this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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This is a bit cynical but I don't think companies care at all about pride. There may be individuals pushing for it within the company, but buy and large any time a company pushes for a social issue it is to make themselves look better and strategically pivot to appeal to different age brackets.
In this way I think corporate "pride-washing" is very much akin to green washing, acting like the company is carbon neutral or reducing emissions or whatever, when they just want people to feel better about buying their product that everyone knows is harmful. Plastic recycling, green ETFs and "clean" natural gas all fall under this category.
Profit decline due to these efforts is probably exaggerated, too, because people always conveniently ignore their moral values when buying products. We always hear about how horrid Nestle is, or how unethical the mining process is for our phone batteries, but look around and everyone still buys these things.
I agree with you, companies only care as far as their bottom line goes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that doing pride displays and showing support, even in superficial support, is a bad thing. And there is no such thing as moral consumption under capitalism, and the only solution is to move towards a more worker centric society and eliminate exploitation from these industries. It starts with how you use your vote and your voice, we should advocate for more people to get involved and active.