10 ms·

Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan

116 points by samdung 7y ago

morningseagulls 7y ago
I like this detour into economics: >Bezos’s enterprise upends long-held precepts about the fundamental nature of capitalism—especially an idea enshrined by the great Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek[, who] argued that no bureaucracy could ever match the miracle of markets, which spontaneously and efficiently aggregate the knowledge of a society. >Amazon, however, has acquired the God’s-eye view of the economy that Hayek never imagined any single entity could hope to achieve. [...] With its logistics business—and its growing network of trucks and planes—it has an understanding of the flow of goods around the world. In other words, if Marxist revolutionaries ever seized power in the United States, they could nationalize Amazon and call it a day. Perhaps we need to break up Amazon because communism? /s
- roenxi 7y ago
  Maybe this is what you were drawing attention to, but that part of the article misinterprets centralised planning. What it describes is the logistics of getting something from one place to another. Centralised planning is when a government planner decides the source, the destination and the good without giving final power to a consumer. Amazon doesn't have the final word on what people buy (or the destination of goods for that matter) so it isn't a centrally planned system in that sense.
  - losteric 7y ago
    The article also misinterprets Marxism/communism. Amazon is logistics, takeover would give the public a more extensive USPS plus digital infrastructure... it's not a revolutionary seizure of the means of production.
    - morningseagulls 7y ago
      >The article also misinterprets Marxism/communism. >it's not a revolutionary seizure of the means of production. The revolutionary bit of Marxism was a political sideshow for Marx's anarchist supporters. The economic theory of Marx does not require a revolution, because according to that theory, the superior mode of economic production should eventually prevail. That is why you have political movements like democratic socialism and social democracy. These are moderates who believe that Marx's theory of economic progression is correct, but who also believe in incremental change.
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >that part of the article misinterprets centralised planning. What it describes is the logistics of getting something from one place to another. I think it's worthwhile to re-read the passage I quoted: >Hayek[...] argued that no bureaucracy could ever match the miracle of markets, which spontaneously and efficiently aggregate the knowledge of a society. This isn't just about physical logistics. Hayek is arguing that no centralised agent has perfect information. The author is arguing that Amazon is approaching the stage when it would have perfect information about the consumers it serves. >Amazon doesn't have the final word on what people buy (or the destination of goods for that matter) so it isn't a centrally planned system in that sense. Even if it doesn't have the final word, it does have quite a bit of say in the form of its recommender system. Also, "communism" in the sense of Marx -- one of the two senses in which I was using the word -- is not necessarily a centrally planned system. Rather, it's an idealisation of what an economy would become if it achieved 100% automation, i.e. an economy operating at 100% efficiency. You can see it in the structure of Marx's "historic materialism" argument: just as capitalism had displaced feudalism because it's more efficient, socialism would then displace capitalism, and communism would do the same for socialism. In Marx's hierarchy of efficiency: Feudalism < capitalism < socialism < communism So a communist economy, in Marx's sense, is also an economy in which there's perfect information. That can't possibly happen in the real world, of course, and Hayek correctly points this out about a centralised bureaucracy. But he's wrong about markets; no market is 100% efficient or operates in an environment of perfect information either.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > Hayek is arguing that no centralised agent has perfect information. The author is arguing that Amazon is approaching the stage when it would have perfect information about the consumers it serves. This statement in the article is a huge misstatement. First, Amazon only has information about the goods it sells. There are many things it doesn't sell, and many things that it can't sell. There are huge supply chains behind the products it sells that it does not see. There are also many things of value that are not exchanged with money. Second, to the extent Amazon does have information about its customers, it has that information because of those customers' buying decisions. In other words, it has exactly the information that Hayek says a market participant has, and no more: the price at which other market participants will buy whatever quantity of one's products are sold.
  - andrekandre 7y ago
    > Centralised planning is when a government planner decides the source, the destination and the good without giving final power to a consumer. what if it was an ai instead?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Regardless, Amazon picks the suppliers, owns the information channel, and both informs and transacts with the consumer. It operates on a greater scale than many national economies, falling at about 38th on a current listing based on 2018 revenues. Amazon is the market. Hayek's basic premise was that national-scale central management was impossible. Amazon and other megacorps put paid to this.
    - ci5er 7y ago
      Amazon - often picks all the suppliers, and lets the buyer decide which they prefer. Also - they deal in finished (consumer) goods. There is a whole lot of coordination before that stuff gets assembled and ready for Amazon or one or their marketplace suppliers to ship it. Maybe they've integrated the demand chain logistics, but not the integration supply chain. And they don't dictate that consumers get to purchase one and only one brand of whatever product (like peanut butter).
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        Amazon b2b: https://www.amazon.com/b2b/info/amazon-business https://www.amazon.com/b2b/info/amazon-business
