Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by dheera » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

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…

> Isn't trying to stop/lessen the damage we're doing to the place we currently live

There are lots of people working on that problem in parallel.

It's worth exploring multiple solutions.

Also, even if we stop damaging the Earth, the sun will damage it in a few hundred million years. We will at some point need a new home.

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

#432

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

jl2718 wrote: post #406

danem wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is what has left me most confused by this decision. Are Van Jones and an incredibly successful celebrity chef really the best he could come up with? If I were Bezos I'd at least give the money to a person or organization that would help improve my PR. edit: And by this I meant things like paying for poor kids college tuition etc. I guarantee no one in the media will be talking about this story, and where Va…

I think he just hired CNN for that.

CNN != the anchors

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

#433

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #317

riantogo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the romanticized version. The history of man is exploration, expansion and exploitation. Destroying everything nice in its path. We destroyed other species, our own species if they looked different, and finally we have all but destroyed the planet. Rather than staying on that path maybe a better approach for humanity is compassion, kindness and helping each other out. Having said that, I'm totally okay with b…

> as it puts money back in the economy That's the rich people hoarding cash theory. They don't hoard any cash. All of it is invested in the economy. Even "cash" deposits in the bank are, as the bank loans out a multiple of those deposits.

Rich people hoard bitcoins, now.

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

#434

Post by jimbokun » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

dumbfoundded wrote: post #405

jimbokun wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given current level of disfunction in the US government, I'll take Bezos just picking who he thinks can do the most good with the money.

It's a classic conservative strategy. Take over a government program, run it into the ground, use it as evidence that governments don't work, and then run for office on a platform of dismantling the broken government. The essential problem with the idea of government is that it requires people to cooperate in good faith. People who say government doesn't work are essentially arguing that people cannot cooperate with…

At scale, capitalist economies with democratic representative governments still seem like the most effective way to organize people working together.

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

#435

Post by misiti3780 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

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"…

He's a parasite because the company (which hired 100K new workers during COVID) that he started and owns a shit-ton of equity in went up in the past year because of lockdowns?

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

#436

Post by maccam94 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #284

geocrasher wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. False. I hate to be "that guy" but neither Bezos or Branson made it to orbit. Those were sub-orbital flights with parabolic trajectories. To use your analogies: If Tesla were the Ferrari, then Virgin Galactic and friends would be…

You're correct, but that doesn't really change the point I was trying to make Since you've edited your post, I'll respond to the rest. > But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves. If Bezos or Branson had sent someone else up in their place, does that really change anything? Sure, it's expensive and only the super wealthy can afford to go into space right now, but th…

I think it's viewed as wasteful because it doesn't actually get people into orbit, AND it is expensive. Thus, it's only really appealing to rich people with cash to burn. These vehicles aren't even stepping stones to orbital rockets, and orbital launch prices are dropping. It's much more likely that SpaceX will offer tickets to orbit for $25k in the next 5-10 years than it will be for Virgin Galactic to do so. Blue Origin at least has an orbital rocket in development, but who knows if/when it'll even start being fabricated.

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

#437

Post by teawrecks » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #420

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. This is unbelievably pessimistic. You're literally saying that Earth is beyond repair and the only way for humans to survive is to move to a rock in orbit that we've spent a total of 3 days on in the past 70 years, or to a planet no one has visited that has radiation that makes life essentially impossible for us. Assuming that's true, let's run som…

That's not what they're saying at all. Imagine if at some point in the history of the human species we just stopped exploring, stopped adapting, and just focused on preserving what we had and nothing more. We wouldn't be who we are today. Not just in the technological sense but in the human sense. The drive to explore the unknown is fundamentally human. The challenge of space and mars is the "final frontier".

The real criticism I have is that it's a false dichotomy. We need BOTH exploration and exploitation. Both greed and fear. Both mutation and rote replication. A species can't survive without a balance of both.

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

#438

Post by dpcx » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

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?

This seems like a pretty good place, really. https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1241843944238923777...

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

#439

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #419

bigthymer wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do. Why? Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Despite the old stereotype of poor people blowing it all on booze and drugs, in reality, most people put it to good use. This is also another reason why UBI has started gaining more support.

I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation). It’s almost unbelievable that investing in education and apprenticeship is considered a negative thing but giving straight up cash from Billionaires is popular. Homelessness and poverty needs to be tackled by getting these people jobs.

> I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation).

Huh? Bezos giving away money likely isn't going to lead to inflation. The money supply is held constant here.

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

#440

Post by pb7 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

amazoningrace wrote: post #404

pb7 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 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? You're building an argument atop the assumption that if Amazon didn't exist, nothing else would be available. Amazon's strategy is to spend money that no other company can spend (by forgoing profits) to be the fastest / cheape…

Well written reply so I'll try to address thoroughly.

>You're building an argument atop the assumption that if Amazon didn't exist, nothing else would be available.

I cannot be making this argument because Amazon exists and we have many other options. We also had many other options before Amazon. Despite this, Amazon became an e-commerce powerhouse. Why? I suspect it's because Amazon is by the far the best option for consumers and others are only close because they adopted many of the same guiding principles like fast free shipping and easy returns.

>Amazon's strategy is to spend money that no other company can spend (by forgoing profits) to be the fastest / cheapest option available. Bezos' innovation is not the "fast shipping" or "broad range of products" Amazon offers, his innovation was the foresight to understand how to dominate the market and the gumption to do it.

He dominated the market because he offered those things. How else would Amazon be able to overtake its much larger competitors? Amazon is not operating at a loss with external funding like many startups, it simply reinvests in itself because it makes incredibly impressive use of its resources. Other companies could do the same but as it turns out, it's quite difficult to repeatedly leverage your profits into bigger and better outcomes. Apple and Google sit on a pile of cash because they don't know how to best make use of it despite a history of successes.

>A single business that owns the sales and distribution of goods is one possible solution to the problem you describe, absolutely, and it's pretty clear that Amazon is doing the best job at that solution... but it's not the only solution, it's one of many.

Nothing stops me from shopping elsewhere and I frequently do. Best Buy gets much of my business for certain products because they've been quite good ever since their early 2010s turn around. eBay gets all of my business for used products. Walmart, Target, and regional grocery stores (not Whole Foods) get the rest. And I shop online mercilessly and don't have a particularly strong taste for Amazon (despite my countless comments in this thread would suggest -- I'm simply arguing for principles) so I'm as decent of a gauge for the state of things as anyone.