13 ms·

The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

117 points by TheLastSamurai 8y ago

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
"Matt Kilcoyne, of the free market think-tank the Adam Smith Institute, disagrees. "Quite frankly Bezos's greatest act of philanthropy is Amazon itself," he argues. "Lower prices, more choice and competition have delivered billions for Bezos and billions worth for the hundreds of millions of customers he serves." " I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good. Pretty sure all the people who worked in book shops don't think so.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. That old industry got killed is natural when progress happens.
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    Amazon also set new lows for how to pay and treat employees, and how little it is possible to care about selling counterfeit products.
    - a008t 8y ago
      Clearly they have been better than the alternatives for customers - otherwise, they would not be successful. Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
      - ionised 8y ago
        > Clearly they have been better than the alternatives for customers - otherwise, they would not be successful. Plenty of shitty companies are successful. They just need to. be more convenient than their competitors. > Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly. Not yet.
      - KozmoNau7 8y ago
        The customer's don't see the horrible conditions behind the scenes, all they see are cheap products. If you're a delivery driver, your job options are extremely limited. You can deliver fast food, or deliver for companies like Amazon. It's either that, or starve.
        danielmg 8y ago
        Or learn another skill?
        KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Not really something you can "just do", when you're living paycheck to paycheck and can barely even pay rent, even after moving to more affordable accommodation, while also keeping your ~15 year old car running, because it's your lifeline to even having a job in the first place.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      I never understand why people say things like this. It's not even remotely true. For instance we can quantify the salary comment. A quick search for fulfillment center work showed salaries starting at $12-$14/hour. The median pay for retail work, by contrast, is $11.24 [1], which means 50% of workers earn less than that. It's not possible to similarly conveniently quantify concern about counterfeit, but if you think they genuinely do not care about it then I don't even know what to say. Even from a purely greed centered point of view, counterfeits hurt mid to longterm revenue. [1] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm
      - KozmoNau7 8y ago
        I base my impression of their working conditions on a friend of mine, who's worked both the warehouses and as a delivery driver. The managers are slave drivers, and if you're just a minute or two behind on a schedules delivery, you get dinged, a black mark on your employment record and a severe talking-down. Even if the delay is of no fault of your own (bad traffic, weather, etc.), it's seen as a personal failure on your part. No level of pay can make up for being treated like shit. Regarding the counterfeits, Amazon loves to say how they're dealing with the issue, but the examples just keep piling up. And of course their childish behavior around Chromecast and Youtube.
  - csydas 8y ago
    I'm not sure I'd allow the delivery times and customer support to be attributed as a real thing to Amazon. Both were meant as audience capturing tactics and were basically unattainable by most all other competitors due to costs -- Amazon only avoided it riding on a large wave of money and eating costs for years until it was the only game in town. Now you can't have a thread about Amazon without constant complaints about the 2-Day shipping never really being 2-Day shipping, the constant fakes that plague the Amazon inventory (with a seemingly blind-eye from Amazon itself on it), and so on. These weren't really public goods introduced by Amazon, as plenty of stores handle the customer service side just fine in most cases, and the delivery stuff was mostly just investors subsidizing the costs for a time, which appears to no longer be a major focal point.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Except that you can still just as easily buy things from normal retailers. They're not dead. People choose not to because the value of obtaining things from Amazon remains higher to them.
    - TheTrotters 8y ago
      Perhaps it’s selection bias. People who are happy with Amazon may not see the need to comment about it in every thread. But to counter this trend: I am very, very happy that Amazon exists. It’s allowed me to discover and buy plenty of books that I otherwise would never read or sample. Not to mention dozens of everyday items I buy from them. Nail clippers, socks, alarm clock, router, resistance bands, headphones and many more I’m forgetting about. It’s all under one roof, delivery is usually very fast (sometimes it’s just one day on two-day delivery; when there are some delays and it takes an extra day they always notify me by e-mail). Amazon is great and I’m a more-than-satisfied consumer.
    - ElBarto 8y ago
      It's not only about costs. It's really about hard work to deliver the best for customers. Many online retailers simply do not make efforts to deliver, quite apart from any cost consideration, and then they moan about Amazon. In addition, it's also about creating trust. Buying something online requires more trust than buying from a store so convincing people that it's safe and that there won't be any issues with returns and refunds is a big part of getting people to place and order and to come back.
  - itsmenotyou 8y ago
    That people benefited from internet shopping and delivery is not a defense of a company treating it's workers badly or evading paying taxes. Let's not pretend amazon is the only company that might have delivered those efficiencies, they were just the most successful, the most ruthless.
    - bluecalm 8y ago
      You can't expect companies to fight for greater good and sacrifice their interests for the overall good. In fact it's against the law for them to do that. Amazon hires a lot of people and in many countries pay reasonably well. With taxes it does what the law allows. If you want to change those things start with changing the law, ending policies hurting the working class (limiting low skill migration would be the first step) and getting rid of ridiculous taxes like corporate income tax you claim Amazon dodged (while in fact it pays what the law requires it to pay). Blaming the player for playing the game well while taking care of what they are legally obliged to do (shareholder value) is neither smart nor constructive.
      - pixl97 8y ago
        Oh no, the foxes eat us, that is their job... "Why dont we get rid of the foxes, we have the power to do that" No, no, that seems like a silly idea, status quo is the best.
      - macintux 8y ago
        > In fact it's against the law for them to do that. No, it’s not. The corporation’s interests must align with the shareholders, but there’s no law that says short-term profit is the only legal goal. Companies can and have sacrificed in order to build the community.
        Nasrudith 8y ago
        Public trading often leads to that however with activist investors. Anyone who sees them acting suboptomally for the short term can buy in, pressure for more short term interests and lobby to get their way then jump off before it collapses with their gains. Even without that scheming continuous gains are demanded generally.
  - andrepd 8y ago
    Shortening the delivery times from 3 to 2 days incurs a >40% increase in fuel costs. You claim the slight convenience of having stuff on your doorstep on Wednesday rather than Thursday not only outweighs that massive inefficiency and all its externalities, but is in fact a "significant improvement of the lives of millions of people".
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. Have you counted the lives and communities it destroyed (e.g. closing local alternatives and smaller chains)? The environmental cost from such large scale delivery of every possible BS? The externalities (including accumulated power to single person who contracts for the military industrial complex and runs newspapers)?
- gadders 8y ago
  I'm sure the people that manufactured buggy whips didn't think cars or mass transit was a public good either. Sadly, stuff like this happens as the world advances. I have a lot of sympathy for people in this situation and think they should be re-trained, but I wouldn't hold back progress.
