> Prominent startup investor Ron Conway, who backed companies including Google, Airbnb and Stripe, resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation on Thursday. According to the New York Times, Conway told Benioff in an email that their "values were no longer aligned."
Money talks
> Opposition to Benioff’s initial suggestion also came from Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator. He wrote on X that “We don’t need the National Guard,” but he used his post to go after liberal local officials and judges perceived as too lenient.
It boggles my Detroit-grown mind that so many people claim this about so many thriving cities.
I live in the PNW and regularly visit most of the major cities there and in NorCal. What exactly is more depressing there than any other city of any economic relevance in the nation?
The end justifies the means, right? Maybe SF should go all Singapore and execute people for pooping on the sidewalk, problem of sidewalk-pooping will soon be solved!
There’s no way to fix San Francisco right now. If anyone disagrees with a proposed change, they just call it a “Trump policy.”
The sad part is that Trump talked so much nonsense and sh*t that you can find a quote to match almost any idea or policy, so any policy can be branded as his.
FWIW: people like you have to realize that the Guard is not and has never been a law enforcement apparatus. The policy goal of "sending in the troops" to US cities is not and has never been crime (the metrics for which are getting better and not worse, yes even in SF).
The goal of putting military force in charge of directing civilians on city streets is and has always been giving the President, who commands that military, direct control over city streets. Right now if the white house doesn't like a protest or doesn't want it to happen, there's nothing they can do bureaucratically using their executive power to prevent it. It's a local thing. If the guard is already there waiting for orders, they can.
It sounds like hyperbole, but it's really not: the transparent purpose to this big National Guard kerfuffle is the military suppression of dissent at the direction of the President.
The governor of New York state has the legal ability to do that. The president of the United States does not (currently). My point is that you need to ask *why* the White House suddenly wants this power that heretofore we've been happy leaving with local governments.
Seriously? It was widely reported that he attempted exactly that during the Floyd protests in 2020 (first link I got, but Esper's testimony was reported everywhere, pick your preferred media, or just find and watch the committee hearing):
That time it failed because the pentagon leadership and generals stood in unison against it and he backed down. The guardrails have been rejiggered this time and it's only the courts that protect us now.
You are being downvoted, but your post is obviously truthful.
I’ve gone to SF several times over the years for tech conferences. It started out as standard tourist excellence. Then it started rotting. The last year I went to Moscone Center, the afternoon walk back to the nearby hotel was horrific. Druggies lounging around, poop on the sidewalk, conference attendees speed marching through the maze, trying not to make eye contact.
Once back at the hotel, it was nonstop sirens after dark.
Compared to a decade back, it was a nightmare.
Update: Just saw this article, SEMICON West skipped SF and went to Phoenix this year. It was a success.
I dunno, man. The first time I visited SF was in 2001. I was stunned back then by the homelessness problem. I vividly remember walking down the sidewalk near the Transamerica building during the morning commute and seeing folks in business attire casually stepping OVER a person sprawled out in the middle of the sidewalk. Nobody cared, even then, because it was normal. On subsequent visits, I’ve seen plenty more homelessness, had a bike seat stolen, etc. If you had a good experience a decade ago, awesome, but you also sort of got lucky if you didn’t see any of the other problems. Maybe it’s worse now, but from the standpoint of someone who grew up near Boston (which also has plenty of homeless folks and addicts), it never seemed “tourist excellent” to me. It’s a real American city with all the standard problems.
Getting downvoted. I’m not thrilled by the idea of deploying the national guard, but folks have had a long time to fix the mess in SF and have failed, badly. It’s not crazy to try something new.
To those saying we never use the military for public security that’s simply false. NYC has had heavily armed national guard deployed as added security at transit hubs since 9/11 and they’re there to this day.
If leaders of cities don’t want others to step in, don’t give people a reason to step in.
I've seen people wearing MAGA hats in SF, and they're never assaulted. Their speech is not infringed or suppressed. At "worst" they are sometimes met with more free speech coming in the form of opinions about their choices. Is this what you're complaining about?
Honestly, I’ve never been brave enough to try it. My neighbor had a Tesla, and it got vandalized.
I do not know. I'm not MAGA while do have both progressive and conservative views (deepening on the subject) but the current environment is really really sad.
I'm not complaining, might do that later, for now I'm explaining.
Poster "tlogan" posted a comment, part of which was "try wearing a “Make America Great” hat in San Francisco".