        ci5er 7y ago
        Neat! (Although I knew about it and stand by my assertion, because...) I still can't conceive of using that to build a (say) iPhone.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  Alienation is a critical and central part of Marxist critique. To miss it is to misunderstand Marxism. Marxists could not call it a day after nationalizing Amazon because the people who make the goods that Amazon sells would still be alienated from the goods they produce, and Amazon's workers would still be alienated from the products of their own labor.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    In Marxist/Leninist regimes this is commonly solved through mass murder. See Red Terror, Cultural Revoluion, Pol Pot, etc. Eventually you murder enough people to suppress dissent, at least for a few decades, until you run out of money, and ideological fervor gets thoroughly undermined by the relative success of your capitalist neighbors. Source: grew up in the USSR.
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? Also, it's widely disputed that the USSR was actually a Marxist society. I've heard it described as "State Capitalism". Regardless, it's pretty clear that the mass murder in places like the USSR, China, and Cambodia was due to small groups of people getting massive amounts of power, abusing that power, and being completely insensitive to the suffering they cause, and not as a consequence of their economic systems. Bloodthirsty despots come in all stripes and are happy to wear any mask as long as it helps them to gain and maintain power. A prime example is Hitler paying lip service to socialism while undermining worker's rights in favor of corporations, murdering socialists, using slave labor, and most of all strengthening his own grip on power. Just for the record, I'm not a Marxist nor a Communist, nor do I advocate for either. But I do think you have to understand Marxism to adequately critique it, and it's pretty clear that the author of the article this HN post links to does not.
      - m0zg 7y ago
        >> How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? By eliminating the alienated and scaring the rest. >> small groups of people getting massive amounts of power In part, yes. But in part it was because in any revolution not everyone will support your kooky ideas. Those folks will fight you after you succeed. The only known way of pacifying them is by murdering them all. You see this every time. >> you have to understand Marxism I'd argue you're the one who needs to "understand" in this case. I lived the consequences of Marxism for the first 22 years of my life. I want no part of that shit here in the US, no matter how it's sold to me.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  >> if Marxist revolutionaries ever seized power in the United States, they could nationalize Amazon and call it a day. Isn't that an argument for Amazon is de-facto a monopoly at this stage?
- bwestergard 7y ago
  This argument - that Amazon prefigures a new Soviet-style planning - has been made sincerely. I’ve written a critique here: http://machineryquestion.com/notes/peoples-republic http://machineryquestion.com/notes/peoples-republic
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >This argument - that Amazon prefigures a new Soviet-style planning - has been made sincerely. Because there is evidence that Marxists had tried, and failed, to do what Amazon has now succeeded. Project Cybersyn comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/08/project-cybersyn-afterlife-chile-s-socialist-internet https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/08/project-cybersyn-... However, what Amazon has done is just characteristic of "organized industries", which Hayek conceded in his essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society, as being a "halfway house" between Soviet-style planning and free markets.
sverige 7y ago
Interesting article. I thought Bezos was just another greedy, power-mad megalomaniac. That he's also a dewy-eyed Trekkie who rationalizes his greed with dreams of space colonization makes it even sillier. Who knew Gene Roddenberry was more dangerous than any economic theorist?
- morningseagulls 7y ago
  >That he's also a dewy-eyed Trekkie who rationalizes his greed with dreams of space colonization makes it even sillier. Space colonization is a form of greed: it's basically saying this world is not enough. So I don't see this as a rationalization: in fact, the article heavily suggests that his dream of space colonization was what led to his greed.
  - andreilys 7y ago
    You could just as easily say that space colonization is the highest form of humanitarianism. If an extinction-level event occurs on earth, humanity can continue to flourish and populate the cosmos rather than go the way of the dinosaur.
    - morningseagulls 7y ago
      >You could just as easily say that space colonization is the highest form of humanitarianism. "Greed" and humanitarianism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can be mutually compatible, depending on what your definition of "greed" is. From an economic point of view, humanitarianism can serve the economic "greed" of the rich that's often decried. This is because both of these can be rooted in the realisation that humans have intrinsic economic value, so that the loss of a human life represents a loss of a lifetime of economic value to society. In the case of Bezos, it's quite clear from the article that his humanitarianism is intrinsically linked to his "greed": >When Bezos describes these colonies—and presents artists’ renderings of them—he sounds almost rapturous. “This is Maui on its best day, all year long. No rain, no storms, no earthquakes.” Since the colonies would allow the human population to grow without any earthly constraints, the species would flourish like never before: “We can have a trillion humans in the solar system, which means we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins. This would be an incredible civilization.” "We can have a trillion humans [...] This would be an incredible civilization." Sounds familiar? This is essentially the siren song of the Chinese market, magnified a thousandfold.
fredsanford 7y ago
