Forget DEI, we need to embrace MEI: meritocracy, excellence, and intelligence

Countering DEI globalists like BlackRock’s Larry Fink and the World Economic Forum, a young entrepreneur named Alexandr Wang has taken a stand, provided leadership, and is triggering a new movement—hiring and promoting based on MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.

Silicon Valley experienced an earthquake on June 13, 2024. This geological event was definitely not televised, but it triggered aftershocks from progressive corporate media like Fortune magazine (which, in a typical propaganda move, cites unnamed “experts” in its reporting on the topic). The earthquake was a consequence of the widespread excesses and consequences of the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) hiring and promotion policies that have been actively promoted by the World Economic Forum and its leading corporatist sponsors including Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and World Economic Foundation (WEF) favored consulting group McKinsey & Company.

To advance and enforce their DEI agenda, which plays a key role in the WEF-promoted vision of “Stakeholder Capitalism”, the WEF has created the “Global Parity Alliance”. The WEF, which defines itself as a key player in an emerging global government (in partnership with the United Nations), has structured this alliance of corporations to implement DEI initiatives across the globe rapidly.

The Global Parity Alliance, a cross-industry group of companies, is not just taking action, but accelerating it. Their urgency to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace and beyond is palpable, and their commitment to this cause is unwavering.

This group, the Global Parity Alliance, is not just a collection of companies. It’s a community of like-minded organizations, all striving for the same goal-better and faster DE&I outcomes. By sharing proven DE&I best practices and practical insights, they are inviting others to join them in this important work.

To realize the promise of diversity, the Global Parity Alliance members and identified DE&I lighthouses will work to close opportunity gaps faster in the new economy.

According to Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, the WEF DEI initiative intends to (quite literally) force the implementation of social engineering/”stakeholder capitalism” DEI policies as the basis for corporate hiring and promotion rather than focusing on profitability, return on investment, and shareholder/owner value measured by financial outcome measures.

The problem with this globalist “can’t we all get along” Kumbaya naïveté is that the dogs of investment are not eating the dog food. And, of course, inquiring minds are raising questions after the serial DEI financial fiascos of Target and its line of transgender attire for infants, InBev with its transgender Bud Light advertising campaign, Disney with its corporate commitment to woke/grooming everything, farming icon John Deere’s surprise discovery that flyover state farmers were not buying into its DEI genuflecting to the WEF, and WEF partner CrowdStrike crashing the world wide web.

To say that the financial genius of the WEF globalist leaders is looking a bit threadbare is a self-evident understatement. Oh yeah, and then there is the US Secret Service and the attempted Trump assassination. As covered in this recent Fox Business News segment, the natives are becoming restless, and drumbeats are being heard in the distance.

Now is an excellent time to remind all concerned that Larry Fink and Blackrock’s corporate financial ascendency is just another classic tale of DC/Democrat crony capitalism. Fink and company are not business masterminds. They are merely garden-variety Obama cronies parading around and masquerading as captains of industry. I admit to a growing sense of schadenfreude with the perverse logic inherent in all this. Perhaps merit-based selection of federal contractors actually results in better outcomes than just allowing politicians to develop public-private partnerships based on cronyism?

Please consider this AI-generated summary of BlackRock’s rise to global financial dominance, primarily based on “Times of India” reporting, for those who are not singing along with the bouncing ball.

During the 2008 financial crisis, BlackRock played a significant role in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) under the Obama administration. Here are key points:

TARP’s Legacy Securities Program: In 2009, the Obama administration’s Treasury Department partnered with BlackRock to manage the Legacy Securities Program, a component of TARP. The program aimed to remove toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets, stabilizing the financial system.

BlackRock’s Acquisition of Merrill Lynch’s Assets: In September 2008, BlackRock acquired a significant portion of Merrill Lynch’s troubled assets, including mortgage-backed securities, for $3 billion. This deal helped stabilize Merrill Lynch and prevented a systemic crisis.

BlackRock’s Management of TARP Assets: As part of the Legacy Securities Program, BlackRock managed a portfolio of troubled assets, including mortgage-backed securities and other complex financial instruments. This role allowed BlackRock to profit from the recovery of these assets, while also helping to stabilize the economic system.

