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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

#191

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

rgbrgb wrote: post #149
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We literally got to the moon before any billionaires bought joy rides to lower orbit, Once upon a time you needed nation state sponsorship in order to sail across the ocean. It's absolutely insane to me that people don't see that a billionaire can do as a vanity project something that was ~50yr ago only the purview of superpowers as an obvious sign of societal progress.

I think you're articulating exactly what the other commenters find appalling: a single man with the power of a state.

There's some truth to this but for the most part you're drawing the wrong conclusion here; Things like aviation and rocketry have become well-understood and "cheap" enough that they're now within reach of the private sector (same goes for the development/construction of satellites which facilitates commercial demand for access to orbit). Just because I can use my smartphone to perform tasks which could only be rivaled by global superpowers 300 years ago doesn't mean I wield the power of a state.

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

#192

Post by nyokodo »

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…

> Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies.

In defense of Branson his other space company Virgin Orbit now does orbital launches also, and has cool capabilities that genuinely differentiate it from other providers. We'll see if Bezos catches up, he's personally focusing on it more now and may make faster progress on New Glenn etc.

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

#193

Post by pb7 »

whymauri wrote: post #180
pb7 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, you would get $600/week on top of the usual unemployment (which is 60% of your regular wage) which amounts to significantly more than Canada. For a minimum wage worker, that would be over $40K/year.

I'm sorry to inform you that in many states, like Florida, the unemployment infrastructure is purposefully built to avoid paying unemployment. You're talking about something that for millions of Americans is a pie-in-the-sky hypothetical thanks to their state legislature. By purposefully built, I literally mean that the unemployment web services infrastructure was designed to fail at scale. Not to mention dark patter…

That's a product of the leadership elected by the people of Florida.

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

#194

Post by sigstoat »

acituan wrote: post #59
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. 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…

> The core fallacy is to assume whatever made Earth less than ideal will not follow us to the new destination.

there are plenty of existential risks which can't "follow" anything, or happen to more than one planet simultaneously.

does living on two planets eliminate all existential risks? no, and nobody has claimed that.

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

#195

Post by chroem- »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #157
chroem- wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does co-founding a Leninist organization not make one a Leninist? Why would you create an organization if you don't believe in its ideals?

Are we supposed to take your word for it that it's a "Leninist organization"? Your only supporting evidence for that idea is the passage above mentioning that members of the group studied ideas from Lenin (and others), but that alone is not enough to make an organization "Leninist" (if it were, then I guess our high schools are all Marxist/Leninist/Nazi organizations too since we studied and discussed those beliefs t…

Don't take my word for it, take theirs. Here is one of their documents. http://www.noisyroom.net/blog/STORMSummation.pdf

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

#196

Post by spoonjim »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #10

The really interesting thing to me about this announcement is that it's the first time I think I've ever heard about such a large gift being given to individuals , instead of a foundation or non-profit. Curious if Bezos is just testing to see if this type of philanthropy has better results. I'm also interested in the logistics of a gift this large. I mean, Bezos would have to pay a large gift tax for gifts sent direc…

This is not a personal gift to Van Jones and Jose Andres... they are being given this money to donate to charities. I think the way it will work is that they will designate the charities and Bezos will donate it, or Bezos will transfer the money and they will donate it within the calendar year.

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

#197

Post by kolbe »

zapnuk wrote: post #185

If billionaires entrust their money to more or less random people for philanthropic objectives I rather have them be taxed higher and let a (somewhat inefficient) government decide how to invest the money. At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance.

There's a lot of things I would rather other people do for my benefit and their detriment as well. Thank you for your contribution.

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

#198

Post by abrodersen »

ironrabbit wrote: post #156
okintheory wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my current understanding: Basically, once you're this rich, you can take hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of loans to cover anything you'd like to spend. Now, you can make sure that you're actually "losing" money in any given year by having (almost) no realized income. Then, at the end, you die, having never paid taxes. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/briefing/tax-jeff-bezos-w... https://w…

Interesting, but how do you pay off these loans except by later selling stock (and paying capital gains tax)?

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.

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

#199

Post by bagacrap »

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…

"we pioneered the west" --- ouch. I guess "pioneer" is one way to say "rape and pillage".

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

#200

Post by co_pilates »

Ostrogodsky wrote: post #160
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 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? And the people earning the low wages were all doing crappy jobs? Did Bezos personally deliver all the packages? I mean you can be as capitalistic as mr Moustache (or whatever he is called) from Monopoly,but you have to agree t…

He's called the Monopoly Man as far as I know. Also, I second your remarks; these guys made great businesses... by investing a sliver of their money in smart managers and execs. They certainly couldn't have done it all themselves, not even half of it, so why do they get like 90 percent or more of the profits and upside? Why shouldn't Joe Dirt from bumfuck get double or even triple what they make as a packer? He's the one doing all the work that makes packages move, when it comes down to it.
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