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Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

nytimes.com

91–100 of 113 posts

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#91
post #70

> ...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..…

> Profit is purpose. Only in a capitalistic system, which he is arguing needs revision. Your argument is therefore tautological.

My argument only requires that people own their own property/labor and have the freedom to trade those things with others.

Without those freedoms we're in some dystopian/totalitarian state.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#92
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

why is that their responsibility at all? Women are electing not to enter that “track;” it’s companies’ jobs to convince them to?

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#93
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get rid of "inequity" if inequity reflects different desires and choices by human beings. Beauty, strength, intelligence, youth and health are wanted by most men and women. But they are not distributed or desired equally. That unequal distribution of desires and characteristics among people will lead to some kinds of inequality.

Sure we can - we did it with slavery! The inequity of slavery reflected the desires and choices of human beings. But over time (nearly 200 years) we changed our ethics so that these desires and choices were no longer acceptable, and eventually outright abolished the practice. Lots of people said it couldn't be done. Not only because it was "natural" to own slaves, but because our nation's economy was deeply tied to t…

Wow. This impulse to compare any and every sort of economic inequality to slavery is pitiful and disgusting.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we can - we did it with slavery! The inequity of slavery reflected the desires and choices of human beings. But over time (nearly 200 years) we changed our ethics so that these desires and choices were no longer acceptable, and eventually outright abolished the practice. Lots of people said it couldn't be done. Not only because it was "natural" to own slaves, but because our nation's economy was deeply tied to t…

Wow. This impulse to compare any and every sort of economic inequality to slavery is pitiful and disgusting.

Thanks!

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#96
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get rid of "inequity" if inequity reflects different desires and choices by human beings. Beauty, strength, intelligence, youth and health are wanted by most men and women. But they are not distributed or desired equally. That unequal distribution of desires and characteristics among people will lead to some kinds of inequality.

Sure we can - we did it with slavery! The inequity of slavery reflected the desires and choices of human beings. But over time (nearly 200 years) we changed our ethics so that these desires and choices were no longer acceptable, and eventually outright abolished the practice. Lots of people said it couldn't be done. Not only because it was "natural" to own slaves, but because our nation's economy was deeply tied to t…

Really? Your response to we have a distribution of people with different levels of intelligence, attractiveness, etc. is we got rid of slavery?

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#97
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we can - we did it with slavery! The inequity of slavery reflected the desires and choices of human beings. But over time (nearly 200 years) we changed our ethics so that these desires and choices were no longer acceptable, and eventually outright abolished the practice. Lots of people said it couldn't be done. Not only because it was "natural" to own slaves, but because our nation's economy was deeply tied to t…

Really? Your response to we have a distribution of people with different levels of intelligence, attractiveness, etc. is we got rid of slavery?

Are you just now learning how to read and want me to confirm your eyeballs work? Or are you capable of more complex thought, and are intentionally ignoring the point I was making?

Like, I'm honestly curious, in what way did you expect me to respond to this question? You literally just asked me if I said what I said.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#98
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's all well and good to understand why this is, but if the answer is "because, on average, women prefer a different distribution of work", then we should let that be. There's this creepy urge to pressure women to share exactly the same preference distributions as men. This restriction of women's choice for the sake of some neat gender parity is antithetical to human rights and equal opportunity.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#99

> 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…

If the inequity is due to free people freely making different choices, then it is strictly better than coercing people to make the choices wants them to make. It is eminently desirable that _all_ people are free, even if that freedom doesn't yield some neat behavioral parity. Pressuring women to behave in a certain way is creepy.

Re: Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism

#100
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think there are a significant number of initiatives, groups, scholarships, etc which provide girls and women beginning at a young age the resources and tools and encouragement into the engineering track.
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