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Just a friendly reminder that this isn't normal and that you are responsible for helping to shape the kind of society that you want to live in.

• maerF0x0 6y ago
  How do you define "normal" ?
  • mjburgess 6y ago
    "Normal" politics is the world c. 1995, and "Normal" economics is the white upper-middle class post war US economy. Why? Presumably because those periods most comparatively advantaged the demographics of the people inclined to make such comments. Of course 171Bn is "normal", and most of human history has been more unequal, not less.
• 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Bezos seems pretty happy to be shaping the kind of society where he sits alone on top of the greatest pile of wealth ever amassed by man.
  • kakd 6y ago
    Bezos is nowhere near the top if you consider "ever", Cesar Augustus personally owned Egypt.
    • skosch 6y ago
      Bezos' dollars are a lot more fungible than that. What would "owning ancient Egypt" on paper do for you, really?
      • tosers4 6y ago
        Really? He was being literally treated as a god among man. And his word was rule there, and not just for the slaves. Bezos is literally nothing. It's just that nowadays the average person has more power, and the average bourgeois has even much more power, but the old rulers could do anything.
        • me_me_me 6y ago
          Lol, Comparing the two is silly. But let's do it. Head to head. Bezos could hire a small army of mercenaries and defeat any cesar/king/emperor of the past. Also Rome didn't own any of the provinces, they occupied, governed and taxed them. Its not like they could do anything with Egypt.
          • learc83 6y ago
            >Bezos could hire a small army of mercenaries and defeat any cesar/king/emperor of the past. The kind of army that governments would allow Bezos to own couldn't defeat the strongest rulers in the past unless he got very lucky and managed to pull a Cortes and ally with another much larger force.
            • me_me_me 6y ago
              And now we are in territory of bizarre wargame scenario. If the army of the past came to present they are dead in the water. All you need is to know where their leader is and assassinate them, sniper rifle, explosives thrown from helicopter etc. You don't need military equipment, as the past people have no experience and knowledge of mode technology. Other way around - modern army in the past - is a bit too complex (too many variables/scenarios) to write in a comment. That is territory of a podcast episode or two :)
      • malandrew 6y ago
        You could borrow against it.
      • kamaal 6y ago
        Owning a database record some where on NASDAQ/NYSE saying you own 172b doesn't do anything either. Money is useful only when spent on something productive.
    • learc83 6y ago
      That's true as a percentage of total world wealth, but if you're using money as a proxy for productivity, in absolute terms $200 billion probably outranks all of Egypt 2000 years ago. And if you're talking about how much wealth he could realistically extract from Egypt, it's much much lower. Maybe even lower as a percent of global wealth.
    • Happpy 6y ago
      King Leopold II 'owned' Congo as his personal property, before it became a Belgian colony.
      • tosers4 6y ago
        Egypt at that was one of the most developed areas in the world, unlike Congo.
  • malandrew 6y ago
    Pretty much every member of congress has the ability to impact the spending of Jeff Bezos level wealth every single year.
• artemonster 6y ago
  I am with you, but please argument your opinion. It is somewhat obvious from any "moral" standpoint, but every time I try to dig why people think that way I only find badly formulated opinions, based on nothing, but some vague belief systems of "right" and "wrong".
  • dabbernaught420 6y ago
    Wealth gives a person power. The people who get very wealthy (in our current system) are not generally the people who will do the best things with power. This seems like a situation which could be improved on.
    • tosers4 6y ago
      Well, Bezos is putting billions of his money (not amazon's) into space industry (Blue Origin), that's nice
      • dabbernaught420 6y ago
        A person or group with immense power can trivially achieve great good. However, if you consider systems A and B, where system A is a bit better at using immense power for good than system B, you will notice that system A will result in a lot more good than system B. Therefore, if you care even a little bit about good things happening, you will be very keen to have system A instead of system B. The fact that someone with immense power does something good becomes a lot less reassuring when you consider the opportunity cost of not having someone or some people who are a lot better at achieving good have that immense power.
        • tosers4 6y ago
          Someone a lot better a doing good were not apparently good enough at getting the resources to do good. You can't just dump a lot of power into someone you think that does good, because you have know way to know if (s)he is even able to manage that to start to do go. At least bezos continues to improve the world infrastructure through amazon, and financing the space industry though blue origin.
• quaffapint 6y ago
  Of course it's not normal that's why it's news, but I don't see anything wrong with this. As long as he pays his fair share of taxes and Amazon pays it's proper share of corporate taxes then we're good. Problem of course is we all know that last part is very broken right now, especially on the corporate tax side.
  • mikeyouse 6y ago
    Of course the problem lies in that the rich and powerful have an immense amount of sway in what is defined as the "fair share of taxes" they have to pay.
    • davidandgoliath 6y ago
      Edit: Nevermind, not getting into this today. Have a great weekend! :)
      • mikeyouse 6y ago
        I'm suggesting that Amazon is insanely aggressive about corporate tax minimization and that if we held them to a minimum rate, Bezos's net worth would be substantially lower since it's all in Amazon's stock which is priced based on the future expectation of cash flow to equity holders. The chipping away of effective corporate tax rates is one of the big untold stories of inequality, especially now that most most cash to equity holders comes in the form of buybacks which are untaxed and most shares are owned in tax havens so the presumed capital gains upon selling can be readily avoided as well. https://itep.org/corporate-tax-avoidance-in-the-first-year-of-the-trump-tax-law/ https://itep.org/corporate-tax-avoidance-in-the-first-year-o... Just saw your edit - you too. I don't really care about Jeff Bezos's wealth, he's just going to blow it on more mansions and boats, but I think it's worth thinking about the virtuous cycle of wealthy people having so much political influence to determine how wealthy they can be.