- Treegarden 8y ago
  I dont quite understand this reoccurring sentiment about the poor book shops. Here in Germany the bookshops mainly feature fear mongering books and are mostly in German. Then there is a tiny section of english books (which often happen to be better then the German books displayed). Maybe this dos not apply to all German book shops but I feel like they haven't gotten with the times yet.
  - csydas 8y ago
    This might just be my perception since I spent a lot of time in college towns in the US, but book shops are kind of like coffee houses in that many people seem to get the idea that they'd be successful in running one, and often enough you see a bookshop pop-up for a few months then just vanish after it fails to gain traction and sustain. Bookshops in the US, however, tend to be way different than you're describing and instead are pretty much just a repository for dumping books. Most (unsurprisingly) double up on the dream and also become coffee houses, and they also try to act as an arts hub for the community, doing like talks, workshops, etc. So that's mostly what people are commenting on I would assume.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    Here in the UK most of the bookshops that just sold books have gone. Now most bookshops are essentially cafes that also sell books. There are a few exceptions - in London there are some niche booksellers, and most university cities have a bookshop that stocks textbooks, but it's generally true.
- ckastner 8y ago
  > I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good. Totally. Yes, in the past Amazon has as some point contributed to the lowering of prices, by challenging the dominant players in retail markets. But now, Amazon is the dominant player in the retail market, and Amazon seems to exploit this to the greatest extent possible. Here's an excellent quote from recent thread [1] about one of Amazon's practices: "Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17959085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17959085
  - Silhouette 8y ago
    "Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly." Which is an interesting assumption, but certainly not a correct one. They have lost a lot of my business in recent years due to frequent poor quality control and customer service issues.
    - ckastner 8y ago
      Perhaps not a universally correct one, but most probably a sufficiently accurate one, given Amazon's continued revenue growth. This is similar to the chronological vs. algorithmic timeline debates in social media: it's annoying to many users, but the overall result must be positive, otherwise they probably wouldn't be doing it, in face of the backlash.
      - Silhouette 8y ago
        If the trends continue over a period of several years, that may prove to be true. Anecdotally, I am far from alone among my friends and family in perceiving that Amazon's quality, reliability and customer service have degraded sharply in recent years. It's not just the counterfeits issue. Their basic product organisation is terrible these days, and it's often difficult to figure out if I'm ordering the correct edition of something. They've also failed to deliver Christmas shopping by the guaranteed dates. They've sent many items out that were packaged in obviously absurd ways and arrived predictably damaged, and then had basic problems with their returns procedures causing customers a lot of hassle. Perhaps more dangerous for Amazon, though, is that they are not always competitive on pricing with my local book and general stores any more. I can buy a new movie from Amazon and have it arrive tomorrow with perhaps a 5-10% chance that it's a bad copy and won't play. If I can buy the same movie for the same or less from my local store when I do my grocery shopping, and be guaranteed a proper UK product that I can see looks undamaged when I pick it off the shelf, which I can then enjoy watching this evening, what am I going to do? It's a similar story for buying books from a good local bookshop, and rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
- andromedavision 8y ago
  > it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good Well, it's either good or it's bad. It seems you think it's the latter and I think you're wrong. All the merchants whose businesses have been transformed for the better would disagree. Those merchants' customers would disagree as well.
- js8 8y ago
  "it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good" No, it is an outrageous claim. Let's be clear - these ASI guys are useful idiots. Compare Jeff Bezos to Linus Torvalds. I am still waiting when ASI will call Linus "a greatest philantropist". He would absolutely deserve that. Instead, he gets called "asshole" by some people. C*suckery of these people is just insane.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thefounder 8y ago
  >> more choice and competition What competition?
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    For many products on Amazon, there are several sellers, each competing for the "buy box". Third party sellers are not an unalloyed good, but on balance are good for Amazon shoppers, IMO. Outside of Amazon, Amazon has helped to set new standards for online commerce (free shipping, fast shipping, no/few questions customer service). When you see Zappos (now Amazon), Jet, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and Ebay all mimicking aspects of the Amazon shopping experience, you're also seeing increased competition. It also has effects on brick and mortar commerce that are beneficial for consumers. Some stores match Amazon prices in the walk-in stores. It has absolutely taken margin out of the retail industry, making it harder on retailers, but so long as they don't fail in droves, margin leaving the industry is money that's being returned to consumers, at least in part.
    - thefounder 8y ago
      There is competition between small sellers until Amazon decides to compete with them, and that's it...remember Amazon refusing to sell Chromecast? Or using dumping against competitors? Not to mention that all the sellers have to pay Amazon a fee so there is no competition with Amazon.
- samsari 8y ago
  Free market think-tank says free market is good. More on this breaking story as it happens.
- MrEfficiency 8y ago
  Amazon has helped me 'invent' things. I cannot deny that getting components in 2 days for mere dollars has been very useful. This cascades as I then provide value for people that buy my later inventions. Sure I can use digikey, but it takes 7-9 days to get parts for a reasonable price. While Amazon has gotten worse in the last few years, they still have crushed the established standards for shipping.
- zekevermillion 8y ago
  This meshes with the 'hipster antitrust' argument, that the consumer surplus measure is not the whole story. If low prices are so great for us, why is it that small communities are objectively so down-and-out even in the midst of unprecedentedly cheap stuff.
- dashmatte 8y ago
  "Pretty sure all the people who worked in book shops don't think so." I'm pretty sure independent self-publishing authors do think so.
- zem 8y ago
  the one thing i've read about amazon's impact that made a lasting, positive impression on me was by a black woman who noted that when she shopped on amazon, no one followed her around the store. there was also some commentary on underserved communities where traditional retailers were reluctant to set up shop. of course, this is really an argument for ubiquitous online retail rather than amazon in particular, but it was a good point in their favour. (sadly, it seems to be being built by exploiting workers, which is why i cannot take any claims of philanthropy seriously.)
  - thedailymail 8y ago
    That's an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about before. At the same time though, it is certain that her every move while on the site was being monitored, recorded and analyzed – just like everyone else's.
    - zem 8y ago
      sure, but she's not being discriminated against for being black, which is absolutely the case in a ton of brick and mortar stores.
hguhghuff 8y ago
Bill Gates didn’t get going with his philanthropy till later.
113 8y ago
I'm always suspicious of someone that has "philanthropist" at the beginning of their wikipedia page.
- ATsch 8y ago
  agreed. In my head, it's synonymous with "Did some very questionable things and then tried to buy his image back and put it on wikipedia"
palerm 8y ago
