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Given a reasonable benchmark of $3 million to retire comfortably in most places in the US, Jeff Bezos could retire a mere 60,000 times. Tell me how a person can

by titzer 3y ago

Given a reasonable benchmark of $3 million to retire comfortably in most places in the US, Jeff Bezos could retire a mere 60,000 times. Tell me how a person can "earn" enough money by doing work that produces 60,000 lifetimes worth of wealth. You can't. Instead, Jeff is the beneficiary of a system by which he extracts an increment of the benefit that every person participating in the system derives (presumably over the old system). It boggles the mind that the system allows some people to accrue that much wealth by summing the indirect benefit to other people and yet some other people are stuck spinning their wheels their entire lives. Inequality is extreme.

deleted 3y ago
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W4ldi 3y ago
> Tell me how a person can "earn" enough money by doing work that produces 60,000 lifetimes worth of wealth. You can't. By providing value or services to people which they want to spend money on. It's pretty simple actually. Though not simple in execution.
- Kapura 3y ago
  Jeff Bezos had the idea of "what if we put a store online," and because he was the most successful at executing the idea of selling stuff using the computer, he deserves effectively infinity money? That seems like a super radical position, imo. No one person has ever invented something good enough that they deserve an infinite amount of money. Maybe if somebody cures cancer some day.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    If you took all of Bezos' wealth, and evenly distributed it to everyone in America, it would be about $600 per person. If instead you tried to spend it on eliminating the federal deficit, it would knock out about 5% of it. I would rather Bezos is allowed to try and invest it in something as impactful as Amazon again. He's certainly fair likelier to do it than, say, the US government, or you yourself.
    - Kapura 3y ago
      [citation needed] i don't have any fucking money, i can't invest in shit. That's the big difference between Jeff Bezos and Me.
      - monero-xmr 3y ago
        Bezos net worth = 152 billion https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-bezos/ https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-be... US population = 332 million 152 billion / 332 million = $457 per person (I was over estimating!) US debt = 33.6 trillion https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock#:~:text=The%20%2433%20trillion%20gross%20federal,that%20it%20owes%20to%20itself https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock#:~:text=The%20%2433.... 152 billion / 33.6 trillion = 0.45% Wow, I underestimated what Bezos' wealth could pay off in our national debt by an order of magnitude! It could only pay 1/10 of what I thought - only 0.45%! Incredible how much debt the US government has. In terms of your own situation, assuming you are not disabled and are a healthy adult, then you need to start thinking longterm. Not "how can I become wealthier today", but "how can I become wealthier over 30 years?" The choices you make every day compound. You should work on a positive outlook, getting real skills, and trying to improve your situation every day.
        medvezhenok 3y ago
        You used deficit the first time, debt the second. The deficit is currently around 2 trillion dollars, so Bezos' wealth is around 7.5% of the deficit (if it were fully liquid, which it's not).
        monero-xmr 3y ago
        Regardless, stealing all of Bezos' money to "help society" would accomplish very little.
        gpxyz 3y ago
        And letting Bezos continue stealing money from his employees is more beneficial to society?
  - randomdata 3y ago
    While some businesses are able to create regulatory moats that prevents (by military force, if necessary) consumers from spending their money elsewhere, I'm not sure what stops consumers from spending their money elsewhere when it comes to Amazon? I see nothing that it offers which is meaningfully unique. Anything I have ever considered buying from Amazon is also available at the 'mom & pop' store down the street. If consumers actively choose to trade an IOU that offers future goods or services (that's what money is) to Bezos for something Bezos is offering now, and not to you for whatever it is you are offering now, I guess he "deserves" it, no? Surely people should have autonomy in who they decide to make trades with?
    - nehal3m 3y ago
      Bezos is not the one you’re buying from, he just forced himself in between you and the seller. He offers nothing but a platform. Whoever you choose to trade with on Amazon, he’s there to take some off the top.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        Actually, access to use the platform is what you are buying. In fact, Bezos gives the products you are interested in to you for free as an incentive to buy into using his platform. He then, of course, is able to use the proceeds from you buying into using the platform to pay for the product he gave away to you for free, and keeps some for himself to justify operation of the platform. If that particular platform doesn't interest you, why pay for it? As before, the store down the street probably sells the same thing. There is nothing I know of that Amazon sells that you can't also get somewhere else.
  - David_Axelrod 3y ago
    AWS is the backbone of the internet, amazon warehouses are some of the most efficient in the world, lowering costs for everyone. People subscribe to prime in droves because of the value they get from it. Even if you zoom in to smaller assets, amazon has huge impact. Twitch brings a lot of people joy, same with kindle and even Alexa a few years ago. "Selling stuff using the internet" probably makes you feel smart/superior but it infantilizes the company's contributions to the rest of us.
    - jdmn73 3y ago
      But Bezos didn't invent any of that stuff. As the other commenter said, he executed best on 'put a store on the internet' and made a bunch of money doing that. He then used that money to either acquire other businesses, like Twitch, or hire other people to invent more things, like AWS. That's the whole point of what OP's comment. Bezos took something completely reasonable for a single person to do, 'put a store on the internet' better than anyone else in the mid-90s, and used that as an entry point to reaping benefits from the ideas and the labor of hundreds of thousands of other people over decades.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - nickpp 3y ago
