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> What the legion critics of Bezos and Blue Origin miss is that the company legitimately has the goal of ultimately saving planet Earth. > Bezos has a compelli
by dundarious 5y ago
> What the legion critics of Bezos and Blue Origin miss is that the company legitimately has the goal of ultimately saving planet Earth.
> Bezos has a compelling vision for space, and it is entirely genuine.
> He has the vision. He has the money. But at the age of 57, does he have enough years or willingness to ensure Blue Origin’s success?
The central thesis of the article seems to boil down to the above quotations, i.e., he's genuine and his goals are noble, but can he pull it off?
The "legitimate", "entirely genuine", and "compelling vision" to "ultimately sav[e] planet Earth" given in this speech is central to the argument, but it is barely even outlined in this article or linked articles -- beyond referencing O'Neill cylinders, mining asteroids, and vague notions of leaving Earth as a "garden". There seems to be no recording or transcript of this speech, nor even any second-hand justification for how legitimate, genuine, or compelling it is.
To me it all seems like the usual ludicrous utopianism that gets attached to space projects. Mine some asteroids, sure. But I see nothing here that even hints at a way to meaningfully reduce or stop environmentally destructive practices here on Earth. We will need to solve our Earth-bound problems. Bezos can focus on Blue Origin or not, it won't matter.
- mnowicki 5y agoThis is just my own speculation, equally as invalid as the authors, but at most I'd say Bezos thinks his goals are entirely genuine, but it's entirely based on narcissism and wanting to be the only one smart/powerful enough to save us. If it came to the point where he had to sacrifice things he actually cares about to help others with no benefit to himself or his ego I would bet Bezos net worth that he wouldn't lift a finger. Maybe convincing himself he's working to save humanity is how he justifies not doing something really useful with his wealth, like saving tens of thousands of people from suffering and dieing of starvation, instead of playing billionaire space games.
- mimixco 5y agoHe could start by treating his own employees like humans. There's a great mass of "humanity" whose lives need improving and they're called Amazon workers.
- mnowicki 5y agoGood point, maybe he could stop actively hurting people before thinking about helping them. I always overlook that somehow
- mnowicki 5y agomaybe I'll write a short story about Bezos and Musk both wanting to become the savior of earth and competing to save humanity first/better to feed their own egos, to the point where they start sabotaging each others efforts to gain an advantage. Then neither of them are able to save us because they were more worried about being seen as the one to save the planet than actual saving the planet, and we all die
- dcow 5y agoJust curious, has Bezos engaged in behavior indicative of an actual narcissist. Or have there been reports from people close to him? Or is your assessment mostly a projection of Amazon back onto him? I know a few people who actually have narcissistic personality disorder but I don't know Bezos at all.
- aeturnum 5y agoI think people can have narcissistic goals without having narcissistic personality disorder. It is tempting to see our passions as deriving from an objectively correct view of how the world should improve. Jeff likes space and, what do you know, it turns out Jeff's way of exploring space is at the center of a larger plan to save the world that Jeff feels pretty confident about. Those of us who aren't billionaires just have to satisfy more people with our arguments about why our ideas are worth doing. When you're funding everything, it's a lot easier to attribute pushback to personal preference rather than your overall worldview being flawed. After all, if your worldview was flawed, why are all these people working at your space company? How did you make all this money? Etc. I don't actually if Jeff has drunk his own cool-aid, but I think people in his position have fewer people to push back against their worldview than most.
- mnowicki 5y agoI'm guessing based on his business practices and attitude in interviews/statements. I don't claim to be an expert though, that's why I qualified my post stating that's it's purely my speculation, just like the authors post
- dcow 5y agoFair. Do you have any examples or links to the offending remarks or practices? I’m trying to build up my own profile in order to understand the negative responses to the blue origin flight.
- dundarious 5y agoIt was reported that Bezos himself was behind the failed pushback online by Amazon "ambassadors" to the peeing in bottles story. Replying "You don't really think people are peeing in bottles, do you?" and then finding internal Amazon documents proving management awareness of people peeing in bottles was certainly a poor decision, and seemingly influenced by Bezos' pride and ego more than reason. And it's not as attributable to Bezos, but Amazon is famous in journalism for asking for numerous "corrections" to articles about them, when those supposed corrections are actually just unrelated talking points and PR spin.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"goal of ultimately saving planet Earth." You could say this about Bill Gates he has actually eliminated disease, ventured into Nuclear, Renewables and food security, he has legitimately saved perhaps a few million of lives. But how could you make such claims about Bezos? Of the big three cloud providers, AWS his the only one still spewing out carbon. If we were to make "life/death" balalncesheet, did his Amazon and other Bezos companies save lives or contribute to people's deaths, net? It should be obvious that Amazon has reduced living standards and wages for so many people, some of them have suffered ill health and death as a result. Wit this track record, how could anyone claim Bezos is "saving the planet" with some hypothetical projects that noone even comitted to? In my book, Bezos needs to pay off his debt to humanity and the planet first.