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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

#271

Post by superfrank »

hemloc_io wrote: post #138
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…

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…

> Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration.

I'm not sure why people feel this need to draw this weird line in the sand and say that SpaceX is okay because Musk built a business, but Blue Origin and Virgin are bad because... reasons?

Technology advances for all sorts of reasons. Lamborghinis exist because a farmer was pissed at Ferrari. Motorolla made the first cellphone to steal the thunder from AT&T. Hell, the first space race back in the 60s was basically done to flex on the USSR.

If this is all a massive dick measuring contest, I honestly couldn't care less. It's advancing space exploration and providing competition in the space. Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy.

When I hear people complain about this being a vanity project like that somehow taints the accomplishment, all I can think about is a particularly on the nose quote from the TV show Community. "Who cares if Troy thinks he's all that? Maybe he is. You think astronauts go to the moon because they hate oxygen? No, they're trying to impress their high school's prom king."

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

#272

Post by coliveira »

pb7 wrote: post #102
peakaboo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to put this in a polite way... Let's just say your brain seems to have gotten too much TV entertainment. These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. People can't get toilet breaks at amazon warehouse without being harassed. This guy is a world class parasite. There is nothing "we"…

>These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. 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? >These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. No one makes minimum wage at Amazon. >People can't get toilet…

> They made billions from excellent businesses

Bezos is not 1 million times more productive than other human beings. He just managed to create a system that exploits people in a massive scale. That's not what I call excellent business.

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

#273

Post by ThomPete »

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…

You are assuming we know all the problems we might encounter. We don't, in fact there are many ways the human species can go extinct that are not fault of our own.

The best we can do is to create general knowledge which allow us to better combat future challenges. Climate change is a potential problem but not existential and not something we can't handle with our current technological understanding.

The idea that humans can somehow survive or progress without an impact is IMO missing the entire premise for human survival if that is in fact what you want.

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

#274

Post by kelnos »

jamesgreenleaf wrote: post #259
sofixa wrote: post #219

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. 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…

The Earth is going to die one day. The Sun will die too. There is no guarantee that intelligent life will survive on this single planet, even if we do a perfect job of taking care of it. Catastrophic, species-killing events can happen at any time. If we wish to ensure the long-term survival of the only intelligent life in the universe that we know about (as well as the survival of all the other creatures on Earth, wh…

I think part of the negativity is the expectation that we'll eventually screw up any other plant we inhabit as well. Which I think is true, unless we make some fundamental changes to our society.

But I agree that it's important to make planetary colonization a priority now rather than waiting. We can -- and should -- develop the technology and expertise needed to build a settlement on Mars while simultaneously trying to arrest and reverse some of the damage we've done to Earth. The latter is unfortunately largely a political process, not as much a technological and scientific one, so it will take a lot more time and effort than it should.

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

#275

Post by edmundsauto »

arrosenberg wrote: post #265
edmundsauto wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is wealth being redistributed, or are the Bezos’ simply slurping up the new money that have been so abundant? It matters, I think. Because if people are only getting relatively poorer when compared to the top 1%, it’s not as bad as if they are losing their standard of living. There are other issues about how excessively rich people can distort our society, but that’s not so much about the redistribution but the distr…

> Is wealth being redistributed, or are the Bezos’ simply slurping up the new money that have been so abundant? How do you differentiate these? If you have 100 dollars, distributed evenly among 10 people, and then you print 100 more and give them all to Jeffery, then you have redistributed the wealth even though you only printed new money. He went from 10% of the power to 55%.

I differentiate distributed from re-distributed.

He may have a higher percentage of available wealth, but it’s not like other people have lost their money.

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

#276

Post by dragonwriter »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #251
Salgat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who pays for the roads that Amazon depends on for deliveries and employee commutes? Who pays for the k-12 educations and public universities that these employees used to become educated? Who pays for the entire social infrastructure that allows Amazon to even exist? That's what people mean when they say Amazon isn't paying their fair share. They depend on us and taxpayer benefits more than almost any other company in…

> Who pays for the roads that Amazon depends on for deliveries and employee commutes? If they’re the interstate highways, then the gas tax pays for most of that. And Amazon buys a LOT of gas.

> If they’re the interstate highways, then the gas tax pays for most of that.

That's mostly a subsidy from passenger cars to larger vehicles, because road wear goes up much more rapidly with vehicle weight than fuel consumption does (IIRC, the former with roughly the fourth power of weight, the latter sublinearly.) Since Amazon mostly isn't using passenger cars as part of its delivery fleet, its actually being subsidized by gas tax, not paying its way.

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

#277

Post by arrosenberg »

andreilys wrote: post #26
minikites wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I personally don't care that these billionaires are spending their money on vacations to orbit. It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. Really? Which billionaires personally funded the Apollo program? The progress of our species shouldn't have to rely on the fickle preferences of one person, their enormous wealth should be taxed and the money should be used for programs like NASA and it…

You would be surprised to learn that history is littered with examples of the fickle preferences of one person impacting the trajectory of the human species. Also I'm curious why you think that a government is better suited at spending money. From what I've seen this leads to lobbyists doing all they can to curry favor and secure contracts despite the fact that they deliver a sub-par product.

Lobbyists are paid for by private businesses, to win contracts which will be poorly performed by privately owned contractors.

OTOH the US Government, with programs run by publicly paid employees: went to the moon, built a ton of dams, including the Hoover and Grand Coulee, electrified the Tennessee Valley, built the interstate highway system, etc.

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

#278

Post by ModernMech »

tdfx wrote: post #36
kmnc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, when you take your inspiration from television and sci-fi movies it does seem like rich people doing vanity ego projects is the best way for us to survive as a species. Assuming you mean mean the "rich" when you say species, because unless you are watching different movies then me the non rich don't survive or are turned into a slave class. The Earth...well its prospects are even grimmer. It is stupid to be c…

> I don't buy the idea that spending on getting the hell off of Earth is the best way to save the species What are the alternatives? On a long enough timeline, it won't be possible for life to survive here. And even on shorter timelines, trusting in untested asteroid deflection plans seems pretty risky, as well. Seems that diversifying ourselves in multiple locations as soon as possible is the best way to guarantee s…

On a long enough timescale the heat death of the universe will occur and there won't be any free energy left for life to exist. Therefore we must invest massive resources today to finding another universe. All life in the universe depends on this, so you can see how important it is.

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

#279

Post by theodric »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #255
aeternum wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to go to space because if we don't, all of humanity will go extinct. The earth won't last forever and also tends not to fare well when it goes 1:1 with asteroids or nukes.

Humanity won't go extinct any time soon, and at this point in time focusing resources on fighting problems like climate change is infinitely more rewarding than any stupid dicking around on the moon or mars. Mars won't ever be even as habitable as a thoroughly fucked up earth. It is a huge waste of time and resources that could be better employed on more immediate problems.

It's possible to care about more than one thing at once. Some people simply cannot be motivated to work on climate change, but there are 7.5 billion people on the planet, and they don't all need to work on the same thing. We just need a critical mass, the same as for any other problem.

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

#280

Post by [deleted] »

peakaboo wrote: post #38
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…

I don't know how to put this in a polite way... Let's just say your brain seems to have gotten too much TV entertainment. These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. People can't get toilet breaks at amazon warehouse without being harassed. This guy is a world class parasite. There is nothing "we"…

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