I don't believe in charity. It's not that useful for poor people as it may seem. How has Bezos helped society: - By taking risks and innovating. - By paying taxes. How he could help even more society? - By taking even more risks. - By paying much more taxes. - By improving his employees salary.
stubish 8y ago
It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. The argument people tend to make here is that the net change he's creating in the world is not for the better. If 1,000 people have to suffer misery because of his company in order to enable 10 people to get the benefit of his personal charity, that doesn't look like "making the world a better place" to many of us.
- point78 8y ago
  One person should not choose where and to what social services need funding. That's why we have government and not kings and queens.
  - kowdermeister 8y ago
    So we should put a gap on wealth and redistribute it beyond that in a fair way?
    - onion2k 8y ago
      Yes. And we do exactly that through taxation. A portion of Jeff Bezos' fortune is derived from Amazon's ability to increase it's profits by (legal, and arguably justifiable) tax avoidance. That's part of global business these days, but it's not unreasonable for people in regions where Amazon minimizes it's tax costs to say Bezos is doing something bad for them.
      - point78 8y ago
amelius 8y ago
Well, even though he made more than 1000x than most people, Bezos is probably not 10x smarter by any reasonable metric, and certainly doesn't work 10x more than the rest of us. It's clearly a choice we all made as a society that allows him to have all this money. The question is: would we have an Amazon without people who are driven by money? Of course we can never know, but if we look at the past, where a large amount of technological progress was driven by monks, it seems the answer is affirmative. Also the amount of work done in OSS by volunteers points in this direction. So the "charade" is something that we created, ultimately. The conclusion is that perhaps we could scale down a little on the capitalism, and let society take care of causes that currently need the help of philanthropists.
- fastball 8y ago
  When you say "let society take care of it", who exactly do you mean?
  - Radim 8y ago
    It's a cowardly way of saying "I want that guy's money, but am too weak to take it myself". The fundamental problem with such redistribution schemes is: Who gets to decide who's weak and who's the villain? Certainly each individual knows for themselves; typically a variation on "I'm weak; give me". But coming up with stable, fair valuations for social contribution is a hard problem. For example, we already know that centralized, committee-driven solutions are deadly in the long run.
    - justtopost 8y ago
      And you just explained why, while it sounds great to me otherwise, I can never get behind socialism. The evils of capitolism are essentially still present, but now controlled by committee. I once dreampt the answer was a new meta-currency, where there is subjective emotional value traded against a objective value currency. The interactions you had during the day gave value to others life and you shared in that, and you gave back to those that brightened yours. My dream imagined people being their best, for both selfish and social reasons. But upon waking and reflection, I found a Black Mirror-esque dance of everyone emotionally blackmailing each other, and facade-laden interaction approaching desperation. I don't know the answer, but careful application seems key. The world is made of edge cases.
FullMetalBitch 8y ago
Sure he could raise all amazon staff salary but that doesn't alter the fact he is charitable.
lwhi 8y ago
Unrestricted capitalism will never be a force for good. Left running without any regulation, the gap between rich and poor will increase adinfinitum. This kind of philanthropy acts as a last ditch attempt to correct the negative affects the system produces .. but in my opinion, it's not an effective or elegant way of doing so. It's main purpose is an exercise in smoke and mirrors .. by trying to influence our perception and shape the conversation surrounding whether these excess profits are acceptable in modern society.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Unrestricted capitalism will never be a force for good. Unrestricted capitalism, sadly, doesn't even exist. But capitalism in its various forms is already a potent force for good - perhaps the most powerful such force the world has ever known. No other system has done more to create wealth, raise standards of living, and improve the world. Attacking capitalism because it's slightly less than perfect at delivering the ideal end result for everybody, is a horrible kind of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".
  - lwhi 8y ago
    No it isn't. The current system isn't working for enough people.
ionised 8y ago
I see these 'philanthropic' efforts as distractions from what is essentially a new Gilded Age and its robber barons.
bitL 8y ago
There used to be time when one was scorned if they donated stuff to needy out of compassion instead of what justice demanded, i.e. fair living wages. There was also time when one had to maintain a facade of normalcy but was encouraged donating to charity in secret so that nobody knew about it. There was also time when charity meant unconditional help to those who needed it most instead of a way to reshape world and its culture into one's own image while evading taxes.
- christophilus 8y ago
  When and where? I don't recall ever learning of such a time. I'm not being sarcastic. I'm genuinely curious.
cromwellian 8y ago
Lots of comments attacking Amazon for lowering wages but ignoring the fact that warehouse work in general is on borrowed time and going the way of horse and buggies (https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY) At some point in the near future, these jobs won’t exist. Are the commentators suggesting they not be automated? Likewise long truck driver driving is going to eventually collapse. Any attempt to make Amazon pay a vastly higher salary for packers will just accelerate the drive to full automation.
- krapp 8y ago
  >Any attempt to make Amazon pay a vastly higher salary for packers will just accelerate the drive to full automation. No one is asking that Amazon pay a vastly higher salary to their low tier employees, only that they consider the cost of living for those employees and pay accordingly within a particular market. The means to afford food and housing should not be out of reach of a full time employee, even if their position is likely to be automated in the future. That shouldn't be considered a luxury only available to the well-to-do. If the likelihood of automation is a valid rationale for lowering wages then just about everyone should be living on borrowed time and $12.00/hr. And Amazon is pushing for full automation at maximum speed regardless, so employee wages are likely not a factor in that timeline.
  - ti_ranger 8y ago
    > No one is asking that Amazon pay a vastly higher salary to their low tier employees, only that they consider the cost of living for those employees and pay accordingly within a particular market. If Amazon is paying too little compared to that "particular market", surely they wouldn't get enough applicants? I guess you mean something else than "market" here ... > The means to afford food and housing should not be out of reach of a full time employee, even if their position is likely to be automated in the future. Then the government should set a (higher) minimum wage (and benefits), they way most other governments in the first (and third) world do. A company's primary obligation is to their shareholders. A government's primary obligation should be to their constituents/voters/residents/citizens. Which one is failing their primary stakeholder the most here?
xg15 8y ago
From the Carnegie quote: > "The man of wealth thus becoming the sole agent and trustee for his poorer brethren," he wrote, "bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer - doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves." How does wisdom about running a business translate into wisdom how other people should live their life?
- pixl97 8y ago
  Money is power. Power means I'm right. Pretty much anyone with money and power ever.
mac01021 8y ago
> "If you want to wade into public policy, you have a moral responsibility not to put a Band-Aid on cancer," he says, adding that Mr Bezos could work to influence policy instead. Noone interviewed for the article talks about what policies Bezos might lobby for in order to make a real difference...
zekevermillion 8y ago
