A tech billionaire is quietly buying up land in Hawaii. No one knows why
A tech billionaire is quietly buying up land in Hawaii. No one knows why
Marc Benioff
He's the CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Salesforce, one of the world's largest software companies, which owns the popular messaging service Slack and is worth nearly $300 billion. He also owns Time magazine.
When I ask Benioff about the properties in the anonymous LLCs, things seem to take a turn. He starts speaking more quickly and fidgets with a piece of paper in his hand. He's reluctant to go through the holdings, and his adviser on the Zoom call jumps in to say we can discuss later.
A couple of days before the interview, Benioff texted the same NPR colleague again, asking for intel on my story. Then he called me and demanded to know the title of this piece. During that call, he also mentioned he knew the exact area where I was staying. Unnerved, I asked how he knew, and he said, "It's my job. You have a job and I have a job." During the interview, he brings up more personal details about me and my family.
I leave the meeting disconcerted and still unclear about what exactly is happening with his land in Waimea.
The following day, I drive around with a photographer to take pictures of the town and Benioff's projects. We go to the property he described as a community center and are confronted by one of his employees. The photographer explains we're there to take photos of the outside of the building. Shortly afterward, I get a text from Benioff. His employee seemed to think we were "snooping," and he says he's escalating the incident to NPR CEO John Lansing. Lansing confirmed he spoke with Benioff, without going into detail — the NPR newsroom operates independently, and the CEO is not involved in editorial decision-making. Benioff didn't respond to my question about the purpose of this call.
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There Is No Such Thing As A Good Billionaire. Every billionaire is a cancerous tumor that needs to be removed from society.
? Bill Gates seems to be doing a good job and contributing pretty significantly to doing good.
If you make broad statements about every person in a category it hurts rather than helps your cause.
Edit: I've replied to many people below but noone has ready provided any strong counter arguments but keep downvoting. Not sure why, as again - everyone is just circlejerking themselves that billionaires are bad and should be killed without actually trying to have a decent discussion on the whole thing. At this point I assume people are just trolling as it seems unlikely so many people are unable to think it through logically.
Bill Gates whose wife divorced him after it came out that he was on Epstein's plane? Or Bill Gates who spent like 30 years building a monopoly on anti-competitive tactics and used that position to ground any contenders into dust?
Trying to karmicly balance decades of being a shit stain by switching to altruism once you're old and rich isn't the same as being a good person.
Or Bill Gates who promoted bullshit pseudoscience and encouraged African men to get circumcised as an “HIV prevention measure” which led to many men then skipping condoms, arguably making the HIV epidemic in Africa even worse?
No no, I think they mean the Bill gates that lobbied heavily to keep RNA vaccine technology private despite the fact that it was developed using public money and could save millions of lives.
M$ under Gates was also hugely about shafting many of the engineering staff working there. These were the Permatemps, people who worked on site alongside ordinary employees, doing the same work, working for the same managers on big products you've heard of. But the Permatemps, and I was one of them, didn't work for M$, we worked for the most part as W2 employees of external staffing companies. OK salaries, basic benefits, but zero equity compensation or job security. Occasionally a permatemp would get hired as a M$ employee and that's probably what a lot of them were hoping for. I got a small pay-out from the Permatemp lawsuit settlement (see link above) while some of the regular employees around me became M$ Millionaires in their 20s, including my tech lead at the time. But at least I was allowed to shop at the Company Store and got a discount on my copy of Vista! Meanwhile Gates conserved huge amounts of equity and had a big staff he could fire at the drop of a hat, because he didn't technically employ us in the first place.
They are still doing this in some fashion because I see "Microsoft" jobs come up all the time but when you read the posting you are actually being hired by a staffing agency.
All the big tech companies do it. Google has their red badges—part of Google’s caste system. Meta has contractors (from what I hear they actually treat them really well, just not compensated like a Meta FTE for the same work).
Have you read the book Microserfs? My brother had it, i never read it, but seems like a relevant book for your comment
I'm pretty sure I read it back in the day but had forgotten all about it. I was at M$ around the time it came out and I vaguely recall employees talking about it in a dismissive but not exactly outraged sort of way. Kind of like you might expect if the author hit pretty close to home re: the culture but without it seeming (to the employees) like an attack piece.
