Bruce Bisset says Jeff Bezos (pictured) "is perhaps the epitome of what's wrong with our corporate culture-run world." Photo / File
Bruce Bisset says Jeff Bezos (pictured) "is perhaps the epitome of what's wrong with our corporate culture-run world." Photo / File
Virtue signalling is to the tweens and now twenties what whistleblowing was to the 90s and noughties – the new face of morality.
Or should that be farce? Because, just as many who have blown whistles over the past two or three decades were promoting their own agendas, so thosewho signal their supposed virtues in public do so not so much to promote a cause as to primarily enhance themselves.
Are hypocrites, in other words. Or so the prevailing gestalt of social media would have it.
Charles, heir to the throne of England and a long-time campaigner for a "greener" world, is portrayed thus because of his enormously privileged position. But he didn't choose to be born a prince, and shouldn't be expected to renounce the monarchy simply to "validate" his ideas.
Actress and activist Jane Fonda is likewise pilloried for hopping on every cause celebre while continuing to enjoy a lavish Beverly Hills lifestyle.
On balance both are genuine in their views, despite they move in exalted circles. And neither, I suggest, needs to further promote themselves as "do-gooders".
If they're virtue signalling, it's to their own in-group – the high and wealthy. Frankly, all power to them for that effort, because it's the high and wealthy who most need to connect to the harsh realities of our critically-endangered planet.
In short, they're acting on sound moral principles.
But then we have Amazon founder and reputed world's richest man Jeff Bezos labelled a virtue signaller immediately following his announcement that 8 per cent of his fortune – a mere $US10 billion – will be used to "fight climate change".
On the face it, good for him. That's serious coin.
But Bezos is perhaps the epitome of what's wrong with our corporate culture-run world.
In 30 years he's gone from selling books online to competing to design a "cloud war machine" for the Pentagon, pocketing $130 billion en route.
Bruce Bisset
Largely off the backs of his badly-paid and tightly-controlled workforce, who seemingly have pricked their boss' conscience with recent protests demanding Amazon redress its climate change impact.
And unlike Warren Buffet, or Bill and Melinda Gates, or even his ex-wife MacKenzie, Bezos has not signed up to the pledge for the super-rich to donate at least half their fortune to the public interest when they die.
So it's hard to think he's not a signaller in the hypocritical sense, wanting folk to feel good about him while he continues selling consumerist crap with a huge carbon footprint.
Of course it's not just individuals who do this. Companies and governments are virtue signalling hard out to maintain business as usual, and there's no better example than New Zealand's totally ineffectual Emissions Trading Scheme.
As a mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases it's a complete failure; our emissions have actually increased 17 per cent since the scheme came into force.
A good slice of the reason are the handful of "trade exposed" companies given a 90 per cent write-off on their emissions by Government – at huge cost to the taxpayer.
And even though under the proposed revision of the ETS this write-off may be reduced to a mere 30 per cent by 2050, my view is that will give the four companies receiving three-quarters of all such write-offs - foreign-owned Bluescope Steel (Glenbrook mill), NZ Aluminium Smelters (Tiwai Pt), Methanex (Taranaki methanol), and our own Fletcher Building (Golden Bay cement) - another several billion dollars worth of free polluting rights.
Now there's some serious signalling, and not a virtue in sight.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.