        Yeah, if it was so easy why didn't anybody else do it? Better yet, pick an "easy" idea from right now and go ahead and execute it. Then come back and report how "easy" it really is.
        felurx 3y ago
        Yeah, you're right, he was massively lucky too. But even with that, does he deserve this much wealth for this? Would he deserve this much money if executing that idea was incredibly hard?
        thunky 3y ago
  - earnesti 3y ago
    Those people who bought his products, invested in his company or otherwise increased his wealth, thought that he deserves the money, as they got something valuable in exchange. I don't think the opinion of an unrelated party matters that much.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- silviot 3y ago
  > It's pretty simple actually That's true. You just need to exploit your fellow humans! Make them work for you but never pay them for the full value they bring. Always pay them the least they will still accept. So you get a piece of their pie. Your position of power will allow you to do so, and people will see your position of power as "natural" and will see no problem in the exploitation.
- ninkendo 3y ago
  And people who buy up companies, take them apart piece by piece, slash all spending, lay people off, sell the parts piece by piece, and pocket all the money? Are they providing value?
  - acover 3y ago
    See zombie companies in Japan. If it improves the allocation of resources (like labor) then it provides value.
- armchairhacker 3y ago
  This is true: the services companies like Amazon provide are worth more than 60,000 lifetimes of money could provide without them. The question is: how many other people, with the wealth Jeff Bezos had when he was younger, would be able to create something like Amazon? The reason he did and not someone else, how much of that was a combination of opportunity and luck? Capitalism is a fine system, but extremes like this are a problem. And the fact that once companies get big enough, they can start to become inefficient and worse (in price + quality), because they get benefits like lobbying and owning the entire production process which potential competitors don’t.
- RivieraKid 3y ago
  Imagine a bunch of guys start looking for oil. One guy is first to find a massive oil field because he started looking first, he's luckier, smarter and harder-working than others. If this guy wasn't born, the society wouldn't be worse off by much, the oil would still be found, but maybe few months later. That's the type of Jeff Bezos' wealth, it's mostly "discovered" rather than earned.
- comte7092 3y ago
  Providing value that you are able to price. Amazon was built on top of layers and layers of public goods that provide surplus value that Bezos and others are able to package into a product: postal services, roads, internet infrastructure, open source software, etc. Indeed, there should be many people on this forum that understand that providing value is a relatively small part of the problem (see: any of a host of heavily used open source projects), it’s the “spend money on” part of the execution that matters. The whole question then becomes, who actually created the value that is being paid for in this scenario? Certainly, Bezos created a company that did many innovative things and made the correct decisions for him to win out over his competition. However, the concept of an online store wasn’t really all that novel. Such a store would have been impossible to create in the 1970s, but suddenly it became so in the 90s and there were plenty of potential competitors popping up at the same time because external conditions made it possible. Additionally, because the entire concept was new, he didn’t have to compete with an existing behemoth like Amazon is today (though of course the incumbent physical retail giants of the time shouldn’t be downplayed, nonetheless, starting an online everything store today is a very different proposition). The issue isn’t “did Bezos create something novel and valuable”, but rather “how much value did he create, and how much did he just benefit from an existing pool of value waiting to be tapped, that was created by the rest of society”? To that end, it’s not a question of whether Bezos might “deserve” to be wealthy, but rather, how wealthy? The consistent framing, as illustrated by your comment, is that our capitalist system inherently gives just dues to those that create value, and is often accompanied by the line that taxing the rich is “punishing success”. But the countervailing point is that it is often the case that the very rich receive outsized gains as the benefit from common resources, and they ought to pay back into that public trust in due course as they have benefitted from it the most.
- Gud 3y ago
  No, not by "providing value". By owning a certain percentage of the value providing-machine.
stronglikedan 3y ago
He doesn't earn the money by "doing work", and I don't think anyone would claim that to be the case. He earns money by taking risks, which is the cornerstone of capitalism, and something that most people aren't willing to do, especially to the extremes he has.. It's a valid way to earn money, and has nothing to do with "equality". Of course, modern capitalism has devolved into crony capitalism, but that's a different topic altogether.
- jandrese 3y ago
  The flipside of "taking risks" is having the resources to take those risks with in the first place. Especially the resources that if the risk doesn't pay off they can try again. It's not that average person isn't willing to take risks, it is that they don't have the opportunity to do so. And yeah, life isn't fair and it should never be totally fair. But at the same time having it rigged against so many people is a big problem. At what point do you say "ok, you have won, good job, it is time to promote the common good now."
  - nickpp 3y ago
    Anybody who bough 1 Amazon stock on IPO day could’ve taken that risk. It wasn’t that hard or expensive, come on. Most people didn’t though. Jeff basically built that company from nothing. He deserves any wealth he has.
    - latexr 3y ago
      > Jeff basically built that company from nothing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars from his parents is very far from “nothing”. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-paren...
