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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

#331

Post by WalterBright »

acituan wrote: post #59
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. 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…

What are you afraid that humanity will do to Mars? There's no life there to disrupt, no ecosystem, no environment to destroy, nothing to displace.

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

#332

Post by fallingknife »

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…

What is this rockets and co2 argument that's being parroted everywhere lately? Yes it does emit co2, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to cars.

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

#333

Post by varispeed »

staunch wrote: post #226
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…

There's no reason to get into comparisons, except to the extent that it helps push them to compete harder, and make more progress. A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for. They can leverage their relatively small funding to push much larger government funding in productive directions. They're better than most government administrators and don't have as many constra…

> A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for.

I'd rather see them paying fair wages and taxes. It's hugely inappropriate that they make billions while their workers struggle to pay rent.

It's only possible, because those poor people are too worked out to protest and do something about effectively being slaves.

These rockets seem more like modern day pyramids, only difference is that they will not last 3000 years.

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

#334

Post by eli »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #182
eli wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a proportional share

Complain to your senators, then? Congress is who sets the algorithm defining how taxes are owed, not the taxpayers themselves. Have you ever written the IRS a check for more than what you owe them (or declined to accept a tax refund)?

I live in DC so I don't have any Senators and barely any say in how my tax dollars get spent.

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

#335

Post by monocasa »

bpt3 wrote: post #327
monocasa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And made $100B that year. Can I get a 1% effective tax rate too?

He only has a 1% effective rate if you change the definition of effective rate. I assume you're fine with making that change, but the federal government isn't currently.

The federal government that Amazon spends millions lobbying.

I'm well aware that what they're doing is legal; I'm saying it shouldn't be.

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

#336

Post by WalterBright »

lefrenchy wrote: post #37
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…

We literally got to the moon before any billionaires bought joy rides to lower orbit, so what you’re saying is proven false already by history? It’s so insane to me that people honestly believe that we need billionaires to fund all their hedonic desires in order to achieve anything good and useful as a society. It’s provably false and frankly an absolutely pessimistic view of society and humanity.

Government did indeed put man on the moon. But they did it at an insane and unsustainable cost, which is why the moon was then abandoned.

Musk/Bezos/Branson are making space travel a paying proposition, which makes all the difference.

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

#337

Post by bluedevil2k »

arrosenberg wrote: post #277
andreilys wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you come up with any projects the US government has done successfully in the last 50 years though?

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

#338

Post by fallingknife »

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…

Would you say that it's reasonable that if you start a business, you get to keep 10% of the value created?

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

#339

Post by semi-extrinsic »

ixacto wrote: post #262
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…

We need to make humanity a multi-planetary species, Mars is just the beginning. The moonshot is just a tech validation, then we can send humans to the rest of the planets and the belt too. Figuring out how to solve pollution on Earth is also doable with modern technology. We can terraform Earth to be more habitable as well, we could melt the antarctic icecap and colonize it. Maybe even make a new civilization there w…

Am I the only one who calls bullshit on this? Let's say Elon pulls off going to Mars and establishing a permanent colony within the next 50 years. What plausible doomsday scenarios are there where everyone on Earth dies, but the people on Mars survive and are completely self-sustainable and able to grow their population exponentially?

I mean, even if 99.99% of all humans on Earth are killed, there will be several orders of magnitude more people left on Earth than in the colony on Mars, and they will have a lot more resources to play with.

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

#340

Post by sgpl »

consumer451 wrote: post #5
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…

Another reason to temporarily suspend cynicism is that this is a very interesting method of philanthropy. Allowing the recipients to chose their own destinations for the money could lead to a more diverse and disruptive set of expenditures. I am interested to see this award program's effects in 10-20 years. Is this an annual event? I never saw a definitive answer on that.

I mean I'd say Mackenzie Scott (fka: Mackenzie Bezos) is someone who should be lauded more here. Not that it's a competition or that one takes away from the other but she's doing more to chip away at the status quo of philanthropic giving vs others.

In 2020, she gave away nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations. And has distributed $2.74 billion so far this year to about 286 orgs. From what I've read, these grants/donations don't come with any strings attached unlike grants from a lot of big foundations.

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