Amazon shares have a lot of value, and Bezos is sitting on a pile of them. What should Bezos do with that currency -- hoard it? spend it? This supermoney represents Bezos' capacity to incentivize his fellow humans to act in concert toward a goal that he can influence. If he hoards it, then it does nothing for society. Bezos doesn't need it for his personal enjoyment either. After he leases a couple jets, buys a few homes, and pays for his staff, I doubt that costs more than tens of millions per year. Not billions. If he spends it, then he needs to find undertakings that can efficiently absorb billions of dollars in value and still advance a meaningful goal. Space exploration is one of those undertakings. Bezos said he has been spending I think a billion per year on space travel / rocket engineering. There are few other areas that could so easily use this kind of capital. I would think that homelessness is another difficult problem that can absorb large amounts of value. Maybe this arrangement of accumulation and philanthropy is sub-optimal, and we should instead tax capital to allocate the surplus democratically rather than allow the person who accumulated it to make the decision. Well, we already do that to some degree, with mixed results. Perhaps a little of both is called for. In any event, I for one am pleased to see this money going to address homelessness. I don't care who is making the endowment, as long as the funds are used well. This is a serious, difficult problem, and this charity seems meaningful to me, not a purchased indulgence like sponsoring a new museum wing for example.
- jonifico 8y ago
  There are better methods to define who need that help rather than the super rich opinion. The Gates Foundation model goes in that direction, approaching urgent things first: child mortality, education access, vacine distribution, etc... Those topics are more urgent than space travel according to the general consensus. A good way to define those problems is to check which social programs are being supported for the countries in a specific region. In Latin America for example, poverty is one of those social problems, rather than internet access, for instance.
- wastedhours 8y ago
  The counter-argument is that, if these super-wealthy individuals didn't feel the need to extract the maximum wealth from the community (the notion that it's their fiduciary duty to pay the least in wages or find loopholes to minimise tax exposure is a myth), then communities in the round would be better off. Regardless of if you agree with his actions or not, it's pretty tone-deaf from a PR perspective - pretty much anyone could have seen the backlash coming. He doesn't seem to give a monkey's butt about public perception, but there's very little he can do positively for the community whilst there's still the notion he's trying to destroy it with his business interests. The money and help he's trying to provide will just work better and be more effective and efficient if there's active support for it from all sides. Everything that happens with that money now will be caveated and judged by his actions. I'd argue he should wait until he retires from Amazon (a la Bill Gates) if he does want any efforts to resonate with people. Then again, for good or bad, I don't think he really cares. I just hope the money can be deployed effectively whilst attached to him, even if it should have been in the pockets of the community all along.
ti_ranger 8y ago
> "Jeff Bezos can tout himself as a great philanthropist, yet it will not absolve him of responsibility if Amazon workers continue to be afraid to take toilet breaks and days off sick because they fear disciplinary action at work." In capitalism/free markets, it is the company's responsibility to generate as much value for shareholders as possible. If paying workers more will not result in more value for shareholders, doing so could be seen in a negative light by shareholders. Bezos is free to do with his own money as he sees fit, but not with his shareholders (which includes almost all employees BTW.) money. However, governments are there to ensure that capitalist-motivated behaviour doesn't negatively affect the community, and should use its power to regulate the companies by such means as minimum wage, minimum benefits etc. I really wonder how the "journalists" here fail to see where the problem lies ... but of course most Americans would say they don't want limits on how little time off they can get and how poor they choose to be ...
- mindcrime 8y ago
  However, governments are there to ensure that capitalist-motivated behaviour doesn't negatively affect the community, Where do people come up with this stuff? All evidence suggests that government is mainly there to act as a hammer to force people to adhere to behavioral standards that other people dream up, to protect the interests of the rich, entrenched, elitists who run the government, to enforce regulatory capture, to violate our civil liberties, and to steal our money.
throw2016 8y ago
Wealth is created with labour and Amazon depends on it, Amazon and Bezos wont be where they are without the labour of millions of others. The policies of the last 30 years have left labour in a weak position compared to capital which has allowed people like Bezos to build wealth for themselves without proper equity to labour. This is not about 'taking' or redistribution but ensuring the proper share for labour in the first place for their part in the process. Of course if you intention is to privilege capital over labour this is exactly the results intended but for the rest of society wages are static for 40 years and ultimately someone has to pay, either Bezos, Wallmart and others via equitable and fair wages or taxpayers and us via subsidies. So as a tech worker for instance there is already a huge portion of your income going to asset inflation and supporting the renteers and the financial class, now you also have to subsidize poorly paid workers by billionaires like Bezos, the Walton family and others. You may get low prices but someone has to pay for the labour, housing, education and medicare and since lobbying works so well for the wealthy its you who is going to be stranded with the bill. Again thanks to globalization, 'convenient' tax havens, lobbying and wealth friendly policies that privilege capital, and sell-out economists businesses and the wealthy can dodge taxes, access cheaper labour globally, put labour against each other and get policies for lower taxes. Labour simply does not have this level of mobility or 'choice' so contrary to conventional narratives there is 'coercion' since working is not a choice, and if there are not enough choices you have to accept whatever is available. If your grand plan is feudalism and a new class of serfs this is exactly how you would go about creating it.
anentropic 8y ago
legislate a higher minimum wage, and tax him
qubax 8y ago
Big "philanthropy" isn't a new concept. It's more than a 100 years old and was created by the "robber barons" of the gilded age to shelter their money from taxes and keep the wealth under family control for generations. An added benefit of these family charities is great PR. The most famous beneficiary of the charity PR is john d rockefeller whose reputation improved immensely after setting up his family charities. Rockefeller revolutionized the modern use of a PR team to burnish one's image through radio, tv, etc. A more recent example of this is bill gates who used charity and pr teams to shift public perception of him from a greedy tech monopolistic to a charitable philanthropist. Bezos is just following in a long line of extremely wealthy people. Whether it is good for society to immense wealth controlled by family trusts/chariities or whether the wealth should be taxed and used for public purposes is something people can debate for an eternity.
bg4 8y ago
Carnegie was very philanthropic. He also ruthlessly exploited his workers.
vbuwivbiu 8y ago
it's a sad world that has philanthropy and charity
teslaberry 8y ago
501c3 tax deductibility is a massive scam to SHIFT TAX BURDENS ONTO WORKING INCOME EARNERS. taxes should be paid on property , on increases in the value of property, on PASSIVELY earned money from property, on the purchase of property, on the sale of property. the more durable the property in temporal sense, the more it should be taxes. INCOME itself is not where the tax should be. you rare taxing labor. it is a crime to tax 'income' , IT IS INDENTURED SERVITUDE TO YOUR GOVERNMENT. tax property, licenses, food ( a form of property ). why should there be 'income' to tax? and why should anyone not have to pay taxes if they give money to a 'church' or 'school' . total nonsense.

