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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

#741

Post by dd444fgdfg »

trainsplanes wrote: post #638
dd444fgdfg wrote: post #626

I'm glad billionaires like Bezos exist. They can choose to fund grand visions when people who need votes either don't, or they do and the funding gets cut after the next election. This is one of the ways China is able to execute long term strategy better than the west, they can maintain focus. We're not able to do that without a significant necessity (winning a cold war). Get over your jealousy of the billionaires. S…

Imagine a world where instead of saying "hey, people in your town are dying on the streets, your water is full of lead, you can't afford medical treatment, and your children can't possibly afford college, but quit being jealous of lucky rich people! It's not fair to them", we instead said "we could take just a little bit of unfairly acquired cash from mega billionaires and make the lives of 300 million people measura…

the problems people have is not the fault of the billionaires.

sometimes it's their fault. sometimes it's their families. mostly it's their communities.

the existence or lack-of of billionaire going into space is going to have zero impact on homelessness, water quality, medical treatment, and your kids going to college.

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

#742

Post by anigbrowl »

bpt3 wrote: post #329
RIMR wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting a living wage from a full-time job, especially when you're working for one of the most profitable companies in the country headed by the wealthiest man on the planet, isn't a "handout mindset". You'd have to be an absolute doormat to accept poverty in exchange for your full-time labor. "Get a different job" isn't the solution here, because there is clearly a massive demand for jobs at Amazon, and those jobs…

Define "fairly".

S/he did in the first sentence. Please don't engage in this sort of verbal aggression.

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

#743

Post by anigbrowl »

chroem- wrote: post #61
edmundsauto wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that communism is an economic idea, which was used by regimes that did brutal things. Whereas the Nazi ideology drove the violence. In one case, it was correlated. In another, causative.

A core tenet of communist ideology is violent overthrow of democratic governments to implement a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both are rooted in violence.

Not actually true.

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

#744

Post by telesilla »

superfrank wrote: post #271
hemloc_io wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's really fair to lump Bezos, Branson, and Musk into the same bucket. Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that wer…

> Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I'm not sure why people feel this need to draw this weird line in the sand and say that SpaceX is okay because Musk built a business, but Blue Origin and Virgin are bad because... reasons? Technology advances for all sorts of reasons. Lamborghinis exist because a farmer was…

As much as we'd like to think otherwise, tech can be political. Think what happened with Edison and Tesla for example : we could be living in a very different world. It's OK to criticize the development of technology because of who and how it's used.

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

#745

Post by thrav »

ishjoh wrote: post #528
gameswithgo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

orrr, maybe bezos is also very progressive?

Then he doesn't walk the walk. He has ample opportunity to write a check to the government and rally for tax schemes that directly and only effect billionaires.

That’s a pretty narrow definition of “progressive”

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

#748

Post by lasc4r »

yupper32 wrote: post #599
aylmao wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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)?

Relying on the goodwill of billionaires is a problem.

>We need to push forward now to have a chance.

We need to get our house in order now to have a chance. I don't know how that isn't obvious.

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

#749

Post by spideymans »

ThomPete wrote: post #273
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…

You are assuming we know all the problems we might encounter. We don't, in fact there are many ways the human species can go extinct that are not fault of our own. The best we can do is to create general knowledge which allow us to better combat future challenges. Climate change is a potential problem but not existential and not something we can't handle with our current technological understanding. The idea that hum…

> Climate change is a potential problem but not existential and not something we can't handle with our current technological understanding.

Climate change is not existential to humanity, but it is existential to human civilization as we know it.

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