Marc Benioff Says Capitalism, As We Know It, Is Dead (cnn.com) 291
Marc Benioff says "capitalism, as we know it, is dead," and it is time for a new form of capitalism that focuses more on societal good. From a report: "That new kind of capitalism that is going to emerge is not the Milton Friedman capitalism, that's just about making money," the billionaire co-CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time Magazine, said at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco Thursday evening. "If your orientation is just about making money, I don't think you're going to hang out very long as a CEO or a founder of a company. You have to be more than that in today's world," Benioff added. Benioff is one of the more outspoken corporate leaders but he is not alone. Others are also trying to prioritize the good of their employees and customers over profit. The Business Roundtable, an influential group of CEOs, said in August that America's top corporations are responsible for improving society by serving all stakeholders ethically, morally and fairly -- and not just for boosting the stock price for shareholders. The group is currently led by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon will take over as chairman of The Business Roundtable in January and will serve a two-year term.
You first then! (Score:4, Insightful)
Benief's net worth is $6.5 BILLION. There's nothing stopping him from giving it all away or writing a $6.4 billion check to the Treasury today.
"Worth" is not real. (Score:2)
It is just a fantasy in people's heads. :P
Not actual money you can hold or use or give away.
Its only purpose is to devalue money and hence your salary.
Half-truths... (Score:3)
... are falsehoods, too.
It is true that the nominal wealth of a billionaire is not a sum that could be drawn from a bank account tomorrow morning.
But each single book dollar does have an actual value which is the same as that of a dollar coin. Both contain the same amount of 'fantasy' – or 'reality', for that matter.
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He can pass around some of that fantasy to other people's heads. Just, you know, give away 99% of that fantasy net worth by transferring the stock to me, for example. That'll be fine, thanks.
Re:You first then! (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of reflexively assuming any criticism of capitalism is some sort of argument for socialism, try reading the article and forming an opinion of the criticism found therein. And rather than attacking any assumed argument for socialism with the hoary old "You first!" argument, try using reasoning and logic. Would the action of any single billionaire giving away their money result in socialism? No? Then "You first!" isn't a reasonable argument to apply.
The exact same argument could (and is) applied (poorly) against taxes. "Oh, so taxes could pay for roads, schools, and armed forces to protect us? You first!" is equally asinine, suitable only to impress already impressionable youngsters. Look out briefly at the real world and realize there is a reason that that argument holds no water with the vast majority of the population.
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try reading the article and forming an opinion of the criticism found therein
What criticism? It is a breathy recounting of some things Salesforce has done to ensure equal pay for equal work, some money Benioff has donated, and a couple of Op-eds no doubt accepted on the name of the author rather than the strength of the writing.
I don't see any criticism at all.
In fact I see this advice as protectionism. Salesforce built itself up under the 'old' rules and I am sure would like to increase barriers to entry.
No - but this is about reading between the lines (Score:3, Interesting)
Like I already commented here .... it seems pretty clear to me this guy is advocating for (thinly veiled) socialist practices in doing business, because first off? We see the background here. Owner of Time Magazine? Time has a very liberal leaning agenda, which has arguably gotten stronger since the print magazine died off and it was reincarnated as a web publication. And then co-CEO of Salesforce? The company that just recently decided to screw over good, paying customers because it had an anti-gun poli
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Only an American could think that not being quite as much of a psychopathic cunt to your workers as you could get away is "thinly veiled socialism".
Your entire nation has been taken hostage by corporations, and you all have Stockholm Syndrome.
Re:You first then! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that what he is saying though? Sounded to me like he was simply talking about another form of capitalism, that accounted for more true costs than just the monetary bottom line.
I really have to ask, did you read the article? Could you quote where Benioff says we should redistribute wealth?
Re: You first then! (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is the hysterical left turned off almost all reasonable people against them. And now even reasonable ideas cannot get through. Search my post history prior to 2015. You will find a lefty in full swing. Arguing that it is insane to place all societal system on the profit motive. Including healthcare and education.
