I came back to the same company, it was no surprise who was still there. ESG or otherwise capitalism is dog eat dog. To the last man.

[@vecernicek2]

As someone who was born in an eastern bloc country, I find it not only dystopian, but painfully reminiscent of our past. Unfortunately, education in the West has been completely redwashed since the 1970s, meaning people from countries which never experienced loosing their freedom are completely ignorant and uninterested in our lived historic experience. This is incredibly painful for me to see, because when we were imprisoned by the iron curtain, at least we had hope that one day the regime will implode. Or we had the choice of trying to escape at grave personal risk and cost to our loved ones who we'd be leaving behind. But now, when the Free world succumbs to a slight variant of the political poison of an ideology that strangled the 'Eastern bloc' for 40 years, there will be no hope and nowhere to escape. Truly dystopian.

[@chefandy72]

@@vecernicek2 thank you for saying that. Everything ends and begins with free speech. Legislation to curb free speech is being drawn up and implemented and the main stream doesn't care because it benefits them. "Lest we forget" was a saying coined after a world war, it was about why so many died and not that so many died. Life is cheap without freedom and that's why people die for it. I'm surprised this comment is still here, and that I can read a reply, others reply have disappeared.

[@vecernicek2]

@@chefandy72 Totally agreed. I guess every or every other generation has to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the generations to come. The danger comes periodically from left or from right. Now this is our fight to win, hopefully. But right now it seems that Freedom is loosing badly.

[@kkhalifah1019]

Doing research for my doctoral dissertation proposal -- this lecture is pure gold! Thank you.

[@joshuaojo-aromokudu4176]

Did anyone ever send him all the ESG scores for all companies not covered by sustainalytics?

[@annasillanpaa1111]

This is so true. The biggest tech companies in Finland are among most discriminating globally against women with tech degrees. The companies' execs have pushed for decades for the bad equal opportunity and work safety laws and still do. With that, for decades they have destroyed female engineers careers especially high achieving ones, for not having sex/relationship with supervisor, asking about pay, etc. Even per recent research, despite 35 year old equal opportunity women with tech degrees are still systematically placed in lowest positions with high amount of annual discrimination and harassment. With the bad laws, as everything is legal, they tout their equal opportunities, human rights etc. They ban women from telling about their experiences despite it being constitutional right. There can even be suicides at work (and there are) due to bullying but companies are never held accountable. In addition, the bad laws they have pushed allow in practise very harsh bullying, discrimination & retaliation when women raise issues. They have caused among biggest gender pay gaps in EU, huge amount of serious mental disorders, highly educated women's re-education, unemplyment, substance abuse, poverty, early retirement due to depression, even suicide attempts & suicides especially among women. For decades, these companies have highly rewarded & fast advanced the worst culprits, the men & women in support roles. The tech execs are in the boards of main media companies that systematically distort & sugar coat the equal opportunity data, censor women's comments, refuse to write about women's problems, what laws mean etc. To make the gender scores good these tech companies started to hire women from outside to high level positions so scores look good. Then, per research, in smaller companies there is much less women's & others' discrimination and harassment than in tech. The difference is big like 5% vs 25-30%. The big tech companies are filled with crony corruption, high level execs are kept in high level positions fir decades even when their work results are poor for decades. The big companies are supported by billions and tens of tax payers money by the gov't. Our pension funds only invest in companies etc in Finland, same for our sovereign wealth fund, even when the returns are much lower. Yet, these biggest tech companies have very high ESG scores & win a lot of ESG awards. Their mgmt - the worst - gives each others all kinds of ESG awards.

[@manictiger]

People should be hired based on their ability, not their identity. The problem with ESG, is that it's like affirmative action. It's about filling quotas, instead of getting jobs done. We already tried communism and central planning and it has and continues to fail. Every centrally controlled city in the U.S., (where I am), is hot garbage. People should make decisions on a local level. No one 8,000 miles away gets to tell me how many rounds I get to have in a magazine. No one even 500 miles away gets to do that. ESG is centralized control, and so it is doomed to fail. No one, not even Genghis Khan was ever able to control the entire world. Humans don't work that way.

