RUTHFULLY YOURS

You may recall that an organization called Sleeping Giants was one of the primary movers and shakers behind the corporate boycott side of the left’s cancel culture. Most famously, it was the tip of the spear in the attack against Breitbart after Trump’s election. Now, one of its founders stands accused of racist and sexist behavior. This is an increasingly common charge against woke companies, and it makes sense, not just because employees are marinated in victimhood, but because of the moral hazard doctrine.

Moral hazard describes a situation in which someone who is insulated from consequences is more likely to engage in risky behavior. Although the term is mostly used in economics, we see it routinely in people’s overall conduct.

For example, you might have noticed that, as cars get safer, people are more likely to take driving risks, such as tailgating or weaving through traffic. Likewise, as football helmets seemingly became more sophisticated, the game changed with players using their heads as battering rams. Sadly, the high incidence of ALS shows that the helmets weren’t as safe as people thought they were.

A variation of moral hazard also shows up when people have behaved virtuously in one area of life. Draped in their moral superiority, they think they have a pass in other areas. A perfect example comes from bicycles. As a former Bay Area resident, I can tell you that many urban bicyclists are deeply impressed with their moral purity in eschewing polluting automobiles. Borne upon a cloud of self-righteousness, they entirely ignore not only bicycle safety rules but general traffic safety rules. In their minds, their one act of virtue is a hedge against all risks.

And that gets us to the stories about accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bad behaviors at excessively woke organizations. These companies tout all the appropriate leftist virtues: They despise Trump, hate Republicans generally, fight climate change, donate millions to Black Lives Matter, offer 52 gender options for their employees, and so on. One would think, then, that women, minorities, and people on the LGBTQ etc. spectrum would be thrilled at these places . . . but they’re not.

Part of this is because we’ve encouraged women, minorities, and people on the LGBTQ spectrum to view themselves as helpless victims, something that justifies their taking offense at all insults, real or imagined, intended or accidental. However, it’s probable that management at these companies, believing itself to be incredibly virtuous, thinks that its manifest virtue is a hedge against the downside risks of bad behavior.

That’s how you end up with Nandini Jammi, who helped found Sleeping Giants, a vicious, unprincipled organization that nevertheless believes it has completely moral superiority because it attacks those who support Trump. She just published a lengthy post claiming that her “white male co-founder” squeezed her out of the organization:

Nearly four years after I began building Sleeping Giants, the campaign to make bigotry and sexism unprofitable, I’m leaving — but not because I want to.

I want to share with you my journey with Sleeping Giants, why taking credit matters and why you must fight for yourself as hard as you do for your cause. I want to show you how a woman of color almost disappeared from the movement she built, and what you can achieve when you refuse to follow the rules your white male “leader” sets for you.

I hope other brilliant WoC and marginalized folks see yourselves in me and don’t wait as long as I did. The stakes are too high for you to disappear.

You can be assured that her partner, Matt Rivitz, felt that he was entitled to do whatever it took because he was an inherently good person.

Pinterest, the online bulletin board company, is undoubtedly woke. Last December, it announced that it would no longer promote weddings on plantations because plantations connote slavery. And if course, it rushed out its ritual Black Lives Matter affirmation. Two black employees, however, allege that the company, which is primarily staffed with white and Asian employees, routinely discriminated and retaliated against them because of their race.

Earlier this year, blacks claimed that hyper-woke companies such as Google and Facebook, which are staffed almost entirely with hard-left, virtue-signaling college graduates, routinely discriminate against them in ways large and small. Then, on Friday, a black nurse contended that Kaiser – a superb healthcare provider that is nevertheless very woke – discriminated against him because of his race. And finally, there are all those progressive young white women screaming at black police officers that the latter don’t understand racism.

It’s all moral hazard: A generation of young people imbued with hard-left values that have made them so confident of their moral virtue that they are relieved of the obligation to comply with normative behavior, legal standards, or simple politeness.