I'd guess... Make enough money to cure baldness and disdain for working people. Only half sarcastic...
vixen99 7y ago
Bezos on climate: "While others might fret that climate change will soon make the planet uninhabitable, the billionaire (Bezos) wrings his hands over the prospects of diminished growth. But the scenario he describes is indeed grim. Without enough energy to go around, rationing and starvation will ensue." As Lovelock as said, currently the only answer is nuclear energy and that's largely rejected while the non-Western countries increase their fossil fuel use 'up to but not beyond' Western levels. They have a way to go and it seems not to involve cutting back whatever words emerge.
- carapace 7y ago
  Yeah, nuclear energy for the long-term (I'm hearing that it would take too long to build the reactors to be much immediate help with climate change) and biomemetic food production (regenerative agriculture, "Permaculture", applied ecology, etc.) As much as I would like to go to space I don't think mass migration will be possible (unless we make some crazy technological breakthrough like anti-gravity or something.)
mothsonasloth 7y ago
I am a sci-fi enthusiast like Bezos, however he seems to cherry pick the themes that he likes to apply to himself and Amazon e.g. driving mankind towards the stars and solving energy crises. There are however plenty of dystopian concepts in science fiction which his company seem to be propelling us toward: * Compression of labour wages by replacing/augmenting with robots. * Building an evil mega-corp (think Tyrell, Liandri, UAC, Weyland Yutani) that has its tentacles in every market. * Facilitating the demise of human privacy laws * Encouraging consumerism and subsequent pollution. I am sure there are other themes in sci-fi that could be applied to Amazon. Looking forward to my subdermal Alexa powered chip! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrruSboN1bQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrruSboN1bQ
- esotericn 7y ago
  Ha, indeed. It's almost like a weird form of localized entropy reduction. Driving improvements in some areas whilst externalizing damage in others.
  - personjerry 7y ago
    You've described the quintessential problem with private property and capitalism.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological battle. Based on long experience, such discussions become highly predictable and increasingly nasty—the two qualities we're most hoping to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I propose he stop investing in Blue Origin and fund another 100 seasons of the Expanse.
  - 7y ago
sunasra 7y ago
Move to space to save the earth is useless statement. Human isn’t able save natural resources on earth, how come he can build enough resources to survive human being in space or mars or whatever. I would say Focus on earth, invest on the broken things
- sergioro 7y ago
  Earth's limited resources might well be the primary reason to explore other planets.
- andreilys 7y ago
  Think of it as a hedge against possible extinction. Being a multi-planterary species means that an existential threat on earth (I.e. asteroid, super bug, etc.) doesn’t wipe out all of humanity.
  - dpau 7y ago
    Agreed. But it's a bit like your house has caught fire and, rather than try to put it out, you call a realtor and go shopping for a new home. Why not try to save your current home, first?
    - minitoar 7y ago
      Because the only way to stay warm in this current house is literally lighting bits of it on fire.
  - smegger001 7y ago
    lets just hope it is not a gamma ray burst as that would potentially still get both planets
yters 7y ago
Why the space colonization focus of techies? So much of earth vastly underpopulated and much easier to colonize. What if an asteroid strikes earth? What if the space colonies all fail?
- carapace 7y ago
  > Why the space colonization focus of techies? I. Many "techies" are also science-fiction fans. II. Space is where everything else is located. > So much of earth vastly underpopulated and much easier to colonize. For the next few minutes. Either we stabilize population or we fill the Earth (exponential growth) or Nature stabilizes it for us (which is expected to be pretty gruesome if it comes to pass.) If we want to keep growing we are going to have to do it in space. (Although that will only postpone the inevitable, albeit for perhaps millions or billions of generations.) > What if an asteroid strikes earth? That would suck, but it seems like a reason to colonize space. > What if the space colonies all fail? That would also suck. It is not a reason not to try though.
- pas 7y ago
  Almos all the tech needed to survive in space is useful also down here too. The odds are that all the colonies fail is real, just as the asteroid striking Earth, but the colonies on the long term perfectly hedge against a lot of failure modes.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  The best advocate of that I could find is Isaac Arthur on YouTube[1]. He explains it so well, including why a technology-advanced civilization (not much more than us) would see an asteroid coming straight to earth as a great economic opportunity to mine lots of stuff. Nowhere near a problem. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    > see an asteroid coming straight to earth as a great economic opportunity to mine lots of stuff. I hope he didn't actually say that, because it would betray a rather fundamental mistake in space travel - that of distance vs delta v.
cerealbad 7y ago
Allegedly Rent seeking billionaires are hypothetically positioning themselves in the supposed space race because the theoretical American -Chinese cold war will be potentially fought in low earth orbit, "smart money gets in quick to suckle at the trillion dollar defense budget." some people might say. Edit: opinion duly corrected in line with moderation standards
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how provocative or annoying such things are. You may not owe rent-seeking billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ArchLinuxBtw 7y ago
> Bill Gates created a program that was considered a prerequisite for turning on a computer. Stopped reading right there! I turn on my Arch Linux computer without any help from Bill Gates Micro$oft WinBlows, thankyouverymuch

