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Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

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Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#501

Post by 824ueirwfjd »

archagon wrote: post #365
sobani wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is a nice example. He probably would've started the same, but Tesla and SpaceX wouldn't have existed / been the same as today. Remember that at some point Musk had poured all his wealth into those companies and they were one failure away from bankruptcy. If Musk had any less money after PayPal, he couldn't have done what he did.

In this alternate universe, PayPal could have morphed into PayPalphabet and spawned other companies corresponding to Musk's interests. I think that would still work fine as long as the money stayed within the company and out of executives' hands.

nope, it wouldn't ever happen. without capitalism -- or greed, incentive, however you want to put it -- none of those companies would exist.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#502

Post by archagon »

824ueirwfjd wrote: post #501
archagon wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this alternate universe, PayPal could have morphed into PayPalphabet and spawned other companies corresponding to Musk's interests. I think that would still work fine as long as the money stayed within the company and out of executives' hands.

nope, it wouldn't ever happen. without capitalism -- or greed, incentive, however you want to put it -- none of those companies would exist.

Yes, I think it absolutely would happen. Incentive would still be there. People won't sit around idle just because they can't make a million times more money than their peers.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#503

Post by paulddraper »

mcbits wrote: post #266
paulddraper wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, supply comes into it too. A nurse will be paid a substantial sum if she is one of very few that can save the CEO's life.

The CEO can die and the company will continue functioning 95% as well. Or maybe 105%, or 10%, or 1,000%.

If he's eating the shareholder's money like that, they should fire him.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#504

Post by laughfactory »

He would be wise to cash out now while the getting is good. Amazon has an enormous problem with counterfeit goods in many categories. Unfortunately, when the implosion happens it will likely be incredibly fast and catastrophic. How might this happen? People get sketched out by their own, or other's experiences with fraud on Amazon, and simply decide to buy from other sources. I suspect this is a tipping point situation where it's not a slow decline, but instead a very fast one. For instance, my wife and I used to do most of our non-grocery shopping on Amazon. But recent horrific experiences (in spite of Jeff and his team stepping in to rectify things) and questions about what we'd actually get if we order something from Amazon means that now we don't buy nearly as much--mostly just Kindle books now. I just think that at some point most of their customers will stop shopping with them all at once because of fraud concerns, they'll stop subscribing to Prime, and next thing we know the company will be broken up and sold piecemeal.

I'm afraid Amazon thinks they have a lot more time than they actually do to think about what, if anything, they want to do about the problem.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#505

Post by WalterBright »

metaphorm wrote: post #474
WalterBright wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a troubling amount of wealth and power Any rookie cop can force you to pull over in your car, and confiscate any cash you have with you. Bezos can do none of that.

Bezos can buy The Washington Post and use it a megaphone to shape elite debate and tilt policy towards his preferences. No rookie cop can do that.

He can influence the voters, sure, from his soapbox. But he can't make anyone vote his way. It's the government that wields the power, not Bezos.

Keep in mind that Clinton way outspent Trump, and had most of the media on her side, and still lost. Money and media do not buy elections.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#506

Post by WalterBright »

memmcgee wrote: post #495
WalterBright wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it didn't end because it wasn't profitable. Actually, it ended because it could not compete with free labor. It was dying around 1800 because of that, and then the cotton gin revived it. It was dying again in the 1850s, and a big driver of the Civil War was the slave states trying to protect their economy from free labor competition. I don't think it's a coincidence that social justice has tended to follow what wor…

Slavery ended in the US because we fought a war. And some forms of slavery do exist today. See prison labor for example.

The war didn't just happen. It didn't start out as a war to end slavery, either (that happened later, with the Emancipation Proclamation).