      - nickpp 3y ago
        Which his parents had also thanks to... capitalism. And, you know, today countless investors are ready to give YOU millions if you are willing to do what Bezos did. This very site is known for something like that.
nwoli 3y ago
I mean that money will be spent in exchange for goods and services that provide salaries and retirement opportunities for more people. It’s not like he’s just hoarding that money, it can’t be used without benefiting other people once he does
- beebmam 3y ago
  The money that isn't spent on consumer goods/services will be invested, where other people can spend that on goods/services, with an expectation of returns on investment, incentivising efficient choices. Economies are cool!
- Buttons840 3y ago
  The same would be true if we taxed the money and the government spent it. Right?
randomdata 3y ago
> It boggles the mind that the system allows some people to accrue that much wealth What do you find surprising about consumers preferring to buy something from Amazon rather than their local mom and pop store? Hell, that's the entire foundation of the urbanization movement. When the population was rurally isolated, they had little choice buy to buy from the local mom and pop – keeping wealth widely distributed, but we collectively saw value in having one big "mom and pop" enabled by having large populations living in close proximity to each other, so we (the majority of us) made the migration into the city. If you have ever chosen to live in a city, you must have recognized the value too? Else why would you be there?
- nehal3m 3y ago
  > What do you find surprising about consumers preferring to buy something from Amazon rather than their local mom and pop store? The website. It’s been absolute shit for years. It’s full of knockoffs and scams. I can hardly find the things I want, there’s dark patterns, they actively compete with sellers on their platform… I honestly think they get away with it because mom and pop are out of business. I’d go back if I could.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    > I honestly think they get away with it because mom and pop are out of business. I’d go back if I could. That tells that you believe there is room for mom and pop to return, which questions why you aren't becoming the mom and pop?
    - nehal3m 3y ago
      I have a job that I like and I am risk averse.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        There is no risk if you truly believe in what you say. There is also no reason why you need to give up your job for such a venture. So, I guess we're back to questioning why you think people would choose Bezos over you.
cj 3y ago
I agree there's some inequality at play, but it's only extreme if you think the time and effort he put in isn't worth the jobs he created for millions of other people. (Which in the case of Amazon, you could argue he put a lot of brick and mortar out of business, so maybe Amazon actually isn't a net gain for society?)
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Or maybe there was a better use of the resources being spend on the brick and mortar businesses that can now be deployed elsewhere in society. Efficiency gains can be society’s gains, if allocated properly.
  - Kapura 3y ago
    I see, and how is our god-king mr. bezos allocating his wealth? He's using it to electrify and build out american rail, to reduce dependence on cars? Is he pouring money into early education so that future generations will be able to make even greater strides to improve society? Or is he, like, buying big boats and houses?
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Most of that wealth is tied in Amazon so he’s “using” it every single day to serve us and provide jobs for all those hundred of thousands of people.
      - tfourb 3y ago
        If Bezos were to distribute all his Amazon shares equally between Amazon employees, not a single person would loose their job, but many people would have a significantly better life. Bezo's wealth is essentially unproductive, serving only his personal ability to make his every wish come true. It has no utility for the society at large that couldn't be reproduced by redistributing this wealth more equally throughout society.
        3y ago
xyzelement 3y ago
// Tell me how a person can "earn" enough money by doing work that produces 60,000 lifetimes worth of wealth. According to a quick Google, Amazon has 310 million customers. Think about that - Bezos built something that a third of a billion of humans find valuable enough to use. Isn't that equally, if not more, impressive than the "60,000" lifetimes measure?
- wiz21c 3y ago
  Einstein and Schroedinger have built something that is useful to that many people and they didn't earn much out of it. It sounds as absurd to me.
  - blackmesaind 3y ago
    It's less about building something that is useful to many people, and more about selling something that is useful to many people. The fact that what they built was sold by others is a problem they should have thought about.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    Apologies if I am misreading you, but you sound really money obsessed as if that was the only measure in life. I suspect that both Einstein and Schroedinger went into science because they loved intellectual work, the academic lifestyle, the thrill of discovery, and perhaps the fame and recognition. Because they were successful, they attained that which they wanted (granted, I am guessing at their motivations...) Bezos set out to build a valuable business and as a result of his success, ended up with... a valuable business. If you evaluate life meaning purely based on dollars (as you seem to be) then yeah Bezos is ahead. If you evaluate life on more complex criteria as I described above, the scientists got what they set out to get, just as much.
  - troupe 3y ago
    People are freely spending their money with Amazon all the time because they find it to be valuable--even paying a premium for having things shipped that they could get by running to the store themselves. Ruth Georgie Erica is presumably still alive. You could obviously send her payment for whatever value you feel her father brought to your life. Is it absurd that you haven't sent her money or do you only see absurdity in other people's actions and not your own?
troupe 3y ago