The obvious implication, obvious even to people such as yourself who are...limited? What's the word? The obvious implication of that, is that someone wearing a MAGA hat in certain parts of SF would have something to fear. Which is undeniably true. I would be scared to do that.
The response from you was "Wearing a MAGA hat in this specific political moment is a a statement of callousness and overt approval of military and masked goons in our streets".
There's a very clear implication there that I understand, and that you understand, but that you will do everything you can to try to pretend that you do not understand.
But you understand exactly. No one is being fooled here.
Free speech is overrated. We, the intellectuals, must make sure everyone is properly educated and understands that their thinking is dangerous to progress and humanity. /s
It was never needed. (The FBI and the US Marshalls, who are actually trained for law enforcement? OK, you could perhaps make a case. The National Guard? After an earthquake, sure, but not before then.)
After reading that for the first time I created a greasemonkey script that replaces "Marc Benioff" with "man responsible for the largest phallic structure in western US" so that I don't have to read his name again.
Reminds me of the plugin I used to have that replaced every instance of “millennials” with “snake people” and every instance of “Great Recession” with “Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks.”
I guess that egg's a bear to scrape off, particularly if it gets into the hairs and bristles. The cocoon of these techbros must be pretty thick, or they pay for their money with sense?
The best I can gather quickly is that this guy was a Democrat donor in the 2010s, then turned into a Trumper more recently, and now he's walking back the Trumping due to backlash? Am I reading it correctly that he's just empty/beliefless and sucks up to whoever has more power at a given time?
Seems like the lack of values and "flexibility" is what's required to be a billionaire. Remember who was at the front row of Trump's Inauguration II? Musk, Bezos, Zuck...
He's never been a 'Trumper', at least not publicly. He got into a very public spat with the Harris campaign over failed attempts to set up an interview in his role as the owner of Time magazine, and seems to have soured on the Dem Party establishment since.
Something, finally, is shifting. It’ll be six months before any of the administration-aligned opportunistic techbro CEOs speak out, but they know where their employees will be tomorrow.
The trade war with China could be a turning point.
Right now the Chinese are still relying on US tech but what happens if they actually manage to become self sufficient? What if those data centres at the Tibetan Plateau no longer needs Nvidia?
It’s already happening. For most tech products, it’s not that replicating them is impossibly hard, it’s that there is no market to sell them to while everyone can still buy the existing market leader. Cut them off from Google Play or GPUs and suddenly you have a whole population with no choice but to buy and support the development of an alternative.
It will be a domestic event that does it. Perhaps the imprisoning on trumped-up charges of a CEO who refuses to hand over 10% of the business to Trump's fascism slush fund. Perhaps ICE disappearing a foreign-born exec.
And they will all try to ignore it for as long as possible.
The best way to fight the mean bullies is by using the military with like tanks and rifles. That'll keep us safe from blue haired queers with... ummm... Instagram?
> Prominent startup investor Ron Conway, who backed companies including Google, Airbnb and Stripe, resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation on Thursday. According to the New York Times, Conway told Benioff in an email that their "values were no longer aligned."
Money talks
> Opposition to Benioff’s initial suggestion also came from Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator. He wrote on X that “We don’t need the National Guard,” but he used his post to go after liberal local officials and judges perceived as too lenient.
That was fast! I guess that wasn’t the most profitable position to hold. Fail fast!
He seemed to want free security for his event (he talked about all the extra security he was hiring). I suspect he learned he'd get free protests too.
The San Francisco reddit discussion of this included such lines as "Welp, picking up my frog costume from Temu asap.", and "San Francisco must out gay them": https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1o7mexv/trump...
Truly generous of Benioff to nuke downtown SF with Prop C, and then propose sending in the military to fix the problem he created.
I care less about how they fix the problem and more about that the problem is fixed.
SF has gone dramatically downhill. I remember what it used to be like, a lovely city. Walking around SF now is depressing.
It boggles my Detroit-grown mind that so many people claim this about so many thriving cities.
I live in the PNW and regularly visit most of the major cities there and in NorCal. What exactly is more depressing there than any other city of any economic relevance in the nation?
Trump specifically mentioned it was better 15 years ago, which was some accidental praise for his political opposition: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/trump-says-sf-was-gr...
The end justifies the means, right? Maybe SF should go all Singapore and execute people for pooping on the sidewalk, problem of sidewalk-pooping will soon be solved!
