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I would love to see Jeff Bezos run for President in 2020. The trust he has built in the Amazon brand, the value he has placed upon investigative journalism and

I would love to see Jeff Bezos run for President in 2020. The trust he has built in the Amazon brand, the value he has placed upon investigative journalism and the survival of the free press, his deep knowledge of and interest in technology, his (presumed) familiarity with U.S. tax law, and the enormous success he’s achieved as a businessman would all work in his favor. I think Donald Trump senses this, and that’s why he singles Jeff out for criticism.

enraged_camel 9y ago
Frankly I don’t want any inexperienced people running for President anymore. Would you hire someone who knows nothing about technology (aside from being a consumer of it) to be your CTO? Probably not... similarly, we should expect people to gain experience in government before they are considered suitable.
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  Bloomberg did pretty well for himself.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Mayor is probably easier to learn than President. If Bezos ran for mayor of Seattle and governor of Washington I would have more faith in himbeing President. Right now he leads an authoritarian organization (as most corporations are). the qualities to lead that may not translate into leading a democracy.
    - crazygringo 9y ago
      +1. As mayor, you're still fundamentally an executive, making practical decisions about city services, police, etc. It feels quite analagous to CEO. Whereas as US president, you're effectively leader of your political party, and your greatest achievements are essentially legislative even though you have no legislative power. It's a position of leadership through coalition-building, not execution through delegation and accountability. There's certainly overlap, but overall they feel like night and day.
- klodolph 9y ago
  This was why I was so unhappy with Stein.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  > similarly, we should expect people to gain experience in government before they are considered suitable. I agree with the principle (and I despise the whole "tv stars as president" trend), but Bezos' experience isn't completely irrelevant. There was a similar argument to be made (and that has been made) about Trump and business experience. Now, Trump's failures as president are correlated with his failures as a businessman and in life in general, but it doesn't undermine the logic. CEO of Amazon is a massive amount of experience that no former president can claim they have. And although Bezos wouldn't have experience working in government, I highly doubt he's unfamiliar with it; he, just like any CEO of companies like amazon, would have worked with governments (especially US government) a ton. (Now let's not say that too loudly in case Larry Ellison reads HN and is getting new ideas)
- ojbyrne 9y ago
  I agree with you, but Amazon is definitely more of a substantive organization than whatever it is Trump ran.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Unsure if this is satire or not. Bezos's businesses don't give a damn about their customers. I don't trust Amazon at all, even if I use their products, that's because I like many others have been screwed over by them on occasion. Trump criticizes everything, Jeff is not singled out. He's the equivalent of a Gilded Age robber baron. You want to put him in charge?
- astebbin 9y ago
  EDIT: misread “customers” as “employees.” As a satisfied longtime Amazon customer, I really couldn’t disagree with you more. In contrast to the current President, Jeff is a stable and effective leader with broad popular appeal, a good head on his shoulders, and respect for the institutions of American democracy. In 2020, I think that’s the best we can hope for.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    I've seen little league board members with a better ability to lead than Trump. Just because he's better than bad, does not make him good. Why can't we have higher standards for the person running this country? Why can't a nation of 300 million people choose someone who hasn't spent their whole life making money or being a pop star? I'd like to see someone with a broader outlook than that. Your satisfaction as a customer comes at the expense of their employees (as you pointed out) and their sellers. It's something you have to experience and then you get how they work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661710 As a once (and still) happy customer they lost all my trust.
    - fjsolwmv 9y ago
      If President Bezos could get the government to work as well for it's customers as Amazon does, it's a good deal.
      - sofal 9y ago
        Do you really want the POTUS to have the same powers over the national government that a CEO has over their company? Because that would require a substantially different type of government than we have. I suppose the trains will be on time at least.
fatbird 9y ago
Bezos is an accomplished entrepreneur, but from everything I've heard about how Amazon works, I can't imagine being an effective politician. He's a corporate dictator, not a coalition-builder: the exact quality that built Amazon would seem to be his greatest weakness in the White House.
- astebbin 9y ago
  I don’t think you’re entirely wrong, but you could have said all that about Donald Trump in 2016. We live in strange times.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Trump isn't an effective politician, so whatever people were saying in 2016 was exactly right.
    - astebbin 9y ago
      Not be too pedantic, but if you can’t get elected, you can’t be effective. By that measure, Trump was more effective than every other Presidential candidate, Hillary in particular. He is now President, and she is an unemployed politician. I think whichever party puts forth the most electable candidate will, by definition, win the next election. Of what I perceive as that pool of individuals, I see Jeff Bezos as one of the better options.
