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This is perhaps a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I'm always pleased when I hear ultra-rich people spending exorbitant amounts of money on something. Without g
by air7 5y ago
This is perhaps a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I'm always pleased when I hear ultra-rich people spending exorbitant amounts of money on something.
Without going into the discussion of whether or not people should be able to accumulate huge fortunes in the first place, given the fact that they exist, such spending means that they are putting huge sums of money back into the hands of "the people": In exchange for this boat, Bezos is moving 500M$ from his bank account to the bank accounts of many, many people working on it directly and indirectly thus moving the pendulum a tiny bit towards financial equality. Considering that the real-world alternative was for him to not have done this, remain under the radar, and keep 500M laying around, I think this is the better option.
- newaccount74 5y agoThe alternative isn't that the money sits in a bank account. The better alternative would be that those 500M went to Amazon employees instead of the CEO. The employees could have used it to buy nice winter boots for their kids. Probably a lot more useful than yet another boat dumping tons of toxic waste into the ocean.
- fastball 5y agoYou are allowed to start a company as a co-op. Feel free to start your own Amazon competitor.
- chucksta 5y agoBoat or bank are the only two current realistic alternatives I see. At least the boat builders & associated kids get some new boots. There are thousands of nicer alternatives that aren't going to happen
- radford-neal 5y agoMoney sitting in a bank account is fine. It's not using any real resources sitting there. Of course, he might spend it sooner or later, which would probably be bad for everyone except him. So even better (for everyone but him) would be if he converted the money to paper bills, and then burned them all. That would benefit millions of people. (Exactly who would depend on which country's currency the bills were in.)