Funny, that's how I feel about the USA as a whole. Used to be a nice country.
I might care a little more about how they fix the problem, but only barely. Somebody had better fix the country soon.
There’s no way to fix San Francisco right now. If anyone disagrees with a proposed change, they just call it a “Trump policy.”
The sad part is that Trump talked so much nonsense and sh*t that you can find a quote to match almost any idea or policy, so any policy can be branded as his.
> I care less about how they fix the problem
That's the logic that got Benioff in trouble.
FWIW: people like you have to realize that the Guard is not and has never been a law enforcement apparatus. The policy goal of "sending in the troops" to US cities is not and has never been crime (the metrics for which are getting better and not worse, yes even in SF).
The goal of putting military force in charge of directing civilians on city streets is and has always been giving the President, who commands that military, direct control over city streets. Right now if the white house doesn't like a protest or doesn't want it to happen, there's nothing they can do bureaucratically using their executive power to prevent it. It's a local thing. If the guard is already there waiting for orders, they can.
It sounds like hyperbole, but it's really not: the transparent purpose to this big National Guard kerfuffle is the military suppression of dissent at the direction of the President.
Gov. Hochul deployed the National Guard to New York subways last year.
The governor of New York state has the legal ability to do that. The president of the United States does not (currently). My point is that you need to ask *why* the White House suddenly wants this power that heretofore we've been happy leaving with local governments.
And the answer, very transparently, isn't crime.
I think it's for many more things than suppression of protests
Please provide a source that suggests Trump has suppressed a protest or something similar.
Seriously? It was widely reported that he attempted exactly that during the Floyd protests in 2020 (first link I got, but Esper's testimony was reported everywhere, pick your preferred media, or just find and watch the committee hearing):
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-d...
That time it failed because the pentagon leadership and generals stood in unison against it and he backed down. The guardrails have been rejiggered this time and it's only the courts that protect us now.
The problem is massive inequality putting people on the streets, driven by people like Mr. Benioff.
You are being downvoted, but your post is obviously truthful.
I’ve gone to SF several times over the years for tech conferences. It started out as standard tourist excellence. Then it started rotting. The last year I went to Moscone Center, the afternoon walk back to the nearby hotel was horrific. Druggies lounging around, poop on the sidewalk, conference attendees speed marching through the maze, trying not to make eye contact.
Once back at the hotel, it was nonstop sirens after dark.
Compared to a decade back, it was a nightmare.
Update: Just saw this article, SEMICON West skipped SF and went to Phoenix this year. It was a success.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/17/tech-conference-tha...
SF deserves better, much better.
I dunno, man. The first time I visited SF was in 2001. I was stunned back then by the homelessness problem. I vividly remember walking down the sidewalk near the Transamerica building during the morning commute and seeing folks in business attire casually stepping OVER a person sprawled out in the middle of the sidewalk. Nobody cared, even then, because it was normal. On subsequent visits, I’ve seen plenty more homelessness, had a bike seat stolen, etc. If you had a good experience a decade ago, awesome, but you also sort of got lucky if you didn’t see any of the other problems. Maybe it’s worse now, but from the standpoint of someone who grew up near Boston (which also has plenty of homeless folks and addicts), it never seemed “tourist excellent” to me. It’s a real American city with all the standard problems.
I don’t know about SF, but increased homelessness is related to illegal immigration
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/BFI_WP_2...
May be partly related in CA as well
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-27/failure-...
I don't think people are downvoting them for their views about the state of SF (I've never been there so i can't comment on its state.).
People took issue with them saying they don't care how it's fixed.
Getting downvoted. I’m not thrilled by the idea of deploying the national guard, but folks have had a long time to fix the mess in SF and have failed, badly. It’s not crazy to try something new.
To those saying we never use the military for public security that’s simply false. NYC has had heavily armed national guard deployed as added security at transit hubs since 9/11 and they’re there to this day.
If leaders of cities don’t want others to step in, don’t give people a reason to step in.
Of course.
For anyone who thinks this is just “money talk,” try wearing a “Make America Great” hat in San Francisco.
That’s all I need to say about the sad state of politics here.
Wearing a MAGA hat in this specific political moment is a statement of callousness and overt approval of military and masked goons in our streets.
>> Wearing a MAGA hat in this specific political moment is a a statement of callousness and overt approval of military and masked goons in our streets
In other words, it is free speech.
