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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

#791

Post by andrepd »

lend000 wrote: post #535
Traster wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still orders of magnitude longer than our distance to the Roman Empire. We've gone from no flight to space travel in 150 years and you're worried about 50 million years.

I'm not worried at all, because the jealous, anti-progressive, pessimistic commenters littering this thread are not the dominant force in society (even if they did have a numbers advantage, which I don't believe they do, they would lose by the inherent virtue of the weakness in their personalities), and people like Musk, Bezos, and the thousands of engineers executing their visions will ensure humanity has self-susta…

You drank the kook-aid bud, that's all I can say to that.

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

#792

Post by mewpmewp2 »

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-…

There's specialists with different passions everywhere, and it's good that they exist. Having everyone focus on only the problems you mentioned wouldn't add to them. It would have diminishing returns. There's an evolutionary reason why different people naturally develop different passions, from maintenance to innovation to many other categories.

For example would you divert Elon Musk to start solving one of the problems you mentioned and still do that with similar passion? Would you expect that to help the situation?

And also this type of investment is diversification.

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

#793

Post by m4rtink »

WalterBright wrote: post #331
acituan wrote: post #59

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. The core fallacy is to assume whatever made Earth less than ideal will not follow us to the new destination. To assume our survivability as species only depends on the locale, not what we will eventually turn that locale into. This happened with every new frontier. The romanticism of "it will be better in the new place" is baked…

What are you afraid that humanity will do to Mars? There's no life there to disrupt, no ecosystem, no environment to destroy, nothing to displace.

Not to mention the technical base needed to go to space, that could very well be damaged by even lesser disasters.

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

#794

Post by mewpmewp2 »

coliveira wrote: post #272
pb7 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. They made billions from excellent businesses on which the world relied during a time of crisis. What would people have done without the likes of Amazon and fast delivery of nearly everything? >These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. No one makes minimum wage at Amazon. >People can't get toilet…

> 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.

He has created million or more times more value than an average human being.

To make it simple.

Would you live in a village where you have 1000 people with 1 apple to eat, or 999 people with 3 apples to eat and one guy with 1000 apples, because he was able to find a way to grow many more apples per day?

Conclusion: Jeff Bezos has added enormous amounts of value to the world.

I guess you will probably say something like, "but I would like to live in a world where this person must give away most of those apples, until he maybe has only 6 apples per day and others have 4". Would this person have still been as motivated to take a risk - which entrepreneurism is all about? Especially knowing that maybe 5% of the start ups will succeed.

In such world, no one will take risks and everyone stays with 1 or 2 apples per day. There's a reason US has so many successful unicorn start ups.

It takes skill, talent, passion, resources and massive amount of luck to pull of what Jeff Bezos did. In a more socialized version of this system, it would have not happened.

The more you tax potential returns and reward, the less risk or resources would people be willing to put in to create something new.

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

#795

Post by bpt3 »

asciimov wrote: post #481
bpt3 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> major corporations aren't paying their fair share Define fair share. > From underpaying workers (who have to use public assistance) I'll never understand this line of reasoning. Would you rather have people who can't earn enough to support themselves earn $0 and rely entirely on public assistance? That's what will happen if you require employers to pay people more than the value they generate. > Thanks to amazon I…

> Define fair share. Fair share, the cost to run the country. For most people that's 33% of what we make a year. For megacorps that can be as much as nothing. > I'll never understand this line of reasoning. While I understand how some people don't want to give individuals handouts, I don't understand how those same people are ok giving large corporations handouts. Take Walmart. If the poverty line where the local gov…

> Fair share, the cost to run the country. For most people that's 33% of what we make a year. For megacorps that can be as much as nothing.

That's your guess at what people pay now, not what their fair share is. Also, most people in the US don't have an effective tax rate anywhere close to 33%.

> While I understand how some people don't want to give individuals handouts, I don't understand how those same people are ok giving large corporations handouts.

I have no issue at all with individual handouts and think we should eliminate almost all corporate subsidies.

The assistance given to people who aren't employable at a wage that allows them to support themselves are individual handouts, not corporate ones.

> Take Walmart. If the poverty line where the local government steps up to help people out is $12.25 an hour (for 40 hours worked a week), and Walmart only pays out $7.25 per hour (for 40 hours), the it's on the local government to help those people out by giving them that extra $5 an hour. Well that means that walmart didn't pay the real rate for local wages, and the local tax payers got stuck with the bill.

