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People shaking their fist at this on hacker news is weird. Yes there is growing wealth inequality in the world. Because we invented a way to turn capital in to

by k_kelly 7mo ago

People shaking their fist at this on hacker news is weird. Yes there is growing wealth inequality in the world. Because we invented a way to turn capital in to more capital without humans. Bezos is just the first of many. He also has on average made other people richer than he has pocketed, he doesn't own more than 50% of Amazon, his investors (shareholders, pension funds, the US government) have all done incredibly well out of his vision and enterprise. I love Prime, I love AWS, I love that I can get rare books over night at a great price. Should he be wealth capped? Should he innovate less as he get's more? Not as long as the primary way he makes money is through computers, that would just be self defeating. As someone who lives in Europe, the tech sector is America's growth engine and has defined the gap between the two economies, we'd love a Jeff Bezos.

gambiting 7mo ago
>>People shaking their fist at this on hacker news is weird I mean I know(at the back of my head) that HN is owned by Y Combinator which is all about creating startups that explode and make you a billionaire. But personally I come here for the actual hacking - gameboy games running on a pregnancy test, that kind of thing. Bezos making more money than GDP of a small country in a day is a thing that kinda deserves us shaking our fists at it - it means the global system is broken, if one man can have this kind of power. But in a way, it's nothing new - emperors and khans had more riches than any current billionaire, comparatively. On the other hand, they were actual rulers, not just "regular" citizens.
vmaurin 7mo ago
Money is not a good success metric https://ploum.net/2026-01-22-why-no-european-google.html https://ploum.net/2026-01-22-why-no-european-google.html Bezos is making a lot of money. But it doesn't mean it makes the world better. Prime or AWS can still work fine without having Bezos making tons of money
FpUser 7mo ago
Few big dicks take over everything and as the result they buy media, they buy government / laws, and having less and less competition they also have way too much power over the employees. All for convenience of overnight delivery? Are you sure this can not be achieved without Amazon? And what are you going to do if Google, Amazon, whatever else that controls good chunk of your life cuts you off? No fuck it.
altern8 7mo ago
Same here. I don't get the outrage. Our system needs incentives to get people to do great work. If you do one-of-a-kind work, shouldn't you get rewarded proportionally? There is 1 Amazon. It's not easy to create Amazon from scratch.
- gambiting 7mo ago
  >> If you do one-of-a-kind work, shouldn't you get rewarded proportionally? Are you allowed to think that the reward that Bezos is reaping isn't proportional to his achievements?
  - altern8 7mo ago
    You are. Who should decide what's proportional, though? Should there be a committee that says, Bezos is capped at X billions, and any money he makes after that gets confiscated?
    - wiseowise 7mo ago
      There should be a committee that says if you have wealth in billions you should pay proportionally more in taxes than common populace.
      - altern8 7mo ago
        Why punish success..?
        wiseowise 7mo ago
        I’m having serious trouble taking your comments as not a trolling attempt.
        dudefeliciano 7mo ago
        Taxes are not a punishment, a person earning exponentially more than the average person can also afford to pay more taxes, and it will not even begin to affect their quality of life. How is that so hard to understand? If you don't want to pay taxes i take it you don't want to live in a civilized society, then you are welcome to leave.
dudefeliciano 7mo ago
People licking Bezos, Musk, Thiel & co's arse on "hacker" news is more weird IMHO
- soerxpso 7mo ago
  "hacker" news is owned and operated by a large and wealthy venture capital firm
  - dudefeliciano 7mo ago
    we all know, pehaps they should give up the name and call it vcnews, since so many people get triggered when hacker topics are discussed here.

by k_kelly 7mo ago

gambiting 7mo ago

>>People shaking their fist at this on hacker news is weird I mean I know(at the back of my head) that HN is owned by Y Combinator which is all about creating startups that explode and make you a billionaire. But personally I come here for the actual hacking - gameboy games running on a pregnancy test, that kind of thing. Bezos making more money than GDP of a small country in a day is a thing that kinda deserves us shaking our fists at it - it means the global system is broken, if one man can have this kind of power. But in a way, it's nothing new - emperors and khans had more riches than any current billionaire, comparatively. On the other hand, they were actual rulers, not just "regular" citizens.

vmaurin 7mo ago

Money is not a good success metric https://ploum.net/2026-01-22-why-no-european-google.html https://ploum.net/2026-01-22-why-no-european-google.html Bezos is making a lot of money. But it doesn't mean it makes the world better. Prime or AWS can still work fine without having Bezos making tons of money

FpUser 7mo ago

Few big dicks take over everything and as the result they buy media, they buy government / laws, and having less and less competition they also have way too much power over the employees. All for convenience of overnight delivery? Are you sure this can not be achieved without Amazon? And what are you going to do if Google, Amazon, whatever else that controls good chunk of your life cuts you off? No fuck it.

altern8 7mo ago

Same here. I don't get the outrage. Our system needs incentives to get people to do great work. If you do one-of-a-kind work, shouldn't you get rewarded proportionally? There is 1 Amazon. It's not easy to create Amazon from scratch.

gambiting 7mo ago
>> If you do one-of-a-kind work, shouldn't you get rewarded proportionally? Are you allowed to think that the reward that Bezos is reaping isn't proportional to his achievements?
- altern8 7mo ago
  You are. Who should decide what's proportional, though? Should there be a committee that says, Bezos is capped at X billions, and any money he makes after that gets confiscated?
  - wiseowise 7mo ago
    There should be a committee that says if you have wealth in billions you should pay proportionally more in taxes than common populace.
    - altern8 7mo ago
      Why punish success..?
      - wiseowise 7mo ago
        I’m having serious trouble taking your comments as not a trolling attempt.
      - dudefeliciano 7mo ago
        Taxes are not a punishment, a person earning exponentially more than the average person can also afford to pay more taxes, and it will not even begin to affect their quality of life. How is that so hard to understand? If you don't want to pay taxes i take it you don't want to live in a civilized society, then you are welcome to leave.

dudefeliciano 7mo ago

People licking Bezos, Musk, Thiel & co's arse on "hacker" news is more weird IMHO

soerxpso 7mo ago
"hacker" news is owned and operated by a large and wealthy venture capital firm
- dudefeliciano 7mo ago
  we all know, pehaps they should give up the name and call it vcnews, since so many people get triggered when hacker topics are discussed here.