Larry Fink’s Relationship with Obama: BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, developed a close relationship with President Obama and his administration. Fink was a key advisor on financial matters, and BlackRock’s expertise was leveraged to inform policy decisions.

Thomas Donilon’s Connection: Thomas E. Donilon, former National Security Advisor to President Obama, is currently the Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute. During his tenure as National Security Advisor, Donilon worked closely with Fink and other financial leaders, including Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.

Key Takeaways

BlackRock played a crucial role in the Obama administration’s TARP program, managing troubled assets and helping to stabilize the financial system.

Larry Fink’s relationship with President Obama and his administration was significant. Fink served as a key advisor on financial matters.

Thomas Donilon’s connection to BlackRock, as Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, highlights the firm’s continued influence in Washington, D.C.

What the AI missed is that BlackRock was able to leverage its special relationship with the Obama administration and the TARP program to produce the most globally comprehensive database of business transactions that the world has ever known. And then to exclusively datamine this rich insider resource to generate forward-looking predictions, which it leveraged to yield a globally dominant investment portfolio. And now, BlackRock has captured the exclusive (US, of course) contract to manage the rebuilding of Ukraine. Once the US/NATO military-industrial complex has succeeded in depopulating and then occupying that region. See how that works? Thanks, O’Biden/Uniparty. Let’s watch to see how that plays out.

Getting back on track.

As exemplified by the overlapping fiascos of CrowdStrike and the US Secret Service, the whole problem with DEI-based hiring and promotion policies is that they result in a gradual, creeping degradation of organizational competence, which I have previously covered in my recent substack essay titled “The Great Enshittening.”

Here’s the thing: In the 21st century, we are the inheritors of an interlaced network of complex systems, each requiring considerable competence to maintain and almost all of which are currently strained to the breaking point. Electricity grids, air traffic control networks, server farms, food supply chains, global shipping, petroleum, finance, the internet—the list goes on and on. They are all interdependent and at risk of cascading failure. And into this mix, the self-proclaimed geniuses of global governance have injected themselves and their untested theoretical fantasies of “Stakeholder Capitalism.” Which unproven theory is just another way of saying Marxist social engineering lathered up with a thin veneer of Adam Smith to reduce the friction of forced introduction.

Returning now to that Silicon Valley earthquake that I mentioned in the opening.

A young entrepreneur-genius (named Alexandr Wang) has taken a stand, provided leadership, and is triggering a new movement—sort of a back-to-the-future moment. Hiring and promotion based on MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence. What a novel concept! Many (including Elon Musk) are jumping on this bandwagon and endorsing this breakthrough concept <sarcasm mine>, which was just the way things were in my youth. Little things like acceptance into medical school. Hiring and promotion. Back in the day, it was understood that the business of business was producing quality goods, services, and value, and deriving wealth from honest productivity.

To provide perspective and put in another plug for the Dean of anarcho-capitalism, Murray Rothbard, there are only two ways of accumulating wealth:

Labor: Wealth can be accumulated through productive labor, where an individual creates value by providing goods and services to others. This approach is based on voluntary exchange, where individuals trade their labor for compensation, such as wages or profits.
Theft: Wealth can also be accumulated through theft, where an individual takes wealth from others without their consent. This approach is based on coercion, where one party uses force or fraud to seize wealth from another.

Rather than quote derivative reporting from Fox Business News or even Callum Borchers of the Wall Street Journal, I prefer to let AI technology leader Alexandr Wang do the talking (originally on “X”, of course).

MERITOCRACY AT SCALE

In the wake of our fundraise, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about talent. All of our external success—powering breakthroughs in L4 autonomy, partnering with OpenAI on RLHF going back to GPT-2, supporting the DoD and every major AI lab, and the recent $1bn financing transaction—all of it is downstream from us hiring the best people for the job. Talent is our #1 input metric.

Because of this, I spend a lot of my time on recruiting. I either personally interview every hire or sign off on every candidate packet. It’s the thing I spend the plurality of my time on, easily. But everyone can and should contribute to this effort. There are almost a thousand of us now, and it takes a lot to hire quickly while maintaining, and continuing to raise, our bar for quality.