116 points by samdung 7y ago

I like this detour into economics: >Bezos’s enterprise upends long-held precepts about the fundamental nature of capitalism—especially an idea enshrined by the great Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek[, who] argued that no bureaucracy could ever match the miracle of markets, which spontaneously and efficiently aggregate the knowledge of a society. >Amazon, however, has acquired the God’s-eye view of the economy that Hayek never imagined any single entity could hope to achieve. [...] With its logistics business—and its growing network of trucks and planes—it has an understanding of the flow of goods around the world. In other words, if Marxist revolutionaries ever seized power in the United States, they could nationalize Amazon and call it a day. Perhaps we need to break up Amazon because communism? /s

roenxi 7y ago
Maybe this is what you were drawing attention to, but that part of the article misinterprets centralised planning. What it describes is the logistics of getting something from one place to another. Centralised planning is when a government planner decides the source, the destination and the good without giving final power to a consumer. Amazon doesn't have the final word on what people buy (or the destination of goods for that matter) so it isn't a centrally planned system in that sense.
- losteric 7y ago
  The article also misinterprets Marxism/communism. Amazon is logistics, takeover would give the public a more extensive USPS plus digital infrastructure... it's not a revolutionary seizure of the means of production.
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >The article also misinterprets Marxism/communism. >it's not a revolutionary seizure of the means of production. The revolutionary bit of Marxism was a political sideshow for Marx's anarchist supporters. The economic theory of Marx does not require a revolution, because according to that theory, the superior mode of economic production should eventually prevail. That is why you have political movements like democratic socialism and social democracy. These are moderates who believe that Marx's theory of economic progression is correct, but who also believe in incremental change.
- morningseagulls 7y ago
  >that part of the article misinterprets centralised planning. What it describes is the logistics of getting something from one place to another. I think it's worthwhile to re-read the passage I quoted: >Hayek[...] argued that no bureaucracy could ever match the miracle of markets, which spontaneously and efficiently aggregate the knowledge of a society. This isn't just about physical logistics. Hayek is arguing that no centralised agent has perfect information. The author is arguing that Amazon is approaching the stage when it would have perfect information about the consumers it serves. >Amazon doesn't have the final word on what people buy (or the destination of goods for that matter) so it isn't a centrally planned system in that sense. Even if it doesn't have the final word, it does have quite a bit of say in the form of its recommender system. Also, "communism" in the sense of Marx -- one of the two senses in which I was using the word -- is not necessarily a centrally planned system. Rather, it's an idealisation of what an economy would become if it achieved 100% automation, i.e. an economy operating at 100% efficiency. You can see it in the structure of Marx's "historic materialism" argument: just as capitalism had displaced feudalism because it's more efficient, socialism would then displace capitalism, and communism would do the same for socialism. In Marx's hierarchy of efficiency: Feudalism < capitalism < socialism < communism So a communist economy, in Marx's sense, is also an economy in which there's perfect information. That can't possibly happen in the real world, of course, and Hayek correctly points this out about a centralised bureaucracy. But he's wrong about markets; no market is 100% efficient or operates in an environment of perfect information either.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > Hayek is arguing that no centralised agent has perfect information. The author is arguing that Amazon is approaching the stage when it would have perfect information about the consumers it serves. This statement in the article is a huge misstatement. First, Amazon only has information about the goods it sells. There are many things it doesn't sell, and many things that it can't sell. There are huge supply chains behind the products it sells that it does not see. There are also many things of value that are not exchanged with money. Second, to the extent Amazon does have information about its customers, it has that information because of those customers' buying decisions. In other words, it has exactly the information that Hayek says a market participant has, and no more: the price at which other market participants will buy whatever quantity of one's products are sold.
- andrekandre 7y ago
