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Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

nytimes.com

41–50 of 113 posts

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#41

In conclusion: buy my overpriced Salesforce products because I'm a good billionaire with a private jet.

Not to be excessively cynical, but the purpose of this opinion piece probably has more to do with: “Marc Benioff is the chairman and co-chief executive of Salesforce and the author, with Monica Langley, of the forthcoming book, “Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change.”

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#42
Each time I read a billionaire criticizing the current capitalistic system, that reminds me of Jacques Attali's argument on how Karl Marx was misunderstood with Socialism.

https://www.newstatesman.com/node/195490

Extract: "Attali: What he tried with the international socialist movement was an amazing attempt to think about the world in global terms. Marx is an amazingly modern thinker, because when you look at what he has written, it is not a theory of what an organised socialist country should be like, but how capitalism will be in the future. Contrary to the caricature of Marxism, he is first an admirer of capitalism. For him, it is a much better system than any other before it, because he considers the earlier systems to be obscurantist. Once or twice he had the idea that it was going to be the end, but he very rapidly decided that this was not the case, and that capitalism had a huge future.

What is very modern also in his view is that he considered that capitalism would end only when it was a global force, when the whole of the working class was part of it, when nations disappeared, when technology was able to transform the life of a country. He mentioned China and India as potential partners of capitalism, and said, for instance, that protectionism is a mistake, that free trade is a condition for progress.

For Marx, capitalism has to be worldwide before we think about socialism. Socialism for him is beyond capitalism and not instead of capitalism. He has much say on globalisation, what is happening to movement of companies, delocalisation and everything that is linked to the way we live today. In a sense, the Soviet Union was destroying or interrupting the validity of Marx's thinking and the fall of the Berlin Wall is giving back a raison d’être to his work, because Marx was thinking of the world globally and the Soviet system was a nightmare that he did not forecast."

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#43
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misunderstanding the Animal Farm. It was a criticism to the Soviet system and not socialism, Orwell literally fought for the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.

How many do overs does socialism get? You can only say "that's not how REAL socialism is supposed to happen" so many times.

Most socialistic societies fell due to outside interference in an already weaker society. (Weaker because of their starting position, not because of socialism).

This was for example the case with Venezuela, to name a recent one.

See: https://www.ozy.com/flashback/venezuelas-downfall-isnt-about...

You'd need a country with an already strong economy to try socialism to see where it goes. We have western civilisations with some socialist aspects (European countries) but they're all still majorly capitalistic.

A lot of countries labelled as socialist/communist were/are really just state-capitalist countries (China, to name a good example. Communist only in name, same way the nazi party was socialist)

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#44

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?

What prevents employees from buying shares today?

I don't think it's possible. If a company's market cap is low enough that its employees can afford to buy all the shares with their salaries I think that would be a significantly failing business.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#45
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a rule of thumb, if you would like to not get downvoted for controversial statements, please source your assumptions.

This isn't controversial (among people who look at reality), it's well known and sources are easily found.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#47
post #11

The extremely wealthy keep talking about how to tackle inequality, many of them pledge to do something about it but nothing ever happens. We all know how this plays out, we'll get lip service until we start to kill the rich. Then they'll apologize, reform, and do it a little more subtly next time.

Killing the rich and seizing their property always turns out well for the everyday joe and never creates a generation of ultra wealthy and corrupt ruling class /s Wait you didn’t think YOU were going to get that stuff did you?

People who cry loudest for revolution are usually the ones who don't ever study the history of successful revolutions. Especially: who the actual revolutionaries were, what positions they held in society before and after the revolution (hint: most successful revolutions aren't peasant uprisings), and what happens to people who weren't either the revolutionary leaders or the ruling class before, during, and after the revolution. The average French peasant did not fare well during or after the French Revolution.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misunderstanding the Animal Farm. It was a criticism to the Soviet system and not socialism, Orwell literally fought for the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.

He also became very disillusioned with the left there. Also took a bullet through the throat, which he rather miraculously survived.

He still wrote the book as a critique from a socialist standpoint. The whole point of the book was that the USSR was not real socialism and was damaging the Socialist movement.

He explains it in this preface: http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/epfc...

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#49

> 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…

Regarding the Politifact article, full credit to Senator Tina Smith for immediately correcting her tweet after being informed it was incorrect.

Too many politicians double down when they get something wrong and try to defend it, instead of admitting they made an error.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#50
post #40

> 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…

So why is average pay for women across all positions less than men? It's not like Salesforce employees are doing heavy manual labor that skews itself towards hiring more men. Why aren't women being hired in positions at the same rates as men (at which point we can then address the issue of pay inequality for the same position?) If this is an issue of "we're not hiring women to the same higher paid positions as men",…

Higher-paying executive and engineering positions tend to skew more male, and lower-paying executive assistant/secretarial/administrative positions tend to skew more female.

There is plenty of overlap but the distribution skew results in men, on the aggregate, being paid slightly more than women.

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