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

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

#111

Post by Symmetry »

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.

To me it seems like philanthropists generally do a much better job spending money well than our government does. They don't tend to use it to bomb other countries, they often consider the lives of foreigners as important as the lives of Americans, and being able to ignore pork barrel considerations makes their projects more efficient.

The money spent by philanthropists is small compared to the US budget so they aren't in any way a replacement for the welfare state. But what money they do spend seems to go a long way.

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

#112

Post by wastedhours »

philwelch wrote: post #94
wastedhours wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-argument is that, if these super-wealthy individuals didn't feel the need to extract the maximum wealth from the community (the notion that it's their fiduciary duty to pay the least in wages or find loopholes to minimise tax exposure is a myth), then communities in the round would be better off. Regardless of if you agree with his actions or not, it's pretty tone-deaf from a PR perspective - pretty much…

The economy isn’t a zero-sum game.

True, but its distribution, scale and movement isn't linear either. Like conservation of energy, Bezos and Amazon are a part of "the economy", he technically hasn't extracted anything from it (just storing it). Doesn't mean that money hasn't been extracted from the rest of the community.

I'm not arguing from a philosophical standpoint, merely pointing out that from a public perception standpoint, a backlash on the apparent hypocrisy of him giving a damn about the community by trying to tackle homelessness whilst potentially damaging it in a tangential way through his ways of working is justified.

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

#113

Post by mrob »

coldtea wrote: post #105
mrob wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I'd allow the delivery times and customer support to be attributed as a real thing to Amazon. Amazon has "Amazon Lockers", which let me accept deliveries at a time convenient to me, with no human interaction. This is a real improvement over previous methods, and AFAIK no other retailer in my country has anything similar.

> Amazon has "Amazon Lockers", which let me accept deliveries at a time convenient to me, with no human interaction. So, just like a post office box? Not to mention that the raise of companies like Amazon and the "on demand" mentality is the one that forces people to not have more regular hours "convenient to them".

Post office boxes are expensive, require filling in an application form, and require human interaction to access the contents. Amazon Lockers are included in the normal "free" delivery, require no paperwork, and are completely automated.

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

#114

Post by lwhi »

amelius wrote: post #97
lwhi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. Limits placed on capitalism, through regulation, might be an example of letting society (the system) sort itself out. If limits aren't introduced, the gap between rich and poor becomes too vast. It become futile for those who have little to even try to adjust their situation. I do believe in capitalism, but left to its own devices, it becomes obscene.

And a nice example of regulation: net neutrality.

Yes.

Regulation should ensure a fair and level playing field for all. It's not anti-capitalist, it just stops the big guys from ruining things for everyone else.

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

#115

Post by kiliantics »

zekevermillion wrote: post #80

Amazon shares have a lot of value, and Bezos is sitting on a pile of them. What should Bezos do with that currency -- hoard it? spend it? This supermoney represents Bezos' capacity to incentivize his fellow humans to act in concert toward a goal that he can influence. If he hoards it, then it does nothing for society. Bezos doesn't need it for his personal enjoyment either. After he leases a couple jets, buys a few h…

The problem is in how undemocratic this kind of philanthropy is. Most everyone can agree that homelessness needs to be addressed. But why does one man get to decide how that is done? We as a society should be using our collective resources to help give everyone a good chance, we shouldn't have to rely on the benevolence of certain massively powerful individuals for any good to be done for those in need. It shouldn't be possible for only one person to dictate the terms for which that aid is dispensed either, which could just be another way of helping themselves.

The way this should work is that Bezos should be taxed far more than he currently is and a good government run by and for the people should be redistributing that wealth created by Bezos (but mostly created by all the workers at Amazon, and through the use of society's existing infrastructure) to improve things for everyone.

There is a good discussion of the issues with such kinds of billionaire philanthropy in this podcast [1] and its sequel, where they focus on how Bill Gates has built an image of doing good for the world's most needy, while also using that same power to threaten democracies and worker's rights and build more power for himself.

[1] https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so...