As for prison labor, most of the cost of that is borne by the taxpayer, not the company using their labor. Keeping people prisoners in the US is very expensive.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#507

Post by loeg »

hyperpallium wrote: post #438
adventured wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rockefeller's adjusted fortune is not $300-$400 billion. It's a lot closer to $30 to $40 billion in fact. That huge fake number - which has been thrown around the Web for more than a decade - is derived from the GDP share. It goes like this. Rockefeller in 1915 (pick the year), was worth the equivalent of 1/37th of the US GDP. Therefore, adjusted to today, Rockefeller would be worth $bazillion (1/37th of $19 trillion…

Yes, not in terms of buying power, but success in terms of proportion of GDP seems a reasonable measure. It must be harder to make the same amount of money in a smaller market. It also shows how well you did relative to others, and may be a better measure of how much actual power you have over others. Just use the proportion 1/37 instead of converting to dollars, or I agree it's misleading. Also: perhaps, $1500 per d…

> Also: perhaps, $1500 per day today is reflective of our buying power in a way

(A little sarcastic, sorry:) Yes, if we ignore all of the things we buy that have gotten more expensive, it's like prices have deflated.

Overall inflation measures a collection of consumer prices, the average of which has trended up since that time. It is a general reflection of buying power, dollar for dollar.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#508

Post by WalterBright »

baursak wrote: post #426
WalterBright wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it didn't end because it wasn't profitable. Actually, it ended because it could not compete with free labor. It was dying around 1800 because of that, and then the cotton gin revived it. It was dying again in the 1850s, and a big driver of the Civil War was the slave states trying to protect their economy from free labor competition. I don't think it's a coincidence that social justice has tended to follow what wor…

Slavery still very much exists in places like Middle East, South Asia, and US prisons, so your argument is moot.

Ask yourself why the USSR was unable to compete with the US economically, and could not even feed itself (Kansas in the 1970s was known as "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union". Why the Chinese could not compete with the US until they switched to free labor. Why N. Korea is starving and regular shipments of food from the west keeps things from getting much worse. The Middle East is not known for exporting factory goods.

The examples go on and on.

Where forced labor still exists there is something else propping it up or subsidizing it - like I mentioned with prison labor.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#509

Post by WalterBright »

pikzen wrote: post #437
WalterBright wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it didn't end because it wasn't profitable. Actually, it ended because it could not compete with free labor. It was dying around 1800 because of that, and then the cotton gin revived it. It was dying again in the 1850s, and a big driver of the Civil War was the slave states trying to protect their economy from free labor competition. I don't think it's a coincidence that social justice has tended to follow what wor…

In case anyone is wondering what libertarian revisionism looks like, look above.

The Confederacy couldn't even produce shoes for their soldiers. That's why Lee had gone north to Gettysburg - there was a shoe factory nearby.

Re: Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person

#510

Post by dredmorbius »

sumedh wrote: post #381
dredmorbius wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're begging the question (and yes, that's proper use): why should all the rewards go to those who've taken some risk? What of the risks taken by others? Are there uncompensated risk-bearing activities? Are there activities with low risk but high return? Suppose, say, dropping a drill bit next to the guy who's just blown in a gusher? Or securing control of the pipelines, railroads, and refineries by which that oil…

> What of the risks taken by others? What risks do employees take, they are getting a salary. If they are not happy they can leave and get another job. The founder has to put everything in it, his money, time, relationships, reputation. This is not "some risk", he cannot just walk away.

Of late, employee risks include being on the short side of an extremely unbalanced power relationship. This includes unilateral and eternal NDAs, claims on all work, non-competes (including in such "industries" as sandwich shops, hairstyling, and auto repair), drugs tests (which risk drugs convictions), and more.

Jobs mobility may be limited by blacklists or other forms of discrimination: H1-B visas or other immigration status, social, religious, gender/sex, issues (not legally, in most cases, but de-facto), and more.

Employees are committing just as much of their fungible time, and often appreciably all of their available resources, which for roughly half the population net out to roughly zero. Figures I've seen suggest that about that number could not come up with $500 - $2000 (amount varies) on a 1-2 week notice -- that's far less than the amount required for, say, a business-appropriate wardrobe, transit or transport access, apartment deposit, and a month's food.

And that's within the US/EU/AU/JP/UK. It's considerably worse in much the rest of the world.

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