This.

I worked in one of their call centres over the summer break from uni. It was fine for a couple of months for someone that was staying with his parents but **** doing that for a career. Barely above minimum wage in Edinburgh, which is one of the more expensive areas in the UK.

That's not totally true. What amzn and Jeff bezos did ,while genius , is completely play the market. They basically took wmt's play and applied it online and they were afforded the opportunity to grow their revenue AND simultaneously not have to show profit ,while it's stock was proceed based on revenue and not the bottom line.

As the owner of a B&M store I wouldn't mind if all online retailers were to go bust overnight, so fingers crossed on that one.

As far as Bezos' wealth goes, when you look at the conditions and the pay of Amazon's workforce, it seems hard for me to rationalise that such gains can ever be proportionate. He has money that I, as someone on above average earnings, can't begin to imagine. I'm not sure where I draw the line but I can't reconcile the concentration of wealth relative to the work when I look at the likes of Bezo or Gates, genius or not.

Think it was a panorama episode where a guy went undercover order picking in one of their warehouses. He ran marathons but was struggling to get done what he was supposed to do, pretty sure it was minimum wage also.

Personally I couldn't live with myself if I turned the TV on and seen children in Africa and Syria dying of hunger while I had all that money, no reason why he couldn't give 100 billion away to make some real progress. I'm sure it would feel better doing that than having 150 billion. But I guess that's why these guys have that kind of money.

wtf?

If you have a net worth of $500k, it's probably all in your house. You can't just hand away $300k lol

Similar to billionaires. They're billionaires bc they own businesses and real estate. They're not all liquid.

If I were Bezos, I'd just keep accumulating as much wealth as possible and give it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when I die, like Warren Buffett.

Giving a better pay structure to employees may be morally outstanding, but it increases labor cost for not much in return, eats profit, and could cause the stock price to tank. He'd be a fool to do it, benevolent or not.

Or he could join forces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation somehow. Delivering malaria nets via drone or sth. A global health care initiative? America only?

Bezos is very liquid for someone with over $10bn. He could sell $50bn in Amazon stock within like 6 months if he wanted. (He can't just offer the stock tomorrow because it would look like insider trading, but he could file an aggressive stock sale plan with the SEC as part of a broad diversification, which is not uncommon.)

I suspect Besos is basically pretty ethical and that he will give away his money eventually to projects he thinks will advance humanity. That's just my read and he likely has blind spots regarding Amazon employees. The other option for people like Besos is a bunch of crap Walmart heirs running around doing dumb stuff while being super rich. Not exactly the ideal.

2nd generation wealth is the WOAT.

With regard to the first, I've long been skeptical of the idea that a rich person could simply "shift their wealth" dollar-for-dollar to address a problem like world hunger.

Let's say that the solution lies in some combination of higher production and better logistics/transportation of existing food. If you estimated the cost of increasing that to needed levels at current prices, you'd ignore that prices will rise when demand is increased.

Another reason I'm skeptical of the idea is that Bezos' wealth is just that, wealth. In order to increase food production, you don't decrease someone's wealth, you decrease production of other things.

That said, it doesn't seem socially optimal to have a few superempowered individuals control so much wealth and get to choose which philanthropic project they find worthy (usually involving building something that will be named after them).

i’d definitely produce 3 seasons of The Three Body Problem but i’d also produce a film version of The Player of Games with Jeff Goldblum as Gurgeh

Bezos only seems like a normal human because other notable American billionaires like Musk, Trump and Peter Thiel are truly and obviously wretched, or are low self-awareness doofuses. Amazon's business model seems largely unethical and Bezos is responsible for it, but by merely staying quiet and not having a genuinely offensive public persona, he's turned himself into the best in class or seemingly normal by default. If you could put yourself behind a veil of ignorance and forgot how personally heinous / childish America's other billionaires appear, and Bezos and his company were the only ones you knew about, I doubt he'd get the benefit of the doubt here of being "basically pretty ethical." IMO it only seems that way because we know billionaires as a whole are the kind of people who call hero divers who rescue people pedophiles because they made fun of their toy submarine.

Don't forget that the democrats are basically a right wing party.

People here seem generally more to the left. They're stuck with the democrats rather than enthusiastic about it.

One day Bezos will be worth as much as Putin (unless Putin can get rid of that pesky Magnitsky Act nonsense)

What do you find unethical about the Amazon business model ?

Ok Mr Bezos

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-a8278066.html


Last I heard though, the deal fell through.

I'm probably not the go to guy for billionaire boosting, but...

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem a'ight aside from just being billionaires.

Larry Ellison doesn't catch enough flak. That guy's a huge douche.

Are you guys doing a bit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney

This guy was a billionaire, but he gave almost all of it away while still alive. He's given away more than $8B and was left with $2M. Warren Buffett called him his hero and said Bill Gates feels the same. And he gave it away in secret for many years before the beans were spilt.

What's your issue with Larry?

First, I hate Oracle.

Second, the beach in California is all public. He's one of the douches in Malibu who blockades parts, puts up illegal no parking signs and hires security to harass people on the public beach in front of his houses.

Related:
- Amazon has a subpar reputation as a place to work even for those in elite white collar careers, and that's before even getting into the awful conditions at their warehouses and turning last mile delivery into a ****ty gig economy job
- re: "he's turned himself into the best in class or seemingly normal by default" - not with people like Gates or Buffett in the conversation

I searched online and couldn’t find anything about the deal falling through. Don’t scare me like that.

It's an error to think of stock value the same way you'd think of its value if you held it.

His stock share is his ownership equity and leverage in a company he built and continues to run. It isn't just an asset he is selling off, it's his control of the company he is still trying to run.

Dunno if they do any better now, but there were stories about the warehouse/packaging jobs being quite dystopian where they regulated every motion people could make.