Can business leaders use their power and resources to make meaningful change? Should they? Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders behind iconic ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, help map the landscape between business and activism and introduce their new project, the Campaign to End Qualified Immunity.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are the co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. Most recently, they are the leaders of the Campaign to End Qualified Immunity, a new police reform and criminal justice campaign.
Ben’s twitter: @YoBenCohen
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https://campaigntoendqualifiedimmunity.org/
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Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer
Nick Hanauer:
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield definitely are heroes in the world of people who care about business for social purpose.
Jerry Greenfield:
When people talk about businesses being ethical, what they mean by that is that they’re not breaking the law.
Nick Hanauer:
They have not yet been criminally indicted.
Ben Cohen:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s business ethics in America.
Jerry Greenfield:
And I think we need to raise the bar a little bit.
Speaker 1:
From the home offices of Civic Ventures in Downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what, and why?
Nick Hanauer:
I’m Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
David Goldstein:
I’m David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures
Nick Hanauer:
Today on the podcast, I’m just giddy because we get to talk to Ben and Jerry of Ice Cream Fame. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are in fact the co-founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and definitely are heroes in the world of people who care about business for social purpose and have done a marvelous job. They sold the company sometime ago, but did a great job in making sure that the company did right by its employees, its community, the country at large, and its shareholders too. And it’ll be super fun to chat with them on whether business can be a force of good, or how business can be a force of good in societies.
David Goldstein:
Let’s start by getting your slates. Tell us your name, who you are, what you do. Let’s start with Ben, and then Jerry.
Ben Cohen:
Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s, co-chair of The Campaign To End Qualified Immunity. I try to end qualified immunity and not eat too much ice cream.
Jerry Greenfield:
I am Jerry Greenfield. I have the identical titles to Ben I’m the co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s and I’m the co-chair of the Campaign to End Qualified Immunity. And I’ve already eaten too much ice cream.
Nick Hanauer:
Well guys, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. And we’re going to talk about a variety of things ending with your priority around ending Qualified Immunity, but you guys are icons in the world of business with a purpose, a double or triple bottom line, which you call the double-dip that prioritizes profits in people and I can’t remember which one of you said a business was an experiment over whether it’s possible to use the tools of business to repair society. And that’s what we really wanted to talk about. We’d love to have your updated views on whether that’s possible and the degree to which businesses must either be encouraged to required to do prosocial things. So Ben, why don’t we get your views? And then Jerry.
Ben Cohen:
I think it’s very possible for business to influence the society. I mean, business currently influences the society in a big way. They control our elections through campaign contributions, they control our legislation through lobbying and they control the news we read through ownership of the media. I think what’s changed is that people now realize that business is the most powerful force in the society and that if there’s going to be any change that happens in society, business has a role to play and it’s pretty much business that’s either going to drive the change or it’s business that’s going to resist the change. And I think that consumers are looking at their businesses to use their power in the public good.
Nick Hanauer:
Jerry, what Do you think?
Jerry Greenfield:
I think it’s a little hard to expect big public companies to be taking the lead. It’s been smaller entrepreneurial companies that have been doing it, but lately certainly since the murder of George Floyd, you’ve seen businesses and business leaders speak out as never before and particularly with the recent law suppressing voting in Georgia, you’re seeing more businesses and business leaders speak out about that. It partly comes from businesses wanting to do the right thing and as Ben says, a lot of it comes from consumers insisting that businesses be about more than simply making as much money as they can and thinking about their own self-interest.
Nick Hanauer:
I’m in violent agreement Ben with your assessment about the power of business to shape society, gives the question I have for both of you guys is two per question. The first is, do we want to live in a society where the CEOs of the biggest companies in America get to define the shape of the society? Is that a responsibility we want them to have? And a corollary that question is if we are somewhat dissatisfied with where we’re at today, what can the society do to either encourage or require business people to do more prosocial things?
