PDF Summary:Woke, Inc., by Vivek Ramaswamy

In Woke, Inc., entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy discusses what he calls Wokenomics, in which American corporations hide their corruption and greed behind the disingenuous virtue signaling of liberal values. He argues that by engaging in Wokenomics, corporations go beyond selling a product; they are selling Americans a new standard for the right way to think and live. He contends that their false alliance with social causes allows them to influence legislation, manipulate consumers, and silence dissent. He argues that Wokenomics’s deceptive practices are weakening democracy—polarizing citizens and concentrating political power in the hands of a small group of corporate elites.

Ramaswamy uses personal anecdotes and examples of current events to supplement his arguments and proposes five solutions to counter wokeness. Our guide will put his key ideas into focus and position them in conversation with other economists and political analysts who both reinforce and dispute his perspective.

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(Shortform note: American journalist Isabel Wilkerson also compares systemic racism in America to a caste system in her book Caste. She argues that similar to caste systems in other countries, groups of people are granted certain privileges while others are disenfranchised, and this dichotomy is upheld by legislation and social norms. However, her solution to breaking the caste system is not to deny its existence but to examine the ways in which the racial structure is maintained and fight against it.)

What Does Wokenomics in Practice Look Like?

Ramaswamy writes that a company engaging in any way with progressive values is woke and strays from his ideal of apolitical capitalism. He highlights what he contends are the worst ways that Wokenomics is applied to American society, including diversity training and censorship, boycotting, and submitting to foreign, undemocratic countries.

Diversity Training and Censorship

Ramaswamy contends that diversity training is a way for a company to inflate its efforts of making internal changes while never having to implement any actual practices. These trainings often teach about sexual harassment, LBGTQ+ inclusion, or anti-racist practices. While they may have some educational value for employees, they do not guarantee that the company will hire more marginalized identities, create safe spaces for them, nor donate to related causes.

(Shortform note: To be clear, Ramaswamy isn’t suggesting that companies reconcile this disconnect between what they say they do and what they actually do by changing their actual hiring practices and inclusion policies. His argument is that such policies are unnecessary because prioritizing a workforce of diverse identities isn’t needed to make a company successful. He recommends, instead, that they simply stop pretending they’re making these changes.)

He argues that diversity training not only allows companies to avoid making real change, but it also leads to other harms: It silences dissenting voices both at work and outside of the workplace, and it diverts resources from more effective avenues of reform.

Silencing dissenting voices at work: Corporate executives use diversity training to force their ideals on workers and pressure them to conform. Employees with dissenting views might be afraid of losing their jobs if they voice their opinion. For example, if a company installs new, single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms, employees who may not agree with that decision might not want to voice opposing opinions lest they be met with backlash.

(Shortform note: Human resources experts advise that to create an environment in which workers feel comfortable expressing their views while at the same time, promoting diversity and inclusion, companies should clearly define the difference between opinion and harassment, which can include discrimination or hate speech. They should also emphasize the importance of fostering respect among coworkers, not just diversity.)

Silencing dissenting voices outside the workplace: When corporations market their use of diversity training to appear woke, they’ll often forbid their employees from expressing an “un-woke” idea on social media—outside the workplace—because it mars their public image. Take InterActive Corp employee Justine Stucco, who famously tweeted about her whiteness making her immune to catching AIDS in Africa and was subsequently fired because InterActive didn’t want to employ someone considered racist. Ramaswamy argues that the company shouldn't have fired her, as employees should be able to say what they want in their private time and spaces.

The Consequence of Cancel Culture

In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, journalist Jon Ronson explains that while cancel culture may have begun with good intentions, the consequences of canceling someone can be destructive. Cancel culture is a phenomenon in which people direct mass disapproval toward someone in an attempt to punish them for offensive speech or behaviors.