How much have people earned by working for Amazon? How much have people earned by selling their goods on Amazon? It seems like you want to find some way to prevent individuals from being wildly successful, but I think you are overlooking the fact that his wealth is a fraction of the value what he started has provided to the economy. You are concerned that Bezos has "accrue[d] that much wealth" but his wealthy is mostly stock which is basically just an indication of how valuable people think Amazon (and his other companies) are to the US (and world) economy. He doesn't have $150 billion in cash in his basement or bank. If you want to think in terms of "How can we keep a company from providing this much value to the world?" then yes. If we could push everyone back to living in caves, there would be less disparity, but that probably isn't something most people want.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
wincy 3y ago
Okay I’m just some dumb guy without the advantage of a college education who lives in flyover country but like, so what? Why should I care? It just strikes me as midwit intellectual class sneering at people better off than them. Especially on Hacker News, it’s mostly millionaires being upset by the existence of billionaires. My quality of life is amazing, all of this capitalism’s working out great for me. I’m someone who doesn’t even have a high school diploma but thanks to tech I make a wage that makes my family and react in shock when I’ve revealed it to them. I get to go on vacation twice a year, I live in a great neighborhood, I love my job. The thing is, Jeff Bezos has done far more to push up my wages indirectly by virtue of Amazon existing and hiring talent, and offering great salaries. I don’t care at all how much money Jeff Bezos makes and it strikes me as mean spirited the complaining surrounding “wealth inequality”. As long as my objective quality of life is unimaginably good compared to any of my ancestors that have ever existed, what am I supposed to be getting riled up about? When I read a statement like “inequality is “extreme”, I feel it’s strongly implying a call to action to “tip the scales” against it. That it’s an injustice that ought to be remedied. With what, government action? Some new laws? I feel like any attempt to mess with this good thing we’ve got going on would destroy it, either unintentionally or not.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  > In 2008, the EU and the US economies were roughly the same size. But since the global financial crisis, their economic fortunes have dramatically diverged. As Jeremy Shapiro and Jana Puglierin of the European Council on Foreign Relations point out: “In 2008 the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s: $16.2tn versus $14.7tn. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25tn, whereas the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8tn. America’s economy is now nearly one-third bigger. It is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK.” > The aggregate figures are shocking. Underpinning them is a picture of a Europe that has fallen behind — sector by sector. https://www.ft.com/content/80ace07f-3acb-40cb-9960-8bb4a44fd8d9 https://www.ft.com/content/80ace07f-3acb-40cb-9960-8bb4a44fd... Because of the magic of compound interest, the EU will continue to fall behind at an increasing pace, as well as their quality of life. EU is already very poor if you travel around outside the tourist cities. American capitalism is the greatest wealth engine ever created, and I pray it continues to exist. It is currently the only hope the world has for increased standards of living.
ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago
This topic comes up often but I rarely see a discussion of the alternatives, except from communism advocates. Assuming we agree with the premise that this amount of inequality is too extreme, what is to be done to reduce it? And in what way do we ensure this does not compromise the basic principles of our capitalist economy, e.g allowing the rewards to be commensurate with the risks, rewarding people who work harder and have more qualifications, and preserving ownership.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  If some of the so-called "radical left" policies that have been proposed were to be implemented, the rich would still be able to afford multiple staffed mansions and a yacht. I think that counts as a reward for their hard work. People would still be able to amass enough wealth to do whatever they want for themselves and their family and friends, they just wouldn't be able to amass so much money that its gravitational field starts to warp all of society.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago
    What are those policies?
- Kapura 3y ago
  Progressive taxation rates, with the highest income brackets (say, every dollar made in a year past $100,000,000) being taxed on the order of 80%. Nothing would stop somebody with money under this schema from continuing to invest. The mindset of "i dont want the government is taking my money!" is reactionary bullshit that has resulting in underfunded public serves, from the FDA to the IRS. The idea that no amount of money can be enough for one person is toxic, and antisocial.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago
    My understanding was that the wealthy essentially do not have income, their net-worth is tied to their stock ownership. Tax on capital gains do not work to tax them either since they don't sell their stocks but take loans against them. In what way should these systems be changed, or new systems be used, to appropriately tax them without compromising their ownership of the companies they built?
lionkor 3y ago
that's net worth, isn't it? I doubt anyone can live off of a net worth of $3 million without working, in fact, turning that net worth into capital is work
RickJWagner 3y ago
I'm sure you've read articles that describe the life a middle-ages king. They lived in dark and uncomfortable castles, ate poor food, had access to few educational materials, etc. Today, even the least privileged in thedeveloped world carry around computers that bring news, entertainment, weather, etc. The worst cars are faster, safer, and get awesome gas mileage. The cheapest clothing is comfortable and durable. Food is plentiful and cheap. The life of Jeff Bezos isn't that much greater than 99% of the people living in a developed country. There's never been a better time to be alive.

