Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

One of my greatest frustrations with having to explain libertarianism to laymen who know very little about the ideology, is having to point out the differences between capitalism and corporatism. I remember debating with a Canadian leftist, who said that he couldn’t understand how libertarians were able to equate individual freedom with corporate freedom. If you look up the word corporation, it is defined as a government approved charter of people to act as a single company, yet certain people seem to miss the part about how these charters are government approved. They don’t seem to understand this incestuous relationship between corporations and government, which is why I laugh whenever I hear somebody talk about regulating or taxing corporations to death. Since the two are in cahoots with each other, how can you really expect the government to do anything that isn’t going to favor their corporate buddies? Contrary to what these misguided people actually believe, corporations actually love big regulations and high taxes. While they have ways to navigate around those obstacles, their smaller competitors who can’t afford lawyers who work around the clock to find loopholes, will have to shoulder the extra costs.

Though what I really find perplexing are the corporations who are going out of their way to virtue signal to the SJW’s that are trying to fight dragons that no longer exist in the year 2023, despite it being fairly unpopular to their customer base. I can understand corporations kowtowing to the government or to certain organizations when it benefits them in the same vein as James Taggart, the weaselly brother of Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. It makes sense when corporations practice cronyism when it actually benefits them, but I never understood getting in bed with an organization or movement that is actually going to harm your bottom line. What I am referring to is this Woke Revolution that is infecting mainstream movies, commercials, TV shows, educational institutions, social media, comic books, video games and just about every sport known to man. These organizations are basically going out their way to show that they are anti-racist, pro-feminist and/or pro-gay. You have Hollywood continuing to shell out woke feminist garbage, such as Ghostbusters (2016), Terminator: Dark Fate, Charlies Angels (2019,) and Birds of Prey despite the apparent lack of reception from mainstream audiences. Despite the lack of profits being generated, Hollywood not only continues to generate the same woke trash, but they have the nerve to attack fans who refuse to use their hard-earned money to see it. The same pattern has continued with video game makers that go woke. In the most recent incarnation of Marvel’s Captain America, they have our protagonist calling the American Dream a sham. Yes, you read that right. Even though Captain America fans are up in arms about them desecrating their hero, Marvel doesn’t seem to care. What is even harder to phantom is the way that most of the major sports organizations have embraced highly controversial political movements such as BLM, despite the obvious fact that bringing politics into sports has cost them in viewership and revenue. Yet, in the case of NFL, they have doubled and tripled down on becoming woke, despite the low ratings and plummeting ticket sales.

If that isn’t crazy enough you have Gillette who created a series of commercials that basically shamed men for being men. You have to see the commercials to truly understand what I am talking about, but I can honestly say that it does the one thing a company should never do in advertising. Gillette alienating its customers with 'toxic masculinity' ad? - YouTube. It is amazing that any company would think it was a good idea to insult and degrade the only customer base that it has, just to sound woke. I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall during that meeting, when they decided that insulting their customers was the right way to go. Gillette would later lose eight billion dollars in revenue, which was a surprise to nobody but the fools pushing this woke nonsense. I thought Nike was stupid when they decided to choose Colin Kaepernick, one of the most divisive people in the NFL, to hawk their products. It took 3.75 billion dollars of loss for the company to realize that Kaepernick wasn’t that good of an endorsement after all.

I can only imagine Ayn Rand in the afterlife scratching her head in confusion at this whole woke trend. For that matter I can imagine how bewildered Murray Rothbard would be about corporations choosing a business model that actually works against their bottom line. As I have said before, kowtowing only makes sense when you are able to profit from it. That doesn’t seem to be the case with those who bow to the will of the woke crowd. As the phrase goes, “Go Woke, go broke.” Granted that is a bit of an exaggeration, since Gillette and Nike are still around, despite the financial pitfalls that they experienced after going woke. However, I can certainly say going woke is far from profitable.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Nike's losses. That has now been corrected. — Editor