[@annasillanpaa1111]

@@manictiger Well, yes, but the laws are often very bad and people are not hired or promoted based on ability. In fact it is ridiculous to claim unless "ability" is ability to bully & discriminate. Loads of research on this. Worst bullies are often the tech companies' execs. They have driven for bad laws & company policies for decades. We women with tech degrees have often had our careers destroyed time and again for decades when we are better than men. The often mediocre or even poor supervisors & mgmt cannot stand high achieving female engineers. They find pretexes to destroy our careers for not having sex/relationship with supervisor, if we ask about pay etc. Has been done in Finland for decades with VERY STRONG support from the top mgmt, including token women & even when their own results are bad even for decades. The crony corrupted mgmt often ONLY advances men & token women who don't have tech degrees who support our legal harsh bullying & discrimination, with the bad laws they have pushed & push. They forcefully silence victims & legally retailate if we raise concerns. Yet, they tout their great "equal opportunity", "ethics" etc while we are not allowed to discuss what it means, what they have done yo us etc. That is the essence of bullying, narcissism & misogyny. They are such cowards they cannot even admit what they have done. And, it costs tens of billions annually to Finland which is a small country with 5,5 milloin people. Of course, the mediocre or even poor mgmt is often filthy rich while especially hard working women are poor & country's GNP is not grown for 15 years despite having world's best public schools. It is evil. ESG attempts to help this but end result is that more women in support roles advance while they already did so very fast & companies started to hire women from outside to higher level positions to have good ESG/gender statistics. It has nothing to do with the original intent. Just like the video said. At least in Finland in tech.

[@manictiger]

​@@annasillanpaa1111 So your solution to crony nepotism, is to have the WEF, an even bigger crony nepotistic entity, control the world? Because they "promised" they care about you? You, with a working cerebrum actually believe that? I think maybe you just need to look for better companies or create your own. Stop trying to have these world-dominating entities try to save you. They won't.

[@YvonLorcy-bl4ck]

Pi

[@vecernicek2]

Do you have data to support your claims? Or is it your personal perception? I am highly skeptical of there being the kind of discrimination you describe*. Because if women were systemically suppressed in pay and in career opportunities, this in economic terms means that women are undervalued on the job market. In a capitalist system this would naturally create a massive competitive advantage for companies who would hire those undervalued women and overtime this problem would resolve itself. Especially in engineering, because I am hearing from all directions that companies are chronically understaffed on qualified engineers. The only alternative possibility is that there is a massive market inefficiency which is prevented from being exploited by some kind of powerful conspiracy. That just sets my bullshit detectors off. I think it's more likely that your story is either not reflecting of reality or there are major missing parts to it. Unless you have extraordinary evidence to support your extraordinary claim. Edit: * I mean on a systemic level. Locally (such as within a particular company), it's possible.

[@mariusvanc]

ESG has become just another universal metric that can and will be gamed, just like any other metric or regulation, with the attendant consulting business and a layer of bureaucracy.

[@Ryan91487]

Bingo, this is what most of us see, people can easily find ways to pay lip service with this.

[@tapio_m6861]

There is a difference between ESG *ratings* and plain ESG. There are genuine usable environmental metrics, and they are further improving. Those are absolutely usable, just as people like I'm sure Mr. Damodaran uses any other data points. He is even talking about carbon footprints. He could be using carbon footprint as data points, and they are today even rather well covered. Using black box ESG ratings as something that impacts your investment decisions is stupid. Using things such as emissions data to calculate how much fossil fuel risk a company or a fund has? Absolutely usable, and something that people should (and some are) doing. But Mr. Damodaran is from the old world and is clearly not familiar with these metrics. He ought to educate himself on what is really out there. Start with EU's CSRD, ESRS, SFDR, the soon-to-be CSDDD... this alphabet soup is really not that complex once you take your time to read up on what is out there. These are not perfect, not by any means. But they are actual data points that you can use. McKinsey and other companies are at fault, but Mr. Damodaran is one of the guys (teachers) that should be telling about ACTUAL data points that you can use for your cash flow analysis etc.

[@jasminsshah2671]

Hello, im a product designer and looking at creating a solution based on ESG rating n tracking. Would you mind helping me some user interview questions and guidance in this domain please?