Thanks for mentioning the book, it'll be fun to re-read it after all these years and see how it's held up. Maybe my library can get an inter-library-loan of a special, limited-edition, BG-autographed version, embellished in gold leaf all over. <checks web> Hmm, Medina doesn't appear to have a public library, how could that be?
But have you tried negotiating better compensation? You must have not been productive enough.
E: deep black sarcasm circled around the blatantly false economic tenet that higher productivity allows workers to negotiate higher wages.
Ha, wasn't sure if that was sarcasm or just Trollage at first. Well played! Yes, I am a pathetic, talentless loser, otherwise I'd be having drinks with BG on his jet or lounging on Larry's yacht or even fly-fishing with a Supreme at some wilderness resort. <hangs head>
I recently had a conversation where worker productivity came up as an argument for why people on average aren't paid well these days in one country vs another, which is still a standard mainstream economic dogma. However there's the blatant historical counterexample - the productivity-wage decoupling in the US since the 80s. Productivity has increased a lot since then while wages have remained stagnant. The argument finished shortly after I brought this up and asked why workers were unable to get higher wages when their productivity has clearly increased.
That’s exactly it, as far as I’m concerned. Gates caused more harm by inflicting his monopoly on the world and stifling competition and innovation then he can undo with all his ill gotten gains. As for the Epstein link? JFC. I don’t even want to think about that... The only redeeming feature he has that made him appear closer to human was his ability to hurdle/jump an office chair in his younger days.
Gates did his monopoly slam closer to 15 years, really.
Yes, once you're a bad person you're always a bad person.
Again, it's statements like this which are just ridiculous. People change and if you think Bill Gates is doing a shitty/bad thing then we're fucked because of the lot he's by far the most charitable and looking to make the world better.
He's certainly done more than you or most people on the planet have done to help.
Pure lib-brain. If our society is dependent upon the philanthropy of billionaires, you are right, we ARE fucked. But he isn't looking to "make the world better," if that were the case he would be funding a socialist/communist party that would replace the Democrats in the United States, instead he is funding charter schools.
Jesus Chris, if you think a socialist/communist party is anything but terrible you need to look at history.
It's a great idea but it's fundamentally flawed and corrupt. Please read some books.
And no, don't twist my words into saying that we are dependent on billionaires. But pretending they're bad and are all evil/can't be part of a solution shows very poor critical thinking skills.
You're deeply misinformed my friend, and that misinformation has been and still is used for taking more of your (and everyone you know) labor than you receive, and shuttling the excess to the top. Socialism has long standing tradition in the West in the form of democratic parties that have driven social reforms. Social security, unemployment benefits, 40 hour work week, universal healthcare, labor organizing law - pretty much all safety nets and working conditions improvements made are socialist policies. This is what democratic socialist parties do in the West. They do it via direct policies and via strengthening labor organization laws. Think the reforms introduced by the New Deal in the US that shuttled money down from the top into the workers which created the average Joe life America was famous for up until the 70s-80s.
You are lost
There are absolutely ZERO accusations against socialism or communism that you can make which are not being committed by capitalism RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
ZERO.
This is why history repeats itself.
You have some of the worst nations in the world failing and mass murdering their citizens due to communism/socialism and you can't see that.
Can you seriously say you'd want to live in a country like a Russia VS most other capitalist countries? Do you honestly not read or understand anything about how awful those systems are?
It's shocking how entitled you and others are.
You know Russia is a capitalist country now right?
And it's ruled by unaccountable billionaires who can murder without accountability
Also, if socialism/communism are so bad and doomed to fail, why do capitalist countries spend such absurd amounts of money to stop other countries from having it instead of defending their own? Why not let them fail on their own? Why does the Cuban embargo exist if it doesnt mean that the US has been lied to about it's "threat"? Why would the CIA EVER bother to overthrow central and south American countries if socialism was doomed to fail and capitalism was "a system based on free and fair exchange"?