      - aaron-lebo 9y ago
        So what you are doing is looking for someone who can win, not necessarily be an effective leader. It's the kind of thinking that's got people seriously jabbing about Oprah as a Democratic candidate. We really want to put someone who was a talk show host and has evangelized quack science for the past 30 years in charge of the country, because she's all of a sudden brave enough to speak out against Harvey Weinstein (nevermind that she was his friend)? The scary thing is, she'd probably beat Trump, that doesn't mean it would be good for this country. It really can't be that difficult to pick someone who is both more electable than Trump and also capable. If we can't do that, then let's fold up as a country and go home. We don't have to default to someone like Oprah or Bezos. We can do better.
alphaalpha101 9y ago
Amazon is a company that has spent years acting incredibly immorally: many many clearly anticompetitive practices, censoring 1984 from peoples' Kindles, avoiding and evading taxes, etc. People don't 'trust' the Amazon brand. People just know that Amazon is cheap because they're built a huge economy of scale by acting anti-competitively. How, you ask? By lowering their prices to the point they were losing money or making very little money. Amazon is no better than Walmart or Microsoft or any big American company that has acted monopolistically, IMO.
mythrwy 9y ago
Maybe he could run for President of China where most of his stuff comes from. Mark Z. can be his vice and they can think up kid names together.
singhrac 9y ago
His suitability nonwithstanding, I doubt Bezos can afford to take time off from Amazon to run in the next few years. And I'd like to see how he's going to extricate himself from his business interests as most presidents are supposed to do... cough
bproven 9y ago
I'd prefer a non-billionaire/millionaire statesman (not a politician). Uber rich people in general have a hard time connecting or understanding regular people - and thats what we need now before the whole thing goes off the rails permanently. Although some may argue that has already happened... We need to get off this train of having famous rich people (or rich business people) running gov. Furthermore we should try to purge the career politicians (who again are usually ultra rich with corporate connections) from all of gov. In most cases, they are not representing us any longer - and haven't for years... Sort of a dream, but seems like a nice goal :)
- littlepinkpill 9y ago
  Yes--I've been thinking about "no more career politicians" for years. And yeah, it's idealism at its finest--a really good progressive idea that will either never break ground or will be radically transformed into something else terrible that still protects vested interests. Sigh. I hate being both an idealist and a cynic. Wait! Maybe we could get Bezos to back it :p
blackbagboys 9y ago
The very last thing we need is another megalomaniacal billionaire handed the reigns to an excessively powerful executive apparatus. People need to remember that billionaires are not your friends. The only thing that can improve society is concerted, collective action. The fetishization of hyper-competent business leaders as the solution to society’s problems is a quasi-fascistic fantasy; it’s of a piece with a yearning for a “strongman” or those thinkpieces that glorify Singapore or the CCP’s supposed technocratic excellence.
- astebbin 9y ago
  I think you’ve taken more from my original comment than was given. I don’t think electing a competent President is at odds with a desire for Congress to better assert its Constitutional authority.
- ssambros 9y ago
  > The only thing that can improve society is concerted, collective action. Can you site the source for this claim, or it's just your opinion?
- paulddraper 9y ago
  > People need to remember that billionaires are not your friends. O'rly. Then how much money does someone need to be my friend?
  - stuntkite 9y ago
    I think you get to set that number on your own or let the market dictate your friend price. Cats with a billie usually have a pretty full roster though. Do you juggle or something? Just a really good listener? Have a rare blood type?
- natalyarostova 9y ago
  That's really not the only thing that can improve society. Singapore, as you note, improved without it. Well, many places have. You may not like the consequences that come about from a quasi-fascistic techno-reactionary government, which is fine. On the other hand, there are benefits to such systems. If Amazon owned Seattle, do you think there would be such filth and homeless squalor throughout the city? Or the daily opioid deaths on our streets. Would Bezos be okay with that? How about our traffic? It is funny to me that a city with perhaps the top logistics talent and management in the world has an ineffectual transportation system due in part to the challenges of collective action and the biases in underfunding public goods endemic and researched in the study of the interaction between representative government, taxation, and investment. Don't misinterpret me as advocating for that world, radical change tends to do more harm than good. But there is nothing wrong with holding a clear view of why people find it an enticing proposition. It's a little intellectually dismissive to just call it some base fetishization or fantasy. Or at least that's how I interpreted your comment, perhaps my interpretation was uncharitable.

enraged_camel 9y ago

Frankly I don’t want any inexperienced people running for President anymore. Would you hire someone who knows nothing about technology (aside from being a consumer of it) to be your CTO? Probably not... similarly, we should expect people to gain experience in government before they are considered suitable.