  > Centralised planning is when a government planner decides the source, the destination and the good without giving final power to a consumer. what if it was an ai instead?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Regardless, Amazon picks the suppliers, owns the information channel, and both informs and transacts with the consumer. It operates on a greater scale than many national economies, falling at about 38th on a current listing based on 2018 revenues. Amazon is the market. Hayek's basic premise was that national-scale central management was impossible. Amazon and other megacorps put paid to this.
  - ci5er 7y ago
    Amazon - often picks all the suppliers, and lets the buyer decide which they prefer. Also - they deal in finished (consumer) goods. There is a whole lot of coordination before that stuff gets assembled and ready for Amazon or one or their marketplace suppliers to ship it. Maybe they've integrated the demand chain logistics, but not the integration supply chain. And they don't dictate that consumers get to purchase one and only one brand of whatever product (like peanut butter).
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Amazon b2b: https://www.amazon.com/b2b/info/amazon-business https://www.amazon.com/b2b/info/amazon-business
      - ci5er 7y ago
        Neat! (Although I knew about it and stand by my assertion, because...) I still can't conceive of using that to build a (say) iPhone.
pmoriarty 7y ago
Alienation is a critical and central part of Marxist critique. To miss it is to misunderstand Marxism. Marxists could not call it a day after nationalizing Amazon because the people who make the goods that Amazon sells would still be alienated from the goods they produce, and Amazon's workers would still be alienated from the products of their own labor.
- m0zg 7y ago
  In Marxist/Leninist regimes this is commonly solved through mass murder. See Red Terror, Cultural Revoluion, Pol Pot, etc. Eventually you murder enough people to suppress dissent, at least for a few decades, until you run out of money, and ideological fervor gets thoroughly undermined by the relative success of your capitalist neighbors. Source: grew up in the USSR.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? Also, it's widely disputed that the USSR was actually a Marxist society. I've heard it described as "State Capitalism". Regardless, it's pretty clear that the mass murder in places like the USSR, China, and Cambodia was due to small groups of people getting massive amounts of power, abusing that power, and being completely insensitive to the suffering they cause, and not as a consequence of their economic systems. Bloodthirsty despots come in all stripes and are happy to wear any mask as long as it helps them to gain and maintain power. A prime example is Hitler paying lip service to socialism while undermining worker's rights in favor of corporations, murdering socialists, using slave labor, and most of all strengthening his own grip on power. Just for the record, I'm not a Marxist nor a Communist, nor do I advocate for either. But I do think you have to understand Marxism to adequately critique it, and it's pretty clear that the author of the article this HN post links to does not.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      >> How does mass murder help to reduce alienation again? By eliminating the alienated and scaring the rest. >> small groups of people getting massive amounts of power In part, yes. But in part it was because in any revolution not everyone will support your kooky ideas. Those folks will fight you after you succeed. The only known way of pacifying them is by murdering them all. You see this every time. >> you have to understand Marxism I'd argue you're the one who needs to "understand" in this case. I lived the consequences of Marxism for the first 22 years of my life. I want no part of that shit here in the US, no matter how it's sold to me.
me_me_me 7y ago
>> if Marxist revolutionaries ever seized power in the United States, they could nationalize Amazon and call it a day. Isn't that an argument for Amazon is de-facto a monopoly at this stage?
bwestergard 7y ago
This argument - that Amazon prefigures a new Soviet-style planning - has been made sincerely. I’ve written a critique here: http://machineryquestion.com/notes/peoples-republic http://machineryquestion.com/notes/peoples-republic
- morningseagulls 7y ago
  >This argument - that Amazon prefigures a new Soviet-style planning - has been made sincerely. Because there is evidence that Marxists had tried, and failed, to do what Amazon has now succeeded. Project Cybersyn comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/08/project-cybersyn-afterlife-chile-s-socialist-internet https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/08/project-cybersyn-... However, what Amazon has done is just characteristic of "organized industries", which Hayek conceded in his essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society, as being a "halfway house" between Soviet-style planning and free markets.

