14 ms·

This is a perfect example of why extreme wealth inequality is bad. It leads to sub-optimal uses of the economy, like this.

rxdb 5y ago
Isn't 95% of every resource use "sub-optimal"? Everyone goes to holidays or buys stuff they do not need. Bezos is just rich enough so that his spending goes into the news.
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  Yes but this is an extreme example
  - fastball 5y ago
    Right, but how do you compare? Where do you draw the line?
    - jamil7 5y ago
      > Where do you draw the line? 500m dollar yacht seems like a good place to start, we can work our way back from there.
      - fastball 5y ago
        Well I can't speak for everyone else, but your arbitrary conception of what is "too much" actually doesn't cut it for me.
        jamil7 5y ago
        I'm not arguing that my definition is the correct one, I'm arguing that we can and have drawn lines before and are capable of doing it again.
        vba616 5y ago
        Neither can I, but it's easier for me to accept a billionaire doing something that's at least really new and different. I'm not a fan of Elon Musk, but I feel much less negative about his ventures than about Bezos, simply because they are adding to the world of what is possible. Bezos' rockets seem like a "me too" thing. People often say expensive things are "status symbols". It appears that Musk really wants to make science fiction real, independently of what anyone else does, and I suspect Bezos of actually being obsessed with relative status. Who knows if that's fair, but that's how it looks.
    - kiliantics 5y ago
      Maybe if he paid his warehouse workers a living wage, and didn't force them to keep working while a tornado destroys a facility killing them, or piss in bottles while delivering packages. Maybe then he would only have enough left over for a somewhat smaller yacht and it wouldn't be quite so outrageous.
- makapuf 5y ago
  Going on vacation can be useful for culture, resting or improving your knowledge of the world. Spending 1000x the resources for this is 0.999 economical waste.
- hansworst 5y ago
  If I go on holiday, I’m not mis-allocating 100s of millions of dollars. I simply don’t have the power to do that, and maybe nobody should to prevent this kind of issue in the first place.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > Isn't 95% of every resource use "sub-optimal"? Depends: > If we suppose that the goal of society is to produce the greatest utility, and that the utility wealth provides an individual is sub-linear (i.e. twice as much money makes you less than twice as happy), then inequality is inefficient resource allocation. > However, we also suppose that some level of inequality can lead to greater productivity, and thus greater utility overall. The question is then what level produces the best outcome? * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505342 At want point is the cut-off in the diminishing returns of utility/happiness?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
zaroth 5y ago
It’s not suboptimal for the shipbuilders, or any of the thousands of people and hundreds of associated companies all the way down the supply chain. The fact that the end product happens to be a yacht is largely irrelevant to the economic impact and value of this investment. There very well will be hundreds of key innovations and significant investments in R&D, materials science, construction techniques, etc. that stem from the investment made into building this product. The more money Bezos spends the better, and I’m personally glad he’s spending some of it on projects like this. Just because it’s privately owned doesn’t make it any less a of an incredible feat of engineering and accomplishment of human ingenuity. It will also employ hundreds if not thousands of people for years into the future (maintenance is much more expensive than the initial build).
- sofixa 5y ago
  > There very well will be hundreds of key innovations and significant investments in R&D, materials science, construction techniques, etc. that stem from the investment made into building this product. No? Is there something special about this yacht outside of its size? Why would there be any innovation around it?
  - chucksta 5y ago
    Size requires innovation in all kinds of context, this is a narrow view. What about earth moving equipment, skyscrapers, IT systems, etc. ? I'm sure it required at least 1 bit of special tooling, capacity, or engineering. Ignoring downstream innovation challenges, like the bridge. You don't think there is an opportunity for innovation there? Maybe they make improvements when they replace it
    - zaroth 5y ago
      I think it’s common to underestimate the hidden complexity in things. Even the smallest widget can contain surprising amounts of innovation. Take the diminutive Apple iPhone Wall Charger - that little wart is the culmination of decades of safe and efficient AC/DC design. A biggest in the world sailing yacht will have hundreds of innovations just in construction of the masts. All the rigging is likely custom materials and hardware, they are probably using exotic techniques in all sorts of ways.
