Crony capitalism 1.0 was simple by comparison: Banks simply had to make campaign contributions and hire lobbyists. In return, they get favorable regulations that codify their status as gatekeepers who enjoy oligopoly status in taking companies public. Championship-level players of this game like Goldman Sachs often top it off with a flourish, by lending their executives to serve as US treasury secretaries — Steve Mnuchin under President Donald Trump, Hank Paulson under President George W. Bush, and so on. And it pays off in the end: Winners like Goldman Sachs get bailouts in tough times like 2008, while less adroit competitors like Lehman Brothers get hung out to dry by the likes of Hank Paulson. That much is straightforward.

But crony capitalism 2.0 is far trickier. Goldman’s diversity edict at Davos last year came at a time when Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two of the biggest critics of the US government’s 2008 bailout of Goldman Sachs, were presidential front-runners. Having supplicated to business-friendly Republicans and centrist Democrats for decades, the moment had arrived for Goldman Sachs to begin placating the identity-politics-obsessed Far Left, just as that wing of the Democratic Party had begun to accrue greater political power. Their new CEO is woker than woke, and he’s a DJ on the side too. That’s how the 2020 edition of crony capitalism looks: Hank Paulson is outmoded by comparison.

Once the American public becomes “woke” to this new trend of self-interest masquerading as morality, our citizenry can see through the charade of corporate virtue-signaling. When Amazon issues a public challenge to Walmart to pay workers $15 per hour, we can simply chuckle to ourselves that Jeff Bezos is just doing what he does best: undermining his competitors when they’re most vulnerable.