The medium in which cancel culture occurs is almost always social media. Social media gives power to voices that have historically been stifled or ignored. Activists can use social media to exert enough pressure to take down titans like Harvey Weinstein, who was so well connected in Hollywood, few people dared to speak against him. The #MeToo movement empowered women victimized by him to speak out and bring him to justice.

However, Ronson explains that the unregulated nature of cancel culture means that the power can easily be abused. When a person is fired or accused of a crime, they are usually given some form of due process, but cancel culture sentences people immediately and severely.

While public figures like Weinstein might have the resources to defend themselves, everyday people like Justine Stucco (of Ramaswamy’s discussion) won’t, and it can strip them of their job, friends, and social standing. This form of justice is arbitrary and at times, disproportionate to the perceived transgression. Ronson reiterates that positive social change cannot stem from this kind of cancel culture.

Diverting resources from more effective avenues of reform: Companies often deploy expensive diversity training directly after a major controversy or social outcry. This trend suggests that companies are only using the training to put on a performance of demonstrating that they’ve taken measures toward social good. Ramaswamy argues that if companies actually want to make positive social changes, they should focus on making better products instead. For example, if a company that makes women’s fitness apparel came under scrutiny for sexism in the workplace, Ramaswamy asserts that training on anti-sexism would be less beneficial than focusing on creating a product that helps women everywhere.

Ineffective Diversity Training

Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author of Emotional Intelligence, agrees with Ramaswamy’s assessment that most diversity workshops don’t create legitimate social change within a company or society. However, Goleman contends that implementing true social change does bring benefits: Companies gain a competitive advantage by employing people from a variety of different backgrounds. Furthermore, for these diverse companies to foster productive employees and create better products, prejudice in the workplace needs to be taken seriously. A company can’t function efficiently if employees don’t believe the workplace is a safe environment for them.

For inclusion efforts to be meaningful, Goleman argues that companies can’t just mandate a diversity training session that lasts for a day or weekend. This short time span makes the exercise seem like an inconsequential hoop to jump through. Additionally, discussing issues like racism or sexism can be emotionally taxing for employees, and a superficial meeting doesn’t justify bringing up such intense emotions.

Goleman suggests that corporations should instead establish long-term, company norms that foster a cooperative environment.

Boycotting

Activists looking to bring about change will sometimes encourage consumers to boycott a company they deem isn't woke enough. Boycotts might seem productive and empowering to the woke consumer in the short term, but Ramaswamy claims that politically-motivated boycotts can hurt poor consumers and are a wasted effort in the long run.

Boycotts can punish poor consumers. Some people can’t afford to quit certain brands if the more woke options are more expensive. For example, woke activists may urge people to boycott Amazon because of the poor working conditions in their factories, but few companies can compete with the range and speed at which Amazon can provide products, and consumers who rely on their services might be shamed for continuing to buy from Amazon or feel pressured into spending more money on alternative options.

Ramaswamy’s solution is that if consumers who don’t face poverty disapprove of Amazon’s business practices, they should donate to nonprofits that address the specific issues or try to open a new business that challenges Amazon.

Boycotts are frequently unsuccessful. It’s difficult to measure how many consumers will have to withhold their money to overcome loyal patrons and for how long boycotters will have to endure. For example, when Chick-fil-A’s CEO made a public statement against gay marriage, activists boycotted the company nationwide. However, enough people continued to eat there that the chain outlived the boycott. Furthermore, even when a boycott is successful, the accomplishment is a net-negative from Ramaswamy’s perspective because consumers are forcing businesses to engage with Wokenomics and repeat the cycle of virtue signaling.

Boycotts Should Not Be the Center of Activism

Law professor Zephyr Teachout argues that boycotting is a legitimate form of ethical consumerism and contrary to Ramasway’s argument, can be effective. If enough consumers decide to quit buying from a company, that company might be motivated to change its business practices. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example—in which segregation was barred from public transport after Rosa Parks inspired customers to protest for over a year—is evidence that sometimes mass protests can be crucial to social change.

