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Former CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc. Andrew F. Puzder exposes how the secretive consolidation of financial power under the guise of "ESG" represents a new collectivist threat to the free market.
Over the last thirty-five years, asset manager mega-giants BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard have accumulated unprecedented levels of stock ownership in virtually every major US company. Voting the shares they hold for clients allows these companies to force their own “environmental, social, and governance” or “ESG” agenda on the American corporate sector and, by extension, on all of us.
An asset manager’s traditional duty is to maximize returns for its investors, but these financial elites expand their duties through “stakeholder capitalism,” the idea that a company is responsible not only for its actual shareholders, but for everyone who is affected by the company—which translates to everyone in the community. Thus, they can impose their preferred ESG goals under the guise of benefitting an amorphous group of non-investors—a group that has no say over whether ESG goals actually “benefit” them.
This elite-dominated economic system is nothing more than socialism in sheep’s clothing. “ESG” defines the champagne socialist agenda that would devastate the working and middle classes globally. Now, in the face of rising opposition, these financial elites are suddenly rebranding—shifting their terminology to conceal their intent.
A Tyranny for the Good of its Victims exposes how, although they may abandon the acronym “ESG,” these elites have pursued—and will continue to pursue—their ESG goals: to transform our consumer-driven free-market economy into one that is subject to their elitist demands, overriding the will of the people whom they deem incapable of self-government.
ESG has changed the United States more than any single law Congress has passed in fifty years. Leftwing ideologues now control our public companies, and most Americans have no idea it’s happening. Andy Puzder has seen it firsthand and describes it vividly in this amazing book.
—Tucker Carlson, American commentator and writer
An important book about a pressing question: whether the US financial system will be used to conscript American businesses to promote political and social causes.
—Eugene Scalia, former US Secretary of Labor
Andy Puzder’s new book is an urgent reminder that the ESG fad—also known as stakeholder capitalism—is a ruse to make workers, shareholders, and America poorer. This leftist assault on free market capitalism is a clear and present danger to prosperity, and this book is a welcome siren alarm.
—Stephen Moore, Senior Trump Economic Advisor and Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation
I highly recommend Andy Puzder’s latest book, A Tyranny for the Good of its Victims. He exposes the harm of unbridled ESG regulation and champagne socialism—de rigueur in global summits. He shows how capitalism, freedom, and the profit motive have built incredible prosperity and are winning against the anti-growth attack from globalism.
—David Malpass, former President of the World Bank
At a moment when most Democrats and even some prominent Republicans have lost confidence in free-market capitalism, Andy Puzder makes a bold case for reviving the greatest system known to man to lift people up from poverty. In A Tyranny for the Good of its Victims, Puzder opens your eyes to the follies of stakeholder capitalism—and offers a better way forward.
—Vivek Ramaswamy, American entrepreneur and author
Andrew F. Puzder is an author, speaker, political commentator, attorney, and retired chief executive officer. For seventeen years he served as the CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., an international corporation that owns popular restaurant chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Puzder became CEO in 2000 and led the company out of serious financial difficulties.
Puzder is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and the America First Policy Institute. He is also a member of the Reagan Institute’s National Leadership Council and a Reaganomics lecturer. He serves on the advisory boards of the State Financial Officers Foundation, Washington University’s School of Law, and Prager University.
Puzder is a frequent lecturer on economics and politics. He is a sought-after commentator on economic and political issues in national publications and a regular guest on cable news shows.