But after the incessant screeching against my skin color, ethnicity and sex. After the endless cries about green policies without a shred of realism and scientific veracity. After declar
Re:You first then! (Score:5, Informative)
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In what sense does what you wrote here apply to either the linked article, or to my post? I'd like to respond, but I can't make heads or tails of this. Try using a quote from either source in your reply, to show that you have read them and are responding to them rather than responding to some fantasy misrepresentation you've concocted in your own mind.
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Actually it sounds a lot like what Nordic countries already have. They tend to be pretty well of, not all billionaires of course but high wages and a high standard of living. High taxes too, but they get a lot in return.
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Aaaah, yes. That ever logical point of view that, "It's way better than what we have now, but it's not perfect so fuck it."
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The point is it's already unsustainable there even with the advantages they have. Sorry man but you're going to have to find a way to support yourself. I can't afford to feed you too.
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I don't know where you're both from, but over here shit isn't worth killing for. In fact we have a whole system of sewers dedicated to getting rid of it.
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He's working on that. Didn't you read the article? Oh I forgot, this is Slashdot. Here, I'll quote it for you:
Investor says (Score:3, Insightful)
You're fired. Effective immediately my guy who is ruthless and who wants to make money will replace you.
Re:Investor says (Score:5, Insightful)
.
Until that compensation scheme changes - it's all bullshit. Human nature isn't changed by persuasion very much at all - but behavior is all incentive driven.
You have no idea you are clueless, do you? (Score:2)
Sorry, how much have you pondered and resesearched this? I mean outside of teachings from your churches and holy books of psychopath capitalism?
Do you want to give the answer in seconds or whole minutes?
For the oligarchy, sure, but what about (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is a whole country full of small businesses that is out every day working themselves ragged to pay the bills and take as best care of their employees as they can. That's realistically as much social good as can be expected from them.
This just looks like more crap from the huge entrenched players designed to burden their smaller competitors. The rules never apply to the ones that should be most controlled.
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If a company can only function by having other parts of society subsidize their worker's wages (AKA paying a sub-livable wage), then that company is a drain on society and should cease operations.
Re:For the oligarchy, sure, but what about (Score:4, Insightful)
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If only your strawman was relevant to the conversation.
Let's make it relevant:
So if I start a lawn service and employ high school students part-time in my neighborhood, but require you to subsidize their pay via social services, food stamps, and a host of other benefits thanks to the low wages and poor hours I force my employees to have, I am a drain on society?
There's a reason every WalMart has employees that help their employees apply for government aid.
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"But there is a whole country full of small businesses that is out every day working themselves ragged to pay the bills and take as best care of their employees as they can."
Small businesses get tons of breaks too. I don't know of any small business owner who doesn't have their company own their houses and cars so they can deduct those expenses from their profits, and funnel all personal expenses through the company as well. I'm not saying they have it as easy as the big guys who just hand bags of cash to C
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To support this, I can say that I've personally audited around a hundred businesses (our clients). None of them had anything like this going on. I don't think the misbehavior that you describe is as prevalent as you appear to think it is.
Even so, what are you arguing for here? More Walmart scale businesses that can push all of their responsibilities off on the government / society?
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True!
I've worked in SMB IT consulting for years and nearly all of them are not much more than cash machines for the owners and their families. I mostly get it when it's a *really* small business, like fewer than 10 people who work there.
But I've worked with some that were larger and appeared on the outside to be kind of a normal firm. At one, they were facing a serious set of risks due to badly aging infrastructure and kept delaying the project. The accountant confided in me that they had some kind of bu
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I don't think you're considering the complexity of the system.
Why do small businesses struggle? For lots of reasons, but one in particular is not having enough customers. Not a lot of small businesses struggle because they have too many.
To get more customers (assuming you have something they want) it helps a lot if more people have more money to spend. And that's partly what this addresses. If the megacorps put more money into their employees' pockets, those employees have more to spend everywhere, includin
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Your last line is the crux for me - "It doesn't seem to me that this is a bad thing, if it's actually something that happens rather than the bullshit marketing and PR stunt that it most likely is. Less money in corporate coffers and more circulating in the economy is better for pretty much everyone that's not a megacorporation owner or multi-million-dollar stock investor."
