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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

#61

Post by _jarroda »

BigJ1211 wrote: post #35
formatkaka wrote: post #2

EDIT: [Removed]

There has never been a truly communist society, they were marketed as being socialist (nazi party) or as communist (lenin and mao). None of those were what they claimed to be at all, or at best a corrupted version of what they were supposed to be. See: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/cpml-ussr.htm So there hasn't been any communism that turned into fascism, as there hasn't been any communist society. Most…

Ah yes. No true Scotsman.

From where I'm standing, it seems obvious that as you slide down the scale into more collectivism, you wind up with a totalitarian nightmare.

It's been tried. It ends disastrously every time.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#62

Post by mkettn »

mindfulplay wrote: post #15

He identified the problem being "companies shouldn't wait for government to take action". Then, he proposed solutions that still seem to involve increasing taxes. If government is inefficient in allocation of resources and has disincentivizes to actually solve problems in reasonable timelines with reasonable red tape, then perhaps letting private companies take on improving infrastructure or providing care easier mig…

>You need the right inventives to tackle these challenges. And frankly governments need to reduce the friction in terms of money allocation and regulations to get things done.

Churches did this in the past (with all the bad side effects). But I guess in more secular regions government needs jump in (with all the bad side effects).

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#63

Post by jadell »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #50
jadell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then the focus should be on why aren't more women being hired for executive and engineering positions? I'm not putting all this on the hiring company; it starts much further back in the pipeline than that. So what is the company doing to get more women onto the track towards higher-paying executive and engineering positions, and keeping them on that track?

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#64

Post by Consultant32452 »

dev_dull wrote: post #21
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…

This whole discussion is so tired to me. I’d like to see organizations who genuinely want to end inequality to start compensation transparency practices. Let’s see the numbers and we’ll decide for ourselves. After all, it’s not in our interest that salaries are so closely guarded.

>After all, it’s not in our interest that salaries are so closely guarded.

I think it's in my interest that salaries are closely guarded. Virtually every time in my private life someone has found out how much I make it's been a problem for me.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#65

Post by peterwwillis »

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…

I think this kind of misses the point. Even if there's only an 8% gap, the question isn't just "what causes the gap". Assume you can rationalize it. Is rationalized inequity OK? Why or why not?

Women aren't the only group this applies to, of course. There's lots of inequity in our society. But I don't think anyone in modern-day times would agree that this is "the way it's supposed to be", as if women are supposed to make less. In the past, philosophers have justified slavery because it seemed to make sense, but now we realize it's immoral. Couldn't the same be true of all kinds of equity gaps in our society?

To reframe it a bit, men are the minority population, yet this pay gap still exists in their favor. If men were the ones making 8% less, I bet there'd be a lot more work to reach pay parity.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#66

Post by BurningFrog »

Miner49er wrote: post #48
BurningFrog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

A wonderful and informative read, thankyou!

I'm reminded that I need to read his Catalonian book.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#67

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kolbe wrote: post #34
sexydefinesher wrote: post #6

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.

What are you actually defending here? A version of capitalism that is imploding under the weight of usurious debt, that considers widespread homelessness around the bases of empty "investment" apartment towers a feature and not a bug, that bankrupts half a million families a year because of health insurance sharking, that is regularly implicated in unquestionably immoral scandals and corruption (Boeing, opioid sales, Enron, S&L...), that is linked to violent wars and oppressive regimes around the world, and has also been the single biggest driver of climate change, and climate change denial, in the last century?

Do you really think these are somehow justifiable with a glib "But socialism!"

Anyway - the Scandi countries do a nice line is social democracy, which includes policies that seem to be considered outright socialist extremism by US standards.

You should find out how they're doing. By all accounts they're not particularly unpleasant places to live.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#68

Post by akvadrako »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #27
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?

What prevents employees from buying shares today?

Employees can join worker-owned coops if they want to own the companies they work for. There are a few successful companies like this.

Most employees just don't seem to want that. Maybe because it's more risk.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#69

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

_jarroda wrote: post #61
BigJ1211 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has never been a truly communist society, they were marketed as being socialist (nazi party) or as communist (lenin and mao). None of those were what they claimed to be at all, or at best a corrupted version of what they were supposed to be. See: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/cpml-ussr.htm So there hasn't been any communism that turned into fascism, as there hasn't been any communist society. Most…

Ah yes. No true Scotsman. From where I'm standing, it seems obvious that as you slide down the scale into more collectivism, you wind up with a totalitarian nightmare. It's been tried. It ends disastrously every time.

This isn't even close to being historically true, and repeating it over and over doesn't make it so.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#70

Post by _edo »

> ...we need businesses and executives to value purpose alongside profit.

Profit is purpose. Profit means the value of the outputs of your business exceeds the value of its inputs. It means you've added something to society, it means you've provided a service to the public. It means when people actually have to choose what's important to them they value what your business has done for them.[0]

> ...where businesses...don’t just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact.

See above.

I don't know why people think this thought process is new. Read The Road To Serfdom by Hayek. It was written in the 1940's about why these ideas don't work.

The free market is the best invention we know of for a society to express what it actually wants and to achieve those goals. Without it you have a small group of enlightened elites deciding what it is that people want.

> Americans overwhelmingly say C.E.O.s should take the lead on economic and social challenges, and employees, investors and customers increasingly seek out companies that share their values....When government is unable or unwilling to act, business should not wait.

No. We don't want businesses to become political entities. If the problem is businesses aren't using their power for good, the solution isn't to give them even more power. That's too close to Fascism.

This whole essay is an argument that businesses need more social power and governments need more financial power. The trade-off is an increase in power inequality (because we're giving the powerful even more power) to decrease financial inequality. At the same time we'd probably take on massive dead-weight losses from abandoning the profit motive which is essential for our economy to function. That looks like a bad deal to me.

There is historical precedent for societies accepting power inequality to the extent of dictatorship in the name of ending the ills of capitalism. It hasn't worked well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria...

[0] - Yes, you can also steal. That's why capitalism exists within a legal framework.

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