Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by BingoAhoy » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

agorabinary wrote: post #167

BingoAhoy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an odd complaint considering he's worth 207 billion. He could more fairly divide that stock wealth among Amazonians. Question is: that 207 billion, did he accumulate that fairly himself or did his workforce accumulate that for him? Hard to answer from the outside but could a single man accumulate 207 billion without help as a corporation of one.

How many of the decisions that determined whether Amazon would become worth >$1T or yet another mediocre web store were made by warehouse workers? Jeff is primarily responsible for Amazon's success. For making Amazon what it is, him being worth ~10% of the whole company is a totally reasonable compensation

He's entitled to more than your average amazon employee, warehouse worker, and probably any other employee: YEAH sure. But I do not agree on paying such a high premium for simply being a decision maker. I'm merely making an argument that it's hard to objectively determine how much more one employee is entitled to the corporations stock pie than another based on merit. Amazon and it's 800,000 employee base built Amazon into the >$1T behemoth it became due simply to the fact one man can't do it alone. A lot of those employees may not have been able to make the important decisions that Jeff Bezos was able to, but they instead contributed blood and sweat. I'm willing to bet even if Jeff Bezos is a super employee, one thousand times more productive and smarter, than the next best employee he still couldn't amass 207 billion himself. By that metric he is overcompensated and others are under.

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

#202

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

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)?

You die without selling them. Your heirs inherit the stocks at current market value: your capital gain liabilities are not inherited. They sell some stocks to repay the loans. Your gains are never taxed.

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

#203

Post by amirhirsch » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

As a percentage of net worth, this is like me donating $200. He can afford to give away $100M every week forever on compounding interest alone. When I'm a billionaire the space suits will be purple.

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

#204

Post by motohagiography » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

The recipients seem like earnest people who have done a lot of good, and the money will supercharge what they do.

Personally, I think that if I had a really good plan for $100m I could probably raise it because there is a highly competitive sellers market for things that you can put that much money into and create value from it. I just don't have that plan. :)

There are a zillion holes to throw money down, but something that can sustain its value and grow? Bezos' decision was probably the same as a regular investment "team, market, product" call: there's a real problem that a lot of people have, and here is a long list of people who want to solve it but nobody has a complete solution yet, and if I had to choose the top ones to get exposure to - to make a difference on this problem, these two guys are the best ones I can find to figure out what the solution is, so I'm in for $100m apiece. Same game as any angel or startup investor, he's just playing at the three-comma table.

I genuinely believe the path to that table starts by challenging ourselves to think bigger, which means doubling down when it's the hardest, and testing assumptions when it's easy. It's not sufficient, but it is the necessary condition.

Think of a problem that people with effectively infinite resources would invest in solving and start working on it. To them $100m is a rounding error, what they don't see are credible plans or track records for making the change they would invest in. Jones and Andres had it. The money isn't a prize, it's an investment and a bet. I wish them luck.

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

#205

Post by aeternum » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

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…

Did we have fully reusable rockets during the Cold War? Even though it's suborbital, Blue Origin's re-use is still a pretty impressive achievement.

Spaceplanes are also interesting tech. Maybe not the best choice for earth but could prove useful on other planets with different atmospheres.

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

#206

Post by whymauri » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #193

whymauri wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is a product of the design of government in the country, so no: it doesn't get to be ignored when comparing the reality of COVID relief in the US compared to other countries.

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

#207

Post by bagacrap » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #66

tills13 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tax write-off.

I'll explain why that comment almost never makes sense. Let's say your tax rate is 50% and your taxable income is $1,000,000, so you'll owe $500,000 in taxes. If you donate $100,000 to charity as a "tax write-off", now your taxable income is only $900,000 and you'll only owe $450,000 in taxes, but you lost $100,000 to save that $50,000 . At the end of the day, you'll have $50,000 less than if you didn't donate anythi…

well it does make sense in the case where Mr X "donates" to the X Foundation, chaired by X. Then, X has saved 50k and still has the same amount of funds at their disposal to distribute to cronies/use as marketing.

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

#208

Post by BHSPitMonkey » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #16

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 personally don't care that these billionaires are spending their money on vacations to orbit. It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. Really? Which billionaires personally funded the Apollo program? The progress of our species shouldn't have to rely on the fickle preferences of one person, their enormous wealth should be taxed and the money should be used for programs like NASA and it…

NASA is still doing the hard/interesting stuff, but now that there is a market that can more cheaply/rapidly work on creating the rockets/vehicles to get payloads where they need to go they can focus more on the actual missions.

Likewise, NASA has always chosen "buy" over "build" where applicable (like contracting out spacesuit construction to major textile manufacturers). If they'd done everything in-house, that means fewer resources where it matters. Public-private partnerships make NASA more effective, not less.

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

#209

Post by systemvoltage » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

inetsee wrote: post #49

If I had $200 million lying around, I'd be more inclined to give $1 million each to 200 people.

Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do.

I'd much prefer if Bezos spent $200M in building an education institute or an apprentice shop for tradesmen or to humanitarian aid or doctors without borders or open source courseware or human genome project...

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

#210

Post by gameswithgo » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #205

hemloc_io wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did we have fully reusable rockets during the Cold War? Even though it's suborbital, Blue Origin's re-use is still a pretty impressive achievement. Spaceplanes are also interesting tech. Maybe not the best choice for earth but could prove useful on other planets with different atmospheres.

No, but nobody had any interest in creating a reusable suborbital rocket. Hobbyists can do that, it just isn't very hard. The reason why what Falcon9 does is hard is the margins are so slim, to be able to get big payloads to high orbits, and still have fuel left to land from that speed and altitude, usually on a boat!

What blue origin is doing is vastly simpler.