The poverty line (or whatever other metric is used to set the threshold for public assistance) is set based on the cost of living, and doesn't set the rate for wages.

> I don't mind paying for the right to use the road, but many roads weren't built to handle the increased delivery traffic. That delivery traffic is a new burden that Bezos created and got rich off of. Surely the company that gained the most from using the public roads deserves to be billed for their upkeep.

Jeff Bezos isn't sending trucks out on the roads unilaterally. His company is satisfying your area's demand for convenient shopping (that seems limitless). It's just as easy to claim you and your neighbors created the traffic, which is why everyone (including Amazon) should pay for road maintenance.

Also, I have no idea how you determined that amazon has benefited the most from public roads, but that seems like a questionable claim.

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

#796

Post by bpt3 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #742
bpt3 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "fairly".

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

They did not. If you're referring to "living wage", that's not an objective or widely accepted metric.

Please don't jump into conversations and chastise people for no reason, especially when you're incorrect.

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

#797

Post by mewpmewp2 »

skywal_l wrote: post #786
fighterpilot wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This anti-space exploration position is basically a meme now and is so unoriginal and tiresome. Where's your anger when it comes to movie development, international tourism, stadium construction, the cosmetics industry, and the rest of the endless list of nonsense that is more wasteful and less beneficial than allocating a tiny proportion of Earth's resources towards rocket tech? I hope to hear this cynical take when…

It's a strawman argument. I don't think people are against space exploration. When a dude alone can finance a space program it creates two moral issues: 1. How come a guy who make people pee in bottles have enough money for this? 2. Should space exploration be privatized this way. Of course, you can see no evil here, but that's different from caricaturing legitimate arguments.

I think this is a pro towards capitalism. It's good that we have individuals with successful track record who managed to gather so many resources and instead of blowing it on expensive vices, they decide to use those resources to organize groups of people to innovate on things that no government would have incentive to do in order to have a better product or some sort of escape latch for humanity if things were to go very wrong.

If instead of something like capitalism we taxed people until they wouldn't have left over money to start new businesses, how would new businesses even be brought to life? How would you go about organizing group of people to work on a single goal that would not have immediate benefit and especially when a common lay person would think it's a complete waste of time? In such world where wealth was divided equally and 99% common people who don't understand the subject or potential gains many years down the line.

Would we use some sort of voting system in such a world on what we should build if that something would require 100B worth of resources to build?

I think if you managed to earn that 100B in the current system, it's evidence of your ability to use money wisely, to make something out of nothing, enough of it for it to provide more than 100B worth of value to the world, I think I would trust such person to make good decisions on next businesses and start ups as well as opposed to people collectively voting and trying to organize on what the next innovative attempt would be.

In the end worrying about him having 100B, just seems like envy out of ego rather than pragmatic thinking to me.

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

#798

Post by m4rtink »

onion2k wrote: post #420
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. This is unbelievably pessimistic. You're literally saying that Earth is beyond repair and the only way for humans to survive is to move to a rock in orbit that we've spent a total of 3 days on in the past 70 years, or to a planet no one has visited that has radiation that makes life essentially impossible for us. Assuming that's true, let's run som…

You are never gonna evacuate the Earth with even reusable rockets. With launch loops and space elevators? Yeah, no problem, totally possible. :)

For fictional yet science based scenario see this Orions Arm article:

https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/49b46fd2198ed

The biggest problem is actually not to lift all the people out of Earth's gravity well, but where to put them afterwards...

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

#799

Post by m4rtink »

dcolkitt wrote: post #508
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…

Wouldn’t it make sense that Antarctica and the open seas are “next in line” before Mars? The point is we have a huge, open continent. At the present moment there’s absolutely zero demand to colonize it. Why? Because it’s inhospitable and hard to get to. But it’s a hell of a lot more hospitable and accessible than Mars. So, honest question why would we expect anyone to move to Mars if they can’t even be bothered to mo…

At least for Antarctica this is largely prevented by international agreements. I'm sure there are companies who would go there for the resources alone otherwise.

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

#800

Post by m4rtink »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #241
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 quote is wrong. Antarctica is next. Then the moon. Then the bottom of the ocean. But all these places are desolate of life and not even resource rich, so there is little point to go there. Mars is like this as well. It's not like you are colonizing a rich continent like America.

For in space infrastructure (that has the potential to bring immeasurable energy and resources long term) anyways available outside the Earth gravity well is a valuable resource, even just for stuff like radiation shielding.
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