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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

#291

Post by ThomPete »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #255
aeternum wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to go to space because if we don't, all of humanity will go extinct. The earth won't last forever and also tends not to fare well when it goes 1:1 with asteroids or nukes.

Humanity won't go extinct any time soon, and at this point in time focusing resources on fighting problems like climate change is infinitely more rewarding than any stupid dicking around on the moon or mars. Mars won't ever be even as habitable as a thoroughly fucked up earth. It is a huge waste of time and resources that could be better employed on more immediate problems.

Climate change isn't en existential risk, the way we deal with it is developing new knowledge which as a by product allow us to go to the moon or mars. Furthermore there is a whole other perspective on space which is military and includes china who is not going to hold back.

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

#292

Post by passivate »

sofixa wrote: post #219
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. I find it extremely weird that people are banking on a (almost literal) moonshot for the survival of our species. Isn't trying to stop/lessen the damage we're doing to the place we currently live and which can sustain us better and more optimistic proposition than hoping a metric shitton of things go perfectly after probably mil…

Well, we still can't get two people of opposite political parties to agree to any long term policy on sustainability. Expecting millions of businesses and/or billions of individuals to follow along as part of a long-term coordinated effort is, IMHO, a super hard problem too. I can't say going to/living on Mars is any easier, but they're both hard problems.

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

#293

Post by edmundsauto »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #153
edmundsauto wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal? Admittedly, I'm not a scholar, but it seems to me that democracy is mostly concerned w/ how leaders are chosen. Whereas communism is about how resources are distributed. It sounds possible to have a democratically elected government that sets a communist economic policy.

> Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal? Theoretically, yes. Practically, if you concentrate all ownership in the state you remove the means by which private citizens can check it.

Isn’t communism ownership by the people? I thought totalitarianism or fascism is where the state owns the means of production.

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

#294

Post by [deleted] »

lefrenchy wrote: post #37
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 literally got to the moon before any billionaires bought joy rides to lower orbit, so what you’re saying is proven false already by history? It’s so insane to me that people honestly believe that we need billionaires to fund all their hedonic desires in order to achieve anything good and useful as a society. It’s provably false and frankly an absolutely pessimistic view of society and humanity.

[deleted]

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

#295

Post by bluedevil2k »

Salgat wrote: post #126
pb7 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are paying exactly what they owe otherwise the IRS would come after them. You have equal access to the same infrastructure. Feel free to start a trillion dollar company.

No ones saying otherwise, what we're saying is raise the taxes to something reasonable. >You have equal access to the same infrastructure. Feel free to start a trillion dollar company. And this is such a lazy cop-out that ignores that Bezos had parents who funded his company (to the tune of half a million in today's money) during a time where he was in the right place at the right time. It insane how ignorant people…

Who cares if he had parents invest in his company?!? Why do people jump to that immediately trying to prove what an “evil” guy he is. Guess what...Bezos’s parents paid their taxes on their incomes and saved the money and chose to invest in their son. Why is that a negative? Right place at the right time - there were millions of people in their 20’s in the late 90’s, thousands had $250,000 in cash to start a business, but only 1 turned into the biggest most efficient company in history. It wasn’t luck man, it was talent. The ignorance seems to be on your end believing it was luck.

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

#296

Post by missedthecue »

monocasa wrote: post #287
pb7 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His equity appreciated and will be taxed appropriately when it is sold.

Except it doesn't get per se, loans are taken out and paid back on a schedule smaller than the appreciation of the stocks which were used as collateral. That's what that $1B was, and is relative scales we're talking about.

How do you pay back loans without income?

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

#297

Post by edmundsauto »

chroem- wrote: post #72
edmundsauto wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal? Admittedly, I'm not a scholar, but it seems to me that democracy is mostly concerned w/ how leaders are chosen. Whereas communism is about how resources are distributed. It sounds possible to have a democratically elected government that sets a communist economic policy.

That's not true, because the goal is to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat through violent revolution. Democracies are incompatible with dictatorship and must be overthrown in order to purge the other social classes. This is why every instance of communism has led to human rights abuses and/or mass murder: totalitarianism is part of the ideology.

It’s been a long time since I read the Communist Manifesto. Do you mean to say that Marx’s goal was violent overthrow? I thought he described more of an evolution of systems until the workers paradise was reached.

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

#298

Post by snowwrestler »

sweetheart wrote: post #171
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…

This is total fallacy, I'm sorry. "We do this thing because we have always done this thing" isn't actual any justification whatsoever. It's whats leftover when realizing you're having a hard time actually justifying why it needs to be done. "It's the way things are" are perhaps in all seriousness the 5 most dangerous words in the English language.

They’re not saying “let’s do things the way we’ve always done them,” they are observing that people seem to have a huge intrinsic drive to explore.

It’s cousin to the famous phrase, “why do we climb the mountain? Because it is there.” It’s not a rational thing but it is a very real part of being human nonetheless.

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

#299

Post by edmundsauto »

lazyeye wrote: post #94
edmundsauto wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that communism is an economic idea, which was used by regimes that did brutal things. Whereas the Nazi ideology drove the violence. In one case, it was correlated. In another, causative.

Lol

This is neither a constructive comment, nor the cleverly sarcastic wit that you think it is. Are you unable to add anything useful to the conversation?

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

#300

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

abrodersen wrote: post #198
ironrabbit wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm no super genius, but it does sound like simply changing the tax code to require paying back all loans before changing the cost basis would be both easily and less possibly catastrophic than all of a sudden taxing unrealized gains.
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