That’s why this is the time to codify a hiring principle that I consider crucial to our success: Scale is a meritocracy, and we must always remain one.

Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale.

It’s a big deal whenever we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been swayed by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever the current thing is. I think of our guiding principle as MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.

That means we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart.

We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual.

We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character — and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic.

There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.

Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do. This approach not only results in the strongest possible team, but also ensures we’re treating our colleagues with fairness and respect.

As a result, everyone who joins Scale can be confident that they were chosen for their outstanding talent, not any other reasons. MEI has gotten us to where we are today. And it’s the same thing that’ll get us where we’re going, as we embark on our next chapter focusing on data abundance, frontier data, and reliable measurement to accelerate the development and adoption of AI models.

Alex

If you are committed to Making America Great Again, then be like Alex. Pursue MEI, not DEI, in all of your management practices.

For the sake of the broader community and mitigation of enshittification risk, if for no other reason.

Reprinted with permission from Robert Malone.

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Hudson’s Bay Bid Raises Red Flags Over Foreign Influence

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Hudson’s Bay Bid Raises Red Flags Over Foreign Influence

Published on April 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Scott McGregor

A billionaire’s retail ambition might also serve Beijing’s global influence strategy. Canada must look beyond the storefront

When B.C. billionaire Weihong Liu publicly declared interest in acquiring Hudson’s Bay stores, it wasn’t just a retail story—it was a signal flare in an era where foreign investment increasingly doubles as geopolitical strategy.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, remains an enduring symbol of Canadian heritage. While its commercial relevance has waned in recent years, its brand is deeply etched into the national identity. That’s precisely why any potential acquisition, particularly by an investor with strong ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), deserves thoughtful, measured scrutiny.

Liu, a prominent figure in Vancouver’s Chinese-Canadian business community, announced her interest in acquiring several Hudson’s Bay stores on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (RedNote), expressing a desire to “make the Bay great again.” Though revitalizing a Canadian retail icon may seem commendable, the timing and context of this bid suggest a broader strategic positioning—one that aligns with the People’s Republic of China’s increasingly nuanced approach to economic diplomacy, especially in countries like Canada that sit at the crossroads of American and Chinese spheres of influence.

This fits a familiar pattern. In recent years, we’ve seen examples of Chinese corporate involvement in Canadian cultural and commercial institutions, such as Huawei’s past sponsorship of Hockey Night in Canada. Even as national security concerns were raised by allies and intelligence agencies, Huawei’s logo remained a visible presence during one of the country’s most cherished broadcasts. These engagements, though often framed as commercially justified, serve another purpose: to normalize Chinese brand and state-linked presence within the fabric of Canadian identity and daily life.

What we may be witnessing is part of a broader PRC strategy to deepen economic and cultural ties with Canada at a time when U.S.-China relations remain strained. As American tariffs on Canadian goods—particularly in aluminum, lumber and dairy—have tested cross-border loyalties, Beijing has positioned itself as an alternative economic partner. Investments into cultural and heritage-linked assets like Hudson’s Bay could be seen as a symbolic extension of this effort to draw Canada further into its orbit of influence, subtly decoupling the country from the gravitational pull of its traditional allies.

From my perspective, as a professional with experience in threat finance, economic subversion and political leveraging, this does not necessarily imply nefarious intent in each case. However, it does demand a conscious awareness of how soft power is exercised through commercial influence, particularly by state-aligned actors. As I continue my research in international business law, I see how investment vehicles, trade deals and brand acquisitions can function as instruments of foreign policy—tools for shaping narratives, building alliances and shifting influence over time.

Canada must neither overreact nor overlook these developments. Open markets and cultural exchange are vital to our prosperity and pluralism. But so too is the responsibility to preserve our sovereignty—not only in the physical sense, but in the cultural and institutional dimensions that shape our national identity.

Strategic investment review processes, cultural asset protections and greater transparency around foreign corporate ownership can help strike this balance. We should be cautious not to allow historically Canadian institutions to become conduits, however unintentionally, for geopolitical leverage.

