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

#411

Post by monocasa » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #391

monocasa wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government that Amazon spends millions lobbying. I'm well aware that what they're doing is legal; I'm saying it shouldn't be.

Your representatives don't have to accept Amazon's bribes, you know. They choose to do so because they're corrupt and convinced you to be mad at a different party entirely while they pocket the cash for future campaigns where they convince other people like you that they will serve your interests.

Where did I say I don't blame them too?

I shouldn't have to say this explicitly but yes, accepting bribes and giving bribes are both bad.

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

#412

Post by failwhaleshark » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

Every billionaire is a policy failure.

Anyone with over $100M should have it confiscated and redistributed to those in greatest need and to provide for the common good. That's the moral thing to do. These jerks own the government and rig the system in their favor, against the interests of average people and climate survivability.

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

#413

Post by jl2718 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

joshuahaglund wrote: post #80

I just think this money shoulda been paid in taxes so we could collectively solve problems instead of some guy hand picking a couple lottery winners.

Well the guy he’s giving it to is always clamoring for higher taxes on everybody else, so obviously he thinks that’s the best place for the money. We’ll see what he does with it.

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

#414

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #270

bigthymer wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do. Why? Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Despite the old stereotype of poor people blowing it all on booze and drugs, in reality, most people put it to good use. This is also another reason why UBI has started gaining more support.

> Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Much like alleviating homelessness by giving people homes, it's so simple and obvious that no one can tolerate it.

[deleted]

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

#415

Post by pb7 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #276

bluedevil2k wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who pays for the roads that Amazon depends on for deliveries and employee commutes? If they’re the interstate highways, then the gas tax pays for most of that. And Amazon buys a LOT of gas.

> If they’re the interstate highways, then the gas tax pays for most of that. That's mostly a subsidy from passenger cars to larger vehicles, because road wear goes up much more rapidly with vehicle weight than fuel consumption does (IIRC, the former with roughly the fourth power of weight, the latter sublinearly.) Since Amazon mostly isn't using passenger cars as part of its delivery fleet, its actually being subsid…

What you say is true but they're just passing those subsidies on to their customers (the majority of the US). And they're still paying a significant amount contrary to the very popular belief, even if it's not proportional to the consumption which I agree with you on.

Amazon e-commerce is not all that profitable. Most of Amazon's value comes from AWS.

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

#416

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #397

geocrasher wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about that, I realized I had more to say after I had posted the reply. Your point about expensive technology becoming more affordable in the long run- that makes a lot of sense, and I totally get it. At first, basic air travel was such a thing, as was travel by rail. Or fancy carriage. So yes. That much is true. And I think if they'd sent up other billionaires instead, it would have made no difference. The trut…

> The truth is that a lot of people are hurting badly, and to watch others do extravagant things that don't make a difference for the bettering of humanity now just pours salt on the 'wound' of poverty. For many people, it's visible proof of the gaps getting wider and wider. I hear you there, but I don't understand why Musk gets a free pass then? He's just as rich as Bezos and just as out of touch with what the needs…

[deleted]

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

#417

Post by fnord77 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:24 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…

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

there's nothing that spacex has done that's "new tech". VTVL rockets were worked out in the 60s and the 90s

spacex does a good job of making it seem like what they're doing is new, though.

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

#418

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#419

Post by systemvoltage » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

bigthymer wrote: post #248

systemvoltage wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Giving people money is absolutely the last thing anyone should do. Why? Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Despite the old stereotype of poor people blowing it all on booze and drugs, in reality, most people put it to good use. This is also another reason why UBI has started gaining more support.

I vehemently disagree. Handing out cash to the poor isn’t fixing the problem. It will make matters worse (inflation).

It’s almost unbelievable that investing in education and apprenticeship is considered a negative thing but giving straight up cash from Billionaires is popular.

Homelessness and poverty needs to be tackled by getting these people jobs.

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

#420

Post by onion2k » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

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.

This is unbelievably pessimistic. You're literally saying that Earth is beyond repair and the only way for humans to survive is to move to a rock in orbit that we've spent a total of 3 days on in the past 70 years, or to a planet no one has visited that has radiation that makes life essentially impossible for us.

Assuming that's true, let's run some numbers. Assuming we can get to 3 launches per day (weather, launch sites, Mars being in the wrong place, etc are limiting factors), and we get 100 years of launches before everyone dies, and we can fire 100 people in to space at a time, that means the future of the human race rests on slightly more than 10 million people. The other 6,990,000,000 of us will perish with the rest of life on Earth.

Damn. If you're right then humans are going extinct.