Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics.

I'm Dan Pramak. On today's show, social media's New Zealand problem and why Silicon Valley may fall in love with Beto O'Rourke.

But first, the hypocrisy of social impact investing. So last week, we discussed the giant college admissions bribery scandal

in which wealthy parents paid for such things as fake standardized test scores and athletic profiles.

Most of the attention went to Hollywood names, like actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin,

but the biggest financial bust was a guy named Bill Mcglashen, who, until his arrest,

managed billions of dollars for private equity firm TPG. Now, most Bill Mcglashen, who, until his arrest, managed billions of dollars

for private equity firm TPG.

Now, most of McG claim to fame at TPG was creating a big tech investing group that backed

such companies as Uber, but more recently he had teamed with Bono.

Yeah, that Bono.

To create the Rise Fund, focused on what's known as social impact investing or sometimes known as

double bottom line investing. The basic idea of this is to incorporate social and environmental

impact into the investment process or more specifically investing companies that are

intentionally seeking to achieve positive results beyond just their income statement.

It's become a pretty popular thing

among institutional investors, with former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick running a similar

program at Bain Capital and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink talking it up in recent interviews. And then

there's, of course, Al Gore, who more than a decade ago launched a firm specifically focused

on what he called sustainable investments.

The big question now, however, is if these efforts are more window dressing than substance,

investments that by definition almost defeat their own purpose, particularly when it comes to income inequality.

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