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Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

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Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#131

Post by olfactory »

aphextron wrote: post #49
Endama wrote: post #15

I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comforta…

Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.

Today we have a military industrial complex supported by both parties and our most vital student loans (championed by our "left" party) come with no bankruptcy protection.

We do have a very strong Federal government, but it's designed to funnel money to various interest groups.

By making compute infrastructure affordable and by making consumer review data available for all products, Bezos is a champion of the little guy. He hasn't gotten rich through government crony capitalism or fraud, he's done the simplest stuff better than anyone else could. He let's people buy products that are reviewed thoroughly by other customers, he has a reasonable return policy, etc. This benefits consumers AND honest merchants selling through the platform.

AWS has made it way cheaper to start and scale many kinds of tech startups, and paved the way for firms like Heroku and DigitalOcean, and the entire vps ecosystem.

Bezos is a master of infrastructure execution. This is extremely rare, as we can see from the fate of Jet and Azure. Year after year the genius of his business tradeoff decisions and strategies become more clear. This is why he's wealthy. What we need are more people with that kind of vision and ability to see the big picture and solve real, unsexy problems.

Before AWS I had dealt with Dell as a part of several startups. The sales people were shady and they tried to milk every penny out of the customer for semi-proprietary hardware that was expensive to support. People flocked to AWS to escape the kind of predation and mediocrity championed by Dell.

Most readers of HN have the technical ability to have started AWS but (if they were of age at the time) did not see the opportunity and the path to execution. Bezos did. Let's give him some credit. I think he's one of the most remarkable visionaries of our age.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#132

Post by [deleted] »

irrational wrote: post #75
FussyZeus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the 1%. Something Rich people tend to forget is that the system of law and order we have now prevents armed uprising of the lower classes, which has a history of cropping up during very hard economic times. Not advocating, and I doubt I'd be one of them holding a pitchfork, but it is something to keep in mind.

Back in the day, most people grew up working on a farm/ranch/etc. and actually knew how to use a pitchfork. I'm trying to imagine today's obese generation trying to physically overthrow the government and can't help thinking that it wouldn't go so well.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#133

Post by slededit »

dghughes wrote: post #118
tmpz22 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

Anytime US police are shown on TV it's staggering to see how many are of them are obese. How can these police officers function in their jobs being so large? There must be yearly fitness tests to weed out people like that. Surely someone 6 feet tall 300 or 400 pounds can barely walk let alone run after someone.

People on TV are the ones that are later in their career. A police sergeant is more of a middle manager and is often not out in the field. Fitness tests ensure new officers are not overweight.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#134

Post by pitaj »

aphextron wrote: post #49
Endama wrote: post #15

I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comforta…

Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.

You mean the same New Deal that likely extended the length of the Great Depression by a significant multiple?

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#135

Post by mikec3010 »

crazygringo wrote: post #79
bsvalley wrote: post #41

most of it is virtual money... He could be worth $50B tomorrow if his company crashes. Still a lot of money though, but $150B don't mean anything. It would be interesting to see when/if bitcoin reaches $1 million USD. That Forbes list would get totally disrupted.

> $150B don't mean anything That's the silliest thing I ever heard. Anyone with more than $50K net worth is or ought to be keeping nearly all of it in investments of some sort, what you're calling "virtual money". It's no more virtual than your 401(k) or Schwab account or home. By your logic, nearly the entire American economy "doesn't mean anything."

> in investments of some sort

But he's got most of his investments in one sort, stock in AMZN. It's not a secret that there isn't $150bn of liquidity at the B/A price. If he tried to unload those shares he wouldn't get anywhere close to their calculated value. That's what GP means by "virtual" it exists on paper but any tangible use of that quantity will change it . Not only is there not enough liquidity at that price, but once the market learned he was unloading a substantial quantity the price would become depressed (not sure what the technical term for that is).

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#136

Post by ralusek »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #70
0xmohit wrote: post #28

Reminds one of a couple of related posts: > When I worked at Amazon we had to run around the warehouse, bc if our pick rate fell below a certain number we stopped getting paid. There were bottles & bins full of piss at odd points, bc you were penalised for toilet breaks. A co-worker attempted suicide on-site bc of the stress Source: https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 > Workers at Amazon wareh…

You'd think with all that cash Bezos could afford to pay his minions a humane rate. But he just doesn't care.

Aren't their margins like, razor-thin? Obviously at Amazon scale, even razor-thin margins mean huge profits, but that doesn't mean that you have any wiggle room within the profit.

Imagine you have 100 people working for you, and off of each person, you make 10 cents a day. Now imagine you grow your business and you have 1,000,000 people working for you. At 10 cents per person per day, you're now making $100,000 a DAY! You're rich! If you wanted to give back to your employees, just remember that each one produces 10 cents of profit. If you gave them all 10 cents extra per day, it means nothing to any one of them, but your business now makes $0 profit.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#137

Post by koube »

This thread is one of the prime examples of Hacker News being terrible when going off topic. You only have to read three comments to get to the most upvoted person saying the rich are at risk of violent revolution. A few more comments and people are discussing logistics of violent revolution, and whether police are too obese to participate or perhaps they act only in the interest of the 1%.

Are these educated opinions?

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#138

Post by mandeepj »

tzs wrote: post #108

OT: I've always wondered, if some multi-billionaire became personally offended by some lesser multi-billionaire and decided to destroy them, what could they do? Assume that they don't want to do anything illegal enough to get themselves into serious trouble. For example, suppose Bezos decided he really hated Rupert Murdoch ($15B). If Bezos decided he could happily live on a mere $100B, that would leave him $50B for t…

> If Bezos decided he could happily live on a mere $100B

Yeah, it's so mere that there are n't too many examples to cite.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#139

Post by paulddraper »

aphextron wrote: post #49
Endama wrote: post #15

I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comforta…

Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.

> functioning federal government

> New Deal

The New Deal is the arguably the worst economic policy in US history. It turned the Great Recession into the Great Depression [1] [2] and has been an economic anchor on the US ever since [3] [4] [5]

That it has popularly been given credit for the WWII-era economy is doctoring history. That it still further has become the epitome of good economic policy is unbelievable.

[1] http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-D...

[2] https://mises.org/library/how-fdr-made-depression-worse

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2018/06/05/tru...

[4] https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html

[5] https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/11/new-deal-stimulus-opinions...

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#140

Post by smhost »

soared wrote: post #110
irrational wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, most people grew up working on a farm/ranch/etc. and actually knew how to use a pitchfork. I'm trying to imagine today's obese generation trying to physically overthrow the government and can't help thinking that it wouldn't go so well.

An overthrow would look entirely different today. The masses wouldn't carry pitchforks, they'd use computers. (I don't know how, but assuming people today wouldn't use computers is definitely wrong)

We have to cripple the datacenters, which tend to be hard to move.
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