You never learned one single fucking thing from history, you cuck.
It is amazing how tunnel-visioned you are. Are.you seriously saying that you want to live in a corporate dystopia with no recourse for grievance? Do you even know what year it is?
I like how you can't grasp the importance of the title of the article.
oof. My guy, I salute your tenacity. These folks here are the wrong crowd to ever give an inch on that stuff though.
Thanks. And yep, it's quite an extremist group..!
He's certainly done more than you or most people on the planet have done to help.
He's also done more than I or most people on the planet have done to harm. For instance I've never flown to Epstein's Island and raped children. Becoming charitable later in life doesn't wash away your past and make you suddenly good. Context matters, you simpleton.
There's a few issues with what you've said.
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The claims that he has raped children is completely unsubstantiated and is just attacking his character. If there was evidence great. But one ride on a plane is hardly strong evidence.
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Have you ever watched or heard of les miserable? I suggest you watch/read it, because yes - people can murder, steal, rape Etc. And that doesn't mean that they're an awful person for life. I'm sure you've severely hurt people in your life, are you unreedemable because of those few times?
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The argument of more harm VS more good is interesting. I personally don't see it and it would be super hard to substantiate. Having a successful company/monopoly is not in itself bad.
And if billionaires are bad, you could make the argument that Bill Gates stopped another billionaire from taking the helm, so he actually stopped a billionaire which makes him good. It's all circular bullshit regardless, but until you can show some strong evidence of the wrong he's done its far easier for me to show you the good.
Holy shit you have no idea what Les Miserables was about! 😂😂😂😂
Here you go since you have no idea what you're talking about from chatgpt and I'm lazy:
Yes, one of the themes of Les Misérables is that criminals can be redeemed. The novel shows how Jean Valjean, a former convict who spent 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, is able to change his life and become a good person after he receives kindness and forgiveness from a bishop. He then devotes himself to helping others, such as Fantine, Cosette, Marius, and even Javert, his former enemy. The novel suggests that redemption is possible for anyone who is willing to repent and love, and that society should not judge people based on their past mistakes, but rather on their present actions and intentions.
Which is exactly my point... So thanks for showing your ignorance.
Sounds like you got that from ChatGPT. The theme is unjust imprisonment of the poor by the rich. You know, capitalism.
How many inmates does the US have per capita in relation to every other country including communist countries?
Don't be so lazy that you use an LLM to have your arguments for you. It defeats the point of these being discussion boards.
Yes, I am being lazy because I read books, provide arguments, and get responses like "LOL no u are wrong! Idiot!"
Why would I spend more than 2 minutes replying to that when it's clear they've spent no time thinking through their response and I can easily show they're wrong?
I get it though, if you don't have an argument then attack the person for being lazy. Ad hominem attacks are good at changing the topic. But I am still right at end of day.
No because you used chatGPT. The thing I specifically stated that you are skirting around in your response.
If you don't take the conversation seriously don't bother having it. And if they are stubborn walk away if they won't have a conversation in earnest.
Don't beat your head against the wall and then tell at everyone that they are giving you a headache. You can't win every conversation. That's not how they work.
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I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted so much, but I'll join you so you're not alone.
I fully believe there should be no billionaires, but somehow suggesting one of them is at least attempting to improve some things seems to be an absolute sin. I don't think Gates is a saint, but I do believe in a lot of the projects he's working on.
I assure you a guy who wakes up every day and makes a decision not to end hunger and instead use his stolen wealth to destroy public school systems and buy good PR is not attempting to improve things.
The trolls are out!
Not trolls, just regular people who've figured it out.
are you serious lol? in what world would you trust one person with the purchasing power of entire countries?
That's not what I wrote at all... People honestly lack such basic comprehension skills here.