SamReidHughes 9y ago
Bloomberg did pretty well for himself.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Mayor is probably easier to learn than President. If Bezos ran for mayor of Seattle and governor of Washington I would have more faith in himbeing President. Right now he leads an authoritarian organization (as most corporations are). the qualities to lead that may not translate into leading a democracy.
  - crazygringo 9y ago
    +1. As mayor, you're still fundamentally an executive, making practical decisions about city services, police, etc. It feels quite analagous to CEO. Whereas as US president, you're effectively leader of your political party, and your greatest achievements are essentially legislative even though you have no legislative power. It's a position of leadership through coalition-building, not execution through delegation and accountability. There's certainly overlap, but overall they feel like night and day.
klodolph 9y ago
This was why I was so unhappy with Stein.
scrollaway 9y ago
> similarly, we should expect people to gain experience in government before they are considered suitable. I agree with the principle (and I despise the whole "tv stars as president" trend), but Bezos' experience isn't completely irrelevant. There was a similar argument to be made (and that has been made) about Trump and business experience. Now, Trump's failures as president are correlated with his failures as a businessman and in life in general, but it doesn't undermine the logic. CEO of Amazon is a massive amount of experience that no former president can claim they have. And although Bezos wouldn't have experience working in government, I highly doubt he's unfamiliar with it; he, just like any CEO of companies like amazon, would have worked with governments (especially US government) a ton. (Now let's not say that too loudly in case Larry Ellison reads HN and is getting new ideas)
ojbyrne 9y ago
I agree with you, but Amazon is definitely more of a substantive organization than whatever it is Trump ran.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

Unsure if this is satire or not. Bezos's businesses don't give a damn about their customers. I don't trust Amazon at all, even if I use their products, that's because I like many others have been screwed over by them on occasion. Trump criticizes everything, Jeff is not singled out. He's the equivalent of a Gilded Age robber baron. You want to put him in charge?

astebbin 9y ago
EDIT: misread “customers” as “employees.” As a satisfied longtime Amazon customer, I really couldn’t disagree with you more. In contrast to the current President, Jeff is a stable and effective leader with broad popular appeal, a good head on his shoulders, and respect for the institutions of American democracy. In 2020, I think that’s the best we can hope for.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  I've seen little league board members with a better ability to lead than Trump. Just because he's better than bad, does not make him good. Why can't we have higher standards for the person running this country? Why can't a nation of 300 million people choose someone who hasn't spent their whole life making money or being a pop star? I'd like to see someone with a broader outlook than that. Your satisfaction as a customer comes at the expense of their employees (as you pointed out) and their sellers. It's something you have to experience and then you get how they work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15661710 As a once (and still) happy customer they lost all my trust.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    If President Bezos could get the government to work as well for it's customers as Amazon does, it's a good deal.
    - sofal 9y ago
      Do you really want the POTUS to have the same powers over the national government that a CEO has over their company? Because that would require a substantially different type of government than we have. I suppose the trains will be on time at least.

fatbird 9y ago

Bezos is an accomplished entrepreneur, but from everything I've heard about how Amazon works, I can't imagine being an effective politician. He's a corporate dictator, not a coalition-builder: the exact quality that built Amazon would seem to be his greatest weakness in the White House.