I think if it worked as stated it would be great
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You don't seem to have read the summary. This is a voluntary thing that a bunch of companies are doing. If their smaller competitors don't want to do the same, they're not obligated to.
What do you see as the mechanism that would harm smaller companies if larger ones voluntarily made less money?
Not if it's done right (Score:3, Insightful)
The same is true for a living wage. Yeah, a $15/hr wage sounds like suic
False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
Societal good and capitalism are not mutually exclusive goals. I don't know why people believe that.
I would say that, as a company, long term sustainability almost requires you take care of your environment ( your employees, your town, your country ).
No need to invent a new term for it.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:4)
As long as polluting the environment is free, then capitalist corporations will have no incentive in protecting the environment.
That's how we emit so much CO2.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as polluting the environment is free, then capitalist corporations will have no incentive in protecting the environment
Same applies to other forms of rule. If a socialist government doesn't care about the environment, then they will also allow people to pollute.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
My point wasn't to switch to a socialist government. Especially not a dictatorial one. Only, we need to put a price on pollution, starting with greenhouse gases.
Corporations are not going to solve the problem just because they indirectly benefit from a cleaner environment.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, the USSR, a de-facto socialist state, drained the Aral Sea, the world's 4th largest sea. As a result, the sea is 1/10th its original size.
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It would seem the overall environmental record of the former USSR is not so great [socialist-alliance.org].
"There’s no point in trying to dress up the Soviet bureaucracy as anything except what it was: a grossly irresponsible clique that pursued its corporate advantage with little regard for damage to nature or to the health of the population."
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+1 "not real socialism"
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For most companies, "long term sustainability" means looking *two* quarters ahead.
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If you have a corporation that is lead by the owner then that'll work the way you imply.
But if you hire someone to lead your corporation and that someone gets a bonus based on the net income of a given timeframe, this person WILL maximize net income for the TIMEFRAME and to hell with everything that comes after.
Put a clause into the contract that states if a decision of the CEO leads to problems down the line, he will be held financially responsible for up to ten years, THEN I see some chance of your utopia
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he will be held financially responsible for up to ten years,
NOBODY is going to agree to terms that hold them responsible for the decisions made AFTER they leave. The best you could do is to have bonuses for X years in the future. Maybe giving shares of stocks as a current bonus, but those shares can not be sold/transferred for X years so that somebody won't screw over future years.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
Societal good and capitalism are not mutually exclusive goals. I don't know why people believe that.
Probably due to all the implementations of "capitalism" they've witnessed so far.
I agree that a heavily regulated and more democratic form of capitalism could work much better and for the societal good, but it seems that capitalism in general (or at least anything we could squint really hard at and define as a form of capitalism) has an expiry date set by advances in automation and post-scarcity effects, and it looks like we're going to run into it in the next couple of decades.
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Stock dividends fly in the face of long-term sustainability. Companies maximize short-term profits over long-term sustainability every time. Just look at Blizzard, throwing away every cent of their goodwill turning their Diablo series into a trash Chinese microtransaction-infested mobile game. It hurts their long-term profits, but in the short-term, it's very profitable.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism needs competent enforcement of regulations and a functioning legal system to work. ... to enrich themselves in the short term at the expense of others.
Otherwise, people at corporations with a lot of power will abuse that power
The same goes for the opposite: a communist state (and for everything between the two): people with power must be prevented from abusing their power.
It is not the idea of capitalism in itself, but the ultra-liberal belief that a capitalist society could adjust itself for the common good that bullshit. It has its origin in misinterpreting a macroeconomic model of the real world as being the absolute truth. Models can be useful for figuring out details of the world, but the world is never as simple as a model.
Be very wary when someone in power says they want to remove regulation. Sometimes a regulatory framework can be too restrictive and needs to be reformed, but then the devil is (like always) in the details: the framework may need to be redone right, not done away with.