However, Teachout also warns against making boycotts the main method of protest. The emphasis on boycotting makes it the consumer’s responsibility to hold companies accountable, which can place a difficult burden on an individual’s shoulders—as Ramaswamy points out in his discussion of its effect on poor people. Instead, Teachout agrees with Ramaswamy’s argument that social coalitions and nonprofits are much better suited to pressure corporations from a variety of angles. He asserts that activists should prioritize efforts to make these organizations stronger.

Submitting to Foreign Countries

According to Ramaswamy, the deceptive nature of Wokenomics amplifies the corruption between American corporations and foreign governments. In global capitalism, companies often seek to maximize their profits by partnering with countries that have fewer regulations on valuable resources like raw materials and labor. Ramaswamy argues that Wokenomics distracts consumers from these unethical partnerships.

When buying from woke companies, consumers believe they’re supporting an advocate for human rights, but Wokenomics doesn't compel companies to be transparent about their overseas dealings. Ramaswamy argues that because Wokenomics creates trust between the company and the consumer, customers may not be motivated to investigate a business's international practices if they already believe the company to be morally sound.

Woke companies' dishonest conduct, therefore, leads to many consumers unknowingly supporting actions that contradict the very ideas they believe in. For example, even though Starbucks advertised its socially responsible mission statement and anti-racist training programs, it has five plantations in Brazil that use child and slave labor under dismal working conditions.

Forgetting a Company's Misdeeds

Studies show that consumers remember ethical corporate behavior better than unethical behavior. When it comes to the news or personal memories, people tend to retain negative information better, but researchers hypothesize that people retain positive memories of companies because they prefer to ignore negative behavior that might conflict with their desire to buy a product or spend their leisure time without thinking about serious, political issues.

Woke companies can use this tendency to their advantage. The average American consumer isn’t up-to-date on international news, and if controversy does surface, companies can drown it out with reports of all of their good deeds until most people forget the scandals.

Using Trust to Buy Data

Ramaswamy argues that trusting a woke company’s integrity not only leads to consumers indirectly financing human rights violations in other countries but also keeps consumers in the dark when foreign governments leverage their invaluable resources to demand access to our personal data.

Ramaswamy warns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in particular is collecting our personal data to potentially misuse it. Ramaswamy describes Airbnb as the epitome of abusing consumers’ trust. Airbnb emphasizes how much they value their stakeholders, even replacing traditionally exclusive shareholder events with a Stakeholder Day. However, Airbnb shares an immense amount of its customers’ private data with the CCP, including phone numbers and email addresses—neglecting to inform the American public that the CCP is one of their largest and most powerful stakeholders.

Information in the Wrong Hands

Some political commentators believe that the United States and other democratic countries should take more proactive measures to prevent the CCP from mining data. The CCP uses intense surveillance through technological devices to maintain social order in China; they monitor private communication, web searches, and the whereabouts of Chinese citizens.

As Ramaswamy described, Airbnb has shared comparably personal information with the CCP. While it might be unclear what China would do with customer information for a temporary lodging company, in 2021, the CCP’s intentions became more clear when they were reported to have new software designed to gather and categorize negative press shared on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. This kind of surveillance could endanger the lives of professors, journalists, or politicians who speak out against the government.

Using Trust to Buy Media Presence

The CCP can also use its outsized influence to pressure media companies to present their political values in a favorable light to American audiences. For example, film production companies have frequently had to censor their movies to appease the CCP. Adjustments range from subtle (like the adaptation of the book World War Z changing the plot point in which China was the place of origin for the zombie virus) to overt (like the Dreamworks movie Abominable using a map that depicted disputed lands as part of China).

As the CCP inserts itself into American pop culture, Ramaswamy worries that ordinary citizens may be swayed into viewing China less critically, again because they’re dissuaded from questioning the partnership between woke media companies—which they trust—and foreign governments.