What I'm saying isn't even controversial it's just logically correct...
then what did you write?
it sounds to me like you trust bill gates to use his piles of money for "good", but the simply fact is nobody should have that much power. would you trust me with all of bill's money? i promise to use it for good.
the simple fact is that humans are fallible, much like how you and i are not likely to come to an agreement here. so who is to say that bill gates (or any billionaire) has successfully defined "good"? what if he's wrong? what if he makes a mistake? there's very few people or entities powerful enough to stop him, and even according to you he is one of the better ones.
being rich and having more than you need is one thing, but billionaires literally have more pull than most of the planet. i don't see why we should be ok with them having nearly all wealth on earth and "charitably" sprinkling some where they deem fit.
Let me repeat myself so it sinks in ALL. BILLIONAIRES. ARE. BAD.
Billionaires are the tumorous growths from the cancer of capitalism and should be excised with the same urgency. None of them are "good" or "okay" until they cease existing. Eating them would be a kindness they are unworthy of.
No offence, but this sort of extremist view is no different to an extremist right wing view. Replace "billionaires" with "poor people" and you get the same result.
It's unrealistic and it's wrong and the arguments made are pretty shallow and cherry picked.
Thanks for the video, but the guy nitpicks a lot of things and tries to character assassinate Bill Gates a fair bit on not really relevant things. I get he has to sensationalise it for more views, but it was a pretty weak argument.
Ultimately for a solution everyone needs to be realistic and work with how the world happens. Asking to remove all billionaires is cute but what I'd expect of a 12 year old trying to solve world issues. Bill Gates isn't perfect but he's a good start and example. Compare him to Jeff bezos or Elon Musk who are just massive fuckwits doing nothing for the planet for example and maybe you'll understand.
Otherwise, if you really think they're all equal then I can't help you out of your own biases.
There are, based the latest figure I could find, globally 2,640 billionaires worldwide with a total combined wealth of $12,200,000,000,000. On the other hand you have 719,000,000 poor people, as defined by the World Bank, worldwide. Not a very fair comparison but I'll roll with it. Just remember you chose the comparison for this discussion.
Right wing extremists want nearly 3/4 of a billion people to just fuck off versus 2,640. If this was a trolley problem which would you pick? And no equivocating or making up another option. One group dies and it's your choice. Now choose. I choose the billionaires now and forever amen.
While he certainly makes the news "fun" the information presented is based on the sources listed in the description. For some reason they never mention this exists in the description for all their videos but it does. Have a looksy.
Now, tell me what we, the world at large, would loose if all the billionaires just stopped existing. What amazingly meaningful glorious thing would we loose?
The primary bank rollers of various fascist groups?
Aw man! I broke my tiny violin so I can't play a sad song. Drats!
Aw shit..... My dude....he didn't stutter.....there are no good billionaires
They have taken advantage of mechanisms that siphons money from the working class. By default they're not good people. Once you're old and aging, spending SOME of your massive fortune to try to leave a benevolent legacy, which in itself is selfish, does not make you a good person.
People change, and there is a difference between doing charitable work later in life VS not doing any charitable work at all.
If you take a completely utilitarian view, you'd actually argue you need to become a billionaire in order to become charitable at a significant level because realistically at an individual level you're going to do fuck all.
I'm not making a point that his efforts haven't helped some people. I'm saying that he's not a good person, even if his money later in life has had some positive effect. A billionaire donating to just causes, to me, is like: if you robbed a bank, putting all it's employees out of work but then you donate a few hundred bucks to each said employee. Sure, it helped them but you're part of the problem.
The funny thing is that even the Gates Foundation is actively causing harm on a massive scale. It’s funding charter schools as a way to kill public education, pushing for circumcision in Africa without a meaningful scientific basis for such a program, or lobbying against vaccine patent waivers. People forget about that because it also is the PR arm of the Gates empire.
Think of all the things we could address through cooperation instead of having to wait until a billionaire fucks enough people to have money to do the same thing should he suddenly decide to become charitable.
Billionaire cucks are outlandishly stupid
Yeah man, there is no good in the world, everyone sucks! I love me some black and white thinking with no nuance.
You sure do.
You are lost
They'll certainly never understand when everyone just insults them or write them off immediately just because they have a different opinion or don't know the same information
Agreed. I don't have the wisdom yet to reach such a view rooted in such different understanding. They think it's charity when someone takes everything and gives a little and I see it as indignity.
