Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that parent company Unilever has silenced its attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees, and threatened to dismantle its board and sue its members over the issue.
The lawsuit is the latest sign of the long-simmering tensions between Ben & Jerry’s and consumer products maker Unilever. A rift erupted between the two in 2021 after Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop selling its products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank because it was inconsistent with its values, a move that led some to divest Unilever shares.
The ice cream maker then sued Unilever for selling its business in Israel to its licensee there, which allowed marketing in the West Bank and Israel to continue. That lawsuit was settled in 2022.
After reading this comment and the article, I feel there is actually some perspective hidden here that may need addressing.
While a million dollars to most of us seems unobtainable, a billion dollars is still unobtainable to most millionaires. It’s 1000x or 3 factors of 10 or however you wish to look at it. Huge difference. Nobody if offered either a million or a billion dollars would say there’s no substantial difference.
Google tells me Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are worth about $150 million each. That’s a hell of a lot of money to be sure.
Current market cap on Unilever is around $144 billion. One thousand times more than either Ben or Jerry.
When we’re in a time where some are starting to say even a million dollars is no longer a guaranteed good retirement savings, and when people with 150x that much are being silenced, maybe we also need to update our thoughts on the ongoing class warfare around the world.
While most of us here have different realities than Ben and Jerry, their lives are drifting closer to ours than they are for the billionaire class. To me, that is a bit scary to think of. That’s concentration of power to a much smaller group. About 1.1% of the world population, 59.4 million people, are millionaires, there are less than 3000 billionaires.
When division is what is keeping us fighting each other instead of focusing on who is really calling the shots, I feel this is an important distinction to consider. Maybe getting pissed at millionaires has now become futile. The upside is it is easier to focus on 3000 people than 60 million. That isnt to say millionaires are also an issue, but it may no longer be the most pressing one.
Open to your thoughts, I just think these numbers are pretty staggering.