Transparency, a healthy press corps and whistleblowers are essential for keeping our freedoms, to report about the people with power and make everyone know when they have done wrong so that evil deeds can't be done without repercussions, and to inspect and report when systems are not working, so that they can be fixed.
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I would say that, as a company, long term sustainability almost requires you take care of your environment ( your employees, your town, your country ).
No need to invent a new term for it.
As business leaders have done all along, throughout history.
business major vs economics major (Score:5, Insightful)
Any econ major could have told him that if shareholders and customers assign value to "societal good" then companies will do that.
Not just boosting stock prices.... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, people are supposed to give him money, and he should spend it however he likes?
How about working to create value for the owners? You know, the guys who own stock in the company. The guys who gave the company money in order to get wealthier themselves....
Note that I'm not talking about manipulating the stock price. I'm talking about making stuff people want to buy, that improves their lives. Which, at least in theory, is what "investing in stock" is all about....
Paragons of Virtue (Score:4, Insightful)
The Business Roundtable, an influential group of CEOs, said in August that America's top corporations are responsible for improving society by serving all stakeholders ethically, morally and fairly...Walmart CEO Doug McMillon will take over as chairman of The Business Roundtable in January and will serve a two-year term.
Because the first company I think of when I hear "taking care of your employees" is Walmart.....
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Well, WalMart does helpfully provide all sorts of help to its employees about applying for government aid. So clearly they must care and not only care about keeping wages low.
This isn't a new idea (Score:3)
Decades ago, the manager of the site where I worked (a C-level exec) gave an all-hands talk at which he described the role of companies as "the creation and distribution of wealth". In other remarks he made it was plain that "distribution" did not just include distribution to investors, but also to employees, suppliers, etc..
Industry chicken (Score:2)
Adjustments are required (Score:4, Insightful)
Marc Benioff is quite wealthy, so I doubt he has much to lose proposing changes to the system. But I think he's right -- society has moved to a place where it's not about who can produce the most physical stuff and get the largest number of people to buy it.
There was a golden age in US capitalism around the 50s through the 70s where companies had enough breathing room to share more of their wealth with their employees. The 70s/80s brought manufacturing outsourcing, the 90s brought the great downsizing purge where companies got around to killing off their pre-computer sized workforce, the 2000s brought offshore outsourcing (and outsourcing of all functions in general) and the 2010s are bringing in wide-ranging automation and the subsequent elimination of formerly high-paid knowledge work. Because of all this, companies have been in a race to the bottom since it started, squeezing more and more out of fewer employees. Look at the retail apocalypse -- retailers can't make enough margin selling physical goods in physical stores because online retailers undercut them on price, and people are buying less stuff/want to pay less for the stuff they do buy.
The question is what companies will do next when people are unemployed and unable to buy products. That's where the change in mentality is going to have to come in. The fabulously wealthy are too small a group to keep making companies revenue. You can only buy so many houses, cars, boats, vacations, etc. Once middle-skill knowledge work is gone, there will be serious problems if millions of office workers who were told to go to college and get office jobs are dumped out on the street with no way to sell their labor.
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It wasn't just economic trends, it was political trends.
IMHO, the left figured that general economic growth supported more taxation for the growth of social welfare programs. This worked until the late 1970s when the economy sputtered and inflation skyrocketed.
The rich capitalized on this to gain tax cuts under the fantasy of trickle down economics, gaining big tax cuts which shifted more tax burden to the middle class who went along with it under the guise of trickle down economics.
I also think that the i
Capitalism already bolsters societal good (Score:3)
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That's not new... (Score:2)
...new form of capitalism that focuses more on societal good.
It's called "democratic socialism".
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How is that different than regular "socialism"?
Try this thing called "Google" - I hear it's great for answering stupids' questions.
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How is that different than regular "socialism"?
It doesn't feature things like the workers owning the means of production, or money being distributed equally/pseudo-equally.
It's basically capitalism with a bigger safety net. And it unfortunately has a name that makes Fox News aficionados explode instead of learning about it.
Maduro was elected as was his socialist party does that make Venezuela democratic socialist?
