
Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism - focal
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/opinion/benioff-salesforce-capitalism.html
======
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...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2018/apr/13/tina-smith/do-women-get-only-80-percent-pay-men-
do-same-job/)

~~~
jadell
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", that is a problem separate from the
problem of "we're not paying women equally to men in the same position."

~~~
jimbokun
> If this is an issue of "we're not hiring women to the same higher paid
> positions as men", that is a problem separate from the problem of "we're not
> paying women equally to men in the same position."

Which is exactly the point. The solution may be much farther back in the
pipeline, when young people are making educational choices, and can't be
solved at the point companies are looking to hire someone.

~~~
jadell
But it can be driven by those companies. Companies in the US have a huge
influence on the educational pipeline, and in turn, who gets encouraged in
that pipeline.

~~~
nradov
I live in Silicon Valley, and I've yet to see any major tech company
representatives show up at our local school board meetings. Occasionally they
kick in a small grant for a specific program. But their influence on the
really important stuff like budgets, curriculum, and hiring is nearly zero.

~~~
jadell
Their influence is more at the level of university and higher-education. My
personal opinion is that they should be doing more for K-12, but I hesitate to
let large corporations be involved in deciding what gets taught and who gets
hired in public schools. I'm not sure what their role is at that level.

------
mindfulplay
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 might be a good solution.

Look city governments have huge cash chests: neither homelessness nor poverty
had ever been addressed by throwing government/money at these problems. 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.

~~~
mkettn
>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).

------
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.

~~~
BurningFrog
If you don't lobby for your selfish interests, you'll get out-regulated by
companies who do. Lobbying is not an optional luxury. You _have_ to do it. At
least in politically sensitive industries.

As a partially made up example, I'm guessing the plastic straw industry didn't
think they had to lay a groundwork lobbying for their existence over the
decades. And now they're dead.

~~~
jiveturkey
I see your point, but bad example. There isn't a plastic straw industry. There
is a plastic industry and a restaurant supply industry. There is no single
focus on straws ...

And no they are not dead. Get our of your bubble. The places where plastic
straws are not allowed is tiny, tiny tiny.

~~~
BurningFrog
I'm in San Francisco. Straws are as hard to find as housing or republicans.

Glad to hear there is more choice in other areas. But... what starts in SF
tends to spread.

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kneel
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.

~~~
dev_dull
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?

~~~
jadell
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.

~~~
easytiger
And you can pick 2 dozen African "revolutions" that left everyone way worse
off than a small elite.

Sell people the idea you will strip the rich of everything and give it to them
(requires a fundamental removal of freedom)... Take power... Profit.

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

~~~
nrp
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.”

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Not to be even more cynical, but I can't help wondering how the advance and
royalties on that book are split between the co-authors vs time spent
writing/editing.

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jshaqaw
I often wonder why people who write these things don’t start with donating the
mass of their fortunes first. Benioff could donate 5b to address poverty
causes and still have more than a billion left over for himself.

~~~
WilliamEdward
It could be greed, but i'd say its more likely they don't even understand that
they could be doing good things with their money.

------
geebee
I agree with Marc that many of the things he'd like to do will take money.
Solving homelessness in San Francisco, for instance, will cost a lot. But that
doesn't mean all we need to do is spend some money. We've tried that - we're
already up to a conservatively estimated $300 million a year. But plenty of
people, hardly all on the right - including Gavin Newsom, who admits he was
behind some of these failed attempts, for instance - opposed Benioff's
initiative on the grounds that if we keep spending money they way we've been
spending it, another 300 million will just make things worse off.

And while San Francisco may be a wealthy city, there's only so many times we
can go to the well. As an example, every year there's a story in the Chron
about how low and middle income San Franciscans sit at their computers with a
list of affordable city run summer programs for kids, looking at the
international clock, desperate to hit "submit" as if it's tickets to a Stones
reunion tour - and the aftermath and scramble for where to put their kid this
summer if they don't get them, which is about half the time. 300 mil would go
a long way to helping with the middle and low income families that San
Francisco is, frankly, bleeding away.

