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Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

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Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#61
post #45
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess many of them want to contribute to solving big global challenges rather than simply focusing on a single country?

I'd think one is more qualified to address local challenges than global ones. Certainly all those people made their money focusing on the US market, not only because it's big and governed by relatively uniform regulations but because they understand it better than any other. For the same reasons, it's IMO far easier to be effective as a philanthropist closer to home. (This is not to say there aren't exceptions to thi…

Actually helping people in a significant way in large wealthy countries is harder/more expensive because the bar is already higher. A disadvantaged person in a first world country is still much better off then a disadvantaged person in a third world country.

Not saying that working in a country with no regulatory or physical infrastructure is easy, but buying a bunch of mosquito nets is much cheaper with very few unintended consequences compared to doing something like OP suggested. For instance, wouldn't a revived/subsidized CC put a lot of current companies/workers out of business? How would that opportunity effect a high schoolers decision making? Is this something that goes on forever, it sounds like we would be training more people to do a job then would be needed if this program stopped. etc, etc, etc.

Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me, that is exactly what he stated: Legislation is blocking innovation and ability to provide micro-apartments. We need to change the laws to fix this. I know this first hand, as I am trying to work in the tiny house movement here in the bay area. In talking with the city and county of alameda, the code is the problem. The code states that any land parcel for a single family is required to be minumum of 2,30…

Can't you just make a small apartment building (with maybe 3 or 4 apartments all connected by a hallway to fulfil the single-outer-door requirement)?

Apartment buildings - even very small ones - come with their own special, elaborate, nightmare regulations. They're worse than housing regulations.

Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#63
post #50

Bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) concept and significantly over-pay the employees on the condition half goes into savings accounts for family use or to pay down debts of some sort. Employ it as a method to give uneducated (HS degree) or underemployed (able bodied with Bachelors and $8/hr job), rehabilitate and early-release incarcerated US Citizens and put them to work in infrastructure needs. So, thi…

The problem with "significantly over-pay" is that you end up with incentives for people to quit other low paying jobs and switch, which will force those employers to either significantly increase wages to match or more likely, automate the job. An another alternative is that there is a such a huge demand for jobs in new CCC that not everyone can be given one. How do you figure out who to give the jobs to? I would be…

"The problem with "significantly over-pay" is that you end up with incentives for people to quit other low paying jobs and switch, which will force those employers to either significantly increase wages to match"

This is usually the explicit goal of this sort of program.

"or more likely, automate the job"

oh right... we'll have to make that illegal or something.

Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#64
post #50

Bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) concept and significantly over-pay the employees on the condition half goes into savings accounts for family use or to pay down debts of some sort. Employ it as a method to give uneducated (HS degree) or underemployed (able bodied with Bachelors and $8/hr job), rehabilitate and early-release incarcerated US Citizens and put them to work in infrastructure needs. So, thi…

The problem with "significantly over-pay" is that you end up with incentives for people to quit other low paying jobs and switch, which will force those employers to either significantly increase wages to match or more likely, automate the job. An another alternative is that there is a such a huge demand for jobs in new CCC that not everyone can be given one. How do you figure out who to give the jobs to? I would be…

> automate the job

This is never a bad thing. The only bad thing is if your society doesn't account for the potential of automation and just leaves the unemployable destitute. But that is a political problem, not an economic one - being able to produce without any labor is one of the greatest accomplishments of economic development you can possibly have.

It does reflect that, in most western countries (and the US in particular) we have a glass house for an economy, propped up in large part by bullshit jobs that exist to satisfy the broader markets demand for comprehensive employment of citizens, and if you throw a pebble in that lake the ripples could break the dam holding a huge portion of the US workforce in employment right now.

Bezos is close to being the richest man recognized by western institutions (tyrants around the world probably control more assets, but can't utilize them on demand) and has the potential to spearhead the social and political changes necessary to adapt to the changing economic reality nobody wants to acknowledge, and that his company is near the forefront of bringing about. But that isn't particularly a way to spend money - it is more that he will hold the respect of oligarchs and politicians the world over and might be able to persuade some of them, if he were so persuaded himself, that like global warming this is not a can to just kick indefinitely down the road until overnight you see 50% unemployment and start seeing public hangings of the elite come back into vogue.

Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#65
post #5

Great marketing campaign, but philantropic stuff needs to be long term to be of any use. Short term stuff can in fact be counter-productive by hiding that there is a problem that needs to be resolved. The best solution for almost every response he got is: Introduce better legislation. Even charities are just bandaids over actual problems.

> philantropic stuff needs to be long term to be of any use. Short term stuff can in fact be counter-productive by hiding that there is a problem I 100% understand what you saving and agree long term fixes are preferable, but... 1) Short term can be massively helpful for getting over humps like famine/disaster etc. 2) I kinda feel that is such privileged world thinking. If I'm buying some guys with nothing food and c…

Large scale short term programs can be very harmful though, e.g. Bezos shows up and gives everyone shoes and clothes, putting every shoe/clothing manufacturer (except the one he bought the shoes/clothes from) out of business, then when things have gotten better there's only one place to get shoes and clothes.

This isn't going to stop me from helping out people I meet and see in need, but as a large scale program it is (at least long term) harmful.

Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#66
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "significantly over-pay" is that you end up with incentives for people to quit other low paying jobs and switch, which will force those employers to either significantly increase wages to match or more likely, automate the job. An another alternative is that there is a such a huge demand for jobs in new CCC that not everyone can be given one. How do you figure out who to give the jobs to? I would be…

"The problem with "significantly over-pay" is that you end up with incentives for people to quit other low paying jobs and switch, which will force those employers to either significantly increase wages to match" This is usually the explicit goal of this sort of program. "or more likely, automate the job" oh right... we'll have to make that illegal or something.

If we as a nation are going to be as opposed to unions and collective bargaining then some other mechanism needs to be in place to give labor some pricing power. The tax on labor is greater than the tax on capital. The pricing power for low skilled jobs is clearly heavily tilted in favor of employers. At some point, where we are headed maybe slavery will make a comeback.

Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#68

Lobby Congress to outlaw lobbying and restrict campaign donations to $20 / person!

That is just trying to regulate an addicts intake of drug. Private campaign funding, period, is a corrupting influence in any form.

The real solution is public campaign finance. We have this lovely new thing that enables instant communication between anyone, anywhere called the Internet, where information duplication and propagation is effectively free.

Start there. Anyone can be a candidate on a state run open source collaborative hosting service for political campaigns. Those represent the first layer - to not alienate the technologically disinterested, provide TV time and dead tree info pamphlets on the top candidates. The difference is that right now you take bribes to enable you to saturate peoples attention on TV and in print, with this system the state buys the face time and the viable candidates share it.

No, it is not perfect. You have the problem of view distortion where anyone who is abjectly against technology won't have their voice heard early on in the process. But Facebook has really demonstrated the ability to motivate people to engage with technology where they would never have fathomed doing it before - I strongly feel a properly implemented system like this would get extremely high adoption and engagement rates, well beyond what we get now with traditionally ad driven campaigns run by laundered money.

The good news is if you do cut money out of campaigning cold turkey then it is very easy to see the vectors of corruption - paid for political speech is an obvious violation, so you don't get private "third party" campaign ads. Part of running for an elected position can be the requirement of full financial disclosure - we know who pays you, and for what. Any time money changes hands for political ends you can directly prosecute on those grounds alone - because you aren't allowed to privately finance your political interests, you have to use public forums.

There is a lot of nuance in such a system, and much nitpicking. But the fundamentals - anyone can run, and the viable runners get public airtime shared by viable candidates equally - and where paid promotion is astutely illegal - you can dramatically cut down on campaign corruption in ways just trying to limit contributions (again, it has been an ongoing and losing battle to control private finance of political campaigns since the country was founded) cannot do, because innate in the idea of private citizens giving money to candidates to then spend attracting more citizens to support them you have a feedback loop that enables corruption because any citizen can be bought off on who they support and they can just be an indirection of big donor monied interests cash going into the pockets of crooked politicians.

Re: Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies

#69

The person who suggested building AWS data centers in Africa was right on the mark. I would love to see that

Maybe I'm missing something. Can you explain the philanthropic reasoning behind the idea? Other than lower cost or latency.
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