fortran77 5y ago
The yacht itself may be suboptimal, but for all the skilled tradesmen who built the ship, and the dozens of people who will operate it, it is what makes the economy work.
- greeneggs 5y ago
  Having skilled people spend their time on this is exactly why it is suboptimal. Had Bezos spent $500 million on Bitcoin or, say, gold bars, it wouldn't matter much. Up to rounding errors, it is just moving numbers around. Here we have $500 million dollars' worth of people's time and effort going to waste. For all the good this yacht does, they might as well be digging holes in the ground and then filling them up again.
  - sempron64 5y ago
    It costs money to maintain a specialized skilled labor force. The capital investments (human capital and infrastructure) to maintain and run the shipyard would not be required to dig holes. What needs be recognized is that "allowing" Bezos to do this is not an ideological or engineering question between what is optimal or suboptimal. It's a question of how much confidence do we have in our interventions. Humans naturally engage in trade and acquisitive behaviors. There have been rich and powerful men for many millenia before Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations and capitalism became a philosophy. Commerce is a default, not an imposition. The question is whether armchair hot takes, politicians, bureaucrats, economists, and ideologues are qualified to make confiscatory decisions against "the wealthy" that will not do more harm than good to society as a result. Our world is a system that is too complex to understand easily, or sometimes at all. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There isn't mass human misery resulting from this yacht, but preventing the order could lose people their jobs and have who-knows-what consequences. So maybe we should chill.
    - vba616 5y ago
      Despite the fallibility of "our interventions", they have to be weighed against the fallibility of a small number of billionaires. We don't live in a world that's big enough for millions of Bezos's to average out, so I think it's a fallacy to appeal to a laissez faire, free market approach. To the extent it works and seems logical, that's in the context of a huge economy with millions of people. Bezos being the product of a (sort of) free market doesn't make his actions free-markety once he's attained his current level of power. Treating him as different from "politicians, bureaucrats, economists, and ideologues" is wrong because he's not fundamentally different.
kryogen1c 5y ago
comments like this drive me stark raving mad. its just nonsense that somehow is taken, unexamined, into the psyche of a whole generation. 1) there is not a consensus as to what an optimal economy looks like for reasons so numerous its unimaginable someone would make such a claim, but include things like: globalism vs nationalism, hedonism vs utilitarianism, militarism vs pacifism, importance of a problem vs tractability of a problem, etc ad infinitum. 2) even if there was somehow a consensus on what an optimal economy is, its a floating target. economics is based on intangibles like demand and peoples feelings. if such a thing were to exist, it couldnt exist for long and would require constant change. 3) what an optimal economy could even theoretically be requires knowledge of the future. if earth becomes uninhabitable in 1 year due to meteor impact, the optimal economy certainly doesnt involve anything but meteor detection and defense. or from volcanic eruption. or solor flare/ejection. or nuclear war. do you bemoan a suboptimal economy when people buy 50 sneakers? or candy and soda? or have 5 TVs? or 3 computers? what does wealth inequality have to do with anything? what are you even talking about?
- Miner49er 5y ago
  We have generally accepted metrics we use to measure how the economy is doing. Things like GDP, productivity, or even more proxy-like things like life expectancy and happiness. Sure, maybe this type of activity counts towards the GDP in the short term, but long term a giant yacht isn't capital that is going to give a return on the investment. For other metrics it is useless as well. It makes 1 person (and maybe his friends) a bit happier for an extreme cost. I think by most metrics this is a poor allocation of resources in the medium or long term. It's just an ultra rich guy spending a ton of capital to make himself happy.
- kiliantics 5y ago
  Sure, you won't be able to get consensus on what an optimal economy should be. But I think we could agree on a few simple universal requirements like, how about everyone has dignified living conditions -- in terms of shelter, food, health, safety. We actually kind of already agreed on these things in the UN human rights charter. And the current economic model is failing about half of all humans on these points. Maybe this can help you to see how comments like yours in discussions about examples of extreme displays of wealth inequality might be the ones that actually drive people mad.

