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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

#71

Post by bobabooey02 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #23
bobabooey02 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason legislation like this isn't helping our country at the moment is because of globalization. Labor laws may help the workers, but it's a net negative if those laws just lead to the outsourcing of jobs. We need to choose between globalization for maximal gains for the rich, or protectionism for quality of life for our workers. At the moment, a middle ground doesn't seem possible.

Globalisation is fine where regulation can ensure that standards are still met. There is nothing that prevents domestic legislation setting standards for the working conditions of those who produce goods in foreign countries. Protectionism isn't going to help workers in the long term. We live in a global market; accepting that and using legislation to deal with negative outcomes is a totally valid approach. The fact…

Theoretically this is true, but look at how it's worked in practice. Manufacturing was shipped to places like China and Mexico where the minimum wage and quality of life is much lower. When considering these things, should we consider the theory of globalization, or the reality of what is happening?

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

#73

Post by txru »

chris_t wrote: post #25
Cozumel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'You can't legislate societies problems away' Could you elaborate? It seems pretty obvious that you can. No child labour, minimum wage laws, equal rights etc.

Government doesn't have unlimited power to alter reality, there are countless examples of legislation being ineffective or having unintended consequences. The canonical example is prohibition of various drugs, but more recently the "ban the box" initiative is quite illustrative: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/consequ...

That article is somewhat confusing.

> "I told her about my conviction, and she wanted me to go deeper into what happened,” he told me, describing one interview in particular. “When I explained that I shot somebody in the back of the head, she didn’t want anything to do with me anymore."

... And then they never go into that more. Why is that not an acceptable reason to not hire someone?

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

#74

Post by eli_gottlieb »

zip1234 wrote: post #50
6stringmerc wrote: post #17

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 or more likely, automate the job.

I see absolutely nothing wrong here. What's the problem?

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

#75

Post by eli_gottlieb »

yequalsx wrote: post #66
dwighttk wrote: post #63

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" 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.

>At some point, where we are headed maybe slavery will make a comeback.

If you look at prison labor, it already did.

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

#76

Post by livingparadox »

euroclydon wrote: post #46
samstave wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree! This is why I always skeptically look at any philanthropic announcements.... if billionaires like Gates, Buffet, Zuck, Bezos simply funded the above - it would go way further, and have long asting effect on the future of this nation in so many profound ways. Rather than "give away half their wealth" - why not do the above now and actually see it change the surface of the nation? --- I am getting involv…

Simultaneously driving the economy and increasing quality of life are often competing goals. Take tiny homes, sure, you might be able to put more people in homes they own, but housing construction is one of the most hammer-ready jobs producing activities there is, and if you cut the average house size by 75%, there are fewer jobs in building. Then consider externalities, the environment could be a lot cleaner if we g…

Well, its not like building tiny homes are going to make most people who would normally purchase a normal/large size home switch to a tiny home. It would probably net increase the amount of construction work because you've now expanded the available market (lower income people can now purchase a home).

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

#77

Post by SolaceQuantum »

wolfgke wrote: post #55
nostrebored wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these laws have pretty glaring problems though. Child labor combined with the emancipation system traps teenagers in abusive homes, minimum wage laws depend heavily on the elasticity of labor, equal rights laws seldom induce equality.

> Child labor combined with the emancipation system traps teenagers in abusive homes I don't understand what you mean here (I probably miss some background in US culture).

The argument is that since a child can't work on their own and emancipation laws prevent a child from claiming independence until they can work on their own , children are stuck in abusive homes where they would otherwise work a full time job to get themselves out of the abuse.

Note I don't really agree with this sentiment as abusing children is fairly illegal and it should be up to the justice system to prosecute the abusive households and also help the children find better homes, but we know that's inadequate in implementation right now.

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

#78

Post by johnpython »

mtmail wrote: post #69
johnpython wrote: post #67

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.

This was the original tweet: https://twitter.com/asemota/status/875497242987307008. He explains it better than I could.

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

#79

Post by Consultant32452 »

6stringmerc wrote: post #17

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…

>Bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

So you want to put a bunch of poor people in labor camps. Inflation adjusted wages of the CCC works out to about $550/mo. If they get injured on the job they will be sent home with nothing.

>over-pay the employees

In a country with a minimum wage, how do you know they're not already being overpaid?

>on the condition half goes into savings accounts for family use or to pay down debts of some sort.

Because "poor people" are too stupid to determine how they should best spend their own money that we should infantilize them and take away their personal autonomy.

>able bodied with Bachelors and $8/hr job

It's nice to know that a person's pedigree determines their market value, rather than their productivity.

>Yes it will cost a fuck-ton of money but because these low-level employees will have money to spend, the wheels of US Consumerist economy will be able to pick up.

US unemployment is already at 4%. Those US consumers are going to be buying products made in Mexico or China because US labor costs more and comes saddled with more health, safety, and environmental regulations. I'm not necessarily opposed to those things, but make no mistake, that money is getting shipped overseas very quickly. And your new CCC workers will be right back where they started.

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

#80

Post by triangleman »

adventured wrote: post #60

The idea here isn't that Bezos is going to get some stellar idea from the Twitter crowd that he couldn't have gotten from an hour sitting down with the best people at the Gates Foundation. The idea is propaganda / PR. Bezos is letting the world know that while yes, he's about to become the world's richest person, he's going to be a good mogul and begin giving lots of money away, so please don't attack him too harshly…

His PR is top notch, for sure:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-lyons/amazon-drones-60-min...

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