"Matt Kilcoyne, of the free market think-tank the Adam Smith Institute, disagrees. "Quite frankly Bezos's greatest act of philanthropy is Amazon itself," he argues. "Lower prices, more choice and competition have delivered billions for Bezos and billions worth for the hundreds of millions of customers he serves." " I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good. Pretty sure all the people who worked in book shops don't think so.

bluecalm 8y ago
Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. That old industry got killed is natural when progress happens.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Amazon also set new lows for how to pay and treat employees, and how little it is possible to care about selling counterfeit products.
  - a008t 8y ago
    Clearly they have been better than the alternatives for customers - otherwise, they would not be successful. Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
    - ionised 8y ago
      > Clearly they have been better than the alternatives for customers - otherwise, they would not be successful. Plenty of shitty companies are successful. They just need to. be more convenient than their competitors. > Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly. Not yet.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      The customer's don't see the horrible conditions behind the scenes, all they see are cheap products. If you're a delivery driver, your job options are extremely limited. You can deliver fast food, or deliver for companies like Amazon. It's either that, or starve.
      - danielmg 8y ago
        Or learn another skill?
        KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Not really something you can "just do", when you're living paycheck to paycheck and can barely even pay rent, even after moving to more affordable accommodation, while also keeping your ~15 year old car running, because it's your lifeline to even having a job in the first place.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    I never understand why people say things like this. It's not even remotely true. For instance we can quantify the salary comment. A quick search for fulfillment center work showed salaries starting at $12-$14/hour. The median pay for retail work, by contrast, is $11.24 [1], which means 50% of workers earn less than that. It's not possible to similarly conveniently quantify concern about counterfeit, but if you think they genuinely do not care about it then I don't even know what to say. Even from a purely greed centered point of view, counterfeits hurt mid to longterm revenue. [1] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      I base my impression of their working conditions on a friend of mine, who's worked both the warehouses and as a delivery driver. The managers are slave drivers, and if you're just a minute or two behind on a schedules delivery, you get dinged, a black mark on your employment record and a severe talking-down. Even if the delay is of no fault of your own (bad traffic, weather, etc.), it's seen as a personal failure on your part. No level of pay can make up for being treated like shit. Regarding the counterfeits, Amazon loves to say how they're dealing with the issue, but the examples just keep piling up. And of course their childish behavior around Chromecast and Youtube.
- csydas 8y ago
  I'm not sure I'd allow the delivery times and customer support to be attributed as a real thing to Amazon. Both were meant as audience capturing tactics and were basically unattainable by most all other competitors due to costs -- Amazon only avoided it riding on a large wave of money and eating costs for years until it was the only game in town. Now you can't have a thread about Amazon without constant complaints about the 2-Day shipping never really being 2-Day shipping, the constant fakes that plague the Amazon inventory (with a seemingly blind-eye from Amazon itself on it), and so on. These weren't really public goods introduced by Amazon, as plenty of stores handle the customer service side just fine in most cases, and the delivery stuff was mostly just investors subsidizing the costs for a time, which appears to no longer be a major focal point.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Except that you can still just as easily buy things from normal retailers. They're not dead. People choose not to because the value of obtaining things from Amazon remains higher to them.
  - TheTrotters 8y ago
    Perhaps it’s selection bias. People who are happy with Amazon may not see the need to comment about it in every thread. But to counter this trend: I am very, very happy that Amazon exists. It’s allowed me to discover and buy plenty of books that I otherwise would never read or sample. Not to mention dozens of everyday items I buy from them. Nail clippers, socks, alarm clock, router, resistance bands, headphones and many more I’m forgetting about. It’s all under one roof, delivery is usually very fast (sometimes it’s just one day on two-day delivery; when there are some delays and it takes an extra day they always notify me by e-mail). Amazon is great and I’m a more-than-satisfied consumer.
  - ElBarto 8y ago
    It's not only about costs. It's really about hard work to deliver the best for customers. Many online retailers simply do not make efforts to deliver, quite apart from any cost consideration, and then they moan about Amazon. In addition, it's also about creating trust. Buying something online requires more trust than buying from a store so convincing people that it's safe and that there won't be any issues with returns and refunds is a big part of getting people to place and order and to come back.
- itsmenotyou 8y ago
  That people benefited from internet shopping and delivery is not a defense of a company treating it's workers badly or evading paying taxes. Let's not pretend amazon is the only company that might have delivered those efficiencies, they were just the most successful, the most ruthless.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    You can't expect companies to fight for greater good and sacrifice their interests for the overall good. In fact it's against the law for them to do that. Amazon hires a lot of people and in many countries pay reasonably well. With taxes it does what the law allows. If you want to change those things start with changing the law, ending policies hurting the working class (limiting low skill migration would be the first step) and getting rid of ridiculous taxes like corporate income tax you claim Amazon dodged (while in fact it pays what the law requires it to pay). Blaming the player for playing the game well while taking care of what they are legally obliged to do (shareholder value) is neither smart nor constructive.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      Oh no, the foxes eat us, that is their job... "Why dont we get rid of the foxes, we have the power to do that" No, no, that seems like a silly idea, status quo is the best.
    - macintux 8y ago
      > In fact it's against the law for them to do that. No, it’s not. The corporation’s interests must align with the shareholders, but there’s no law that says short-term profit is the only legal goal. Companies can and have sacrificed in order to build the community.
      - Nasrudith 8y ago
        Public trading often leads to that however with activist investors. Anyone who sees them acting suboptomally for the short term can buy in, pressure for more short term interests and lobby to get their way then jump off before it collapses with their gains. Even without that scheming continuous gains are demanded generally.
- andrepd 8y ago
  Shortening the delivery times from 3 to 2 days incurs a >40% increase in fuel costs. You claim the slight convenience of having stuff on your doorstep on Wednesday rather than Thursday not only outweighs that massive inefficiency and all its externalities, but is in fact a "significant improvement of the lives of millions of people".
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. Have you counted the lives and communities it destroyed (e.g. closing local alternatives and smaller chains)? The environmental cost from such large scale delivery of every possible BS? The externalities (including accumulated power to single person who contracts for the military industrial complex and runs newspapers)?