rxdb 5y ago

Isn't 95% of every resource use "sub-optimal"? Everyone goes to holidays or buys stuff they do not need. Bezos is just rich enough so that his spending goes into the news.

mitchdoogle 5y ago
Yes but this is an extreme example
- fastball 5y ago
  Right, but how do you compare? Where do you draw the line?
  - jamil7 5y ago
    > Where do you draw the line? 500m dollar yacht seems like a good place to start, we can work our way back from there.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Well I can't speak for everyone else, but your arbitrary conception of what is "too much" actually doesn't cut it for me.
      - jamil7 5y ago
        I'm not arguing that my definition is the correct one, I'm arguing that we can and have drawn lines before and are capable of doing it again.
      - vba616 5y ago
        Neither can I, but it's easier for me to accept a billionaire doing something that's at least really new and different. I'm not a fan of Elon Musk, but I feel much less negative about his ventures than about Bezos, simply because they are adding to the world of what is possible. Bezos' rockets seem like a "me too" thing. People often say expensive things are "status symbols". It appears that Musk really wants to make science fiction real, independently of what anyone else does, and I suspect Bezos of actually being obsessed with relative status. Who knows if that's fair, but that's how it looks.
  - kiliantics 5y ago
    Maybe if he paid his warehouse workers a living wage, and didn't force them to keep working while a tornado destroys a facility killing them, or piss in bottles while delivering packages. Maybe then he would only have enough left over for a somewhat smaller yacht and it wouldn't be quite so outrageous.
makapuf 5y ago
Going on vacation can be useful for culture, resting or improving your knowledge of the world. Spending 1000x the resources for this is 0.999 economical waste.
hansworst 5y ago
If I go on holiday, I’m not mis-allocating 100s of millions of dollars. I simply don’t have the power to do that, and maybe nobody should to prevent this kind of issue in the first place.
throw0101a 5y ago
> Isn't 95% of every resource use "sub-optimal"? Depends: > If we suppose that the goal of society is to produce the greatest utility, and that the utility wealth provides an individual is sub-linear (i.e. twice as much money makes you less than twice as happy), then inequality is inefficient resource allocation. > However, we also suppose that some level of inequality can lead to greater productivity, and thus greater utility overall. The question is then what level produces the best outcome? * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505342 At want point is the cut-off in the diminishing returns of utility/happiness?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

zaroth 5y ago

It’s not suboptimal for the shipbuilders, or any of the thousands of people and hundreds of associated companies all the way down the supply chain. The fact that the end product happens to be a yacht is largely irrelevant to the economic impact and value of this investment. There very well will be hundreds of key innovations and significant investments in R&D, materials science, construction techniques, etc. that stem from the investment made into building this product. The more money Bezos spends the better, and I’m personally glad he’s spending some of it on projects like this. Just because it’s privately owned doesn’t make it any less a of an incredible feat of engineering and accomplishment of human ingenuity. It will also employ hundreds if not thousands of people for years into the future (maintenance is much more expensive than the initial build).

sofixa 5y ago
> There very well will be hundreds of key innovations and significant investments in R&D, materials science, construction techniques, etc. that stem from the investment made into building this product. No? Is there something special about this yacht outside of its size? Why would there be any innovation around it?
- chucksta 5y ago
  Size requires innovation in all kinds of context, this is a narrow view. What about earth moving equipment, skyscrapers, IT systems, etc. ? I'm sure it required at least 1 bit of special tooling, capacity, or engineering. Ignoring downstream innovation challenges, like the bridge. You don't think there is an opportunity for innovation there? Maybe they make improvements when they replace it
  - zaroth 5y ago
    I think it’s common to underestimate the hidden complexity in things. Even the smallest widget can contain surprising amounts of innovation. Take the diminutive Apple iPhone Wall Charger - that little wart is the culmination of decades of safe and efficient AC/DC design. A biggest in the world sailing yacht will have hundreds of innovations just in construction of the masts. All the rigging is likely custom materials and hardware, they are probably using exotic techniques in all sorts of ways.

