DEI as good business
2026-10-11 16:37:03.861954+02 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
I guess on BlueSky this is a skeet string? Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
Quick story. My op-ed on how corporations that kept their DEI programs performed just as well financially was accepted & factchecked at TIME Magazine. Just needed "pro forma review by the legal department." Suddenly the piece is spiked
Why? Benioff owns TIME and wants to ingratiate himself to Trump
Piece came out at USAToday
Why? Because USAToday owners (Gannett) only own media companies, so they have an incentive to attract an audience & advertisers
Tech elites like Bezos, Ellisons, Musk, & Benioff use their media firm to cozy to Trump, not to make profit
USA Today: DEI initiatives didn't cost companies. Just the opposite.
The lesson is not that the Trump administration's threats are empty. It is that their effectiveness often depends less on whether they are carried out than on whether people believe they will be.
www.usatoday.com/story/opinio... 2/4 DEI initiatives didn't cost companies. Just the opposite. | Opinion Firms that kept DEI, whether due to executive decisions or shareholder pressure, performed as well in the stock market as those that rolled it back. www.usatoday.com
These different incentives from standalone media owners vs. "common owners" like Benioff is the subject of one of my working papers
This is why Musk doesn't mind that that Twitter revenue is down 59% (or Ellison w/ CBS). He's more than making up for that loss via Twitter's political effects-- ingratiating to Trump, fomenting racist panics, etc--which help SpaceX and xAI get favorable public contracts and regulatory treatment"
It also seems to be the end-game for "AI"/LLM investment: use these things as propaganda machines, get the regulatory capture necessary to make up for the fact that the investments are gonna crash.