Business

A Parallel, Conservative Economy Is Emerging To Compete With ‘Corporations That Hate You’ 

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• Conservatives have long been concerned about companies discriminating against their viewpoints and promoting a left-wing agenda, but there have been few conservative-leaning businesses offering viable alternatives.
• Several new companies have emerged to combat this problem in various fields including financial services, entertainment and consumer goods; conservative entrepreneurs want to influence the culture and offer an alternative to businesses that are hostile to their beliefs. 
• “This movement has to be cultural, it can’t just be about business … It’s about daring people to think this way and showing them it can be done. It transcends a lot of the fake and performative aspects of partisan politics,” New Founding cofounder Matthew Peterson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A separate economy is emerging for consumers who want to opt out of supporting corporations with vocal left-wing views, with new businesses popping up in various fields that aim to either promote conservative values or stay out of politics altogether.

Some of the country’s largest corporations have taken left-wing stances on divisive issues in recent years, and some have been accused of discriminating against conservative and religious consumers. A growing cohort of entrepreneurs are offering an alternative to left-wing corporations and aiming to change the culture through the promotion of conservative values in their businesses.

New Founding, a conservative for-profit organization, is connecting conservative investors with ideologically aligned projects and publishing a curated guide of companies that align with its social values. New Founding cofounder Matthew Peterson had already been connecting investors with ideologically aligned businesses informally, but he created New Founding to do that at a larger scale, he told the DCNF.

Social conservatives oppose hookup culture and the trend of delaying or foregoing marriage, yet as several new dating apps hit the market aimed at helping people pursue marriage, conservatives had no way of promoting them as a cultural countermovement or an opportunity for investors, Peterson told the DCNF. New Founding aims to change that by creating a network of like-minded investors and entrepreneurs who can promote products they believe are good for the culture.

“Why isn’t there a pro-family angle that businesses are selling with the same level of urgency that they’re selling climate change. That’s winning to me. Winning would mean we’d be talking about the family crisis,” Peterson said.

Concerns about left-leaning corporations go beyond their political statements: the environmental and social and governance (ESG) movement allows dominant investment firms to impose climate and social justice-related goals on other businesses even when they’re harmful to the bottom line. ESG has fueled a corporate war on the fossil fuels industry, for example, and the ESG initiatives of three top finance companies prompted 19 state attorneys general to question them about how they’re actually able to fulfill their fiduciary duties to investors while pursuing social and environmental goals.

The financial firm Strive Asset Management is cutting against the trend in the financial services industry of prioritizing social and environmental goals over shareholder value at the expense of customers; they’re pledging not to mix business with politics and to instead prioritize value for shareholders.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas asked U.S. publicly traded oil producers what was restraining growth in production despite high gas prices.

A staggering *60%* cited “investor pressure” in their responses.

Strive was born to solve this problem. Starting next week.

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 5, 2022

Another company saw growing popularity among conservatives after GoFundMe, the dominant crowdfunding platform, removed causes from its website such as the Canadian truckers’ protest against COVID-mandates and the legal defensefund for Kyle Rittenhouse. GiveSendGo, a Christian organization, has become a popular fundraising alternative for conservatives who no longer trust GoFundMe.

The Daily Wire, a company founded as a conservative news outlet, has moved into movies, children’s content and razor sales, and it was reportedly valued at about $150 million in April. The company is openly conservative and markets itself as an alternative to its left-leaning competitors.

“Stop giving your money to corporations that hate you. Give it to me instead,” reads the website for Jeremy’s Razors, a Daily Wire project. Jeremy’s Razors was born out of a dispute between the Daily Wire and Harry’s, a razor company that sponsored the outlet before publicly denouncing it for criticizing gender ideology.

Rather than being simply “anti-woke,” this emerging economy needs to put forth a positive vision focused on family and community, according to Peterson. “This movement has to be cultural, it can’t just be about business … It’s about daring people to think this way and showing them it can be done. It transcends a lot of the fake and performative aspects of partisan politics,” he told the DCNF.