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

Post by elil17 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 11:59 PM UTC

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…

Post by prepend » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:01 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #385

prepend wrote: post #370

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So not the highest, but above average. It’s cool you know people who make $19.33 but I was referencing average pay. Target seems to pay $13.68/hour [0] and BestBuy $13.69 [1] so they pay substantially worse than Amazon. It’s hard to systematically understand working conditions though so hard to compare. But again, the claim that Amazon employees aren’t paid well seems unsubstantiated. [0] https://www.payscale.com/res…

>Target seems to pay $13.68/hour You're comparing apples and oranges. The $13.68/hr includes high school cashiers. The average wage for a Target warehouse worker is $17, again from your own link [0] on page 2. The average range for best buy is $15, well north of the $12.61 Amazon is paying. And AGAIN, far better working conditions. So no, not unsubstantiated. And no, it isn't hard to understand working conditions unl…

Post by dumbfoundded » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #488

dumbfoundded wrote: post #374

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Governments actually make the risky investments. From infrastructure to nukes to the internet to space travel to particle colliders to fusion. The governments that have made these investments are the ones that do the best job of representing the interests of millions of people. If you take the limit of concentrating wealth, you get a dictatorship. They don't seem to do much. It's hard to believe in democracy and insa…

> If you take the limit of concentrating wealth, you get a dictatorship. Except that's never happened, not even close. Ironically, the modern activists are busy trying to force businesses into getting involved in politics unrelated to their business. This smacks of foolishness to me, as in be careful what one wishes for. > It's hard to believe in democracy and insane wealth concentration at the same time. Wealth in a…

Post by dane-pgp » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:04 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #521

coliveira wrote: post #272

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> 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.

> Bezos is not 1 million times more productive Bezos has unambiguously produced 1m times more than what most humans have.

Post by ehsankia » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 12:05 AM UTC

dmz73 wrote: post #550

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…

The problem is not that billionaires are spending their money on space exploration. The problem is that we have many billionaires and millions (billions world wide) are barely surviving. Do you want our species to expand to other planets with this kind of society? We will all end up being slaves if this keeps going on, not in 19th century sense but modern kind - forced to work endless hours just to scrape enough mone…