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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#131

Post by whatwherewhy »

frumper wrote: post #128
whatwherewhy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but that doesn't mean your net worth will decrease by that amount that year. There are other effects - e.g. the rest of his investment portfolio.

if you give away $10 then your net worth at that moment goes down...it may easily recover that price, but if you count it like that then you can surely count that the money you donated would have been worth more too

Yeah but nobody has that granular logs of Gates' net worth and donations. At best, it's calendar months, sometimes you can try to assume weeks, with a big maybe.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#132

Post by whatwherewhy »

germinalphrase wrote: post #130
whatwherewhy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Gates said he will donate before he dies, not immediately.

I think the Gates Foundation does good work, but the cynical "so what?" is that creating a structure like this to "give away most of his $124bn (£107bn) fortune during his lifetime" (RE the linked article about Bezos) is a ruse to maintain control over the money without paying taxes - while also producing some good PR. If they truly wanted to just give it away, Chuck Feeney offer a straight forward model for doing so…

I fully believe they're doing it to retain control of their money, and I don't mind, Bill Gates is a master handler of money - in fact I find the system that led to people like Bill Gates working on things that are good for the general humanity to be genius. It's not like he's going to embezzle the money out of his foundation to buy another villa. Bill Gates doesn't fucking care about a hundreth villa. He's really working on the projects, and he's deploying the money in a way that promises results - that's exactly what I want to happen. I am happy.

And the PR? Let the guy have his fame, he's really worked for it.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#133

Post by pmoriarty »

zie wrote: post #127
pmoriarty wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charities buy products and services all the time... for charitable purposes, of course. That money they spend goes to corporations. That's what I meant when I said "They can direct their foundations to give billions of dollars to corporations controlled by their friends, who use that money (after taking a cut, of course) to do whatever it is the foundation was set up to do." It's not "given" in the sense of a gift, b…

OK, You are correct, they can buy goods and services from corporations, but this will ONLY apply to Foundations, as DAF's are different. Plus, it's not like these foundations can get away with over-paying for goods and services. They have to file returns to the IRS, if the expenses start to look ridiculous, they can audit, just like they can audit anyone else. DAF's are not controlled by the contributor, so this does…

"it's not like these foundations can get away with over-paying for goods and services"

It doesn't have to be gross overpayment[1], it could just be funneling the money to companies that benefit friends, family, or people they want to influence or get favors in return.

"I still don't see why this is somehow bad"

It's bad because these billionaires get good PR for giving away money and hero worshiped for being selfless benefactors of the needy, while they might be lining their friends' pockets and maybe themselves, just doing so under the veneer of philanthropy.

Whether these "philanthropic" foundations actually do any good, or how much good they do for all the money spent and all the influence they have because of it is yet another issue that's explored elsewhere in this thread and the many articles that have been written about them.

[1] - though I wouldn't be surprised if some foundations get away with this... whether they get caught depends on a lot of things

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#134

Post by zie »

pmoriarty wrote: post #133
zie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, You are correct, they can buy goods and services from corporations, but this will ONLY apply to Foundations, as DAF's are different. Plus, it's not like these foundations can get away with over-paying for goods and services. They have to file returns to the IRS, if the expenses start to look ridiculous, they can audit, just like they can audit anyone else. DAF's are not controlled by the contributor, so this does…

"it's not like these foundations can get away with over-paying for goods and services" It doesn't have to be gross overpayment[1], it could just be funneling the money to companies that benefit friends, family, or people they want to influence or get favors in return. "I still don't see why this is somehow bad" It's bad because these billionaires get good PR for giving away money and hero worshiped for being selfless…

How is funnelling money to their buddies any different than the entire rest of the world? This is how the entire world works, that you think it should somehow be different in charitable causes is the funny part.

In your personal dealings, if you have to buy X and your friend sells it and some random stranger sells it, would you rather buy it from your friend? If the answer is yes(which will be true for 99+% of the entire 8 billion people on the planet), then you are being at the very least a touch hypocritical.

I think with your attitude being fairly common, this good PR perspective doesn't seem to necessarily be true.

As for doing good, what does that have to do with anything? There are tons of non-profits out there, that are objectively failing at their mission. Should they all close as well, just because they had a bad year or two? Clearly whoever is funding and controlling the foundations thinks they are doing good. I guarantee even the most widely accepted non-profits get plenty of criticism at failing to do good. Good is not an objective measure anyway. If I think saving the last 2 stuffed Tux penguin's on the planet is important and I'm willing to pay for their continued survival, what does it matter that you think stuffed Tux Penguins is not doing anything good in the world. It's not your resources used to keep the last 2 stuffed Tux Penguins in good condition.

FYI: Foundations are generally required to spend at least 5% of the total fair market value of its noncharitable-use assets from the preceding year on charitable causes. This means that they will almost certainly close eventually.

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#135

Post by sershe »

nevinera wrote: post #61
ch4s3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get the animus against private schools. Surely a one size fits all public school can't possibly best serve the interests of every possible student. Furthermore in a pluralistic society, shouldn't we tolerate people's different preferences in education, especially those who opt for more religious education?

Most of us don't have a problem with _private schools_, just with state money or charity being aimed at them. Private schools are fundamentally capitalistic - they serve their (generally wealthy) patrons, not society.

What is a median private school tuition? I doubt it's very high, I know someone who taught in an extremely wealthy-focused and exclusive private school and the tuition was $35k/year. In contrast, New York state schools appear to spend $25-30k per year per pupil [0 summarizing 1][2] and gets... far, far worse results.

You could say that private schools would attempt to serve anyone they can (just like any business), but public schools rob them of the opportunity. In this system, only the rich can escape, while non-rich get stuck with a botched socialized system at taxpayers' expense. Donating to allow more people to escape the public schools is thus a great cause.

[0] https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-ny-school-spendi... [1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/econ/school-finances... [2] https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/ny-per-pupil-schoo...

Re: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

#136

Post by carapace »

happytoexplain wrote: post #77
Workaccount2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products. If everyone who hated billionaires stopped using amazon tomorrow, Bezos would be in serious trouble. But alas, Bezos offers a service that enormous amounts of people seemingly can't quit using, which to me (and the market that prices it), is infact worth hundreds of billions. I haven't used amazon in 2 years. I'm sick of sitting in peoples ap…

>They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products. Can you elaborate on this? It doesn't follow at all to me. If somebody makes billions and another person makes thousands, but the billionaire does not work proportionally hard or deliver proportional value to society or does not behave morally, and I buy products from both people, you may (and should) criticize me. However, there's no logica…

Everyone involved was acting voluntarily. No one's forcing people to work at Amazon, nor to buy from Amazon. We all set up these rules of the game, and he played and won.

Don't get me wrong, I think he's an ass. He took Captain Kirk to space, but then dissed him on the ground to pour champagne on the desert. Also I really miss used book stores.

But as a businessman I don't see how he doesn't deserve what he has, he's earned it, eh?

I very much do put the blame on "the consumer", they are the ones who keep giving Bezos money!

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