gadders 8y ago
I'm sure the people that manufactured buggy whips didn't think cars or mass transit was a public good either. Sadly, stuff like this happens as the world advances. I have a lot of sympathy for people in this situation and think they should be re-trained, but I wouldn't hold back progress.
Treegarden 8y ago
I dont quite understand this reoccurring sentiment about the poor book shops. Here in Germany the bookshops mainly feature fear mongering books and are mostly in German. Then there is a tiny section of english books (which often happen to be better then the German books displayed). Maybe this dos not apply to all German book shops but I feel like they haven't gotten with the times yet.
- csydas 8y ago
  This might just be my perception since I spent a lot of time in college towns in the US, but book shops are kind of like coffee houses in that many people seem to get the idea that they'd be successful in running one, and often enough you see a bookshop pop-up for a few months then just vanish after it fails to gain traction and sustain. Bookshops in the US, however, tend to be way different than you're describing and instead are pretty much just a repository for dumping books. Most (unsurprisingly) double up on the dream and also become coffee houses, and they also try to act as an arts hub for the community, doing like talks, workshops, etc. So that's mostly what people are commenting on I would assume.
- onion2k 8y ago
  Here in the UK most of the bookshops that just sold books have gone. Now most bookshops are essentially cafes that also sell books. There are a few exceptions - in London there are some niche booksellers, and most university cities have a bookshop that stocks textbooks, but it's generally true.
ckastner 8y ago
> I do think feel strong about Bezos plans, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good. Totally. Yes, in the past Amazon has as some point contributed to the lowering of prices, by challenging the dominant players in retail markets. But now, Amazon is the dominant player in the retail market, and Amazon seems to exploit this to the greatest extent possible. Here's an excellent quote from recent thread [1] about one of Amazon's practices: "Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17959085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17959085
- Silhouette 8y ago
  "Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly." Which is an interesting assumption, but certainly not a correct one. They have lost a lot of my business in recent years due to frequent poor quality control and customer service issues.
  - ckastner 8y ago
    Perhaps not a universally correct one, but most probably a sufficiently accurate one, given Amazon's continued revenue growth. This is similar to the chronological vs. algorithmic timeline debates in social media: it's annoying to many users, but the overall result must be positive, otherwise they probably wouldn't be doing it, in face of the backlash.
    - Silhouette 8y ago
      If the trends continue over a period of several years, that may prove to be true. Anecdotally, I am far from alone among my friends and family in perceiving that Amazon's quality, reliability and customer service have degraded sharply in recent years. It's not just the counterfeits issue. Their basic product organisation is terrible these days, and it's often difficult to figure out if I'm ordering the correct edition of something. They've also failed to deliver Christmas shopping by the guaranteed dates. They've sent many items out that were packaged in obviously absurd ways and arrived predictably damaged, and then had basic problems with their returns procedures causing customers a lot of hassle. Perhaps more dangerous for Amazon, though, is that they are not always competitive on pricing with my local book and general stores any more. I can buy a new movie from Amazon and have it arrive tomorrow with perhaps a 5-10% chance that it's a bad copy and won't play. If I can buy the same movie for the same or less from my local store when I do my grocery shopping, and be guaranteed a proper UK product that I can see looks undamaged when I pick it off the shelf, which I can then enjoy watching this evening, what am I going to do? It's a similar story for buying books from a good local bookshop, and rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
andromedavision 8y ago
> it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good Well, it's either good or it's bad. It seems you think it's the latter and I think you're wrong. All the merchants whose businesses have been transformed for the better would disagree. Those merchants' customers would disagree as well.
js8 8y ago
"it's a bit of a stretch to claim Amazon is a public good" No, it is an outrageous claim. Let's be clear - these ASI guys are useful idiots. Compare Jeff Bezos to Linus Torvalds. I am still waiting when ASI will call Linus "a greatest philantropist". He would absolutely deserve that. Instead, he gets called "asshole" by some people. C*suckery of these people is just insane.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
thefounder 8y ago
>> more choice and competition What competition?
- sokoloff 8y ago
  For many products on Amazon, there are several sellers, each competing for the "buy box". Third party sellers are not an unalloyed good, but on balance are good for Amazon shoppers, IMO. Outside of Amazon, Amazon has helped to set new standards for online commerce (free shipping, fast shipping, no/few questions customer service). When you see Zappos (now Amazon), Jet, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and Ebay all mimicking aspects of the Amazon shopping experience, you're also seeing increased competition. It also has effects on brick and mortar commerce that are beneficial for consumers. Some stores match Amazon prices in the walk-in stores. It has absolutely taken margin out of the retail industry, making it harder on retailers, but so long as they don't fail in droves, margin leaving the industry is money that's being returned to consumers, at least in part.
  - thefounder 8y ago
    There is competition between small sellers until Amazon decides to compete with them, and that's it...remember Amazon refusing to sell Chromecast? Or using dumping against competitors? Not to mention that all the sellers have to pay Amazon a fee so there is no competition with Amazon.
samsari 8y ago
Free market think-tank says free market is good. More on this breaking story as it happens.
MrEfficiency 8y ago
Amazon has helped me 'invent' things. I cannot deny that getting components in 2 days for mere dollars has been very useful. This cascades as I then provide value for people that buy my later inventions. Sure I can use digikey, but it takes 7-9 days to get parts for a reasonable price. While Amazon has gotten worse in the last few years, they still have crushed the established standards for shipping.
zekevermillion 8y ago
This meshes with the 'hipster antitrust' argument, that the consumer surplus measure is not the whole story. If low prices are so great for us, why is it that small communities are objectively so down-and-out even in the midst of unprecedentedly cheap stuff.
dashmatte 8y ago
"Pretty sure all the people who worked in book shops don't think so." I'm pretty sure independent self-publishing authors do think so.
zem 8y ago
the one thing i've read about amazon's impact that made a lasting, positive impression on me was by a black woman who noted that when she shopped on amazon, no one followed her around the store. there was also some commentary on underserved communities where traditional retailers were reluctant to set up shop. of course, this is really an argument for ubiquitous online retail rather than amazon in particular, but it was a good point in their favour. (sadly, it seems to be being built by exploiting workers, which is why i cannot take any claims of philanthropy seriously.)
- thedailymail 8y ago
  That's an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about before. At the same time though, it is certain that her every move while on the site was being monitored, recorded and analyzed – just like everyone else's.
  - zem 8y ago
    sure, but she's not being discriminated against for being black, which is absolutely the case in a ton of brick and mortar stores.