by titzer 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

W4ldi 3y ago

> Tell me how a person can "earn" enough money by doing work that produces 60,000 lifetimes worth of wealth. You can't. By providing value or services to people which they want to spend money on. It's pretty simple actually. Though not simple in execution.

Kapura 3y ago
Jeff Bezos had the idea of "what if we put a store online," and because he was the most successful at executing the idea of selling stuff using the computer, he deserves effectively infinity money? That seems like a super radical position, imo. No one person has ever invented something good enough that they deserve an infinite amount of money. Maybe if somebody cures cancer some day.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  If you took all of Bezos' wealth, and evenly distributed it to everyone in America, it would be about $600 per person. If instead you tried to spend it on eliminating the federal deficit, it would knock out about 5% of it. I would rather Bezos is allowed to try and invest it in something as impactful as Amazon again. He's certainly fair likelier to do it than, say, the US government, or you yourself.
  - Kapura 3y ago
    [citation needed] i don't have any fucking money, i can't invest in shit. That's the big difference between Jeff Bezos and Me.
    - monero-xmr 3y ago
      Bezos net worth = 152 billion https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-bezos/ https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-be... US population = 332 million 152 billion / 332 million = $457 per person (I was over estimating!) US debt = 33.6 trillion https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock#:~:text=The%20%2433%20trillion%20gross%20federal,that%20it%20owes%20to%20itself https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock#:~:text=The%20%2433.... 152 billion / 33.6 trillion = 0.45% Wow, I underestimated what Bezos' wealth could pay off in our national debt by an order of magnitude! It could only pay 1/10 of what I thought - only 0.45%! Incredible how much debt the US government has. In terms of your own situation, assuming you are not disabled and are a healthy adult, then you need to start thinking longterm. Not "how can I become wealthier today", but "how can I become wealthier over 30 years?" The choices you make every day compound. You should work on a positive outlook, getting real skills, and trying to improve your situation every day.
      - medvezhenok 3y ago
        You used deficit the first time, debt the second. The deficit is currently around 2 trillion dollars, so Bezos' wealth is around 7.5% of the deficit (if it were fully liquid, which it's not).
        monero-xmr 3y ago
        Regardless, stealing all of Bezos' money to "help society" would accomplish very little.
        gpxyz 3y ago
        And letting Bezos continue stealing money from his employees is more beneficial to society?
- randomdata 3y ago
  While some businesses are able to create regulatory moats that prevents (by military force, if necessary) consumers from spending their money elsewhere, I'm not sure what stops consumers from spending their money elsewhere when it comes to Amazon? I see nothing that it offers which is meaningfully unique. Anything I have ever considered buying from Amazon is also available at the 'mom & pop' store down the street. If consumers actively choose to trade an IOU that offers future goods or services (that's what money is) to Bezos for something Bezos is offering now, and not to you for whatever it is you are offering now, I guess he "deserves" it, no? Surely people should have autonomy in who they decide to make trades with?
  - nehal3m 3y ago
    Bezos is not the one you’re buying from, he just forced himself in between you and the seller. He offers nothing but a platform. Whoever you choose to trade with on Amazon, he’s there to take some off the top.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Actually, access to use the platform is what you are buying. In fact, Bezos gives the products you are interested in to you for free as an incentive to buy into using his platform. He then, of course, is able to use the proceeds from you buying into using the platform to pay for the product he gave away to you for free, and keeps some for himself to justify operation of the platform. If that particular platform doesn't interest you, why pay for it? As before, the store down the street probably sells the same thing. There is nothing I know of that Amazon sells that you can't also get somewhere else.
- David_Axelrod 3y ago
  AWS is the backbone of the internet, amazon warehouses are some of the most efficient in the world, lowering costs for everyone. People subscribe to prime in droves because of the value they get from it. Even if you zoom in to smaller assets, amazon has huge impact. Twitch brings a lot of people joy, same with kindle and even Alexa a few years ago. "Selling stuff using the internet" probably makes you feel smart/superior but it infantilizes the company's contributions to the rest of us.
  - jdmn73 3y ago
    But Bezos didn't invent any of that stuff. As the other commenter said, he executed best on 'put a store on the internet' and made a bunch of money doing that. He then used that money to either acquire other businesses, like Twitch, or hire other people to invent more things, like AWS. That's the whole point of what OP's comment. Bezos took something completely reasonable for a single person to do, 'put a store on the internet' better than anyone else in the mid-90s, and used that as an entry point to reaping benefits from the ideas and the labor of hundreds of thousands of other people over decades.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Yeah, if it was so easy why didn't anybody else do it? Better yet, pick an "easy" idea from right now and go ahead and execute it. Then come back and report how "easy" it really is.
      - felurx 3y ago
        Yeah, you're right, he was massively lucky too. But even with that, does he deserve this much wealth for this? Would he deserve this much money if executing that idea was incredibly hard?
        thunky 3y ago
- earnesti 3y ago
  Those people who bought his products, invested in his company or otherwise increased his wealth, thought that he deserves the money, as they got something valuable in exchange. I don't think the opinion of an unrelated party matters that much.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
silviot 3y ago
> It's pretty simple actually That's true. You just need to exploit your fellow humans! Make them work for you but never pay them for the full value they bring. Always pay them the least they will still accept. So you get a piece of their pie. Your position of power will allow you to do so, and people will see your position of power as "natural" and will see no problem in the exploitation.
ninkendo 3y ago
And people who buy up companies, take them apart piece by piece, slash all spending, lay people off, sell the parts piece by piece, and pocket all the money? Are they providing value?
- acover 3y ago
  See zombie companies in Japan. If it improves the allocation of resources (like labor) then it provides value.
armchairhacker 3y ago
This is true: the services companies like Amazon provide are worth more than 60,000 lifetimes of money could provide without them. The question is: how many other people, with the wealth Jeff Bezos had when he was younger, would be able to create something like Amazon? The reason he did and not someone else, how much of that was a combination of opportunity and luck? Capitalism is a fine system, but extremes like this are a problem. And the fact that once companies get big enough, they can start to become inefficient and worse (in price + quality), because they get benefits like lobbying and owning the entire production process which potential competitors don’t.
RivieraKid 3y ago
Imagine a bunch of guys start looking for oil. One guy is first to find a massive oil field because he started looking first, he's luckier, smarter and harder-working than others. If this guy wasn't born, the society wouldn't be worse off by much, the oil would still be found, but maybe few months later. That's the type of Jeff Bezos' wealth, it's mostly "discovered" rather than earned.
comte7092 3y ago
Providing value that you are able to price. Amazon was built on top of layers and layers of public goods that provide surplus value that Bezos and others are able to package into a product: postal services, roads, internet infrastructure, open source software, etc. Indeed, there should be many people on this forum that understand that providing value is a relatively small part of the problem (see: any of a host of heavily used open source projects), it’s the “spend money on” part of the execution that matters. The whole question then becomes, who actually created the value that is being paid for in this scenario? Certainly, Bezos created a company that did many innovative things and made the correct decisions for him to win out over his competition. However, the concept of an online store wasn’t really all that novel. Such a store would have been impossible to create in the 1970s, but suddenly it became so in the 90s and there were plenty of potential competitors popping up at the same time because external conditions made it possible. Additionally, because the entire concept was new, he didn’t have to compete with an existing behemoth like Amazon is today (though of course the incumbent physical retail giants of the time shouldn’t be downplayed, nonetheless, starting an online everything store today is a very different proposition). The issue isn’t “did Bezos create something novel and valuable”, but rather “how much value did he create, and how much did he just benefit from an existing pool of value waiting to be tapped, that was created by the rest of society”? To that end, it’s not a question of whether Bezos might “deserve” to be wealthy, but rather, how wealthy? The consistent framing, as illustrated by your comment, is that our capitalist system inherently gives just dues to those that create value, and is often accompanied by the line that taxing the rich is “punishing success”. But the countervailing point is that it is often the case that the very rich receive outsized gains as the benefit from common resources, and they ought to pay back into that public trust in due course as they have benefitted from it the most.
Gud 3y ago
No, not by "providing value". By owning a certain percentage of the value providing-machine.

