If I had $200 million lying around, I'd be more inclined to give $1 million each to 200 people.
[deleted]
Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
491–500 of 879 posts
Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#492Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#493All 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…
[deleted]
Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
> as it puts money back in the economy That's the rich people hoarding cash theory. They don't hoard any cash. All of it is invested in the economy. Even "cash" deposits in the bank are, as the bank loans out a multiple of those deposits.
Rich people hoard bitcoins, now.
The money they paid for the bitcoin went into the economy.
Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#495All 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…
Getting to Mars won't help us survive as a species.
Mars is a barren rock that is less desirable for human inhabitation than even the most remote land regions on Earth (such as the middle of the Sahara desert and the middle of Antarctica). Mars has no atmosphere, its mean surface temperature [1] is about the same as the average daily low temperature in winter at the south pole [2], its surface gravity is about 38% of Earth's [3] which can lead to muscle and bone atrophy, and it receives about 44% as much sunlight as Earth [4] which makes it harder to grow crops and can cause seasonal affective disorder.
In other words, if it were desirable to live on Mars, people would already be living in the middle of Antarctica.
What about mining resources from Mars? The problem with that is that it's prohibitively expensive due to the fundamental laws of physics. Getting stuff (e.g. equipment) to Mars requires escaping the gravity well of the Earth ([5] is a nice visual), which requires 225 kilograms of fuel per kilogram launched [6]. Sending things back is cheaper, and things like fusion engines would help, but it still takes a lot of energy and it's always going to be cheaper to mine on Earth.
Computers have gotten exponentially better over the past few decades because we've learned to make them smaller and more energy-efficient. Space travel hasn't because there are immutable requirements in terms of how much energy you need to do it.
Planet Earth is by far the best place in the universe for the human species, and I don't see that changing in the next millennium. It's really tailor-made for us (or rather, we are tailor-made for it). The best use of resources right now is towards making life on Earth more sustainable.
[1] https://www.space.com/16907-what-is-the-temperature-of-mars.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole#Climate_and_day_and... [3] https://phys.org/news/2016-12-strong-gravity-mars.html [4] http://tomatosphere.letstalkscience.ca/Resources/library/Art... [5] https://xkcd.com/681_large/ [6] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/279947-nasa-wants-to-mak...
Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#496Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#497All 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…
Living on only one planet is a recipe for extinction no matter how perfect that planet’s environment is. Sooner or later it will get hit by an asteroid, or the sun will go supernova or any one of a million other completely unpreventable natural disasters will happen. Being multi planetary is the only way to ensure the survival of humanity.
Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#498All 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…
Sounds like “manifest destiny” where we destroyed thousands of indigenous civilizations in the country because “it was next”. I’m starting to come around to the idea that this kind of thinking is exactly why we have poverty and hunger in the USA. We allow individuals to accumulate endless wealth even when that money could be used to help those who need a helping hand. I’m not saying we necessarily have the government…
Exactly.
"we pioneered the west" lmao.
"how we survive as a species" wtf lmao
op is heavily romanticizing technology and throwing humanity under the bus without even realizing it.
Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#499All 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…
And it's worth noting that they have overtaken a wildly expensive, ineffective government program and built a competitive industry, driving down the cost of getting a kilogram into Low Earth Orbit by 44-fold already.
Re: Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
#500There will be a lot of cynicism on this post from the HN crowd, but these are unbelievably good recipients. I have interacted with Jose Andres many times, and go to his DC restaurants when I visit, and he is truly a wonderful soul who spends all his effort helping others. I don’t know much about Van Jones beyond what I see on TV, but if he’s of the same character as Jose Andres, that is stellar and they will both do…
It deserves cynicism. If he wasn’t a jerk he’d just pay his employees more and maybe pay some taxes. When everyone is fair upfront they don’t need to give us free turkeys on thanksgiving we can buy our own.
If you weren’t a jerk you’d pay $100 for a gallon of milk when you go to the store so the workers could have some extra money. Why are you such a jerk that you don’t pay more for things than what they cost?