sverige 7y ago

Interesting article. I thought Bezos was just another greedy, power-mad megalomaniac. That he's also a dewy-eyed Trekkie who rationalizes his greed with dreams of space colonization makes it even sillier. Who knew Gene Roddenberry was more dangerous than any economic theorist?

morningseagulls 7y ago
>That he's also a dewy-eyed Trekkie who rationalizes his greed with dreams of space colonization makes it even sillier. Space colonization is a form of greed: it's basically saying this world is not enough. So I don't see this as a rationalization: in fact, the article heavily suggests that his dream of space colonization was what led to his greed.
- andreilys 7y ago
  You could just as easily say that space colonization is the highest form of humanitarianism. If an extinction-level event occurs on earth, humanity can continue to flourish and populate the cosmos rather than go the way of the dinosaur.
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >You could just as easily say that space colonization is the highest form of humanitarianism. "Greed" and humanitarianism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can be mutually compatible, depending on what your definition of "greed" is. From an economic point of view, humanitarianism can serve the economic "greed" of the rich that's often decried. This is because both of these can be rooted in the realisation that humans have intrinsic economic value, so that the loss of a human life represents a loss of a lifetime of economic value to society. In the case of Bezos, it's quite clear from the article that his humanitarianism is intrinsically linked to his "greed": >When Bezos describes these colonies—and presents artists’ renderings of them—he sounds almost rapturous. “This is Maui on its best day, all year long. No rain, no storms, no earthquakes.” Since the colonies would allow the human population to grow without any earthly constraints, the species would flourish like never before: “We can have a trillion humans in the solar system, which means we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins. This would be an incredible civilization.” "We can have a trillion humans [...] This would be an incredible civilization." Sounds familiar? This is essentially the siren song of the Chinese market, magnified a thousandfold.

fredsanford 7y ago

I'd guess... Make enough money to cure baldness and disdain for working people. Only half sarcastic...

vixen99 7y ago

Bezos on climate: "While others might fret that climate change will soon make the planet uninhabitable, the billionaire (Bezos) wrings his hands over the prospects of diminished growth. But the scenario he describes is indeed grim. Without enough energy to go around, rationing and starvation will ensue." As Lovelock as said, currently the only answer is nuclear energy and that's largely rejected while the non-Western countries increase their fossil fuel use 'up to but not beyond' Western levels. They have a way to go and it seems not to involve cutting back whatever words emerge.

carapace 7y ago
Yeah, nuclear energy for the long-term (I'm hearing that it would take too long to build the reactors to be much immediate help with climate change) and biomemetic food production (regenerative agriculture, "Permaculture", applied ecology, etc.) As much as I would like to go to space I don't think mass migration will be possible (unless we make some crazy technological breakthrough like anti-gravity or something.)