Only if you think the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is a democracy (hint: it's North Korea).
Try Denmark, Sweden, or much of Western Europe if you're looking for an example.
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Really? Finally we're saved! (Score:2, Offtopic)
Isn't it great that we live in a country where two people who could practically end several societal problems and barely notice the dip in their savings can tell us that the companies that make them millions should care more about the "little guy"? Man, I'm so proud right now! Now all we have to do is wait and give them even more money!
(Is there a "sarcasm level: head explode" emoji yet? Cause I don't think /s is nearly sufficient for this...)
How is this supposed to work? (Score:2)
This would require a completely different economic system.
I can believe that is possible.
But, I looked at the article, and did not find much of an explanation.
At best, this seems like some kind of idealistic fantasy.
Kickstarter a "Public Benefit Corporation" (Score:2)
Not only refuses to unionize but is active busting unions.
https://www.salon.com/2019/09/... [salon.com]
So for a corporation that is organized for "public benefit and social good", it's a case of meet the new boss same as the old boss, and you did get fooled again.
Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Please don't regulate away our abuses. We promise we will fix ourselves! Really! This time, we will really do it!
no, it's not dead (Score:2)
The headline makes no grammatical sense:
"capitalism, as we know it, is dead"
Because capitalism as we see it daily is obviously very alive. In fact it has changed very little during this century. Perhaps the statement should have been "Capitalism as it is described to 5th graders, is dead"
The more or less pure capitalism that is taught to children is about competing in the marketplace for customers and profits. Children are told that this honest competition creates jobs and prosperity for everyone.
The realit
it doesn't work that way (Score:3)
from the /. summary:
Benioff is one of the more outspoken corporate leaders but he is not alone. Others are also trying to prioritize the good of their employees and customers over profit.
There is an obvious and fundamental error in that statement. Happy employees, pleased customers and profits are synergistic, not mutually antagonist. In other words, prioritizing the good of employees and customers can increase, not decrease profits. So it is wrong to write prioritzing "..over profit."
Hiring the best employees and treating them well results in great products and service. Great products and service make happy customers. Happy customers give you big profit margins and more customers. Having a successful business lowers the cost of borrowing by reducing risk, leaving more profit to distribute between between stakeholders.
That new kind of capitalism that is going to emerge is not the Milton Friedman capitalism
Milton Friedman never said that businesses should short-change customers or mistreat employees for the sake of profits. His point vis-à-vis prioritizing profits was that, if a business accepts investment with the promise to investors of increasing value, then that business is ethically obligated to be sincere in that promise and to actually work to return value to the investor. In other words, he wanted corporations to be honest. Friedman explicitly advocated for free markets and the point of a free market is that you are free to do whatever the hell you want, within the boundaries of law. If you want to start a business or non-profit which rewards employees and customers but not shareholders Friedman was 100% cool with that. But he was also frank about the record of success for that sort of thing not being terrific and he wanted truth-in-advertising; if you are not working for your investors then tell them that.
Sowell points out in his book "Knowledge and Decisions" that profits are a small percentage of corporate financial activity but a large determinant of business success. That is, financial profit is a good social bargain because providing little in profit returns a large amount of value in the form of better management. That is more evidence that interests of customers, employees and investors are not at odds with each other.
Surely you're joking? (Score:2)
Paraphrasing: "Well, the important thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
"The important thing is that you publicly virtue signal and work to support and promote every leftist cause proposed by the media and the political elite, disproportionately reward those who support the same causes, and be sure to give plenty of money to those causes.
"If you do not, you will be less able to do business with those of us who do, and chances are, you'll run afoul of one of the far too many laws that we can use via 'prosecutorial discression' to disproportionately impact anybody who doesn't support what we think you ought to be doing with your money.
"That's a nice company you've got there, be a shame if anything were to happen to it."
Gotcha.
Um, that is what capitalism is (Score:2)
Contrary to as is popularly stated, capitalism isn't about making profit. It's about selling people what they want. Profit is maximized whenever you give people what they want.* If they want ethics, morality, and fairness, then there will be profit
F*ck this guy .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, Salesforce is the same company that recently denied their services to gun manufacturers:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
This CEO just wants to redefine Capitalism with a more liberal agenda.