• ixvvqktiwl 6y ago
  People like Bezos have far more influence on shaping the world than most of us mere mortals, and they are not going to make it easy to redistribute wealth.
• deadalus 6y ago
  " you are responsible for" According to what or whom? Morality? Morality is subjective. What is 'good' is subjective.
  • Faaak 6y ago
    I think that they meant "responsible of how you want to shape Life", and not "responsible for Bezos' wealth"
• Super_Jambo 6y ago
  I'd say it is normal, the vast majority of time since humans started living in cities have been like this. A society based on a corrupt system structured to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a ruling class. The abnormal time period is our brief flirtation with systems aimed to harness competition between the powerful in service of the masses. But it doesn't seem this can survive without rules to limit the power of the super rich to control the media & create monopolies.
• partiallypro 6y ago
  How is this not normal? Amazon offers great services, both for consumers and through the cloud. It makes total sense that their stock would continue to increase as more and more people use their services. Bezo's owns a lot of Amazon stock...so his wealth goes up. It's no different than with Gates or Jobs. Gates has just sold off a lot of his stock or donated it, and like with Jobs, had a lower ratio of stock ownership than Bezos. This is no different that any other time in period of company holdings. Amazon certainly has its problems, and I'm a critic of it a lot...but they still offer services that are generally good for consumers, and that is something that drives its growth.
  • mars4rp 6y ago
    what is not normal is he is not paying much taxes compare to his wealth! He is selling around a $1B of Amazon shares each year and if he doesn't deduct anything he is paying 15% capital gain on it. That's 1/1000 of his net worth, I am pretty sure we all are paying way more than that. How is that fair? And also the taxes supposed to be progressive, rich supposed to pay more, our dream here is to have the rich pay as much as a teacher!
    • brainzap 6y ago
      https://youtu.be/a3_PPdjD6mg https://youtu.be/a3_PPdjD6mg
    • rukittenme 6y ago
      You've just discovered the problem with income taxes. A tax on labor favors capital. Good luck convincing any of your political allies that the income tax should be replaced with something more progressive.
      • mars4rp 6y ago
        Bernie/Warren wealth tax was a good idea in my opinion. It would increase Bezos's effective tax rate from 0.1% to 3%. Bezos's net worth still would increase every year, as the normal capital gain is 8% per year and it is much higher in Amazon.
• danhak 6y ago
  What is the alternative? For people not to own the things they create?
  • brandon272 6y ago
    Owning something does not mean that you have zero responsibilities associated with that ownership. I may "own my home", but I still have to pay property tax on it.
    • barrenko 6y ago
      Precisely, but Bezos doesn't own something that's his, it's something that's everybody's, so definitely not the same.
      • brandon272 6y ago
        Not sure what you mean by "it's something that's everybody's".
        • yesplorer 6y ago
          I think he's implying you can also own part of Amazon by buying shares so it's not just for Bezos. Bezos owns 11% of Amazon which means over a trillion dollars in value is shared by other people who own pieces of Amazon.
  • mhoad 6y ago
    There are a whole spectrum of options between unchecked capitalism and communism. I'm just asking what kind of guardrails if any might be appropriate moving forward now that we can see for ourselves how the current system is working for everyone.
  • amelius 6y ago
    People create wealth all the time without (the prospect of) being paid billions Just look at some great FOSS projects: Linux, GCC, ...
• abstractbarista 6y ago
  Eh, I'm fine with it. It's mostly stock, not Dollars. He couldn't actually turn that in to $171.6B in cash.
• sudhirj 6y ago
  This sentiment comes up a lot as a protest against power laws; but they are perfectly normal, in that they're natural. In any situation where there are differences among individuals and a single axis store of value (currency) there is going to be power law. Imagine a world where everyone started with an equal amount of money, and people only paid each other to see them do X. X could be singing, playing basketball, make youtube videos, standup comedy, croquet, whatever. With the passage of time, money will concentrate in a fractal representation of the 80-20 power law. 80% of the money will go to the top 20% of the people best at X, and even in that 20%, 80% of that money will belong to the top 20% of the top 20% and so on. If X was basketball, Michael Jordan would be a thousand times richer than me (he is) and a million or billion times richer than the poorest people (he is). Same for the best artists, most widely read authors, everything. If the currency is power / reproductive rights, the top 20% would pass their genes on to 80% of the children, again fractally. This is also borne out in nature, we're all children of Genghis Khan or King David or Abraham or whoever your geography's alpha was. What we can say, is that the situation is not rational, just, or merciful. All beneficiaries of the power law ride on the value provided by everyone else that cannot be quantified properly into the single-axis measure of value. Bezos could only build Amazon because there were already a country that was fought and paid for, roads, courts, electricity, planes and trains that society as a whole built for before he was born. That attribution is not being captured in any way, and we try to re-balance that value owed with taxes, which are again imperfect because we have only a single-axis value store. So normal and natural, yes, but the value is not distributed correctly. That's a rational and ethical problem, both of which are very artificial human constructs.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jacknews 6y ago
  it's perfectly normal, that's the way nature and unrestrained free markets work, 'winner' takes (nearly) all. It's just not what we want as a society. Most of us anyway. Perhaps the 'winners', or those who think they can be, disagree.
• sdinsn 6y ago
  > isn't normal You're right- creating a amazing, successful business that employs a ton of people isn't normal. Just a friendly reminder that some people do deserve the money they've earning. Bezos is one of them