Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 879 posts

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

#591

Post by xvilka »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #339
ixacto wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ord…

There are other planets that might be more hospitable for sustainability. It will require much more advanced technology, but even Venus colony might be promising in relatively short run. Not to speak about many icy words around the solar system. If we solve the nuclear fusion, then any icy world with plenty of water would become habitable.

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

#592

Post by mensetmanusman »

eli wrote: post #334
BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Congress voted to do that. They could undo it and make everyone a citizen of Virginia if they wanted to undo it.

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

#593

Post by andrepd »

pb7 wrote: post #572
andrepd wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and perhaps that might be a problem, don't you think?

No. I want people to keep being incentivized to create innovative companies, products, and services that make my life easier and more enjoyable. The people that are successful in doing so will reap rewards many orders of magnitude more than their employees that did not take on any risk and whose output is measured by “productivity”.

> I want people to keep being incentivized to create innovative companies, products, and services that make my life easier and more enjoyable.

Funny, I do too! That's why I don't want all the wealth and power in the hands of a few oligarchs, and that's why I want everyone to be properly compensated and rewarded for their work and their creations. Capitalism, especially in its current flavour, prevents this.

> their employees that did not take on any risk

If a business fails and closes down its employees will be out on the dole, and that's the best case scenario. They lose their health care, possibly their homes and other possessions. Capital risks what, materially? One less luxury auto? One less vacation across the globe this year? Probably not even that.

I confess I never really understood all that talk about "risk".

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

#594

Post by kennywinker »

jimbokun wrote: post #434
dumbfoundded wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“At scale”. Name an example of a failed alternative, and i’ll show you a country where the CIA plotted coupes and waged economic warfare against them. We’re like an abused spouse - we keep hearing “i’m the only one who’ll love you” from our abuser while they cut us off from our friends and family.

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

#595

Post by fork1 »

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…

The overall population is still way better now than it has been historically. I don't understand why both cannot be done in parallel anyway. It's not like we are investing everything in the space race, plenty goes on more earthly concerns.

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

#596

Post by fork1 »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #583
mdorazio wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with this line of reasoning is that money is generally not going to solve the problem of people barely surviving. In the vast majority of cases, sociopolitical issues are the root cause and throwing money at things doesn't really help. If you don't believe me, look at the history of aid to sub-saharan Africa. So there's no reason we can't both spend billionaires' money on space development and fix terrestri…

No, I think he's got something here. Surely Bezos could also spend some of his billions overthrowing African kleptocracies.

The issue is not overthrowing them, but finding a good replacement. Overthrowing one just to get another similar one is kinda pointless.

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

#597

Post by cwkoss »

xyzzyz wrote: post #554
cwkoss wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Bezos or Branson achieved orbital velocities, which is the minimum bar for doing useful things related to space. It really is just a carnival ride - it's not about who's in it, its that they didn't actually achieve anything: what they built has no utility except as a dick-measuring contest. Orbit is a little bit of upwards velocity and a whole lot of sideways velocity. They only did the much simpler former. T…

> Neither Bezos or Branson achieved orbital velocities, which is the minimum bar for doing useful things related to space. Well, ICBMs are very useful, and only require sub-orbital velocities, though I don't necessarily want Bezos or Branson to get those.

Do ICBMs have any practical uses besides delivering explosives?

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

#598

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

peteretep wrote: post #516
kube-system wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies. Like this?: https://kstp.com/kstpImages/repository/2021-07/richard-brans... I honestly don't think it's something bad to praise when only a handful of organizations have ever done it. [0] Thousands of people have climbed Everest, but it is still a commendable achievement. > Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have fr…

> nation-states You mean "countries", right, or are you trying to make some point about nationalism?

No, "nation-state" is trying to make about about someone's smartitude. It's like "thread actor" in that regard, i. e. its a big word that important people use in their CNN interviews. The racing strip of sentences, basically.

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

#599

Post by yupper32 »

aylmao wrote: post #543
jamesgreenleaf wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The Earth is going to die one day. [...] 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, who don't have our knowledge) then adapting, exploring, and surviving in space is what we must do. I think that's the gripe. We all wish to ensure our long-term survival, but worrying about becoming a multi-…

> sounds like making the wrong investment.

It's not the wrong investment. It's a different investment.

Other billionaires are working on some of the problems on your list, too, if that makes you feel better. The most prominent one being Bill Gates. He's working on the "we lose millions a year to disease" portion of your list. Do you hate on Bill Gates because he isn't solving world peace ("fighting wars" on your list)?

Space dominance is a multi-generational thing. It's something that will take a LONG time to figure out and perfect. If in 150 years we see an unavoidable rock hurling towards earth, there won't be time to figure out how to keep our species alive. We need to push forward now to have a chance.

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

#600

Post by bonestamp2 »

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 and which can sustain us better and more optimistic proposition than...

Why not both?

Post reply on HN