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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

#851

Post by pb7 »

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…

What if the sandwich shop went from being worth $1M to being worthless instead? Should the workers bear the cost of any business debt and/or have their wages clawed back?

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

#852

Post by tylersmith »

r00fus wrote: post #707
tylersmith wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats an opportunity provided by his parents, not "society". If he owes anyone then it's them.

I’d love to have had parents who could afford to dump $1m into my fledgeling startup. That he did proves he owes others for his success as much as his own wits and hard work.

Right, he owes his parents as established. They likely owe their parents, who owe their parents. And there were certainly others that contributed along the way may or may not have been compensated for that help. But none of these people had help from an amorphous group of "society", they had help from specific individuals.

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

#853

Post by rhizome »

hemloc_io wrote: post #138
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 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…

>Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech.

Isn't is an amazing coincidence that Elon was able to find so many rocket engineers with ideas just as NASA was being starved of funding? Just lucky I guess! anotherwinformilos.gif

SpaceX is a privatization that enjoys plenty of easy funding from the government, it's just that spaceflight staff aren't paid via the federal HR department anymore.

Frankly, I don't see the benefit of Elon getting any of my tax dollars.

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

#854

Post by mensetmanusman »

eli wrote: post #818
mensetmanusman wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress voted to do that. They could undo it and make everyone a citizen of Virginia if they wanted to undo it.

Oh great let me just lobby my no senators and single non voting house delegate to fix it. How about in the meantime I don’t have to pay federal taxes if I don’t get a day in how they’re spent? Also: neither VA not DC want retrocession and you can’t force a state to change its borders. So no, the answer is DC statehood, which is something Congress can do. It’s long past time.

I doubt Congress would vote to give the wealthiest people in the country even more power, they would rather it just ctrl-z what was done.

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

#855

Post by r00fus »

tylersmith wrote: post #852
r00fus wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to have had parents who could afford to dump $1m into my fledgeling startup. That he did proves he owes others for his success as much as his own wits and hard work.

Right, he owes his parents as established. They likely owe their parents, who owe their parents. And there were certainly others that contributed along the way may or may not have been compensated for that help. But none of these people had help from an amorphous group of "society", they had help from specific individuals.

So none of them went to public schools or used public roads or relied on a fire department. Probably none of them could look forward to social security or medicare.

Or maybe that's not correct.

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

#856

Post by ModernMech »

pb7 wrote: post #851
ModernMech wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What if the sandwich shop went from being worth $1M to being worthless instead? Should the workers bear the cost of any business debt and/or have their wages clawed back?

When a founder draws a salary and the business goes under, their wages aren't clawed back. Why would a worker's wages be clawed back?

Workers should share in ownership. If the value of the business goes to zero, their ownership stake goes to zero, just like the founder.

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

#857

Post by 50 »

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…

"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous."

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

#858

Post by dang »

gnzoidberg wrote: post #657

[flagged]

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note these ones:

"Don't be snarky."

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#859

Post by coliveira »

pb7 wrote: post #817
coliveira wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 expl…

Yes… that is the risk. He was already comfortable and could have had a guaranteed easy life but he decided to throw that away to start Amazon that could have failed after many years of foregoing his cushy salary. Most people wouldn’t have taken this risk in his position and that’s why they will never have a chance to be wealthy like him. Your foot stomping won’t change that.

That's not risk at all. He wouldn't lose a cent, he was just trading one big salary for a potentially bigger fortune.

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

#860

Post by coliveira »

sweetheart wrote: post #808
aeternum wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly, humans having developed the technology to destroy earth, will easily destroy any kind of spacial colony. Going to other planets is not a solution at all.
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