171–180 of 548 posts
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People are usually including Amazon and MS when they use the metonym "Silicon Valley".
Really meant San Fran. An extreme disproportionate amount of investment dollars go there considering just how much value has come out of Seattle with much less starting capital.
b) Silicon Valley is 30 miles or so south of San Francisco.
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I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence, whereas Jeff Bezos got rich because you gave him money in exchange for products. Like, "Hey, here's this cool electronic device called the Amazon Echo for $50." is a markedly different from "Farm here or I'll decapitate you." The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terr…
This reminds me of Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example, which I will quote here: > Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument is an attempt to show that patterned principles of just distribution are incompatible with liberty. He asks us to assume that the original distribution in society, D1, is ordered by our choice of patterned principle, for instance Rawls's Difference Principle. Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popu…
How do we account for the effects of power or leverage imbalances on free exchange or consent?
If you consider violent force and the like as just one extreme on the broad spectrum of potential leverage between two parties, then we see that a primary focus of most governments is to limit or prevent leverage of cetain forms or intensity.
Kudos to him, hopefully he will go all in on some crazy idea eventually. I still have this feeling amazon (as in online store) isn't all that big outside of US/english-speaking world. I do have a question though. When you have that much net worth and you get plastered all over the press about how much you have... What do you do then? What's your life then like? Seems like a nightmare, especially if you have kids and…
until the competition is completely annihilated, jeff is not content.
[0] The truth is in the middle.
Everytime I see these types of articles I wonder if we're still in feudalism. Should we really be celebrating that a single individual is worth more than hundreds of millions of people[1]? I dunno, it seems dystopian , like we're enslaved to the system. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/...
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That's not about what he did do or did not do. In reality there's no concept of "fair pay" or "just earnings". In fact, Bezos doesn't even matter, personally. What matters is that he owns an asset (Amazon) that appreciated in value. Obviously, his "net worth" is tied to this holding. It appreciated because it provided desirable services. Now, preventing it can be done in two ways, and only two ways - either limit Ama…
This isn't thinking far enough outside the tiny box of this specific economic order at this specific point in history. For example, we could have co-ops instead of corps.
A corporation allows the average person to get paid while someone else takes on a risk with their money.
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I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence, whereas Jeff Bezos got rich because you gave him money in exchange for products. Like, "Hey, here's this cool electronic device called the Amazon Echo for $50." is a markedly different from "Farm here or I'll decapitate you." The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terr…
Whatever economic system may be in place, it will be possible to profit by making better decisions in that context, but that doesn't prove the superiority of that system, and it doesn't make it "terrifying" to wonder whether this or that emergent phenomenon is a feature or a bug.
it is amazing how Bill Gates remain richest person in the world despite donating billions to Melinda & Gates foundation.
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in the /r/conspiracy realm - it is widely believed that the reason for Gaddafi's execution was to go after the billions he had - and to take him down. The idea is that the Benghazi fiasco was let loose by the state dept so that HRC could loot Libya... its not provable - but the fact is that Gaddafi was one of the worlds richest ppl - and the rumor is that HRC and cabal stole all his loot. He was worth a reportable 70…
OK, I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is just crazy. So, in your scenario, HRC wants Gaddafi's money. So she orchestrates an attack on a US embassy nearly a year after he died, as a false flag operation. And then we sent people in get the money. Of course, officially we didn't send anyone in Libya in response to the attacks except some more marines to guard the embassy, so this group that went in to get th…
I do find all the Benghazi BS to be super weird - but thats just me without all the facts...
However, it is a documentable fact that Gaddafi may have been the richest documentable person (clearly we are ignoring the Rothschilds etc...) in the world...
He had vast assets and liquid cash all over the place. This is known - so do not accuse me of trolling on facts...
Further, it is known that HRC is a corrupt person (proven via her emails and many many other resources -- if you are unaware of this, then you're simply unaware and I am not trolling)
I said that it is RUMORED to have been financial motivation to go after Gaddafi... did you ever see the list of countries that Clark said the .gov was going to go after? Libya was on that list...
now, I shall admit my ignorance - as I am not entirely familiar with the libyan civil war, but I know my CIA history a fair bit... arab spring was an op. to foment a varied amount of things... civil wars here, uprisings there, extremests wherever... and change all over.
I never said Gaddafi was some benevolent anything -- I said he was sought for his money and executed CIA fashion.
so.. let me ask you: What happened to all the 70+++ billion dollars Gaddafi had? He was killed - what happened to his wealth?
I know that you have no fucking clue. So... what is your speculation?
Where did his funds go?
http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/573aeac75632a39...
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He provided more economic/productive value to the world than 100,000,000s of people. Idk about "working hard" or "merit" because who cares if someone has to work super hard for 2 days to produce the same results another person can produce in 10 minutes.
That's a fantasy. An analogy taken too literally. People lionize John Galts and imagine that they are their organizations. They aren't. Just because he started it and called the shots doesn't mean he literally is Amazon. That's a fanciful way of thinking and it's disastrous for us mortals to take it literally. Amazon is all the people working there, who, while well-paid compared to all the other serfs, actually get a…
All those "serfs" are not really risking their own personal wealth. They take home their pay win or lose for amazon. They are not serfs. They are getting paid for their work.