Capitalism is SUPPOSED to be about the motivation to make money. It's an economic system, not a system of moral values or ethics, or what makes you feel subjectively good, or any of that. The realities have never changed though. If you don't offer your customer real VALUE for the dollar, you will eventually fail at the goal of making money. That value takes many forms, including the customer feeling your business doesn't engage in activities that he/she is opposed to. But it's always been up to you as the business owner to keep all of that in mind and strike a balance that ensures continued success. (Traditionally, that meant refraining from making biased political statements or expressing your personal views on contentious subjects as though you speak for your entire company. Recently, it seems it's become trendy to throw that out the window. And so far, I see it doing nothing but hurting sales, no matter who does it.)
LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Aging billionaire tries to buy back his soul (with other people's money), film at 11.
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Benioff, Dimon, and McMillon are no longer interested in making money? This isn't just propaganda, it's the setup for a con job by which their bank accounts get bigger and the customers and labor get screwed.
Re:Zzzz (Score:4, Insightful)
They've got more money than they can spend. We're sort of returned to the old industrial barons era where top CEOs have ridiculous amounts of money, and like the industrial barons some of them figure that they can invest in philanthropy. There's 0% abandonment of capitalism, they're just rejecting the myth that greed is the highest virtue.
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Your bias is showing, and it's not pretty.
Have a great week end young man.
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Stop showing off. Most people have two arms, too.
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You know, it's worth pointing out to anyone that cares to read this, that anytime you say anything along the lines of "...everybody like $this or $that should be shot..." you don't make a point or anything, you just sound like Hitler. So whatever you point is, against those that you wish to just shoot, it's overshadowed by the fact that you're not just sadistic, but you're a sadistic hypocrite.
Re:Zzzz (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a story out today that the "scientist" who invented the "gender-is-a-social-construct" theory admits to fabricating the entire thing and regrets it. I wonder if that'll get a Slashdot post?
There's a story out today that the "scientist" who invented the "gender-is-a-social-construct" theory admits to fabricating the entire thing and regrets it. I wonder if that'll get a Slashdot post?
Please, do tell us more. Which scientist said what exactly?
I believe the social construction of gender goes back to things like Berger & Luckmann's "The Social Construction of Reality", and Michel Foucault's history of sexuality. And all of this goes back, after about three beers, to Marx. A couple of beers later, and I'm talking Hegelian dialects and Carl Von Clausewitz.
Gender experiments done in the Kibbutzim in the early days of Israel eventually demonstrated that gender is only partly a social construct. As it turned out, biology and society interact in determining job and chore preferences, and how people behave in general. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Likewise, studies of children's toy preferences have shown a statistical preference based on sex. Girls usually play with girl toys more than boys do, and vice versa. Even in Sweden, who rates pretty low on the gender inequality index, similar toy preferences were found. [ https://qz.com/1190996/scienti... [qz.com] ]
The Kinks' Lola was right about it being a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. But in general, boys will be men, and girls women.
Re:Zzzz (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, studies of children's toy preferences have shown a statistical preference based on sex. Girls usually play with girl toys more than boys do, and vice versa. Even in Sweden, who rates pretty low on the gender inequality index, similar toy preferences were found.
Indeed, and the LEGO Group has done studies to characterize exactly what the differences are. They spent 30 years denying the sexes were different, and attempted to market LEGO to girls as if they were just boys who like jewelry. Utterly confused.
Then they started listening to their own child psychologists.
Girls prefer pastel colors, boys prefer primary colors. Girls play with the inside of a building, boys play with the outside. Girls play with dolls and animals, boys play with cars and trucks. Girls prefer characters, with names and stories and described relationships. Boys are fine with 'naming' a character after their profession (Fireman, Policeman, Truck Driver). (Turns out that's one point where there's some overlap; boys will accept characters with names and backstories as well. It's just much lower priority.) And oh yeah, girls in modern society care about body weight with a both conscious and unconscious fervor that beggars belief. To girls, the traditional LEGO minifig is fat. They don't like it at all, even when it's nominally female. So LEGO created the minidoll, which is taller and much much thinner in the arms, legs, and torso. And is therefore acceptable to girls.
