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The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

bbc.com

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Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#11

Post by ubernostrum »

stubish wrote: post #9

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'.

The argument people tend to make here is that the net change he's creating in the world is not for the better. If 1,000 people have to suffer misery because of his company in order to enable 10 people to get the benefit of his personal charity, that doesn't look like "making the world a better place" to many of us.

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#12

Post by point78 »

stubish wrote: post #9

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

One person should not choose where and to what social services need funding. That's why we have government and not kings and queens.

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#13

Post by csydas »

bluecalm wrote: post #3
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #2

"Matt Kilcoyne, of the free market think-tank the Adam Smith Institute, disagrees. "Quite frankly Bezos's greatest act of philanthropy is Amazon itself," he argues. "Lower prices, more choice and competition have delivered billions for Bezos and billions worth for the hundreds of millions of customers he serves." " I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good.…

Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. That old industry got killed is natural when progress happens.

I'm not sure I'd allow the delivery times and customer support to be attributed as a real thing to Amazon.

Both were meant as audience capturing tactics and were basically unattainable by most all other competitors due to costs -- Amazon only avoided it riding on a large wave of money and eating costs for years until it was the only game in town.

Now you can't have a thread about Amazon without constant complaints about the 2-Day shipping never really being 2-Day shipping, the constant fakes that plague the Amazon inventory (with a seemingly blind-eye from Amazon itself on it), and so on.

These weren't really public goods introduced by Amazon, as plenty of stores handle the customer service side just fine in most cases, and the delivery stuff was mostly just investors subsidizing the costs for a time, which appears to no longer be a major focal point.

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#14

Post by lucideer »

stubish wrote: post #9

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

The primary purpose of criticising the charitable work of the very rich over, say, similarly wealthy people who aren't philanthropic, is that it is a form of PR.

As other commenters mention, Bezo's overall contributions to the world are a net negative, but it's not just the his philanthropy doesn't make up for his other negative activities, it's that it also acts as a way of soliciting public forgiveness for the other indescretions, which shouldn't be accepted.

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#15

Post by kowdermeister »

point78 wrote: post #12
stubish wrote: post #9

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

One person should not choose where and to what social services need funding. That's why we have government and not kings and queens.

So we should put a gap on wealth and redistribute it beyond that in a fair way?

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#16

Post by onion2k »

stubish wrote: post #9

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else.

Spending money on good causes is great. That's to be definitely something to be encouraged. Putting all of the decision making about which causes are 'good' in the hands of one individual, or a small group of very similar individuals, is very, very bad. That's how entire segments of society get ignored.

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#17

Post by gomox »

lucideer wrote: post #14
stubish wrote: post #9

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

The primary purpose of criticising the charitable work of the very rich over, say, similarly wealthy people who aren't philanthropic, is that it is a form of PR. As other commenters mention, Bezo's overall contributions to the world are a net negative, but it's not just the his philanthropy doesn't make up for his other negative activities, it's that it also acts as a way of soliciting public forgiveness for the othe…

By what measure are Bezos' contributions a net negative?

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#18

Post by csydas »

Treegarden wrote: post #10
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #2

"Matt Kilcoyne, of the free market think-tank the Adam Smith Institute, disagrees. "Quite frankly Bezos's greatest act of philanthropy is Amazon itself," he argues. "Lower prices, more choice and competition have delivered billions for Bezos and billions worth for the hundreds of millions of customers he serves." " I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good.…

I dont quite understand this reoccurring sentiment about the poor book shops. Here in Germany the bookshops mainly feature fear mongering books and are mostly in German. Then there is a tiny section of english books (which often happen to be better then the German books displayed). Maybe this dos not apply to all German book shops but I feel like they haven't gotten with the times yet.

This might just be my perception since I spent a lot of time in college towns in the US, but book shops are kind of like coffee houses in that many people seem to get the idea that they'd be successful in running one, and often enough you see a bookshop pop-up for a few months then just vanish after it fails to gain traction and sustain.

Bookshops in the US, however, tend to be way different than you're describing and instead are pretty much just a repository for dumping books. Most (unsurprisingly) double up on the dream and also become coffee houses, and they also try to act as an arts hub for the community, doing like talks, workshops, etc.

So that's mostly what people are commenting on I would assume.

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#19

Post by onion2k »

kowdermeister wrote: post #15
point78 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person should not choose where and to what social services need funding. That's why we have government and not kings and queens.

So we should put a gap on wealth and redistribute it beyond that in a fair way?

Yes. And we do exactly that through taxation. A portion of Jeff Bezos' fortune is derived from Amazon's ability to increase it's profits by (legal, and arguably justifiable) tax avoidance. That's part of global business these days, but it's not unreasonable for people in regions where Amazon minimizes it's tax costs to say Bezos is doing something bad for them.

Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

#20

Post by darawk »

csydas wrote: post #13
bluecalm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. That old industry got killed is natural when progress happens.

I'm not sure I'd allow the delivery times and customer support to be attributed as a real thing to Amazon. Both were meant as audience capturing tactics and were basically unattainable by most all other competitors due to costs -- Amazon only avoided it riding on a large wave of money and eating costs for years until it was the only game in town. Now you can't have a thread about Amazon without constant complaints ab…

Except that you can still just as easily buy things from normal retailers. They're not dead. People choose not to because the value of obtaining things from Amazon remains higher to them.
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