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Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

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Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#231

Post by robotastronaut »

sofixa wrote: post #219
Zelphyr wrote: post #9

All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…

> It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. It's what's next. I find it extremely weird that people are banking on a (almost literal) moonshot for the survival of our species. Isn't trying to stop/lessen the damage we're doing to the place we currently live and which can sustain us better and more optimistic proposition than hoping a metric shitton of things go perfectly after probably mil…

I personally don’t think many people are banking on colonizing another planet, but rather the technologies created as byproducts of that effort. Between energy creation, energy storage, thermal regulation, extraction and refinement of products necessary for life (oxygen, water, etc), and transformation of atmospheric gases, there’s plenty that can help keep our current planet healthy and suitable for human life.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#232

Post by maverick-iceman »

sigstoat wrote: post #194
acituan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. It's what's next. The core fallacy is to assume whatever made Earth less than ideal will not follow us to the new destination. To assume our survivability as species only depends on the locale, not what we will eventually turn that locale into. This happened with every new frontier. The romanticism of "it will be better in the new place" is baked…

> The core fallacy is to assume whatever made Earth less than ideal will not follow us to the new destination. there are plenty of existential risks which can't "follow" anything, or happen to more than one planet simultaneously. does living on two planets eliminate all existential risks? no, and nobody has claimed that.

You see earthly stuff as a risk because all the positives are grandfathered in and you only see the negatives.

Bats and pagolins, now are public enemy #1. In general animal reservoirs for viruses and species jumps can't possibly happen on Mars because there are no animals and no other specie. So we have eliminated that risk right?

But....that also means no food, no ecosystem, no biosphere, basically absence of everything. So the benefits provided by bats , poultry, bovines etc. outweigh the negatives of a pandemic every 100 years or so

Even an Earth ruined by supervolcanoes, mega asteroid, nuclear war and climate change all at the same time..is better than Mars.

The only cases in which Mars comes out on top are a huge comet impact and a Gamma Ray burst which strikes the Earth but somehow misses Mars.

Bezos is right saying that we have to go to space to save the Earth, then we can talk sci-fi type things such as mind uploading ourselves in silica, and once that process is complete than Mars and the Earth will be equally valid to host us. But that ship won't set sail for a long while.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#233

Post by dantheman »

Salgat wrote: post #126
pb7 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are paying exactly what they owe otherwise the IRS would come after them. You have equal access to the same infrastructure. Feel free to start a trillion dollar company.

No ones saying otherwise, what we're saying is raise the taxes to something reasonable. >You have equal access to the same infrastructure. Feel free to start a trillion dollar company. And this is such a lazy cop-out that ignores that Bezos had parents who funded his company (to the tune of half a million in today's money) during a time where he was in the right place at the right time. It insane how ignorant people…

Taxes barely go to roads and infrastructure they go to welfare and warfare.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#234

Post by Layke1123 »

MikeHolman wrote: post #220
hemloc_io wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's really fair to lump Bezos, Branson, and Musk into the same bucket. Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that wer…

They definitely aren't all at the same level right now, but I'm happy for the competition. Hopefully it will drive innovation.

Since when has competition ever spurred innovation?

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#235

Post by pphysch »

It's interesting that Bezos is coming out with these big PR initiatives after stepping down as Amazon CEO. As the world's richest individual and face of Amazon, he endured a lot of (perhaps justified) smear campaigns, but didn't really fight back in a major way, like target the (more wealthy) Waltons or something. The MBS phone hacking scandal got a terse, professional Medium article.

It's also interesting to note that the horrendous stories of Frito Lay factory worker conditions are coming out now, despite being a widespread and longstanding issue. Previously, the media narrative around poor work conditions was all "Amazon, Amazon, Amazon", with little indication that it's a systemic issue with--let's be honest--far worse cases in America.

Now Bezos is going full throttle. To what end? Why not operate from the shadows on a megayacht? If it is all ego, why not do this populism drive earlier to mitigate some of the damage?

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#236

Post by coliveira »

Zelphyr wrote: post #9

All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…

> It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species.

No, it's not we. It's them: billionaires and their friends. Other people will never go to the moon and mars because billionaires are using their money to lobby politicians in order avoid taxes and get more subsidies at our expense.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#237

Post by aeternum »

weare138 wrote: post #24
Zelphyr wrote: post #9

All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…

>It's how we get to the moon We already did that. Why not just support NASA?

NASA is beholden to congressional funding, and congress is supposed to act in the interest of their constituents.

Even if we assume everyone is rational and the system works as-designed, NASA must work to keep each state and even district within that state happy. That means hundreds of small contracts and explosions of complexity in order to do some of the work in each state.

NASA's mission designs for the last 50 years have been a mess of complexity and ridiculously expensive, and rarely happened as a result. Only now with the commercial contractors are things starting to change.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#238

Post by jimbokun »

cassac wrote: post #81
catillac wrote: post #2

There will be a lot of cynicism on this post from the HN crowd, but these are unbelievably good recipients. I have interacted with Jose Andres many times, and go to his DC restaurants when I visit, and he is truly a wonderful soul who spends all his effort helping others. I don’t know much about Van Jones beyond what I see on TV, but if he’s of the same character as Jose Andres, that is stellar and they will both do…

It deserves cynicism. If he wasn’t a jerk he’d just pay his employees more and maybe pay some taxes. When everyone is fair upfront they don’t need to give us free turkeys on thanksgiving we can buy our own.

I don't understand the point about trying to make this a character referendum on one specific billionaire.

Just make federal minimum wage $15 / hour and be done with it. Why is there so much rhetorical energy wasted on singling out one billionaire or another, as if they are going to feel bad and unilaterally raise everyone's wages in some kind of real world Ebeneezer Scrooge moment?

Democrats technically control Presidency and both US Houses of Congress, but it's looking like they won't accomplish anything because of Manchin's love for the sanctity of the filibuster is greater than his love for delivering concrete economic benefits for his constituents.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#239

Post by jonny_eh »

pb7 wrote: post #227
jonny_eh wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They made billions from excellent businesses on which the world relied during a time of crisis. What would people have done without the likes of Amazon and fast delivery of nearly everything? They've been rewarded enough already. Sometimes enough is enough, it's obscene.

So where do you draw the line? What's the number? And when that number is reached, what happens exactly?

100x the poverty line. Excess earnings goes to taxes.

Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

#240

Post by jimbokun »

ironrabbit wrote: post #118
cassac wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It deserves cynicism. If he wasn’t a jerk he’d just pay his employees more and maybe pay some taxes. When everyone is fair upfront they don’t need to give us free turkeys on thanksgiving we can buy our own.

Genuine question because I'm out of the loop: it looks to me like the "Bezos doesn't pay taxes" argument is just pointing out that most of his wealth sits in unrealized gains in amazon stock. When he sells stock, he pays taxes. Is there more to it that I'm missing? Is the prevailing argument that we should be paying taxes on unrealized capital gains?

If you ask Elizabeth Warren, yes.
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