The CCP as a Codependent Partner

There’s no easy way for American companies to detach themselves from China. China wants to compete in the global market and provides alluring incentives for Western companies to contribute to their market and development. However, as Ramaswamy notes, one of the stipulations of having China as a partner is that the CCP will not accept any criticism and quickly punishes companies that don’t comply. Even though companies are aware of the CCP’s transgressions, halting business with China would steeply reduce their profit and cause everyday goods to be more expensive for American citizens.

Political figures like Robert Daly warn of another looming problem: As China begins to build up its own infrastructure, technology, and capital, it will depend less on American companies while our reliance on it remains the same. This imbalance will lead to a power dynamic that might permit the CCP even more influence over American companies and citizens.

How Do We Solve Wokenomics?

Ramaswamy believes the antidote to Wokenomics is a paradigm shift. He believes that Americans need to redefine strong values so that they cannot be influenced by wokeness or any other political ideology in the future. Ramaswamy paves the road to reclaiming our political power with five actionable solutions.

Solution 1: Revise Section 230

Ramaswamy argues that if we don’t limit the unique privileges granted to tech companies, those companies will essentially function as a shadow government ruling over the free speech of American citizens. To do this, he says we should restructure The Common Decency Act (CDA), which was established in 1996 to prevent minors from accessing pornographic material on the internet but has ended up giving tech companies unusual powers of censorship in addition to unusual freedom from liability.

Under Section 230 of the CDA, if a user posts explicit content on social media, the tech provider for that website can neither be held liable for the post nor sued for removing it. This protection gives them enormous power: They can both permit and remove content as they like with no repercussions. Ramaswamy argues that this gives tech companies the power to interpret our laws and censor our citizens according to their own guidelines, which may or may not align with official legal guidelines.

Ramaswamy’s solution is an amendment to Section 230 in which social media companies have to choose between one of the two legal protections. If they choose to moderate people’s opinions, they’ll then be liable for the spread of illegal content—in other words, if they’re going to remove problematic content, they must commit to removing all problematic content. If, on the other hand, they choose to allow complete freedom of speech, then they can’t remove any content that they decide doesn’t fit their guidelines—but they’ll be protected from litigation.

(Shortform note: The debate over Section 230 is a hot topic in conservative circles, and party members are divided on whether or not to revise the legislation. Some agree with Ramaswamy, believing that the revisions proposed would pressure media companies to create fairer and more transparent user guidelines. Others argue that as Big Tech companies are a part of the market, the government would be overstepping in trying to further regulate how they run their business. People on this side of the debate maintain that when censoring users’ voices becomes unprofitable, then these companies will stop on their own.)

Solution 2: Consider Political Affiliation as Freedom of Religion

Ramaswamy argues that free speech can be strengthened by adding political affiliation to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. He writes that since political affiliation is such a predominant part of people’s identities and how they live their lives, it’s equivalent to following a religion. Thus, just as religion is protected, people should not be discriminated against based on how they define themselves politically.

Not IRS-Approved

A person’s political leanings can impact their perspective of the world and how they choose to live their life, but there are more conditions that need to be met before a belief system can be recognized as a religion. The Internal Revenue Code (IRS) determines the tax status of organizations such as nonprofits and churches, and political affiliation does not meet many of the qualifications for religious protections and exemptions:

• Political parties don’t have a distinct creed and structure of worship. Neither the liberal nor conservative parties can claim universal principles or a uniform way in which those principles are applied in practice.

• Political parties don’t have a sacred text that outlines the rules of their doctrine.

• Political parties don’t have ordained ministers. We elect representatives to communicate our interests in the federal government. It’s not general practice for the leaders of a political party to preach what to believe to their constituents.