After LEGO started listening, they came out with the Friends line of toys. And they sold them to girls. They sold like gangbusters. In some years, Friends outsells the Star Wars line, something Disney prefers they not talk about anymore. LEGO knows exactly what the biological differences are between boys and girls and they used that understanding to make a billion dollars. They successfully cater to both, and are now the largest toy company in the world in some years, trading off with Mattel.
Boys and girls are different and society has no chance at all against those innate differences. A successful society builds around the differences.
Re: Zzzz (Score:3)
I guess the chimps were also culturally influenced by us?
https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
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Actually, there really is that theory.. I wasn't sure if it was true or not, but I found references to that specific word phrase all the way back to 2011. Not sure what is current, but it is something that defiantly been studied.
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It's an anchor link that leads to another website.
Re:Zzzz (Score:5, Informative)
It works for me. Here's the full article for you:
‘I Basically Just Made It Up’: Confessions of a Social Constructionist
written by Christopher Dummitt
If I had known, 20 years ago, that my side in the ideological wars over gender and sex was going to win so decisively, I would have been ecstatic. Back then, I spent many evenings at the pub or at dinner parties debating gender and identity with other graduate students; or, really, anyone who would listen—my mother-in-law, my relatives, or just a random person unlucky enough to be in my presence. I insisted that there was no such thing as sex. And I knew it. I just knew it. Because I was a gender historian.
This was, in the 1990s, the thing to be in history departments across North America. Gender history—and then gender studies, more generally, across the academy—was part of a broader group of identity-based sub-disciplines that were taking over the liberal arts. History departments across the continent were transformed. When the American Historical Association surveyed the trends among major fields of specialization in 2007, and then again in 2015, the single largest field was women’s and gender history. This was right up there with social history, cultural history, and the history of race and sexuality. Each of these fields shared the same worldview as I did—that just about every identity was a social construction. And, that identity was all about power.
Back then, quite a few people disagreed with me. Almost nobody who hadn’t been exposed to such theories at a university could bring themselves to believe that sex was wholly a social construct, because such beliefs went against common sense. That’s what makes it so amazing that the cultural turnaround on this issue has happened so quickly. Reasonable people might readily admit that some—and maybe a lot—of gender identity is socially constructed, but did this really mean that sex doesn’t matter at all? Was gender solely based on culture? Yes, I would insist. And then I would insist some more. There’s nothing so certain as a graduate student armed with precious little life experience and a big idea.
And now my big idea is everywhere. It shows up especially in the talking points about trans rights, and policy regarding trans athletes in sports. It is being written into laws that essentially threaten repercussions for anyone who suggests that sex might be a biological reality. Such a statement, for many activists, is tantamount to hate speech. If you take the position that many of my ’90s-era debating opponents took—that gender is at least partly based on sex, and that there really are two sexes (male and female), as biologists have known since the dawn of their science—uber-progressives will claim you are denying a trans person’s identity, which is to say, wishing ontological harm upon another human being.
I’m sure that I don’t need to instruct Quillette readers in all the ways in which this social constructionist logic has pervaded our culture. But what I can offer is a mea culpa for my own role in all of this, and a detailed critique about why I was wrong then, and why the radical social constructionists are wrong now. I once made the same arguments that they now make, and so I know how they are mistaken.
* * *
I have my full social-constructionist membership card. I finished that PhD in gender history and published my first book on the subject, The Manly Modern: Masculinity in Postwar Canada, way back in 2007. The title promised more than it delivers; it’s actually five case studies from the mid 20th-century, all centered on Vancouver, in which there was a public discussion of the “masculine” aspects of society. The examples I used were based on car culture, capital murder, a mountaineering club, a terrible incident of workplace violence (the collapse of a bridge), and a royal commission into the treatment of a group of military vetera
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Your name-calling is a great example of trying to shut people up to avoid talking about a subject.
