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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

#711

Post by AngryData »

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.

I agree with your other points but isn't it kind of your choice to move to DC, knowing full well that they lack full representation? It isn't like DC is this massive landscape of a bunch of natives who have lived there for generations and are too poor to move 10 miles away.

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

#712

Post by AngryData »

ChickeNES wrote: post #534
andrepd wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. By reasons I expounded in another comment I believe a percentage of any enterprises's shares (in the order of at least 20%) should be owned by the public and pay out an equal dividend to every citizen.

Luckily, any member of the public is free to buy AMZN :)

Of course that also requires excess capital to buy into. Most people can't afford significant amounts of capital investment though.

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

#713

Post by gameman144 »

ModernMech wrote: post #706
gameman144 wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, most of the net worth of these people isn't just sitting around in a big bucket of cash; the wealth of these people is overwhelmingly due to their ownership of their businesses. If I own a mom-and-pop sandwich shop worth $1 million, and I take a $50k salary, I imagine most people would be fine with that. If I grow this sandwich shop into a national franchise worth $1 billion and still take a $50k salary…

> If I grow this sandwich shop into a national franchise worth $1 billion It's very unlikely that you personally, singlehandedly would be able to build your sandwich shop into a billion dollar franchise. The value of Amazon is not a trillion dollars because of Jeff Bezos alone. He helped get it there, sure, and he deserves to be rewarded for that, but so did 800k other people. Can an Amazon driver afford a house, 2 c…

This is, in my opinion, the perfect example of where regulation should be applied though. If a business is playing by the rules and we as society aren't okay with the results, then those rules should be changed for all businesses, e.g. minimum wage raises.

The roadblocks to these laws is that they don't come for free, and loads of businesses would either no longer be viable or would be able to hire less. This is one of the ways that Amazon is building out its moat to prevent challengers (note that Amazon has had a $15 minimum wage for years). Of course there's a happy equilibrium somewhere in there, but this is not the role of Jeff Bezos (or my hypothetical sandwich shop) to figure out.

I expect my government to determine the rules of how society can function, and I expect businesses to be as efficient as possible within the bounds of those rules.

As an aside, though, none of this has to do with the concept of someone being forced to give up their own company. If a company needs to act a certain way, then the law should force the company to act that way for sure. If a company was following the law, though, the backlash for crappy outcomes falls firmly at the feet of that law.

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

#714

Post by [deleted] »

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"…

[deleted]

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

#715

Post by timmytokyo »

colordrops wrote: post #263
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…

These guys are stooges of the elite for maintaining narrative control. They are part of the same media bloc as the Washington Post, which Bezos owns - that bloc being neoliberal establishment. To call them "unbelievably good recipients" is orwell speak.

I can maybe see this argument being made against Van Jones. But Jose Andres?

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

#718

Post by cranesnake »

oh_sigh wrote: post #667
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?

Why should someone other than an elected official be allowed the power to manipulate legislation as corporate lobbies do?

It is not about money, it about money as a proxy for power over the country.

The guy you're talking to does not have enough money to affect disproportional change. It does not matter to anyone else what he does with it as it can't possibly infringe on their rights, unlike when corporations manipulate media and government.

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

#719

Post by philistine »

rootusrootus wrote: post #399
alttab wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has already done that, in less time, and took humans to the ISS.

So we should stop? SpaceX did it first, everyone else can just fold up shop? C'mon. Blue Origin has a proper rocket, it seems very capable. They even land the booster like SpaceX does. To be unimpressed with their achievements seems like sour grapes.

No, but the press has been crazy about this event to a dispiriting level. I'd have loved to see some restraint and clear criticism of their tiny hops.

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

#720

Post by howaboutnope »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #458
kelnos wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I understand that, but I think the belief among some people is that, as long as we are being irresponsible stewards of Earth, we will be equally irresponsible with any other planet we colonize. And if life on Earth is destroyed by a meteor, that will still be the case. Some seem to believe that this is a reason to get a handle on our own destructive tendencies toward our environment before we try to colonize oth…

Because Mars doesn't have life to mess up.... Isn't the Terra-forming technology that we will have to develop to make Mars habitable, basically aligned with what we will have to learn to repair/manage our relationship with the Earth's environment?

> Because Mars doesn't have life to mess up....

The issue isn't "messing up life", life will be fine. The issue is that we're knocking the supports in the forms of ecosystems out from under ourselves. Not to mention the human cost, e.g. potentially hundreds of millions of refugees. The potential for war, and the possible destructiveness of war, is immense.

Besides, starting "afresh" where there are no such supports to begin with, without Earth to be supported by initially is still facing same issues, but worse. Depending on that of all things saving humankind is like hoping a child "might" save their parents from their troubles 5 minutes after being born.

> Isn't the Terra-forming technology that we will have to develop to make Mars habitable, basically aligned with what we will have to learn to repair/manage our relationship with the Earth's environment?

Here too I see it the other way around: our civilizations not collapsing in massive wars over scraps is what is needed for civil space missions to go on, and the sustainability -- materially, socially individually -- which we would need to avert that from happening is also what we would need for space colonies to both come into grasp and to not turn into the wrong end of Star Trek episodes. You know, where we're not the visiting crew, but said crew shakes their heads in horror at.

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