If I thought 300 mil more would solve homelessness, I'd happily spend it -
hell, I'd triple it. I grew up here and I still love this city, but things are
bad. The main difference between me and the people who bash SF here on HN is
that to me, it's extremely painful, I don't get the gleeful thrill of pointing
out how shitty SF's policies have made things, it hurts. I'd be willing to dig
pretty deep into my limited financial assets if I could see it get better. But
unfortunately, I really do think that 300 million more of the same will
produce, well more of the same, which is things getting worse and worse.

~~~
easytiger
It's literally impossible to "solve homelessness". You can't stop someone
walking I to your town and sitting down on the street.

Thats not even getting into what you allude to, in that "solving it" creates
more homelessness

~~~
geebee
I agree. There's also a huge ambiguity in the term "homeless". This ambiguity
was not an accident, I believe it is deliberate and is designed to serve a
political purpose.

What I mean is, currently there is a large population of mentally ill and drug
addicted people on San Francisco's streets, and many of San Francisco's
residents and visitors are frequently berated, threatened, harassed, stalked,
and even assaulted as they go about their business or vacations.

By "solve" I mean a humane and effective plan to greatly reduce this
phenomenon. In spite of the intense and angry disagreements about what a
humane and effective plan will be (must be?), I do think we (almost) all can
agree on this as our objective. And in spite of my frustrations with Benioff,
I do believe he sincerely wants the same thing I do.

------
_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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat)

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

~~~
jiveturkey
> Profit is purpose.

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

~~~
_edo
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.

~~~
jiveturkey
In modern society, people do not own their own property (ie, real estate).
Please elaborate on why this is a requirement for profit?

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miles_matthias
It’s very interesting to me that he didn’t mention the B Corp organization,
who attempts to do exactly that. Is there a reason for this? Maybe he thinks
the requirements/audits are too burdensome?

------
WilliamEdward
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.

------
jaoued
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](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."

------
jiveturkey
sigh. Benioff again with his convenient philanthropy. Berating the system he
was happy to and remains happy to take advantage of. Whilst shaming others,
that are in in less to much less good positions to demonstrate largesse, to
act.

Honest question, why do people listen to this guy?

OK, he does try to start off strong: "Capitalism, I acknowledge, has been good
to me." But it's not quite true, is it. It's not as if he was a disinterested
3rd party, strong in his belief of equality (socialism if we take it to
extreme), that had capitalism foisted upon him.

Sorry, but for me the messenger has tainted the message. It's a clear do-as-I-
say, not-as-I do.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-marc-
benioff-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-
salary-versus-median-employee-2018-4)

It's behind a paywall, sorry. The headline is: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
made $4,653,362 for fiscal year 2018 — a total made up of $1,550,000 in base
salary, and $3,100,000 in non-equity insentive compensation. This means that
the median employee got paid at a rate of 1-to-30, raking in about 3% of what
Benioff made.

------
gnu8
This is easy for Benioff to say because he's already wealthy. Let's table this
until such a time as I become wealthy too. After that we can talk about
dismantling capitalism.

~~~
WilliamEdward
I unironically agree. Either nobody is rich, or we all have the opportunity to
get rich. I will not settle for inequality which is what is proposed under the
hood by this author.

------
Miner49er
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?

~~~
anonuser123456
What prevents employees from buying shares today?

~~~
morvita
Money? Opportunity?

How many employees (even high earning employees like engineers) are actually
in a position to purchase enough shares to make a difference? Even for most
"publicly owned" companies the vast majority of shares are held by a small
number of investors who aren't giving up their control and power.

------
jasonlfunk
Sure it would be great for business leaders to change their ways, but the
beauty of capitalism is that consumers can force businesses to change by their
actions. Mark Zuckerberg could change Facebook overnight, but what incentive
does he have? It’s still one of the most populous websites in the world.

It’s easy to blame to rich and wealthy for the problems but they cannot force
us to give them money. Every time I buy Facebook ads, I’m telling Mark that
it’s okay for him to continue what he’s doing.

It’s very fun these days to blame the 1% for societies problems. But the 99%
enable them.

~~~
bschne
If you take a very simplistic model of how the economy works, this is true.

The problem is when you get into a situation/equilibrium where enabling
business practices that you consider to be bad for society as a whole is the
rational choice because anything else will just leave you out-competed by
someone else who doesn't care.

I am not saying that this makes it OK to do whatever because "everyone does"
or "if I don't, someone else will", I'm just saying that appealing to
individuals to just "do the right thing" has almost never worked to
efficiently/swiftly bring about changes like this.

~~~
jasonlfunk
> I'm just saying that appealing to individuals to just "do the right thing"
> has almost never worked

Which is exactly what Mr. Benioff is trying to do with this article. Companies
change when it's in their financial interest to do so; and rarely before then.