Ben Cohen:
I would say that business is currently controlling the shape of our society. So all they’re doing is they happen to be controlling it in their own narrow self-interest. It used to be that government was more powerful than business and government regulated business and controlled business, now business controls government. They decide what bills gets passed they decide who gets elected. If business really wanted to get this H.R. 1 passed, they could get it passed. How many billions of dollars a year do they spend on lobbyists in DC? It’s unfathomable if they started elevating that to the top of their lobbyists agenda instead of how can we make more money at the expense of the community, we could see decent election reform in our country.
David Goldstein:
To be clear to listeners H.R. 1 is the voting rights act that’s going through Congress.
Nick Hanauer:
But I mean, I’m a business person, I’ve started a bunch of companies, you guys are business people. I’m a huge believer in capitalism, but capitalism only is sustainable if capitalists effectively are required to operate their businesses in ways which sustain the society and the democracy and Ben you’re absolutely right, government used to be more powerful than business and certainly for the last 45 years, 50 years over the neo-liberal era it has not been, I think that we are at a moment right now with the Biden ministration where that may be changing radically, which I think is a really, really good thing. But I’m just wondering how you guys think about the tension between the society requiring good behavior and businesses being sort of left to their own devices to do that at their pleasure. Jerry, what do you think? It’s a hard tension, right?
Jerry Greenfield:
I happen to believe in good government and looking out for the good of all. I don’t believe that people and capitalism should go unfettered and do whatever it wants. I’m a person who believes we’re all in this together and we all need to take care of each other, and that’s sort of a fundamental starting place for me.
Ben Cohen:
You could say that business has modeled kind of the breakdown of society based on narrow self-interest. Business is the most powerful force in the society. The type of behavior that it is modeling is, make the society benefit your own narrow self-interest right. That I’m going to fight for my own narrow self-interest, I’m not really going to care about the interest of the community as a whole and so the most powerful element of the society has modeled that behavior and other people are following that model.
Nick Hanauer:
So the economists came up with this concept called homo economicus which was the idea that all people are perfectly selfish and rational. And then we extended that to our corporate governance idea which is, because of that the only purpose of the corporation can be to be selfish and rational. And surprise we end up with a society where people are not taking into account the broad long-term interest of the entire society. And here we are.
Jerry Greenfield:
Well on the other hand, you have the rise of B Corps(Benefit Corporations) which are growing tremendously. If you look at a company like Ben and Jerry’s, which Ben and I no longer operates, so we’re not calling the shots there, but the company has been very outspoken about racial justice. It’s been outspoken about Black Lives Matter, and the company continues to do very, very well in the marketplace. And I think it’s because consumers are responding to that and when other businesses look at that, they’re going to say, yeah, there is value in standing up for people who are not getting justice in this country.
David Goldstein:
So Other than just relying on entrepreneurs and CEOs to adopt the kind of values that the two of you brought into your company, what can we do? Is it more regulation? Is it more incentives? Is it a combination of the two? How do we get more socially conscious companies out there and operate the economy in a way that doesn’t just benefit shareholders?
Ben Cohen:
Well, for one, I think that the original concept [inaudible 00:11:20] business incorporating of getting a corporate charter from a particular state was based on the idea the business was working in the best interests of the community, of the society as a whole. And those corporate charters were not proforma, the idea was to look at how the business was behaving and decide whether you wanted to renew or revoke their charter. So I think we could back move to that. And the other thing is that consumers are incredibly powerful if they just use their voice and do it somewhat in unison, consumers change the way corporations behave.
Jerry Greenfield:
Yeah. I think We need to change the way we look at businesses, it’s funny because when people talk about businesses being ethical, what they mean by that is that they’re not breaking the law. That is… Seriously that’s the threshold of an ethical business. And I think we need to raise the bar a little bit.
Nick Hanauer:
They have not yet been criminally indited.
Ben Cohen:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s business ethics-
Ben Cohen:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
In America.
