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I sort of agree with a mild version of this but I think it way overstates the case; companies are no more amenable to wasting money in good times than in bad, what may in fact be the case is that DEI departments did actually represent, or at least were perceived to represent, a reasonable investment in boom time, for any number of reasons (attracting young talent, maintaining a good public image etc.), and this is no longer to be the case in more lean times. The question was always 'is this value for money', it's just that for many the answer used to be yes, and now it's no.
If your perception of what is reasonable changes depending on how much money you have, and you are more likely to find more things to be reasonable when you have more money, and assuming the perception of what is reasonable is more tolerant towards risk when you have more money, how are you not then more susceptible to waste money when you have more money? Sure, no one couches their investments as 'waste'. But it's hard to call it anything else after the fact has been revealed that you 'invested' in a bunch of snake oil.
I don't think you represented a mild version of what was said. But rather a PR coded version that fronts the notion that companies don't waste money. I don' think the notion of a return on investment was ever on the cards for companies that hired professional racists to do in-house struggle sessions on white supremacy. I think that you could, at best, define it as a wasteful fashion statement.
That such programs are less likely to be considered value for money these days is not proof that they were at one time 'snake oil', only that different economic conditions have now rendered them less useful.
Fashion statements are not necessarily wasteful, especially if you are a very public facing company who markets their goods to the general public.
I am not saying they are less likely to be considered valuable. I am stating that they are and were always not valuable. Not as a matter of perception but as a matter of fact. That's why I likened it to snake oil. The snake oil might have been believed to be good when the prospective buyer didn't know it was snake oil but thought instead that it was a rare elixir that cured all illness. But that belief never made the snake oil a good investment. It was always snake oil and the buyer was always a fool for believing it was an elixir that could cure all illness.
Another way to say this, just because a company believed that something was valuable doesn't mean that it was. Or that the company was reasonable for having believed it was valuable in the first place. It was always a money pit designed by grifters.
But they can be. Like the wardrobe of a bored housewife of a rich husband. Sure, it might be very good for the image of the husband and wife for the wife to be well dressed at social gatherings. That fact does not preclude us from recognizing that you don't need a gigantic wardrobe filled with dresses that will never be worn to present yourself properly 4 times a year at company conventions. On top of that, buying into a bad fashion trend might hurt your company as well. Like the case with the anti-men Gillette razor commercials.
Again, just because a company believed something or did something doesn't mean it was good or smart or reasonable or anything else. Decisions are made by people. You can't shield those decisions behind the fact they were made by a company. You have to look at them as they were taken. Which is why, sometimes, companies go bankrupt and CEO's get fired. Regardless of how good they believed their decisions were at the time.
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