fortran77 5y ago

The yacht itself may be suboptimal, but for all the skilled tradesmen who built the ship, and the dozens of people who will operate it, it is what makes the economy work.

greeneggs 5y ago
Having skilled people spend their time on this is exactly why it is suboptimal. Had Bezos spent $500 million on Bitcoin or, say, gold bars, it wouldn't matter much. Up to rounding errors, it is just moving numbers around. Here we have $500 million dollars' worth of people's time and effort going to waste. For all the good this yacht does, they might as well be digging holes in the ground and then filling them up again.
- sempron64 5y ago
  It costs money to maintain a specialized skilled labor force. The capital investments (human capital and infrastructure) to maintain and run the shipyard would not be required to dig holes. What needs be recognized is that "allowing" Bezos to do this is not an ideological or engineering question between what is optimal or suboptimal. It's a question of how much confidence do we have in our interventions. Humans naturally engage in trade and acquisitive behaviors. There have been rich and powerful men for many millenia before Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations and capitalism became a philosophy. Commerce is a default, not an imposition. The question is whether armchair hot takes, politicians, bureaucrats, economists, and ideologues are qualified to make confiscatory decisions against "the wealthy" that will not do more harm than good to society as a result. Our world is a system that is too complex to understand easily, or sometimes at all. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There isn't mass human misery resulting from this yacht, but preventing the order could lose people their jobs and have who-knows-what consequences. So maybe we should chill.
  - vba616 5y ago
    Despite the fallibility of "our interventions", they have to be weighed against the fallibility of a small number of billionaires. We don't live in a world that's big enough for millions of Bezos's to average out, so I think it's a fallacy to appeal to a laissez faire, free market approach. To the extent it works and seems logical, that's in the context of a huge economy with millions of people. Bezos being the product of a (sort of) free market doesn't make his actions free-markety once he's attained his current level of power. Treating him as different from "politicians, bureaucrats, economists, and ideologues" is wrong because he's not fundamentally different.

kryogen1c 5y ago

comments like this drive me stark raving mad. its just nonsense that somehow is taken, unexamined, into the psyche of a whole generation. 1) there is not a consensus as to what an optimal economy looks like for reasons so numerous its unimaginable someone would make such a claim, but include things like: globalism vs nationalism, hedonism vs utilitarianism, militarism vs pacifism, importance of a problem vs tractability of a problem, etc ad infinitum. 2) even if there was somehow a consensus on what an optimal economy is, its a floating target. economics is based on intangibles like demand and peoples feelings. if such a thing were to exist, it couldnt exist for long and would require constant change. 3) what an optimal economy could even theoretically be requires knowledge of the future. if earth becomes uninhabitable in 1 year due to meteor impact, the optimal economy certainly doesnt involve anything but meteor detection and defense. or from volcanic eruption. or solor flare/ejection. or nuclear war. do you bemoan a suboptimal economy when people buy 50 sneakers? or candy and soda? or have 5 TVs? or 3 computers? what does wealth inequality have to do with anything? what are you even talking about?

Miner49er 5y ago
We have generally accepted metrics we use to measure how the economy is doing. Things like GDP, productivity, or even more proxy-like things like life expectancy and happiness. Sure, maybe this type of activity counts towards the GDP in the short term, but long term a giant yacht isn't capital that is going to give a return on the investment. For other metrics it is useless as well. It makes 1 person (and maybe his friends) a bit happier for an extreme cost. I think by most metrics this is a poor allocation of resources in the medium or long term. It's just an ultra rich guy spending a ton of capital to make himself happy.
kiliantics 5y ago
Sure, you won't be able to get consensus on what an optimal economy should be. But I think we could agree on a few simple universal requirements like, how about everyone has dignified living conditions -- in terms of shelter, food, health, safety. We actually kind of already agreed on these things in the UN human rights charter. And the current economic model is failing about half of all humans on these points. Maybe this can help you to see how comments like yours in discussions about examples of extreme displays of wealth inequality might be the ones that actually drive people mad.