Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 124 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#51

Post by blaisio »

JAFTEM wrote: post #24

Bezos is an advocate for basic income, but I question his motives. Is it because he is genuinely concerned for others and society, or does he want to avoid the pitchforks at his doorstep when Amazon gets blamed for mass unemployment? Coupled with the fact that he's the richest man on earth, it's very apparent he will have a target on his back if he doesn't already. Maybe his motives don't matter. Maybe we just need t…

I'm not sure why his motivation matters? Both of those are good reasons to advocate for a universal basic income. We should want people to be aware of the consequences of their successes and to try and alleviate any pain they caused. It's when people don't do this that all the "rich is poor" problems occur.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#52

Post by opportune »

garmaine wrote: post #39
reducesuffering wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because Musk can run both Tesla and SpaceX doesn’t mean Bezos can run Blue Origin and frickin Amazon at the same time. That’s overseeing 500k employees. I think that it’s a safe bet we’ll see a lot more from Blue Origin when Bezos steps down from Amazon.

Probably. I’m more complaining about ambition though. Blue Origin isn’t trying to change the game fundamentally in he way SpaceX is. Regardless o whether they are hitting deliverables, the deliverables aren’t interesting.

But don't they have different goals? I thought Blue Origin was a little more bootstrappy in that they aren't trying to rely on federal funding / subsidies and are trying to get revenue from tourism

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#53

Post by tryingagainbro »

amelius wrote: post #46

That man has done so much for humanity, I believe he really deserves that $100B.

if you're being sarcastic, I am sure he doesn't care. "Humanity" is complicated...maybe he'll make up for all with one invention on his space venture.

He did save people a lot of money, but then he did also cause many stores to go kaput. So, how do you judge?

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#54

Post by mrtksn »

daxfohl wrote: post #50
justboxing wrote: post #5

AMZN, the stock, is trading at a P.E. Ratio of nearly 300. http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN Serious question: Considering that it nearly doubled over the past year, is it already too late to buy Amazon stock? Or not? What's the upside?

It occurred to me last night that Amazon's next target could well be Google (search). I mean, how much money are they paying to google for ads? I could be wrong but I'd have to imagine they're Google'slargest revenue source now, possibly by a large margin. And they've got the expertise to do it in house. And I'm hearing more and more complaints about google these days. Amazon also seems more disciplined at listening…

Is search still a thing? I mean, these days content is curated socially or algorithmically and thrown onto your face. I only google errors these days and if I'm looking for a product I would search the specific sites that I shop at. Google will show me the sites I visit anyway, but with less nicer presentation.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#55

Post by amelius »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #53
amelius wrote: post #46

That man has done so much for humanity, I believe he really deserves that $100B.

if you're being sarcastic, I am sure he doesn't care. "Humanity" is complicated...maybe he'll make up for all with one invention on his space venture. He did save people a lot of money, but then he did also cause many stores to go kaput. So, how do you judge?

The sarcasm was not directed at him, but at us, and our lack of ability to come up with an economic system that can properly evaluate what somebody is worth.

E.g. We have a legal system that decides when somebody is right or wrong, and it mostly matches with what people feel is right or wrong. Why can't we have a similar system that decides what somebody is worth?

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#56

Post by barrkel »

protomok wrote: post #13
tzm wrote: post #2

> Bill Gates was last person to attain 12-figure fortune in 1999 $100B nearly 20 years ago, just before the federal antitrust case decision against Microsoft. Makes me wonder how much concentration of wealth would occur if regulation was not in place.

Bill Gates has also given a lot to charity, from the article - 'Gates, 62, who has a net worth of $86.8 billion according to the Bloomberg index, would be worth more than $150 billion if he hadn’t given away almost 700 million Microsoft Corp. shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets to charity, according to an analysis of his publicly disclosed giving since 1996.'

Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. I say this having been the beneficiary of charity myself: needing to be grateful to someone else is a kind of psychological servitude.

We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than efficiency and profit, that ends up bio-hacking people to buy more food and mind-hacking people to control their attention.

I don't know how to help make that happen, but I'm pretty sure basic income isn't the right answer either.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#57

Post by JAFTEM »

blaisio wrote: post #51
JAFTEM wrote: post #24

Bezos is an advocate for basic income, but I question his motives. Is it because he is genuinely concerned for others and society, or does he want to avoid the pitchforks at his doorstep when Amazon gets blamed for mass unemployment? Coupled with the fact that he's the richest man on earth, it's very apparent he will have a target on his back if he doesn't already. Maybe his motives don't matter. Maybe we just need t…

I'm not sure why his motivation matters? Both of those are good reasons to advocate for a universal basic income. We should want people to be aware of the consequences of their successes and to try and alleviate any pain they caused. It's when people don't do this that all the "rich is poor" problems occur.

>I'm not sure why his motivation matters?

I recognized this idea in in the last two sentences of my post. The biggest issue with this line of thinking is the diversion of scrutiny towards Bezos in the process. As another poster stated, Bezos is a beneficiary of basic income via Amazon. As an aside, we know why Zuckerberg is more focused on free Internet drones over Africa than basic income.

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#59

Post by 1stranger »

daxfohl wrote: post #50
justboxing wrote: post #5

AMZN, the stock, is trading at a P.E. Ratio of nearly 300. http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN Serious question: Considering that it nearly doubled over the past year, is it already too late to buy Amazon stock? Or not? What's the upside?

It occurred to me last night that Amazon's next target could well be Google (search). I mean, how much money are they paying to google for ads? I could be wrong but I'd have to imagine they're Google'slargest revenue source now, possibly by a large margin. And they've got the expertise to do it in house. And I'm hearing more and more complaints about google these days. Amazon also seems more disciplined at listening…

They already did that over a decade ago.

https://www.macworld.com/article/1039079/a9.html

Re: Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B

#60

Post by thedoops »

garmaine wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #11

Not spending nearly enough on rockets.

I too am disappointed about this. Elon Musk is a scrappy bootstrapper by comparison. Blue Origin could be reaching so much further than they currently are...

I think it's more of a development life cycle problem, Elon started earlier and rocketry ain't easy. It's less a problem of money as it is in scaling up an R&D operation to effectively use the money. Scaling organizations of people is bottlenecked in enough ways that the added domain difficulty of rocket science creates a situation where throwing money at the problem has diminishing returns.
Post reply on HN