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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

#801

Post by ijcaatst »

machinelearning wrote: post #778
thn-gap wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You give as truth that #2 is not 100% morally wrong. I am not so sure, and many other people would also disagree.

The implicit assumption in what you're saying that the only way to obtain a billion dollars is by immoral means. There is no proof that this is always the case.

As someone who thinks it's morally wrong to have billionaires in a society let me try to make an argument why I think so.

If a person has a billion dollars it does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts heavily within the economy in which it exists and more importantly with the people who participate in that economy.

Think for example the amount of people employed to do work in order to service a billionaire. A vast estate requires 24 hour staff, a sports car fleet requires thousands upon thousands hours of labor to produce. The logistics of a private jet demands a lot of effort from a lot of people. In order to service a single individual we require, in aggregate, countless of human lives spent toiling.

I am not arguing that the effect of increased economic activity and employment are not desirable. And one can make a decent case that a billionaire's time is incredibly valuable which to an extent may justify spending larger resources in service to this lifestyle. I just think the idea of many humans spending their lives in order to satisfy a single human is absurd no matter which societal model organizes this arrangement.

It can be argued that the people who service the billionaire are better off having found employment within or in relation to someones billion dollar estate. Though I think it is even easier to argue that we can find many hypothetical arrangements that are far more just and moral for these people.

There is also an argument to be made about the large amounts of undemocratic power that a billion dollar in private wealth entails. If the billionaire holds majority stakes within prominent industries we are delegating important decisions to opaque power with unknown agendas that we can not hope to influence in meaningful ways. As I firmly believe that a moral society is actively democratic this feels deeply wrong.

With that said, I do not have any good quick fixes. Because the reasons I outlined I feel that the presence of billionaires reveal that human society has yet to reach its moral potential. I have no illusions that reaching that goal will be either a simple or fast process. I prefer billionaires to having a nobility class. Though I hope that we as a species recognize that deeply inequitable social arrangements is something we want to move away from.

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

#802

Post by Nimitz14 »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #405
jimbokun wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given current level of disfunction in the US government, I'll take Bezos just picking who he thinks can do the most good with the money.

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…

You're wrong.

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

#803

Post by abrodersen »

djrogers wrote: post #307
abrodersen wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you die, your heirs get the stock with "step up basis", meaning the cost basis used to calculate capital gains resets to the market price at time of death. So if they sell right after you die, they pay no capital gains tax.

The heirs get the stock at etc step-up basis after estate taxes, which are considerable in the $100m+ realm...

Estate taxes can be avoided with trusts.

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

#804

Post by sunstone »

cratermoon wrote: post #674

Wow between this and the donations Jeffy made a couple of weeks ago [1][2], he's either trying to write off as much of the money he made from the pandemic, or trying to whitewash his reputation to distract from criticism of sending himself into space. Or maybe both? 1 https://www.marssociety.org/news/2021/07/14/mars-society-sel... 2 https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/smithsoni...

Perhaps he's just being tired of being embarrassed by his Ex who's been donating billions while he has senior citizens peeing in bottles in his warehouses.

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

#805

Post by vk23 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #794
coliveira wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 li…

So in Bezos case with his estimated net worth of 205B USD and assuming a average net worth of an american family of 750k (not sure how accurate this number is it was the first thing on google) this comes down to Bezos owning 266666 Apples for every apple a "normal" famliy owns. Noone would complain if it was a 1000 to 3 ratio.

Almost noone argues that we should take all his apples away but I think there is a lot of room before he has to feel like his risk is not worth it anymore.

The only issue Amazon would have in a more socialized society is that it would be way harder to exploit poor people that have to take up with their working conditions and wages because they rely on those jobs. And if your business cannot survive without exploitation it should not exist in the first place.

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

#806

Post by elil17 »

stubish wrote: post #736
elil17 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but that it should be our primary goal is extremely clear It’s not extremely clear to me. Why is long term survival more important than making life better for more people? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to prefer to belong to a species that took care of it’s entire population and lived in harmony with the environment than one that avoided extinction, no matter the cost? Also, why would space be the best way to survive an…

If we don't spread to the stars, our entire species will have made absolutely no impact for better or worse on the galaxy or Universe. None whatsoever, no matter how beautiful or horrific our existence on this planet. Unless some more proactive species picks up our 'I Love Lucy' episodes and decides to remember us. Some of us hope for there to be some meaning to our sentience, or at least put off the long night a few…

Totally agreed. But, so what? Why do we need to have an impact on the galaxy or Universe? Why would that impact be meaningful absent our own value framework?

Even if we want to, it’s not safe to say people in the future will. Any truly significant impact we’d have would occur so far in the future that it isn’t safe to assume that our progeny will be recognizable to ourselves. They may have evolved significantly different values and goals.

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

#807

Post by mewpmewp2 »

vk23 wrote: post #805
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

So in Bezos case with his estimated net worth of 205B USD and assuming a average net worth of an american family of 750k (not sure how accurate this number is it was the first thing on google) this comes down to Bezos owning 266666 Apples for every apple a "normal" famliy owns. Noone would complain if it was a 1000 to 3 ratio. Almost noone argues that we should take all his apples away but I think there is a lot of r…

I'm still thinking that any bigger taxation could decrease potential risk taking and/or investments into new potentially innovative avenues. Maybe there could be a golden taxation point that's higher than it is now, but I also think it's definitely possible that it would work out worse overall for everyone.

If there's 1000 to 3 ratio, the things small group of people could organize to build would be far off what individuals could start with today.

If a single individual who has a good idea, they would have to convince many more people that the idea is good in order to be able to proceed with it.

Also, why does it even matter that much what Jeff's net worth specifically is? Unless he's wasting that money or using that to purposely destroy the world, it just exists as a number and if it was divided between people, it would only increase prices of everything and we probably would be back where we started. And it would only benefit the world if the people the money was divided with would use the money more wisely as opposed to Jeff.

If they can't get over 1000 to 3 ratio or certain ratio, because of the taxes, why would those folks just not rest on their laurels?

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

#808

Post by sweetheart »

aeternum wrote: post #703
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.

Technological progress is not a given. Spaceships don't magically get built given enough time. Humans must spend effort on it. Do we really have 50 million years? Very unlikely. Do we even have 150 years? I'd take odds against, we've just come way too close to all-out nuclear war recently and international relations are not trending in a promising direction.

If humanity is at risk of extinction due to nuclear war, then going to space isn’t actually going to accomplish anything; the ISS, nor a Mars colony, nor a city of 10 million orbiting Io are going to be able to stop nuclear war either.

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

#809

Post by cactus2093 »

asciimov wrote: post #283
cactus2093 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of argument is so completely unhinged. Bezos paid roughly $1B in taxes in 2018, and Amazon warehouses pay well above the minimum wage. I understand progressives wanting to raise taxes and raise minimum wage, but why in the world would you blame someone personally for just paying the going rate? That's what we all do for the taxes and service providers we pay.

Bezos makes an easy identifiable target, much easier to call out Bezos than any of the Walton's of Walmart. The real issue is that major corporations aren't paying their fair share of the costs of running this country. From underpaying workers (who have to use public assistance) to getting sweetheart deals to build in your area. Thanks to amazon I have more heavy delivery trucks running up and down my street. Meaning…

I mean the road argument is really reaching here. Roads are never subsidized fairly. My neighbor doesn’t pay any extra for their huge pickup truck that generates a lot more wear on the roads day to day than my bicycle.

I’d rather subsidize the cost of delivery trucks than people’s massive personal trucks, at least I can order things and get some benefit from delivery trucks.

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