astebbin 9y ago
I don’t think you’re entirely wrong, but you could have said all that about Donald Trump in 2016. We live in strange times.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Trump isn't an effective politician, so whatever people were saying in 2016 was exactly right.
  - astebbin 9y ago
    Not be too pedantic, but if you can’t get elected, you can’t be effective. By that measure, Trump was more effective than every other Presidential candidate, Hillary in particular. He is now President, and she is an unemployed politician. I think whichever party puts forth the most electable candidate will, by definition, win the next election. Of what I perceive as that pool of individuals, I see Jeff Bezos as one of the better options.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      So what you are doing is looking for someone who can win, not necessarily be an effective leader. It's the kind of thinking that's got people seriously jabbing about Oprah as a Democratic candidate. We really want to put someone who was a talk show host and has evangelized quack science for the past 30 years in charge of the country, because she's all of a sudden brave enough to speak out against Harvey Weinstein (nevermind that she was his friend)? The scary thing is, she'd probably beat Trump, that doesn't mean it would be good for this country. It really can't be that difficult to pick someone who is both more electable than Trump and also capable. If we can't do that, then let's fold up as a country and go home. We don't have to default to someone like Oprah or Bezos. We can do better.

alphaalpha101 9y ago

Amazon is a company that has spent years acting incredibly immorally: many many clearly anticompetitive practices, censoring 1984 from peoples' Kindles, avoiding and evading taxes, etc. People don't 'trust' the Amazon brand. People just know that Amazon is cheap because they're built a huge economy of scale by acting anti-competitively. How, you ask? By lowering their prices to the point they were losing money or making very little money. Amazon is no better than Walmart or Microsoft or any big American company that has acted monopolistically, IMO.

mythrwy 9y ago

Maybe he could run for President of China where most of his stuff comes from. Mark Z. can be his vice and they can think up kid names together.

singhrac 9y ago

His suitability nonwithstanding, I doubt Bezos can afford to take time off from Amazon to run in the next few years. And I'd like to see how he's going to extricate himself from his business interests as most presidents are supposed to do... cough

bproven 9y ago

I'd prefer a non-billionaire/millionaire statesman (not a politician). Uber rich people in general have a hard time connecting or understanding regular people - and thats what we need now before the whole thing goes off the rails permanently. Although some may argue that has already happened... We need to get off this train of having famous rich people (or rich business people) running gov. Furthermore we should try to purge the career politicians (who again are usually ultra rich with corporate connections) from all of gov. In most cases, they are not representing us any longer - and haven't for years... Sort of a dream, but seems like a nice goal :)

littlepinkpill 9y ago
Yes--I've been thinking about "no more career politicians" for years. And yeah, it's idealism at its finest--a really good progressive idea that will either never break ground or will be radically transformed into something else terrible that still protects vested interests. Sigh. I hate being both an idealist and a cynic. Wait! Maybe we could get Bezos to back it :p

blackbagboys 9y ago

The very last thing we need is another megalomaniacal billionaire handed the reigns to an excessively powerful executive apparatus. People need to remember that billionaires are not your friends. The only thing that can improve society is concerted, collective action. The fetishization of hyper-competent business leaders as the solution to society’s problems is a quasi-fascistic fantasy; it’s of a piece with a yearning for a “strongman” or those thinkpieces that glorify Singapore or the CCP’s supposed technocratic excellence.

astebbin 9y ago
I think you’ve taken more from my original comment than was given. I don’t think electing a competent President is at odds with a desire for Congress to better assert its Constitutional authority.
ssambros 9y ago
> The only thing that can improve society is concerted, collective action. Can you site the source for this claim, or it's just your opinion?
paulddraper 9y ago
> People need to remember that billionaires are not your friends. O'rly. Then how much money does someone need to be my friend?
- stuntkite 9y ago
  I think you get to set that number on your own or let the market dictate your friend price. Cats with a billie usually have a pretty full roster though. Do you juggle or something? Just a really good listener? Have a rare blood type?
natalyarostova 9y ago
That's really not the only thing that can improve society. Singapore, as you note, improved without it. Well, many places have. You may not like the consequences that come about from a quasi-fascistic techno-reactionary government, which is fine. On the other hand, there are benefits to such systems. If Amazon owned Seattle, do you think there would be such filth and homeless squalor throughout the city? Or the daily opioid deaths on our streets. Would Bezos be okay with that? How about our traffic? It is funny to me that a city with perhaps the top logistics talent and management in the world has an ineffectual transportation system due in part to the challenges of collective action and the biases in underfunding public goods endemic and researched in the study of the interaction between representative government, taxation, and investment. Don't misinterpret me as advocating for that world, radical change tends to do more harm than good. But there is nothing wrong with holding a clear view of why people find it an enticing proposition. It's a little intellectually dismissive to just call it some base fetishization or fantasy. Or at least that's how I interpreted your comment, perhaps my interpretation was uncharitable.