hguhghuff 8y ago

Bill Gates didn’t get going with his philanthropy till later.

113 8y ago

I'm always suspicious of someone that has "philanthropist" at the beginning of their wikipedia page.

ATsch 8y ago
agreed. In my head, it's synonymous with "Did some very questionable things and then tried to buy his image back and put it on wikipedia"

palerm 8y ago

I don't believe in charity. It's not that useful for poor people as it may seem. How has Bezos helped society: - By taking risks and innovating. - By paying taxes. How he could help even more society? - By taking even more risks. - By paying much more taxes. - By improving his employees salary.

stubish 8y ago

It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.

ubernostrum 8y ago
If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. The argument people tend to make here is that the net change he's creating in the world is not for the better. If 1,000 people have to suffer misery because of his company in order to enable 10 people to get the benefit of his personal charity, that doesn't look like "making the world a better place" to many of us.
point78 8y ago
One person should not choose where and to what social services need funding. That's why we have government and not kings and queens.
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  So we should put a gap on wealth and redistribute it beyond that in a fair way?
  - onion2k 8y ago
    Yes. And we do exactly that through taxation. A portion of Jeff Bezos' fortune is derived from Amazon's ability to increase it's profits by (legal, and arguably justifiable) tax avoidance. That's part of global business these days, but it's not unreasonable for people in regions where Amazon minimizes it's tax costs to say Bezos is doing something bad for them.
    - point78 8y ago

amelius 8y ago

Well, even though he made more than 1000x than most people, Bezos is probably not 10x smarter by any reasonable metric, and certainly doesn't work 10x more than the rest of us. It's clearly a choice we all made as a society that allows him to have all this money. The question is: would we have an Amazon without people who are driven by money? Of course we can never know, but if we look at the past, where a large amount of technological progress was driven by monks, it seems the answer is affirmative. Also the amount of work done in OSS by volunteers points in this direction. So the "charade" is something that we created, ultimately. The conclusion is that perhaps we could scale down a little on the capitalism, and let society take care of causes that currently need the help of philanthropists.

fastball 8y ago
When you say "let society take care of it", who exactly do you mean?
- Radim 8y ago
  It's a cowardly way of saying "I want that guy's money, but am too weak to take it myself". The fundamental problem with such redistribution schemes is: Who gets to decide who's weak and who's the villain? Certainly each individual knows for themselves; typically a variation on "I'm weak; give me". But coming up with stable, fair valuations for social contribution is a hard problem. For example, we already know that centralized, committee-driven solutions are deadly in the long run.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    And you just explained why, while it sounds great to me otherwise, I can never get behind socialism. The evils of capitolism are essentially still present, but now controlled by committee. I once dreampt the answer was a new meta-currency, where there is subjective emotional value traded against a objective value currency. The interactions you had during the day gave value to others life and you shared in that, and you gave back to those that brightened yours. My dream imagined people being their best, for both selfish and social reasons. But upon waking and reflection, I found a Black Mirror-esque dance of everyone emotionally blackmailing each other, and facade-laden interaction approaching desperation. I don't know the answer, but careful application seems key. The world is made of edge cases.

FullMetalBitch 8y ago

Sure he could raise all amazon staff salary but that doesn't alter the fact he is charitable.

lwhi 8y ago

Unrestricted capitalism will never be a force for good. Left running without any regulation, the gap between rich and poor will increase adinfinitum. This kind of philanthropy acts as a last ditch attempt to correct the negative affects the system produces .. but in my opinion, it's not an effective or elegant way of doing so. It's main purpose is an exercise in smoke and mirrors .. by trying to influence our perception and shape the conversation surrounding whether these excess profits are acceptable in modern society.

mindcrime 8y ago
Unrestricted capitalism will never be a force for good. Unrestricted capitalism, sadly, doesn't even exist. But capitalism in its various forms is already a potent force for good - perhaps the most powerful such force the world has ever known. No other system has done more to create wealth, raise standards of living, and improve the world. Attacking capitalism because it's slightly less than perfect at delivering the ideal end result for everybody, is a horrible kind of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".
- lwhi 8y ago
  No it isn't. The current system isn't working for enough people.

ionised 8y ago

I see these 'philanthropic' efforts as distractions from what is essentially a new Gilded Age and its robber barons.

bitL 8y ago

There used to be time when one was scorned if they donated stuff to needy out of compassion instead of what justice demanded, i.e. fair living wages. There was also time when one had to maintain a facade of normalcy but was encouraged donating to charity in secret so that nobody knew about it. There was also time when charity meant unconditional help to those who needed it most instead of a way to reshape world and its culture into one's own image while evading taxes.

christophilus 8y ago
When and where? I don't recall ever learning of such a time. I'm not being sarcastic. I'm genuinely curious.

cromwellian 8y ago

Lots of comments attacking Amazon for lowering wages but ignoring the fact that warehouse work in general is on borrowed time and going the way of horse and buggies (https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY) At some point in the near future, these jobs won’t exist. Are the commentators suggesting they not be automated? Likewise long truck driver driving is going to eventually collapse. Any attempt to make Amazon pay a vastly higher salary for packers will just accelerate the drive to full automation.

krapp 8y ago
>Any attempt to make Amazon pay a vastly higher salary for packers will just accelerate the drive to full automation. No one is asking that Amazon pay a vastly higher salary to their low tier employees, only that they consider the cost of living for those employees and pay accordingly within a particular market. The means to afford food and housing should not be out of reach of a full time employee, even if their position is likely to be automated in the future. That shouldn't be considered a luxury only available to the well-to-do. If the likelihood of automation is a valid rationale for lowering wages then just about everyone should be living on borrowed time and $12.00/hr. And Amazon is pushing for full automation at maximum speed regardless, so employee wages are likely not a factor in that timeline.
- ti_ranger 8y ago
  > No one is asking that Amazon pay a vastly higher salary to their low tier employees, only that they consider the cost of living for those employees and pay accordingly within a particular market. If Amazon is paying too little compared to that "particular market", surely they wouldn't get enough applicants? I guess you mean something else than "market" here ... > The means to afford food and housing should not be out of reach of a full time employee, even if their position is likely to be automated in the future. Then the government should set a (higher) minimum wage (and benefits), they way most other governments in the first (and third) world do. A company's primary obligation is to their shareholders. A government's primary obligation should be to their constituents/voters/residents/citizens. Which one is failing their primary stakeholder the most here?

xg15 8y ago

From the Carnegie quote: > "The man of wealth thus becoming the sole agent and trustee for his poorer brethren," he wrote, "bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer - doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves." How does wisdom about running a business translate into wisdom how other people should live their life?

pixl97 8y ago
Money is power. Power means I'm right. Pretty much anyone with money and power ever.

mac01021 8y ago

> "If you want to wade into public policy, you have a moral responsibility not to put a Band-Aid on cancer," he says, adding that Mr Bezos could work to influence policy instead. Noone interviewed for the article talks about what policies Bezos might lobby for in order to make a real difference...