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The best thing a capitalist can do is focus on profit, and invest those profits in growth for even higher profits in the future. This creates jobs for employees, returns for shareholders (mostly middle class pensions, not fat cats), and better living standards due to rising productivity.
If a capitalist holds back for the sake of "societal good", then the result will be fewer jobs, lower pay, underfunded pensions, and an unproductive economy.
Beware of billionaires telling you that all the other billionaires
Re: Yeah, that evil "assholery doesn't work" propa (Score:3, Insightful)
Andrew Carney was ridicules and criticized by the people of his day for his Gospel of Wealth. I see every reason to believe his sincerity.
The idea that society grows by encouraging wealthy people to invest and create more wealth is fine. The problem comes from not tempering it with social concern. There is no guarantee, given the story that you told alone, that the society will not end up addicted to drugs, destroying the ecological wealth that it had available, and with an abusive society. There are sy
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There is also no guarantee that lower profits will prevent any of these problems. Quite the opposite. A poorer economy makes it harder to solve these issues.
Venezuela has seen profits disappear, so by your logic their society should be doing great!
You are making a strawman argument here. Nobody argued that lower profits are good in and of themselves. The argument is that blind devotion to profit often causes social harm, and even economic harm. Consider the case of golden parachute CEOs that fire all of a company's top earners to improve the bottom line and maximize profit, only to see sales disappear the quarter afterwards (Circuit City).
Profit is a worthy goal only as long as it is tempered by ethics. Indiscriminate pursuit of profit is what gives
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The best thing a capitalist can do is focus on profit
There is some danger there, in that the focus must be on more than just the current reporting period. Look at a company like Kodak or Nokia to see the result of not thinking long term.
But it seems to me that Benioff is suggesting the path to more profit is to consider the company's social reputation. Group X will buy more stuff from us if we pretend to care about Y.
There is the possibility he is being totally dishonest here and trying to protect his position, but the above is the only way I can see a
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Society has to hold back a capitalist who grows too big to fail, because a capitalist who cannot be allowed to fail is a capitalist incentivised to take irrational risks.
The United States should have learned this lesson in the cotton bubble of the 1830s, but still didn't get it 180 years later.
Re: Yeah, that evil "assholery doesn't work" propa (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, that evil "assholery doesn't work" propag (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem we're facing today is that the system has become horribly lopsided. We are at the point where there is an incredible surplus of capital on the investment side... but nothing to invest in because the demand side has so little that there is no viable new opportunity. There is a reason that real estate prices are hyperinflated and venture capitalists are desperately funding even the most harebrained ideas. There simply is no room for growth unless we can actually sell the goods and services produced.
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there is nothing stopping a capitalist of being socially aware and still being filthy rich other than being a greedy narcissistic bastard. Lots of old businesses found it sensible and profitable to build homes for their workers to live in.
Re: Yeah, that evil "assholery doesn't work" propa (Score:3)
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All that's required to do that is to take existing processes and continue to refine them in order to be more efficient.
Re: Yeah, that evil "assholery doesn't work" prop (Score:3)
Before big-C Communism, Russia was a backward agricultural country. After 50 years of Communism, the Soviet Union was a global superpower.
Were there problems? Oh fuck yeah there were. Agricultural collectivism doesn't work nearly as well as industrial collectivism, so there were famines. Stalin's gulag was the only prison system in history to cage up even more people than today's American gulag. Freedom of speech, movement, and association were non-existent.
Whether the spectacular increase in national power
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JP Morgan and Walmart are running the group. Every good psychopath knows that you have to pay lip service to social niceties to blend in.
I wonder when Facebook gets their turn in charge of the ethical council?
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If you'd like be a more educated individual, and perhaps more of an asset to the society you belong to, listen to the man's points, and try to stop your brain from attempting to discredit him with ad hominem reasoning.
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Mac OS is based on FreeBSD, so is NetBSD, which e.g. is used by Apple in TimeMachines. As FreeBSD is the most solid Unix it is often used in internet infrastructure.