Unfortunately it was the tools used on me to mold a understanding. I never was shown much patience or empathy with my views and it's tough learning how to give it. In my day if 100 people told ypu you are wrong one would start to beleive it. Now a days everyone is galvanized and my way of teaching isn't just not useful it's more galvanizing. I'll work on it soulg!
100% wrong in all ways. I'm not sure how hexbear does their macros but pretend I posted "shut the fuck up liberal" with Stalin's eye's glowing red.
I'm quite left leaning.
But there's always going to be extremists either way, and just blanketly saying everyone with money is evil is moronic/extremist left.
It's also ironic you mention Stalin because that turned out so well... 😅.
"left leaning" in America means you are a conservative. Don't toe the line. State plainly what you stand for.
I want Full Communism Now. As an American I believe private ownership of almost all corporations should be abolished, and airlines, railroads, car company's and the agricultural Sector should be immediately Nationalized, with the current executives and share holders wealth seized.So I reiterate, shut the fuck up liberal.
Genuinely curious how you think communism would work this time even though it's never worked anywhere else?
I'm not American, I'm in another country...
But yes, full communism is insane. I am not interested in creating worse systems that are fundamentally broken. I honestly don't know if you're trolling or just uneducated, but have you not seen Russia? Because that is what happens with communism.
No, it's not that they failed to implement it, it's because it's a fundamentally flawed system that always fails.
It’s also ironic you mention Stalin because that turned out so well…
While there are legitimate criticisms of the guy, particularly his lack of support for the Chinese and Korean struggles, they're entirely negated by how well 1917 and WWII turned out given the circumstances.
Though I'm sure you wish they turned out differently.
they're entirely negated by how well 1917 and WWII turned out given the circumstances.
Like hell they are.
I do not have sufficient historical context to form a strong opinion on his advice to the Communist Party of China that got them eviscerated in the 20s, and again in the 40s or the lack of support for Korea, and other mistakes, but I'm certain you have even less.
Dude killed way more people than Hitler my guy
Sure, if you attribute all the nazis killed in WWII, the soviets who died fighting those nazis, the children those nazis would have had if they didn't get owned, and throw in few million extra just for fun, you can come up with such numbers, that's what The Black Book of Communism did.
Victims Of Communism even includes deaths by covid.
I would say not all millionaires are bad because not all of them gain their wealth through exploitive practices. Plenty of them are just retirees that have worked all their lives and shouldn’t have to work anymore anyways.
On the other hand, it’s literally impossible to become a billionaire without exploiting a truly absurd number of people. It’s that scale of exploitation that makes billionaires categorically a plague on society. If you can’t see that then you’re certainly not left leaning in any sense.
I agree that they do get there by exploiting people sure.
Is there a difference between someone like Jeff bezos and Bill Gates though? If you say no then I can't help you. If you can see the difference then we can continue the discussion because exploiting people at one stage in your life and then trying to make up for it later is inherently good in my opinion.
Put another way, do you think once you're a criminal you're always a criminal? There is no chance of redemption and of being a good person?
Is there a difference between someone like Jeff bezos and Bill Gates though?
Yes, Bill Gates has better PR. That’s literally it. He’s not actually trying to do good at this stage in his life. It’s a testament to the power of his wealth that you think otherwise.
Then you are a fool if that's the only thing different. Here, have a read: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2023/01/23/americas-top-givers-2023-the-25-most-philanthropic-billionaires/
The Gated foundation is a PR and lobbying machine that’s clearly done its job in your case.
Your comment is irrelevant to what I'm saying. Try to actually offer something of value instead of baseless nonsense.
You’re incredibly gullible then. You literally think that a billionaire donating to a foundation that he still controls and operates counts as giving his money away.
You must be too young to remember when Bill Gates was the one person the entire world could agree was a worthless asshole.
If you need a primer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lFS9DFXtj1M
Yeah, the bill and Melinda gates foundation does a lot of good work. Doesn't mean bill gates is a good person but maybe there are some billionaires higher on the arsehole scale.