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.

  • @SinningStromgald
    28•10 months ago

    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?