zekevermillion 8y ago

Amazon shares have a lot of value, and Bezos is sitting on a pile of them. What should Bezos do with that currency -- hoard it? spend it? This supermoney represents Bezos' capacity to incentivize his fellow humans to act in concert toward a goal that he can influence. If he hoards it, then it does nothing for society. Bezos doesn't need it for his personal enjoyment either. After he leases a couple jets, buys a few homes, and pays for his staff, I doubt that costs more than tens of millions per year. Not billions. If he spends it, then he needs to find undertakings that can efficiently absorb billions of dollars in value and still advance a meaningful goal. Space exploration is one of those undertakings. Bezos said he has been spending I think a billion per year on space travel / rocket engineering. There are few other areas that could so easily use this kind of capital. I would think that homelessness is another difficult problem that can absorb large amounts of value. Maybe this arrangement of accumulation and philanthropy is sub-optimal, and we should instead tax capital to allocate the surplus democratically rather than allow the person who accumulated it to make the decision. Well, we already do that to some degree, with mixed results. Perhaps a little of both is called for. In any event, I for one am pleased to see this money going to address homelessness. I don't care who is making the endowment, as long as the funds are used well. This is a serious, difficult problem, and this charity seems meaningful to me, not a purchased indulgence like sponsoring a new museum wing for example.

jonifico 8y ago
There are better methods to define who need that help rather than the super rich opinion. The Gates Foundation model goes in that direction, approaching urgent things first: child mortality, education access, vacine distribution, etc... Those topics are more urgent than space travel according to the general consensus. A good way to define those problems is to check which social programs are being supported for the countries in a specific region. In Latin America for example, poverty is one of those social problems, rather than internet access, for instance.
wastedhours 8y ago
The counter-argument is that, if these super-wealthy individuals didn't feel the need to extract the maximum wealth from the community (the notion that it's their fiduciary duty to pay the least in wages or find loopholes to minimise tax exposure is a myth), then communities in the round would be better off. Regardless of if you agree with his actions or not, it's pretty tone-deaf from a PR perspective - pretty much anyone could have seen the backlash coming. He doesn't seem to give a monkey's butt about public perception, but there's very little he can do positively for the community whilst there's still the notion he's trying to destroy it with his business interests. The money and help he's trying to provide will just work better and be more effective and efficient if there's active support for it from all sides. Everything that happens with that money now will be caveated and judged by his actions. I'd argue he should wait until he retires from Amazon (a la Bill Gates) if he does want any efforts to resonate with people. Then again, for good or bad, I don't think he really cares. I just hope the money can be deployed effectively whilst attached to him, even if it should have been in the pockets of the community all along.

ti_ranger 8y ago

> "Jeff Bezos can tout himself as a great philanthropist, yet it will not absolve him of responsibility if Amazon workers continue to be afraid to take toilet breaks and days off sick because they fear disciplinary action at work." In capitalism/free markets, it is the company's responsibility to generate as much value for shareholders as possible. If paying workers more will not result in more value for shareholders, doing so could be seen in a negative light by shareholders. Bezos is free to do with his own money as he sees fit, but not with his shareholders (which includes almost all employees BTW.) money. However, governments are there to ensure that capitalist-motivated behaviour doesn't negatively affect the community, and should use its power to regulate the companies by such means as minimum wage, minimum benefits etc. I really wonder how the "journalists" here fail to see where the problem lies ... but of course most Americans would say they don't want limits on how little time off they can get and how poor they choose to be ...

mindcrime 8y ago
However, governments are there to ensure that capitalist-motivated behaviour doesn't negatively affect the community, Where do people come up with this stuff? All evidence suggests that government is mainly there to act as a hammer to force people to adhere to behavioral standards that other people dream up, to protect the interests of the rich, entrenched, elitists who run the government, to enforce regulatory capture, to violate our civil liberties, and to steal our money.

throw2016 8y ago

Wealth is created with labour and Amazon depends on it, Amazon and Bezos wont be where they are without the labour of millions of others. The policies of the last 30 years have left labour in a weak position compared to capital which has allowed people like Bezos to build wealth for themselves without proper equity to labour. This is not about 'taking' or redistribution but ensuring the proper share for labour in the first place for their part in the process. Of course if you intention is to privilege capital over labour this is exactly the results intended but for the rest of society wages are static for 40 years and ultimately someone has to pay, either Bezos, Wallmart and others via equitable and fair wages or taxpayers and us via subsidies. So as a tech worker for instance there is already a huge portion of your income going to asset inflation and supporting the renteers and the financial class, now you also have to subsidize poorly paid workers by billionaires like Bezos, the Walton family and others. You may get low prices but someone has to pay for the labour, housing, education and medicare and since lobbying works so well for the wealthy its you who is going to be stranded with the bill. Again thanks to globalization, 'convenient' tax havens, lobbying and wealth friendly policies that privilege capital, and sell-out economists businesses and the wealthy can dodge taxes, access cheaper labour globally, put labour against each other and get policies for lower taxes. Labour simply does not have this level of mobility or 'choice' so contrary to conventional narratives there is 'coercion' since working is not a choice, and if there are not enough choices you have to accept whatever is available. If your grand plan is feudalism and a new class of serfs this is exactly how you would go about creating it.

anentropic 8y ago

legislate a higher minimum wage, and tax him

qubax 8y ago

Big "philanthropy" isn't a new concept. It's more than a 100 years old and was created by the "robber barons" of the gilded age to shelter their money from taxes and keep the wealth under family control for generations. An added benefit of these family charities is great PR. The most famous beneficiary of the charity PR is john d rockefeller whose reputation improved immensely after setting up his family charities. Rockefeller revolutionized the modern use of a PR team to burnish one's image through radio, tv, etc. A more recent example of this is bill gates who used charity and pr teams to shift public perception of him from a greedy tech monopolistic to a charitable philanthropist. Bezos is just following in a long line of extremely wealthy people. Whether it is good for society to immense wealth controlled by family trusts/chariities or whether the wealth should be taxed and used for public purposes is something people can debate for an eternity.

bg4 8y ago

Carnegie was very philanthropic. He also ruthlessly exploited his workers.

vbuwivbiu 8y ago

it's a sad world that has philanthropy and charity

teslaberry 8y ago

501c3 tax deductibility is a massive scam to SHIFT TAX BURDENS ONTO WORKING INCOME EARNERS. taxes should be paid on property , on increases in the value of property, on PASSIVELY earned money from property, on the purchase of property, on the sale of property. the more durable the property in temporal sense, the more it should be taxes. INCOME itself is not where the tax should be. you rare taxing labor. it is a crime to tax 'income' , IT IS INDENTURED SERVITUDE TO YOUR GOVERNMENT. tax property, licenses, food ( a form of property ). why should there be 'income' to tax? and why should anyone not have to pay taxes if they give money to a 'church' or 'school' . total nonsense.