[@jasminsshah2671]

This is a student case study not an actual solution. However research n problem solving will b real

[@DF-ss5ep]

It's regulatory capture at a global scale on steroids

[@jacobh674]

From the sound of the girls voice 30 minutes in I knew she would be on some BS. Then she hits him with “Have you read them?” … “Doesn’t seem like you have.” Plain disrespect there. Not a good look for Baruch.

[@kuldeepraina7360]

Woah

[@mikevincent6332]

CSO = religious cleric

[@matys137]

I can't cancel my ESG investment because I can go to hell.

[@brandoncliffswarts5100]

The guy doesn't understand ESG. ESG is not about profit but about doing business in a sustainable way. He says a mining selling a mine doesn't change the world because another company buys it; if another company want to do dirty business, what is it to you. You do good, even if others do bad. In his mind, ESG is about revenue and profit, and it's not. It's about sustainability.

[@GoogleUser-ge5hi]

What the hell does he talk about ???? We don’t have a standard to measure someone with good behaviours? That’s what the law there for. If you a criminal I know you are not safe.

[@define4736]

Laws define bad behaviours. Not good behaviours. Definition of bad is much easier to make than definition of good. You can't form consensus on what is good across a diverse population. One probably can't even get a consensus in a family on what is "the good"

[@weareall1]

Such a shallow lecture.

[@doomy420]

Why don't u give the lecture yourself

[@syedasifmushtaq1379]

This argument appears to be rather ridiculous, as it attempts to mix various unrelated elements together. While I don't support either BlackRock or the mathematical professors, it is evident that the current method of measuring value creation is problematic. One only needs to look at the state of the world to see the glaring issues: inequality, poverty, child labor, environmental destruction, stagnant wages, and the prevalence of tax havens. The professor seems to selectively focus on points that bolster their one-sided argument. ESG score are questionable that's true but financial valuation models are questionable.

[@danielong4013]

You just did the same by obfuscating what you perceive to be social issues with business valuation

[@syedasifmushtaq1379]

@@danielong4013 Problem is that these corporations exploit their power to interfere in social issues, manipulate the rules to their advantage, and undermine the principles of a free-market economy. There is no genuine free market where we can altogether ignore these issues

[@gmw3083]

The good news is that all civilizations crumble. The current one is not exempt from this fate.

[@user-hongkongnews]

"inequality, poverty, child labor, environmental destruction, stagnant wages, and the prevalence of tax havens." These things have been there since humans came out of the forest in Africa; the real difference is that these issues were worse several centuries ago. The reason you can feel it is that now you have the internet and laptops to watch it, thanks to the industrial revolution, free market, and capitalism.

[@DolaMoja]

​@@user-hongkongnewsThen what is the essence of a market if some of its stakeholders don't enjoy the value in proportion to their input? Addressing Social issues must be the leading Risk-Adjusted actions by any business. Ultimately the people are the market

[@georgekubantsev1432]

feels a bit like he was paid off by o&g companies reps to give this lecture. Or he just like to ramble like any other old man. but in any case, if you make such claims, then show what you're basing it off on.

[@vrakitine]

I asked ChatGPT: "How can we rank a list of software development companies from best to worst based solely on the environmental part of ESG?" and I did not find any metrics or indicators in the response that depend on the programming methodologies that companies strive to use in software development. Here, there is a direct analogy with conventional production of anything. It is well known that within the eco-programming paradigm, there are programming methodologies such as Model-driven engineering (MDE), v-agent oriented programming (VAOP), Automata-based programming, and others, which initially require more development costs but provide significant resource savings during the maintenance and upgrading of software products when they are used. Moreover, it is important to note that investors often show a preference for software development companies that have embraced the eco-programming paradigm. These companies not only reduce their environmental impact but also demonstrate a commitment to resource efficiency and long-term sustainability, which aligns with the growing interest of environmentally conscious investors. It seemed very strange to me that this aspect is not being addressed, and I wonder who this question should be addressed to? For reference, eco-programming is a programming paradigm based on the idea that any software product is ultimately useless and environmentally harmful to humanity, except for a software product that can be quickly and inexpensively reprogrammed (modified, updated) to work with new data in new conditions.

[@nkannikal]

❤😊❤😂3😂🎉odds 😂39 😊😊😊 b b. B