mothsonasloth 7y ago

I am a sci-fi enthusiast like Bezos, however he seems to cherry pick the themes that he likes to apply to himself and Amazon e.g. driving mankind towards the stars and solving energy crises. There are however plenty of dystopian concepts in science fiction which his company seem to be propelling us toward: * Compression of labour wages by replacing/augmenting with robots. * Building an evil mega-corp (think Tyrell, Liandri, UAC, Weyland Yutani) that has its tentacles in every market. * Facilitating the demise of human privacy laws * Encouraging consumerism and subsequent pollution. I am sure there are other themes in sci-fi that could be applied to Amazon. Looking forward to my subdermal Alexa powered chip! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrruSboN1bQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrruSboN1bQ

esotericn 7y ago
Ha, indeed. It's almost like a weird form of localized entropy reduction. Driving improvements in some areas whilst externalizing damage in others.
- personjerry 7y ago
  You've described the quintessential problem with private property and capitalism.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological battle. Based on long experience, such discussions become highly predictable and increasingly nasty—the two qualities we're most hoping to avoid here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I propose he stop investing in Blue Origin and fund another 100 seasons of the Expanse.
- 7y ago

sunasra 7y ago

Move to space to save the earth is useless statement. Human isn’t able save natural resources on earth, how come he can build enough resources to survive human being in space or mars or whatever. I would say Focus on earth, invest on the broken things

sergioro 7y ago
Earth's limited resources might well be the primary reason to explore other planets.
andreilys 7y ago
Think of it as a hedge against possible extinction. Being a multi-planterary species means that an existential threat on earth (I.e. asteroid, super bug, etc.) doesn’t wipe out all of humanity.
- dpau 7y ago
  Agreed. But it's a bit like your house has caught fire and, rather than try to put it out, you call a realtor and go shopping for a new home. Why not try to save your current home, first?
  - minitoar 7y ago
    Because the only way to stay warm in this current house is literally lighting bits of it on fire.
- smegger001 7y ago
  lets just hope it is not a gamma ray burst as that would potentially still get both planets

yters 7y ago

Why the space colonization focus of techies? So much of earth vastly underpopulated and much easier to colonize. What if an asteroid strikes earth? What if the space colonies all fail?

carapace 7y ago
> Why the space colonization focus of techies? I. Many "techies" are also science-fiction fans. II. Space is where everything else is located. > So much of earth vastly underpopulated and much easier to colonize. For the next few minutes. Either we stabilize population or we fill the Earth (exponential growth) or Nature stabilizes it for us (which is expected to be pretty gruesome if it comes to pass.) If we want to keep growing we are going to have to do it in space. (Although that will only postpone the inevitable, albeit for perhaps millions or billions of generations.) > What if an asteroid strikes earth? That would suck, but it seems like a reason to colonize space. > What if the space colonies all fail? That would also suck. It is not a reason not to try though.
pas 7y ago
Almos all the tech needed to survive in space is useful also down here too. The odds are that all the colonies fail is real, just as the asteroid striking Earth, but the colonies on the long term perfectly hedge against a lot of failure modes.
K0SM0S 7y ago
The best advocate of that I could find is Isaac Arthur on YouTube[1]. He explains it so well, including why a technology-advanced civilization (not much more than us) would see an asteroid coming straight to earth as a great economic opportunity to mine lots of stuff. Nowhere near a problem. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g
- DuskStar 7y ago
  > see an asteroid coming straight to earth as a great economic opportunity to mine lots of stuff. I hope he didn't actually say that, because it would betray a rather fundamental mistake in space travel - that of distance vs delta v.

cerealbad 7y ago

Allegedly Rent seeking billionaires are hypothetically positioning themselves in the supposed space race because the theoretical American -Chinese cold war will be potentially fought in low earth orbit, "smart money gets in quick to suckle at the trillion dollar defense budget." some people might say. Edit: opinion duly corrected in line with moderation standards

dang 7y ago
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how provocative or annoying such things are. You may not owe rent-seeking billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ArchLinuxBtw 7y ago

> Bill Gates created a program that was considered a prerequisite for turning on a computer. Stopped reading right there! I turn on my Arch Linux computer without any help from Bill Gates Micro$oft WinBlows, thankyouverymuch