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

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 146 posts

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

#31

Post by js8 »

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.…

"it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good"

No, it is an outrageous claim. Let's be clear - these ASI guys are useful idiots.

Compare Jeff Bezos to Linus Torvalds. I am still waiting when ASI will call Linus "a greatest philantropist". He would absolutely deserve that. Instead, he gets called "asshole" by some people. C*suckery of these people is just insane.

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

#32

Post by TheTrotters »

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…

Perhaps it’s selection bias. People who are happy with Amazon may not see the need to comment about it in every thread.

But to counter this trend: I am very, very happy that Amazon exists. It’s allowed me to discover and buy plenty of books that I otherwise would never read or sample. Not to mention dozens of everyday items I buy from them. Nail clippers, socks, alarm clock, router, resistance bands, headphones and many more I’m forgetting about.

It’s all under one roof, delivery is usually very fast (sometimes it’s just one day on two-day delivery; when there are some delays and it takes an extra day they always notify me by e-mail).

Amazon is great and I’m a more-than-satisfied consumer.

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

#33

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

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

#34

Post by gaius »

Silhouette wrote: post #23
ckastner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good. Totally. Yes, in the past Amazon has as some point contributed to the lowering of prices, by challenging the dominant players in retail markets. But now, Amazon is the dominant player in the retail market, and Amazon seems to exploit this to the greatest extent possible. Here's an excellent quote from recent thre…

"Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly." Which is an interesting assumption, but certainly not a correct one. They have lost a lot of my business in recent years due to frequent poor quality control and customer service issues.

The issue of counterfeit branded goods is gathering momentum. Already I know people who refuse to buy anything for their kids from Amazon as the risk is too high. I think twice about it now myself. Such an easy problem to solve, just don’t commingle in the warehouse stuff that is sold by them vs sold by third party via them.

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

#35

Post by a008t »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #7
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.

Amazon also set new lows for how to pay and treat employees, and how little it is possible to care about selling counterfeit products.

Clearly they have been better than the alternatives for customers - otherwise, they would not be successful.

Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.

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

#36

Post by eeZah7Ux »

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.

"Extreme taking and extreme giving" is what kings, emperors and other tyrants did (and still do).

A billionaire can give away 99.9% of his/her earnings every month but s/he is acquiring extreme power in exchange.

Being able to control the money tap is power.

> It's not a great way of encouraging charity.

Good. That's what taxation or other forms of redistribution are for.

Contrarily to charity, it does not create patrons/heros/tyrants

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

#37

Post by TheTrotters »

onion2k wrote: post #16
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.

US federal budget for 2018 is ~4 trillion. Bezos has just donated 2 million. If that’s really your concern then you should try to keep things in perspective.

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

#38

Post by Silhouette »

amelius wrote: post #24

Well, even though he made more than 1000x than most people, Bezos is probably not 10x smarter by any reasonable metric, and certainly doesn't work 10x more than the rest of us. It's clearly a choice we all made as a society that allows him to have all this money. The question is: would we have an Amazon without people who are driven by money? Of course we can never know, but if we look at the past, where a large amou…

The printing press made monks copying manuscripts obsolete. Software created by volunteers is rarely better in performance and features than software created with commercial support, and the Open Source aspect is mostly a red herring here. I'm not sure your examples are making your case very well.

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

#39

Post by TheTrotters »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #36
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. "Extreme taking and extreme giving" is what kings, emperors and other tyrants did (and still do). A billionaire can give away 99.9% of his/her earnings every month but s/he is acquiring extreme power in exchange. Being able to control the money tap is power. > It's not a great way of encouraging charity…

US federal budget for 2018 is ~4 trillion. Caifornia’s 2018 budget is ~200 billion. Bezos has just donated two billion. Keep things in perspective.

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

#40

Post by lucideer »

gomox wrote: post #17
lucideer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Unless you believe that commerce is a goal in itself, and that building a successful business contributes positively to the world by default (I'm sure many people do believe this so just getting it out of the way), then you have to look at the outputs. For Amazon that's largely:

- extremely poor pay and conditions for Amazon's workers

- dominance driving smaller less-efficient enterprises out of business; this isn't just sentimental: efficiency is about driving cost down, including labour costs. SMEs employ more in aggregate than the large businesses replacing them, so typically Amazon is unlikely to be a net job-creator.

- Amazon pays very little corporate tax, both by running low-profit/high-cashflow, through other methods particularly for it's operations in Europe, and they used to evade sales tax almost completely in the US. Tax = vital public and social services for citizens, so that's a big net negative.

- Jeff Bezos' personal tax story is not dissimilar.

etc. etc.

This isn't a criticism of Bezos or Amazon, but of large multinational corporate entities and their contributions to "charitable" causes in general. CSR is always an a attempt to offset something.

Post reply on HN