stronglikedan 3y ago

He doesn't earn the money by "doing work", and I don't think anyone would claim that to be the case. He earns money by taking risks, which is the cornerstone of capitalism, and something that most people aren't willing to do, especially to the extremes he has.. It's a valid way to earn money, and has nothing to do with "equality". Of course, modern capitalism has devolved into crony capitalism, but that's a different topic altogether.

jandrese 3y ago
The flipside of "taking risks" is having the resources to take those risks with in the first place. Especially the resources that if the risk doesn't pay off they can try again. It's not that average person isn't willing to take risks, it is that they don't have the opportunity to do so. And yeah, life isn't fair and it should never be totally fair. But at the same time having it rigged against so many people is a big problem. At what point do you say "ok, you have won, good job, it is time to promote the common good now."
- nickpp 3y ago
  Anybody who bough 1 Amazon stock on IPO day could’ve taken that risk. It wasn’t that hard or expensive, come on. Most people didn’t though. Jeff basically built that company from nothing. He deserves any wealth he has.
  - latexr 3y ago
    > Jeff basically built that company from nothing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars from his parents is very far from “nothing”. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-paren...
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Which his parents had also thanks to... capitalism. And, you know, today countless investors are ready to give YOU millions if you are willing to do what Bezos did. This very site is known for something like that.