Should free speech be met with violence?
I've seen people wearing MAGA hats in SF, and they're never assaulted. Their speech is not infringed or suppressed. At "worst" they are sometimes met with more free speech coming in the form of opinions about their choices. Is this what you're complaining about?
Honestly, I’ve never been brave enough to try it. My neighbor had a Tesla, and it got vandalized.
I do not know. I'm not MAGA while do have both progressive and conservative views (deepening on the subject) but the current environment is really really sad.
>> Is this what you're complaining about
I'm not complaining, might do that later, for now I'm explaining.
Poster "tlogan" posted a comment, part of which was "try wearing a “Make America Great” hat in San Francisco".
The obvious implication, obvious even to people such as yourself who are...limited? What's the word? The obvious implication of that, is that someone wearing a MAGA hat in certain parts of SF would have something to fear. Which is undeniably true. I would be scared to do that.
The response from you was "Wearing a MAGA hat in this specific political moment is a a statement of callousness and overt approval of military and masked goons in our streets".
There's a very clear implication there that I understand, and that you understand, but that you will do everything you can to try to pretend that you do not understand.
But you understand exactly. No one is being fooled here.
As I responded earlier, I've seen it plenty of times in SF. Yet I've never witnessed anything remotely close to violence as a response.
> Should free speech be met with violence?
Free speech is overrated. We, the intellectuals, must make sure everyone is properly educated and understands that their thinking is dangerous to progress and humanity. /s
That's a shiny echo chamber you have going there.
It was never needed. (The FBI and the US Marshalls, who are actually trained for law enforcement? OK, you could perhaps make a case. The National Guard? After an earthquake, sure, but not before then.)
If I was a police detective in the US I would be pretty angry at the notion of a bunch of rural weekend warriors taking over my job.
I mean if it was this easy why was the police created at all? We've always had soldiers.
After reading that for the first time I created a greasemonkey script that replaces "Marc Benioff" with "man responsible for the largest phallic structure in western US" so that I don't have to read his name again.
Reminds me of the plugin I used to have that replaced every instance of “millennials” with “snake people” and every instance of “Great Recession” with “Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks.”
I guess that egg's a bear to scrape off, particularly if it gets into the hairs and bristles. The cocoon of these techbros must be pretty thick, or they pay for their money with sense?
The best I can gather quickly is that this guy was a Democrat donor in the 2010s, then turned into a Trumper more recently, and now he's walking back the Trumping due to backlash? Am I reading it correctly that he's just empty/beliefless and sucks up to whoever has more power at a given time?
Do you remember his Dalai Lama billboard?
I'm certain it was sincere reverence.
Seems like the lack of values and "flexibility" is what's required to be a billionaire. Remember who was at the front row of Trump's Inauguration II? Musk, Bezos, Zuck...
He's never been a 'Trumper', at least not publicly. He got into a very public spat with the Harris campaign over failed attempts to set up an interview in his role as the owner of Time magazine, and seems to have soured on the Dem Party establishment since.
> Benioff said he “avidly supported President Trump”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/124475145.cms
Wow I guess David is no longer the worst Benioff, for fucking up Game of Thrones.
So another oligarch who got his ego hurt and lashed out and started associating with the far-right, just like the rest of them.
Something, finally, is shifting. It’ll be six months before any of the administration-aligned opportunistic techbro CEOs speak out, but they know where their employees will be tomorrow.
The trade war with China could be a turning point.
Right now the Chinese are still relying on US tech but what happens if they actually manage to become self sufficient? What if those data centres at the Tibetan Plateau no longer needs Nvidia?
It’s already happening. For most tech products, it’s not that replicating them is impossibly hard, it’s that there is no market to sell them to while everyone can still buy the existing market leader. Cut them off from Google Play or GPUs and suddenly you have a whole population with no choice but to buy and support the development of an alternative.
It will be a domestic event that does it. Perhaps the imprisoning on trumped-up charges of a CEO who refuses to hand over 10% of the business to Trump's fascism slush fund. Perhaps ICE disappearing a foreign-born exec.
And they will all try to ignore it for as long as possible.
[flagged]
The best way to fight the mean bullies is by using the military with like tanks and rifles. That'll keep us safe from blue haired queers with... ummm... Instagram?
> When I say things people don't like it's free speech. When people express their anger at my free speech it's harassment.
Modern American "conservatism", distilled.
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