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Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

nytimes.com

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Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#3

Post by croon »

> When government is unable or unwilling to act, business should not wait.

I hope this is all based in good intentions, and have no real reason not to believe so, other than past experience.

I just had this idea though: Seeing the current state of US regulatory capture; I wonder what would happen if companies that felt the way Marc Benioff claims he does (as well as the other companies in that roundtable) would just start paying the same lobby money as business has done previously, but instead ask for sane regulation, aiming for what they claim to be working towards.

If I was a politician beholden to corporate money, but also still had a sliver of a soul left in me, and was given the option of the same money, but to work for the people that elected me, I could actually get some real legislative work done. At least if the same was true for other representatives and senators.

Or campaign finance reform and outlawing outside payment to politicians, but that's a catch 22 given the above.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#7

Post by _4ziu »

It's unrealistic to hope businesses do the right thing, especially when profit inherently wins out over all else, and it means you cannot do the right thing in your business without losing to the competition who doesn't care.

That's kind of a big issue with capitalism, and any revisionist/reformist take on capitalism has to try really hard to convince me this won't be an issue.

This article misses that point badly. If you're going to criticise capitalism at least try to understand what actually makes it bad.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#8

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

> Legislation to close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act have stalled in Congress for years, and today women still only make about 80 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men. But congressional inaction does not absolve companies from their responsibility. Since learning that we were paying women less than men for equal work at Salesforce, we have spent $10.3 million to ensure equal pay; today we conduct annual audits to ensure that pay remains equal.

If Benioff is going to quote the .80/$1 statistic, then the equal pay audits of SalesForce need to use the same comparison which is to take the average pay of all women in the company regardless of position or job and compare it to the average of all the men in the company regardless of position or job.

If you actually do the comparison taking into account job and position, you get something like .93/$1

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/apr...

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#9

Post by _4ziu »

Miner49er wrote: post #5

Well, he gave a nice list of problems caused by capitalism, and said we need a new capitalism, but gave no reason why. Why a new capitalism? Why not something different, like market socialism, where the shareholders are the employees?

I think they either have no concept of another system or are in denial about how problematic capitalism really can be and are blaming the wrong things.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#10

Post by weberc2 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

> Legislation to close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act have stalled in Congress for years, and today women still only make about 80 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men. But congressional inaction does not absolve companies from their responsibility. Since learning that we were paying women less than men for equal work at Salesforce, we have spent $10.3 million to ensure equal pay; today we conduct annual…

And if you account for other factors, like flexibility and other benefits, you get within the margin of error--women may even out-earn men.
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