Ben Cohen:
And then you look at all of-
Nick Hanauer:
The absence of criminal behavior. Can you guys, as you reflect on your business experience, is there anything that comes to mind like businesses trade offs like every day you’re making trade-offs about product quality and wages, and can you think of a moment in your careers where you really were confronted with a challenge where you had to balance what would be good for the community or your workers against sort of your narrow self-interest or what the shareholders of the company wanted? Were there moments kind of really come to Jesus moments for you guys? I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but…
Jerry Greenfield:
The thing that comes to mind for me was more about the first time Ben and Jerry’s took a position on the military budget for the country. So this was back during the Cold War in the late eighties, when the U.S. and Russia were in a huge military buildup and Ben and Jerry’s came out with an ice cream bar on a stick and decided to call the product Peace Pop and use the packaging to talk about the military budget and redirecting 1% of the military budget to peace through understanding initiatives.
The idea being that when people and countries got to know each other, they wouldn’t want to bomb the crap out of each other. And as I mentioned, this is the first time Ben and Jerry’s was considering taking essentially a political stand that could be considered controversial. It was very controversial within Ben and Jerry’s. People were concerned that the company was going to be seen as unpatriotic, soft on defense, that there were going to be… is it appropriate for a business to take a position on a [inaudible 00:14:55] program? The concern was consumers and stores would boycott us, distributors wouldn’t take the product in and Ben in his wisdom essentially forced it on the company.
Nick Hanauer:
I love it.
Jerry Greenfield:
And none of those bad things ever happened. Certainly not everybody agreed with the stand Ben and Jerry’s was taking, but even people who didn’t agree with it respected the idea that the business was taking a position on an issue that was not designed to [inaudible 00:15:31] make more money, but was designed to look out for the common good.
Nick Hanauer:
You sold the shit out of those ice cream bars though. Didn’t you?
Jerry Greenfield:
They were really good, really really good.
Nick Hanauer:
But did you sell a lot of them?
Jerry Greenfield:
We did. So the other interesting thing about this though in talking about this is, because we’re talking a little bit about ice cream. So we’re talking about the name of the product they were talking about, the message and whatever, but the other part of that is the product itself that it still has to taste good and not only was Ben having the company call out a Peace Pop, but he was the guy doing all the quality control on the product and eating an enormous amount of ice cream. I mean Ben, you should talk about all the variations of Peace Pops you were going through.
Ben Cohen:
Yes. I sacrificed my body for my company. I used to weight 50 pounds more.
Nick Hanauer:
Oh really?
Ben Cohen:
Yeah.
Jerry Greenfield:
There’s a lot that goes, there’s the thickness of the chocolate, there’s the different types of chocolate, there’s the different melting points, there’s the inclusions and chunks. This is not a simple thing.
Nick Hanauer:
It must’ve been such an interesting time in the evolution of the business and a scary thing to have taken that stand and to have been ready for the trade-offs that might have been necessary. And who knows Safeway could have kicked you out, right?
Jerry Greenfield:
Yeah. They could have.
Nick Hanauer:
They could have said, no, we’re just not going to carry your brand anymore.
David Goldstein:
But this is a good segue since we’re talking about politics. To get into your latest political endeavor, your Campaign to End Qualified Immunity, I guess, to start just explain what Qualified Immunity is and then you can tell us how you got into the issue and what you’re doing to try to end it.
Ben Cohen:
Qualified immunity is essentially a get out of jail free card for bad cops. So based on this judicial doctrine, if a cop assaults me I am not allowed to sue that cop unless some other cop in the past has assaulted a person like me in exactly the same situation been convicted of it. And the reality is that there’s never exactly the same situation. So the courts just keep on throwing out these suits, the civil suits against police that have brutalized and killed mostly black people. Like millions of Americans, Jerry and I have been outraged about one that they’re doing it and two that they’re literally getting away with murder before our very eyes and we came to understand that a big part of the problem was this legal doctrine and so we are very focused on this very broad coalition now to end that legal doctrine. Our big obstacle is the fraternal order of police.
David Goldstein:
Right. And when did you launch this campaign?
Ben Cohen:
Well, we started working on it soon after George Floyd was murdered and we just went public with it just a few months ago.