Solution 3: Mandate Community Service

To combat a cultural admiration of wokeness, Ramaswamy suggests a national community service mandate in which all adolescents must participate during their four summers of high school. Ramaswamy notes some benefits this would provide, such as combating the summer retention deficiency students face and generating a sense of patriotism similar to countries that mandate military service. The most important part of his idea, though, is the role it plays in the paradigm shift Ramaswamy is after.

He notes that currently, many students do community service as resume boosters, but Ramaswamy considers this a form of virtue signaling. However, if all students participated in community service, young people could focus on actually helping their communities instead of getting a competitive advantage. They might find causes that they genuinely care about and continue to support these causes themselves instead of handing the responsibility over to a corporation.

Community Service Isn’t Free

While few would argue against the benefits of young people getting involved in their communities, people in the world of education have doubts as to how such a mandate would be enforced. Such responsibility would most likely fall on schools, which range drastically in the amount and quality of resources each district has. Without addressing inequities in the education system, a community service mandate risks creating yet another means of power imbalance.

Students cannot volunteer without necessary resources. To participate in such a program, students would need access to things like transportation and a safe place in the community to serve. Mandated community service programs would also be a financial hardship for students who must work over the summer to support their families, and they would disadvantage students who participate in summer programs like sports or band in efforts to win non-academic scholarships.

Solution 4: Replace Critical Race Theory With Critical Diversity Theory

To contest Critical Race Theory and the diversity training it inspires, Ramaswamy proposes the development of Critical Diversity Theory (CDT). CDT would entail collaboration between academics and corporations to create new assessments for determining diversity. Diversity under CDT would measure different experiences and ways of thinking instead of inherited traits like skin color and sex. CDT would also allow flexibility for companies to define which diverse traits are important to them. For example, some companies may want diversity of thought when it comes to creativity but not when it comes to punctuality.

Why the Name Matters

Although Ramaswamy argues that CRT should be replaced by CDT because CRT promises to fix what he claims is a false problem (ingrained racism affecting all aspects of American life), data does support the principle tenet of CRT that unexamined racism leads to unfair inequalities.

The Justice Department’s recent attempt to eradicate racial bias from legal practice exemplifies how ingrained racism can be. Pattern is an artificial intelligence (AI) program created to impartially assess how likely a prisoner is to repeat a crime and their level of risk returning to society. Ultimately, the AI began to duplicate the discrimination of its human predecessors, disproportionately marking Black and Brown people as high risk and prohibiting their release.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned criminal justice systems against relying on AI, as people can pass on their bias to the algorithm. While merging all differences as diversity is inclusive, activists emphasize the importance of being specific in terminology when trying to solve complicated problems like racism.

Solution 5: Entrust Social Issues to Non-Profits

Ramaswamy says that all social issues should be relegated to nonprofits and government organizations, leaving capitalist entities completely apolitical. For this to work, he explains that Americans must have faith that companies with no political influence will naturally come to align themselves with our social values.

Let’s use vapes to illustrate this idea. Although many had hoped that vaping would reduce nicotine addiction among young people, studies are beginning to show that it actually increases addiction. Woke consumers may be tempted to fix this issue by demanding that companies make socially responsible changes like removing the version sold to teens or starting ad campaigns advocating for teen health. However, companies aren’t going to want to lose a large portion of their consumer base and will probably resort to shady tactics to keep marketing to young people anyway.

Ramaswamy claims that if consumers put their money toward nonprofits—for example, ones that educate and assist teens who vape—we have a greater chance of raising a generation of young people who will do the right thing, like having no desire to vape. Thus, the vaping companies of this example would come to a natural end.

Necessary Changes to Nonprofits

Experts note that if our society is to rely on nonprofits to promote social change, there must be measures in place to prevent fraudulent or ineffective use of resources. Harvard business professor Regina E. Herzlinger recommends a system in which nonprofits:

• Must make their financial statements transparent to the public.

• Are assessed for the quality and quantity of community efforts.

• Have sanctions applied if they fail to disclose their records or misuse donations.