nwoli 3y ago

I mean that money will be spent in exchange for goods and services that provide salaries and retirement opportunities for more people. It’s not like he’s just hoarding that money, it can’t be used without benefiting other people once he does

beebmam 3y ago
The money that isn't spent on consumer goods/services will be invested, where other people can spend that on goods/services, with an expectation of returns on investment, incentivising efficient choices. Economies are cool!
Buttons840 3y ago
The same would be true if we taxed the money and the government spent it. Right?

randomdata 3y ago

> It boggles the mind that the system allows some people to accrue that much wealth What do you find surprising about consumers preferring to buy something from Amazon rather than their local mom and pop store? Hell, that's the entire foundation of the urbanization movement. When the population was rurally isolated, they had little choice buy to buy from the local mom and pop – keeping wealth widely distributed, but we collectively saw value in having one big "mom and pop" enabled by having large populations living in close proximity to each other, so we (the majority of us) made the migration into the city. If you have ever chosen to live in a city, you must have recognized the value too? Else why would you be there?

nehal3m 3y ago
> What do you find surprising about consumers preferring to buy something from Amazon rather than their local mom and pop store? The website. It’s been absolute shit for years. It’s full of knockoffs and scams. I can hardly find the things I want, there’s dark patterns, they actively compete with sellers on their platform… I honestly think they get away with it because mom and pop are out of business. I’d go back if I could.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > I honestly think they get away with it because mom and pop are out of business. I’d go back if I could. That tells that you believe there is room for mom and pop to return, which questions why you aren't becoming the mom and pop?
  - nehal3m 3y ago
    I have a job that I like and I am risk averse.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      There is no risk if you truly believe in what you say. There is also no reason why you need to give up your job for such a venture. So, I guess we're back to questioning why you think people would choose Bezos over you.

cj 3y ago

I agree there's some inequality at play, but it's only extreme if you think the time and effort he put in isn't worth the jobs he created for millions of other people. (Which in the case of Amazon, you could argue he put a lot of brick and mortar out of business, so maybe Amazon actually isn't a net gain for society?)

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Or maybe there was a better use of the resources being spend on the brick and mortar businesses that can now be deployed elsewhere in society. Efficiency gains can be society’s gains, if allocated properly.
- Kapura 3y ago
  I see, and how is our god-king mr. bezos allocating his wealth? He's using it to electrify and build out american rail, to reduce dependence on cars? Is he pouring money into early education so that future generations will be able to make even greater strides to improve society? Or is he, like, buying big boats and houses?
  - nickpp 3y ago
    Most of that wealth is tied in Amazon so he’s “using” it every single day to serve us and provide jobs for all those hundred of thousands of people.
    - tfourb 3y ago
      If Bezos were to distribute all his Amazon shares equally between Amazon employees, not a single person would loose their job, but many people would have a significantly better life. Bezo's wealth is essentially unproductive, serving only his personal ability to make his every wish come true. It has no utility for the society at large that couldn't be reproduced by redistributing this wealth more equally throughout society.
      - 3y ago

xyzelement 3y ago

// Tell me how a person can "earn" enough money by doing work that produces 60,000 lifetimes worth of wealth. According to a quick Google, Amazon has 310 million customers. Think about that - Bezos built something that a third of a billion of humans find valuable enough to use. Isn't that equally, if not more, impressive than the "60,000" lifetimes measure?

wiz21c 3y ago
Einstein and Schroedinger have built something that is useful to that many people and they didn't earn much out of it. It sounds as absurd to me.
- blackmesaind 3y ago
  It's less about building something that is useful to many people, and more about selling something that is useful to many people. The fact that what they built was sold by others is a problem they should have thought about.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Apologies if I am misreading you, but you sound really money obsessed as if that was the only measure in life. I suspect that both Einstein and Schroedinger went into science because they loved intellectual work, the academic lifestyle, the thrill of discovery, and perhaps the fame and recognition. Because they were successful, they attained that which they wanted (granted, I am guessing at their motivations...) Bezos set out to build a valuable business and as a result of his success, ended up with... a valuable business. If you evaluate life meaning purely based on dollars (as you seem to be) then yeah Bezos is ahead. If you evaluate life on more complex criteria as I described above, the scientists got what they set out to get, just as much.
- troupe 3y ago
  People are freely spending their money with Amazon all the time because they find it to be valuable--even paying a premium for having things shipped that they could get by running to the store themselves. Ruth Georgie Erica is presumably still alive. You could obviously send her payment for whatever value you feel her father brought to your life. Is it absurd that you haven't sent her money or do you only see absurdity in other people's actions and not your own?