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

#117

Post by qubax »

Big "philanthropy" isn't a new concept. It's more than a 100 years old and was created by the "robber barons" of the gilded age to shelter their money from taxes and keep the wealth under family control for generations. An added benefit of these family charities is great PR. The most famous beneficiary of the charity PR is john d rockefeller whose reputation improved immensely after setting up his family charities. Rockefeller revolutionized the modern use of a PR team to burnish one's image through radio, tv, etc. A more recent example of this is bill gates who used charity and pr teams to shift public perception of him from a greedy tech monopolistic to a charitable philanthropist. Bezos is just following in a long line of extremely wealthy people.

Whether it is good for society to immense wealth controlled by family trusts/chariities or whether the wealth should be taxed and used for public purposes is something people can debate for an eternity.

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

#118

Post by logfromblammo »

philwelch wrote: post #94
wastedhours wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-argument is that, if these super-wealthy individuals didn't feel the need to extract the maximum wealth from the community (the notion that it's their fiduciary duty to pay the least in wages or find loopholes to minimise tax exposure is a myth), then communities in the round would be better off. Regardless of if you agree with his actions or not, it's pretty tone-deaf from a PR perspective - pretty much…

The economy isn’t a zero-sum game.

Each dollar that you hold and don't spend represents one potential vote for what the economy should do next. If you vote wisely, your votes usually get returned to you. If you vote poorly, they usually don't come back.

Rich people are a form of representative election. Some people give their proxies to others that they think will make wise economic choices. If you choose your proxy well, you also get rewarded with more votes.

That system has led to a situation where a viable equilibrium exists wherein those with unspent money can tend to make choices that benefit mostly themselves rather than the whole economy.

Each spent dollar is a production order. Investment is planning; spending is executing. If you don't spend enough money to execute on the plan, it will fail from a lack of material support. If the plan is good, and the work gets done, everyone benefits. That's not zero-sum. You can get out more than you put in. That's the whole point of having a specialized, productive economy.

But the investment portion of the economy is zero-sum. You can't order more than 100% of the productive economy that exists at any given moment. Every day, one pie the size of the productive economy gets auctioned off in tiny pieces. You can order the productive economy to grow its own capacity a bit, to make bigger pies tomorrow and into the future, but after it does, you will still have to re-vote to use it. Once the investment economy started gambling with itself on which of the candidate economic plans had the best prospects, it turned itself into a realm where someone else has to lose in order for anyone else to win. People stopped voting on bigger pies, and started voting strategically, to get more votes in the future. "Don't make more pie; make more votes!" They forgot that making and eating the daily pie was the important part of the voting process.

As for philanthropy, that might be an attempt to create a standing vote for "let's plan to spend some economic resources on being good to one another, regardless of anything else we might vote on".

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

#119

Post by zamalek »

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.

> Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

Exactly, if philanthropy is self-serving then what does that make the act of dissuading such behavior?

People seem to get involved with the argument rather than outcomes nowadays. A frequent argument is that "Bezos should pay his taxes because I do." While I do feel as though it's unfair that I loose more of my "living money" to taxes, I don't forget for one second what those taxes are doing: waging wars over fossil fuels and progressing climate change. Who cares if the cause is personal glory; if the effect is a better world?

I'd rather have the unfairness of ego-charitable billionaire tax avoidance than the two-term shortsightedness of politician power mongering.

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

#120

Post by Radim »

lwhi wrote: post #95
Radim wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cowardly way of saying "I want that guy's money, but am too weak to take it myself". The fundamental problem with such redistribution schemes is: Who gets to decide who's weak and who's the villain? Certainly each individual knows for themselves; typically a variation on "I'm weak; give me". But coming up with stable, fair valuations for social contribution is a hard problem. For example, we already know that…

No it isn't. Limits placed on capitalism, through regulation, might be an example of letting society (the system) sort itself out. If limits aren't introduced, the gap between rich and poor becomes too vast. It become futile for those who have little to even try to adjust their situation. I do believe in capitalism, but left to its own devices, it becomes obscene.

Left to its own devices and somewhat bizarrely, capitalism evolves strategies that include "social stability". Long-term prosperity becomes a part of the equation, with despotic wealth gaps an obstacle to that.

Nobody likes their head inside a guillotine! Or a world where their children couldn't live.

In other words, no central committees are needed when the actors align voluntarily. "Bread and games", it was called in Rome. It would take some fairly corrupt governments and very stupid businessmen to forget these lessons.

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