David Goldstein:
Right. And just to be clear, it’s unlikely as it is for a cop to be convicted of murder, it’s nearly impossible to actually sue the cops civilly for damages.
Jerry Greenfield:
Right. And that’s where Qualified Immunity comes in, that’s what makes it essentially impossible. It’s a fundamentally unfair and unjust doctrine that disproportionally impacts black and brown people. It’s a simple matter of accountability for us being in business we understand that having accountability for ourselves and for our people is the key to getting desired results. And yet the police who are authorized to carry guns and to essentially kill people in our name, don’t have that same accountability. So what we’re looking for is not an anti-police measure as Ben said, Qualified Immunity only helps bad cops and so it’s not just that this is a bad policy, but all these victims are not able to get any justice or restitution and there’s real people involved. Ben has just come out with a book… Ben, why don’t you mention your book?
Ben Cohen:
Above the Law is a book that gives 16 stories of individuals who have been abused or murdered by the police or had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen from them by the police and had their cases thrown out of court because of this absurd judicial doctrine that… [inaudible 00:21:06] the basis of which is assuming that law enforcement officers do not know the law unless there was a previous cop convicted of doing exactly the same thing.
Jerry Greenfield:
So to fix this, what do you have to do?
Ben Cohen:
All you have to do is pass a law. I mean, Congress already passed the law and they passed the law virtually for the same reason. After reconstruction the problem was that police officers in the South were still members of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were brutalizing black people. And so Congress passed a law that said any citizen if their rights, constitutional rights have been violated by any state employee including the cops, they can sue that state employee. And so that was solving the problem. And then in the 60s, this was kind of at the same time as the Freedom Rides, I think there was a case that came to the Supreme Court that people wanted to sue the police for arresting them and the Supreme Court came up with this new theory or doctrine that said that no, you can’t sue the police.
Jerry Greenfield:
So There’s a legislative solution, you can do it federally and there’s proposed legislation now you can do it at the state level. Colorado has ended Qualified Immunity, New York City just ended Qualified Immunity in, New Mexico there’s a built End Qualified Immunity that’s gone through both houses and is waiting to be signed by the governor. So you can do it that way. Ben mentioned that there’s a broad coalition of advocacy groups who are working together on this, the ACLU, the NAACP, Legal Defense Fund, on the libertarian side there’s Cato Institute, Institute for Justice, Americans for Prosperity. So it’s liberals, libertarians, lawyers, former police, athletes, business people all working together, the group we have the Campaign to End Qualified Immunity. You can visit the website. What’s that website, Ben?
Ben Cohen:
holdcopsaccoutable.org.
Jerry Greenfield:
Yeah. And we’ll put that website in the show notes for the podcast to make sure that folks can get involved they’d like to.
David Goldstein:
Yeah. So if people want to get involved they should go to that site and there’s some place to sign up.
Ben Cohen:
Yeah. Put in your email address and then we let you know when there’s a law that’s in the legislature in your state or if we need a letter to the editor or when it’s time to let your federal representatives know that you support overturning this law.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s super exciting. So we always end our podcast with one question, which is why do you guys do this work?
Ben Cohen:
Well, as I’ve always said, when you’re confronted with situations of injustice, you have three choices, you can ignore it, you can complain about it, or you can do something about it. I feel better doing something about it.
Nick Hanauer:
How about you, Jerry?
Jerry Greenfield:
Yeah. Ben and I and many many other people we’ve had very privileged lives and not everybody has all the same privileges and benefits that we’ve had and it’s not right, first of all, but we all suffer when there is no justice in the world. The thing that I keep trying to figure out, which I certainly haven’t figured out yet is how to work on all these horrible things and bring love to it because I believe love is at the center of everything. And I just haven’t quite been able to bring it to everything I do and I’m going to keep trying to do that.