troupe 3y ago

How much have people earned by working for Amazon? How much have people earned by selling their goods on Amazon? It seems like you want to find some way to prevent individuals from being wildly successful, but I think you are overlooking the fact that his wealth is a fraction of the value what he started has provided to the economy. You are concerned that Bezos has "accrue[d] that much wealth" but his wealthy is mostly stock which is basically just an indication of how valuable people think Amazon (and his other companies) are to the US (and world) economy. He doesn't have $150 billion in cash in his basement or bank. If you want to think in terms of "How can we keep a company from providing this much value to the world?" then yes. If we could push everyone back to living in caves, there would be less disparity, but that probably isn't something most people want.

deleted 3y ago
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wincy 3y ago

Okay I’m just some dumb guy without the advantage of a college education who lives in flyover country but like, so what? Why should I care? It just strikes me as midwit intellectual class sneering at people better off than them. Especially on Hacker News, it’s mostly millionaires being upset by the existence of billionaires. My quality of life is amazing, all of this capitalism’s working out great for me. I’m someone who doesn’t even have a high school diploma but thanks to tech I make a wage that makes my family and react in shock when I’ve revealed it to them. I get to go on vacation twice a year, I live in a great neighborhood, I love my job. The thing is, Jeff Bezos has done far more to push up my wages indirectly by virtue of Amazon existing and hiring talent, and offering great salaries. I don’t care at all how much money Jeff Bezos makes and it strikes me as mean spirited the complaining surrounding “wealth inequality”. As long as my objective quality of life is unimaginably good compared to any of my ancestors that have ever existed, what am I supposed to be getting riled up about? When I read a statement like “inequality is “extreme”, I feel it’s strongly implying a call to action to “tip the scales” against it. That it’s an injustice that ought to be remedied. With what, government action? Some new laws? I feel like any attempt to mess with this good thing we’ve got going on would destroy it, either unintentionally or not.

monero-xmr 3y ago
> In 2008, the EU and the US economies were roughly the same size. But since the global financial crisis, their economic fortunes have dramatically diverged. As Jeremy Shapiro and Jana Puglierin of the European Council on Foreign Relations point out: “In 2008 the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s: $16.2tn versus $14.7tn. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25tn, whereas the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8tn. America’s economy is now nearly one-third bigger. It is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK.” > The aggregate figures are shocking. Underpinning them is a picture of a Europe that has fallen behind — sector by sector. https://www.ft.com/content/80ace07f-3acb-40cb-9960-8bb4a44fd8d9 https://www.ft.com/content/80ace07f-3acb-40cb-9960-8bb4a44fd... Because of the magic of compound interest, the EU will continue to fall behind at an increasing pace, as well as their quality of life. EU is already very poor if you travel around outside the tourist cities. American capitalism is the greatest wealth engine ever created, and I pray it continues to exist. It is currently the only hope the world has for increased standards of living.

ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago

This topic comes up often but I rarely see a discussion of the alternatives, except from communism advocates. Assuming we agree with the premise that this amount of inequality is too extreme, what is to be done to reduce it? And in what way do we ensure this does not compromise the basic principles of our capitalist economy, e.g allowing the rewards to be commensurate with the risks, rewarding people who work harder and have more qualifications, and preserving ownership.

Buttons840 3y ago
If some of the so-called "radical left" policies that have been proposed were to be implemented, the rich would still be able to afford multiple staffed mansions and a yacht. I think that counts as a reward for their hard work. People would still be able to amass enough wealth to do whatever they want for themselves and their family and friends, they just wouldn't be able to amass so much money that its gravitational field starts to warp all of society.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago
  What are those policies?
Kapura 3y ago
Progressive taxation rates, with the highest income brackets (say, every dollar made in a year past $100,000,000) being taxed on the order of 80%. Nothing would stop somebody with money under this schema from continuing to invest. The mindset of "i dont want the government is taking my money!" is reactionary bullshit that has resulting in underfunded public serves, from the FDA to the IRS. The idea that no amount of money can be enough for one person is toxic, and antisocial.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago
  My understanding was that the wealthy essentially do not have income, their net-worth is tied to their stock ownership. Tax on capital gains do not work to tax them either since they don't sell their stocks but take loans against them. In what way should these systems be changed, or new systems be used, to appropriately tax them without compromising their ownership of the companies they built?

lionkor 3y ago

that's net worth, isn't it? I doubt anyone can live off of a net worth of $3 million without working, in fact, turning that net worth into capital is work

RickJWagner 3y ago

I'm sure you've read articles that describe the life a middle-ages king. They lived in dark and uncomfortable castles, ate poor food, had access to few educational materials, etc. Today, even the least privileged in thedeveloped world carry around computers that bring news, entertainment, weather, etc. The worst cars are faster, safer, and get awesome gas mileage. The cheapest clothing is comfortable and durable. Food is plentiful and cheap. The life of Jeff Bezos isn't that much greater than 99% of the people living in a developed country. There's never been a better time to be alive.