Last year, Vivek Ramaswamy, a health-care entrepreneur, published “Woke Inc”, a rollicking polemic against the passion of American ceos to pat themselves on the back for tackling such issues as climate change, racism and workers’ rights. He argued that, however fractured governments are, such problems are the job of politicians to fix. In the hands of business elites, a concept like esg might be well-intentioned. But it threatens to subvert the integrity of democracy, Mr Ramaswamy suggested.