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

661–670 of 879 posts

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

#661

Post by dumbfoundded »

kennywinker wrote: post #594
jimbokun wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I sometimes think we deserve capitalism. Capitalism is the best solution when you assume people are selfish, immoral, and all-around kind of evil. It's a system to incentive people to work together despite our awful nature.

I certainly don't think it's the best system imaginable given different assumptions or conditions. I hope as the basic needs of more and more people are met, we will be able to come together. I think most evils in the world can be explained by desperation caused by scarcity but some certainly can't.

I'm not sure if we deserve a better system, at least not yet.

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

#662

Post by TaylorAlexander »

dane-pgp wrote: post #623
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like “manifest destiny” where we destroyed thousands of indigenous civilizations in the country because “it was next”. I’m starting to come around to the idea that this kind of thinking is exactly why we have poverty and hunger in the USA. We allow individuals to accumulate endless wealth even when that money could be used to help those who need a helping hand. I’m not saying we necessarily have the government…

> Amazon draws a lot of profit (presumably) from millions of cheap plastic objects from overseas which will break and end up in landfills in some poor country. So you're saying he's found a way to make carbon sequestration profitable at scale? Maybe he is a hero.

It sounds like you might be joking, but no the plastic does not come from carbon removed from the air. We remove it from the ground as oil, turn it in to plastic, ship it overseas in carbon polluting container ships, transport each item to an end customer, and then transport them to the landfill where they will persist for generations.

So no, I am not saying that.

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

#663

Post by dane-pgp »

fighterpilot wrote: post #33
weare138 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's how we get to the moon We already did that. Why not just support NASA?

Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies. Government is good when the public externalities are large, the private benefit is small and there's an extremely large capital requirements. This is not the case any longer for rocket tech, and so it makes zero sense to have the government do it. It'd be like asking the government to make sma…

> Because something like VTOL rockets can only be innovated by a private company focused on unit economics and scale economies.

I don't think anyone is proposing that government employees (or politicians) actually design the rockets themselves. The question is, can governments oversee and fund the development of innovations like VTOL rockets? And the answer to that question is "yes"[0].

As for why innovation in that field stopped, and had to be picked up again by private companies, I think it's worth asking whether large companies have undue influence over the sorts of projects that governments choose to pursue.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

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

#664

Post by oh_sigh »

joshuahaglund wrote: post #80

I just think this money shoulda been paid in taxes so we could collectively solve problems instead of some guy hand picking a couple lottery winners.

Is anyone ever allowed to have money they give away? Or should all money which would be given away instead have been taken by the government as taxes? Even if Bezos paid $200M more in taxes, it isn't clear that he wouldn't have given this $200M away.

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

#665

Post by coliveira »

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”.

> employees that did not take on any risk

You must be kidding that Bezos took any risk... The only risk he had was that he wouldn't continue making money from his well paid Wall Street job. He was already well off when he started raising other people's money to found Amazon. So, no, he didn't take any risk to justify all this money. Only the very deluded think he did anything of great risk. He is an oligarch who exploit others, and doesn't deserve even a fraction of that fortune.

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

#666

Post by gameman144 »

aeturnum wrote: post #461
ncallaway wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is unbelievably pessimistic. It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. It's just that what the parent poster means by "how we survive as a species" and what you mean are...different things. Going to the moon, going to mars, are necessary for the survival of our species...on a 100,000 year time horizon. At some point, something catastrophic may happen to earth. An asteroid impact, or a Gamma Ray Burst, or some othe…

First, I favor space exploration and think we, as a society, should spend more money on it than we do now. Second, calling this 'realistic' is nonsense: > It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. [...] on a 100,000 year time horizon. It has been 65 years since Sputnik was launched, so you are projecting out 1,565x that duration into the future. I'm sure you picked a nice, big, round number, but I think it's really impor…

> I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to ban space exploration until climate change is under control.

Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way:

* Ban climate change research until hunger is under control

* Ban efforts to curb hunger until war is under control

* Ban efforts to stop war until disease is under control

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

#667

Post by oh_sigh »

zapnuk wrote: post #185

If billionaires entrust their money to more or less random people for philanthropic objectives I rather have them be taxed higher and let a (somewhat inefficient) government decide how to invest the money. At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance.

Why should you have any say in how Bezos spends his money? Do you accept when other people tell you how to spend your money?

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

#668

Post by WalterBright »

agrover wrote: post #634
WalterBright wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like find one that isn't. I bet you can't :-)

Salk and Polio vaccine.

Salk said: "It's brought me enormous gratification"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk

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

#669

Post by coliveira »

pb7 wrote: post #625
andrepd wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

Well then if it's so easy, then why doesn't everyone just start their own businesses? There's no risk after all. Get a loan from a bank and start a small business -- millions of people do this around the world! Easy. Guaranteed wealth, right? >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 posses…

> Get a loan from a bank and start a small business

That's the point: Bezos didn't get a loan from a bank, he just raised money from other rich people. He never had even the risk of repaying a bank loan, for Christ's sake! Most people who want to start small business are a much more precarious situation, and that's why they don't start businesses as easily as you want.

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

#670

Post by cartoonworld »

dane-pgp wrote: post #623
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like “manifest destiny” where we destroyed thousands of indigenous civilizations in the country because “it was next”. I’m starting to come around to the idea that this kind of thinking is exactly why we have poverty and hunger in the USA. We allow individuals to accumulate endless wealth even when that money could be used to help those who need a helping hand. I’m not saying we necessarily have the government…

> Amazon draws a lot of profit (presumably) from millions of cheap plastic objects from overseas which will break and end up in landfills in some poor country. So you're saying he's found a way to make carbon sequestration profitable at scale? Maybe he is a hero.

Plastic does not sequester carbon.

However, if there were a bioplastic that did not degrade or a process to reclaim atmospheric co2 into plastic stock, it would be a great way to sequester carbon so long as it does not break down and is piled up somewhere forever.

Post reply on HN