Nick Hanauer:
I think that’s a noble cause. Well guys, thank you so much for being with us. It’s been a real honor and pleasure to get to chat with you and meet with you and we wish you the best of luck on your campaign and you have my promise that I’m going to check into what our team is doing on that issue here in Washington State and we will Let you know.
Jerry Greenfield:
Thank you so much. [crosstalk 00:25:55].
Nick Hanauer:
This has been great. Thank you guys.
David Goldstein:
Thanks for joining us.
Ashley:
Hi, I’m Ashley one of the producers here at Pitchfork Economics, well we had been in Jerry’s ear for this interview, Nick couldn’t help but take a chance at pitching his very own ice cream flavor to the guys. Here’s how it went.
David Goldstein:
Okay, Nick, this is your big moment.
Nick Hanauer:
For years, we have been hoping to influence the ice cream flavor at Ben and Jerry’s and we had this awesome idea for trickle down trickle, what was it Goldie?
David Goldstein:
It was Trickle Down Ice Cream, a very thin layer of high quality chocolate at the top-
Nick Hanauer:
On the top.
David Goldstein:
And then vanilla. [crosstalk 00:26:38]
Nick Hanauer:
99.What do you think?
Ben Cohen:
It’s very similar to the flavor called Bernie’s Yearning that we came out with for Bernie’s campaign. It had a disk of chocolate on the top and nothing in the bottom [inaudible 00:26:56] break it up and mix it around.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, there you go. I love it. Sound like neo-liberal delight, something like that.
Ashley:
Yeah, it turns out they already made a flavor like that, but it got the wheels turning in our heads about what other economics related ice cream flavor possibilities could be out there. So we asked you our listeners to call in with your best ideas.
Jeff:
This is Jeff in Minnesota. I have a couple ice cream flavors for you. This one is called Neoliberal Neapolitan. This throwback to the classic chocolate vanilla strawberry trio will leave you asking for more and more. To extensive lobbying efforts with FDA ingredients, long bans or meddling liberal agenda regulations have been made available again including all natural unpasteurized clean, deliciously sweet cyclamates, and eye-popping red [inaudible 00:27:50] . Negotiations for internationally source ingredients, ensure that the manufacturer is not subject to those pesky fair trade agreements, passing on savings that are sure to keep you smiling.
Brett Armstrong:
Hey, this is Brett Armstrong from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and my economic inspired ice cream flavor is Fudge the Numbers Raspberry Nut Ripple, featuring chunks of fudge and [inaudible 00:28:19], raspberry ripples, and lots of trickle down clown card nuts.
Jonathan Allman:
Hey, my name is Jonathan Allman. I’m calling from Las Vegas, Nevada, and I have an ice cream submission. It is the Candy Cane V and Crumble. The description is, the plain vanilla ice cream keeps interest rates very low. So it relies on peppermint candy pieces to stimulate consumption the hard chocolate wafers crumble easily multiplying with every spoonful. Also the container has a special feature, it has an extra wide lip that serves as a liquidity trap, if you leave it out too long. That’s the Candy [Keynsian 00:28:59] Crumble.
Alona Raul:
Hey, my name is Alona Raul and my ice cream flavor is the Rocky Road to Serfdom and sure enough that’s where neoliberal thinking has brought a lot of us.
Brian Tap:
Hey, Nick. This is Brian Tap from Des Moines, Iowa. I developed a flavor called Supply-Side Surprise which is a chocolate nutty ice cream and it’s on the top and down the side and is also is caviar and fused ice cream on the top. The surprise is the shape of the pint container although it appears to be full, but it has a convex bubble opening from the bottom revealing not that it’s a true pint of ice cream but more of a quarter cup.
Ben:
My name is Ben and I had an ice cream flavor. Try some infrastructure delight. It has flavors galore. Those highway arteries that [inaudible 00:29:53 unplugging. This will unclog the most congested, one to lift those sagging muscles to the old age. You can gorge on the $400 billion for senior care provisions. And is your [R and D 00:30:08] sagging or you can reverse that trend with some infrastructure D. Do you crave to suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere? Well, infrastructure delight works like a vacuum. It’s got a crunchy taste and it’ll leave you with a feeling you’ve over indolged that is in fact it’s 100% healthy for your economy and it’s skilled free.
