| I don’t get this line of argument. Sales force believed their business will do better with Matthew Mcconaughey as opposed to those 8k employees. They may be wrong, but it’s for them to figure out if they’re wrong. I understand the argument that workers should not be disposable, and workers shouldn’t be fired at will, even with at-will contracts, and companies have responsibilities towards their workers. In fact, that argument is popular enough that most countries, including the U.S. until recently, gave workers and their unions privileges that wouldn’t be afforded in a different scenario. And if you want to argue that workers rights have been diluted far too much in with you. My problem is instead of making this straightforward argument, when you’re trying to compare the firing of workers to spending on a completely different situation. There’s no possible way for an outsider to know what the value of having McConaughey sit around is, what the contractual details are, what the cost, both monetary and otherwise of splitting from him, etc is. My response to this headline isn’t to be more sympathetic to the workers. It’s to wonder what the hell McConaughey getting contractually paid has anything to do with the poor treatment of workers by Salesforce. |
You clearly buy into the idea that because salesforce has, within our current economic system, managed to gather to itself substantial economic resources, then it should be the entity that gets to decide how to deploy those resources.
If Salesforce is wrong (and there's a very, very good chance that they are), they have mis-allocated resources, but will face little if any penalty for it other than some opportunity costs that are of their own making.
> There’s no possible way for an outsider to know what the value of having McConaughey sit around is, what the contractual details are, what the cost, both monetary and otherwise of splitting from him, etc is.
The actual question is whether there is actually any way for an insider to know this either, and what penalties would be face if they make a mistake.
I'm fine with companies making a profit (I think). But I want them taxed in a way that removes their control over the bulk of these resource allocation decisions. Salesforce might (or might not) be very good at what they do, but they, like every other corporation (and essentially all individuals) have no demonstrated competence at resource allocation that benefits all of us. US$10M might not seem like a lot if it is roughly your annual salary, but there are huge numbers of people and communities that would be substantially aided via US$10M.