“It turns out that alienating the majority of your customer base is terrible for business,” Shepard said. “You can sort of get away with that when the market is reaching new highs and interest rates are nothing, so you can borrow and make up for the lack of profits.” But in today’s environment, with markets tumbling, interest rates rising, and a potential recession looming, “suddenly the luxury of alienating your customer base doesn’t exist anymore.”
Last week, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell became the latest executive to say he has had enough. He invited employees who felt “triggered” by controversial ideas to accept a severance package and leave the company.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek has proven to be a cautionary tale for corporate leaders. In March, he bowed to activist employees and announced that the family entertainment company would fight to support sex education for children in elementary school, while his company revealed its intention to sexualize kids’ movies and shows. This action sparked a backlash from conservative employees and led to parents canceling subscriptions and theme park visits. Disney stock fell from $130 per share in March to $95 today, a 27 percent drop well in excess of the 18 percent decline in the S&P 500 over the same period.
Left-wing newspaper The Intercept lamented that the election of President Joe Biden was supposed to mark the start of a golden era for the progressive moment. Instead, “Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other reproductive health organizations had been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between competing factions of their organizations … It’s also true of the progressive advocacy space across the board, which has, more or less, effectively ceased to function.”
The executives of Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, Microsoft, Levi’s, and Major League Baseball chose to protest voter-ID laws in Georgia, with MLB even removing its all-star games from Atlanta. Delta CEO Ed Bastian first supported the law, then turned against it in response to left-wing threats to boycott the airline.