Rick:
Hey` Nick. This is Rick from Salem, Oregon. Okay. I’ve got an ice cream for you. Neoclassical ice cream contains valuable fruits and nuts, but they’re only available by imposing taxes and cutting social programs. MMTP for routine releases these fruits and nuts up for all to enjoy without the need for austerity.
Ashley:
And finally, this next one might be our favorite submission because it’s exclusively for the podcast.
Speaker 14:
Hey Nick, hey Pitchfork team I’m calling about the ice cream flavor and I think it should be Pitched for Pistachio as one flavor option.
Ashley:
That anonymous listener didn’t really elaborate on the pistachio choice, but if we had to guess the meaning behind it, we’d say it’s because pistachio is a totally underrated flavor, maybe even a cult favorite, and it’s a little nutty. So yeah, that works for us. Thanks for all the great submissions. It’s safe to say you definitely delivered.
David Goldstein:
So one of my big takeaways from our conversation Nick, is how important corporate culture is and how founders can instill a culture in a company that actually outlives them or survives their involvement in the operations of the business. So that it’s the corporation is not just this faceless monolithic thing. It reflect the people who own it and run it and work there.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. And the values that they bring and inculcate not just the feelings of the employees, but also the processes by which they operate the business, for sure true. And there are examples in our country and around the world where fine people have run great businesses that make great products and do well by their workers and their suppliers and the community at large. But sadly, those folks are in the minority because lots and lots of people who start businesses aren’t fine people they’re selfish shitbags who don’t care about anything but themselves and which is not to say that’s how all business people are. It’s absolutely not true but look in every large group of people there will be some very kind and generous people, and there will be some shitbags that’s just in the nature of any human society.
And that’s why I’m much more hardcore, I think, than Ben and Jerry around corporate governance and standards because I don’t think we can leave it up to the kindness of strangers to make the society work well, I think we need to require people to do the right thing, because if we don’t a few people will do the right thing, but mostly the people who want to do the wrong thing will drag down the people who want to do the right thing because doing the right thing always involves trade-offs doing the wrong thing almost never does.
David Goldstein:
Bad behavior drives out good behavior because in the end you have to compete and if you’re competitors are paying parasite wages and causing all types of negative externalities to save money you’re faced with the situation of do the same thing to be able to compete on price or risk being driven out of business.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. And with all due respect to Ben and Jerry, if you sort of zoom out and I’m no expert in the Ice Cream industry, but it seems pretty clear that they used their niche and their commitment to social justice as a super effective marketing strategy too. If you have a tiny fraction of the market, those stands that they took, turned into winning differentiators for a huge proportion of the population who thought it was really cool and great and funny and important.
David Goldstein:
But also show that you could actually make money doing that-
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right.
David Goldstein:
That could be very good for business doing the right thing and making that your brand, but all that said, Nick, you’re right we can’t rely on a couple of good eggs like Ben and Jerry and the culture they create to change corporate culture in the large, in the aggregate. We need a strong government to do that.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. And government is simply the people, right? That’s what a democracy is and having the citizens of a country hold the businesses in the country to a prosocial standard is essential to having a high functioning society which is really important. And if Ben and Jerry weren’t fine people, they would not now be devoting their time and resources to ending another injustice which is Qualified Immunity. At the end of the day, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream used their sort of position in the market and their marketing strategies to generate positive social change but now Ben and Jerry are using their cred as business people and their celebrity to continue to make social change in a positive way, which is super cool. In the next episode of Pitchfork Economics, we’re going to speak with an incredibly smart commentator on economics [Anasof Rookie 00:36:31] on the mother of all economic booms and the end of neo-liberalism.
Speaker 1:
Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook @civicaction and @NickHanauer, follow our writing on Medium @civicskunkworks and peep behind the podcast scenes on Instagram @pitchforkeconomics. As always from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.