In a world where power is increasingly exercised through influence rather than force, safeguarding our heritage means understanding who is buying—and why.

Scott McGregor is the managing partner and CEO of Close Hold Intelligence Consulting.

Bjorn Lomborg

Net zero’s cost-benefit ratio is crazy high

Published on April 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Bjørn Lomborg

The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.

Canada has made a legal commitment to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Back in 2015, then-Prime Minister Trudeau promised that climate action will “create jobs and economic growth” and the federal government insists it will create a “strong economy.” The truth is that the net zero policy generates vast costs and very little benefit—and Canada would be better off changing direction.

Achieving net zero carbon emissions is far more daunting than politicians have ever admitted. Canada is nowhere near on track. Annual Canadian CO₂ emissions have increased 20 per cent since 1990. In the time that Trudeau was prime minister, fossil fuel energy supply actually increased over 11 per cent. Similarly, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy supply (not just electricity) increased from 75 per cent in 2015 to 77 per cent in 2023.

Over the same period, the switch from coal to gas, and a tiny 0.4 percentage point increase in the energy from solar and wind, has reduced annual CO₂ emissions by less than three per cent. On that trend, getting to zero won’t take 25 years as the Liberal government promised, but more than 160 years. One study shows that the government’s current plan which won’t even reach net-zero will cost Canada a quarter of a million jobs, seven per cent lower GDP and wages on average $8,000 lower.

Globally, achieving net-zero will be even harder. Remember, Canada makes up about 1.5 per cent of global CO₂ emissions, and while Canada is already rich with plenty of energy, the world’s poor want much more energy.

In order to achieve global net-zero by 2050, by 2030 we would already need to achieve the equivalent of removing the combined emissions of China and the United States — every year. This is in the realm of science fiction.

The painful Covid lockdowns of 2020 only reduced global emissions by about six per cent. To achieve net zero, the UN points out that we would need to have doubled those reductions in 2021, tripled them in 2022, quadrupled them in 2023, and so on. This year they would need to be sextupled, and by 2030 increased 11-fold. So far, the world hasn’t even managed to start reducing global carbon emissions, which last year hit a new record.

Data from both the International Energy Agency and the US Energy Information Administration give added cause for skepticism. Both organizations foresee the world getting more energy from renewables: an increase from today’s 16 per cent to between one-quarter to one-third of all primary energy by 2050. But that is far from a transition. On an optimistically linear trend, this means we’re a century or two away from achieving 100 percent renewables.

Politicians like to blithely suggest the shift away from fossil fuels isn’t unprecedented, because in the past we transitioned from wood to coal, from coal to oil, and from oil to gas. The truth is, humanity hasn’t made a real energy transition even once. Coal didn’t replace wood but mostly added to global energy, just like oil and gas have added further additional energy. As in the past, solar and wind are now mostly adding to our global energy output, rather than replacing fossil fuels.

Indeed, it’s worth remembering that even after two centuries, humanity’s transition away from wood is not over. More than two billion mostly poor people still depend on wood for cooking and heating, and it still provides about 5 per cent of global energy.

Like Canada, the world remains fossil fuel-based, as it delivers more than four-fifths of energy. Over the last half century, our dependence has declined only slightly from 87 per cent to 82 per cent, but in absolute terms we have increased our fossil fuel use by more than 150 per cent. On the trajectory since 1971, we will reach zero fossil fuel use some nine centuries from now, and even the fastest period of recent decline from 2014 would see us taking over three centuries.

Global warming will create more problems than benefits, so achieving net-zero would see real benefits. Over the century, the average person would experience benefits worth $700 (CAD) each year.

But net zero policies will be much more expensive. The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.

Every year over the 21st century, costs would vastly outweigh benefits, and global costs would exceed benefits by over CAD 32 trillion each year.

We would see much higher transport costs, higher electricity costs, higher heating and cooling costs and — as businesses would also have to pay for all this — drastic increases in the price of food and all other necessities. Just one example: net-zero targets would likely increase gas costs some two-to-four times even by 2030, costing consumers up to $US52.6 trillion. All that makes it a policy that just doesn’t make sense—for Canada and for the world.