Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres
cnn.com
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"'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on the timeline of exploration, and this is what's next."
I personally don't care that these billionaires are spending their money on vacations to orbit. It's how we get to the moon and Mars and how we survive as a species. It's what's next.
Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech.
Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration.
I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that were accomplished in the Cold War?
SpaceX has been around for two years less and has accomplished orbital missions. Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies.
I'm not sure why people feel this need to draw this weird line in the sand and say that SpaceX is okay because Musk built a business, but Blue Origin and Virgin are bad because... reasons?
Technology advances for all sorts of reasons. Lamborghinis exist because a farmer was pissed at Ferrari. Motorolla made the first cellphone to steal the thunder from AT&T. Hell, the first space race back in the 60s was basically done to flex on the USSR.
If this is all a massive dick measuring contest, I honestly couldn't care less. It's advancing space exploration and providing competition in the space. Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy.
When I hear people complain about this being a vanity project like that somehow taints the accomplishment, all I can think about is a particularly on the nose quote from the TV show Community. "Who cares if Troy thinks he's all that? Maybe he is. You think astronauts go to the moon because they hate oxygen? No, they're trying to impress their high school's prom king."
Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy.
That's not to say that neither is impressive. They are definitely impressive. But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves.
As for the founders. Meh. They're circus show men, but at least Musk comes from an engineering back ground, I guess? But the difference in mission is important.
This is the crux of your argument, and it's the core disagreement. Blue origin does nothing to advance space exploration just by virtue of existing. They are not competitive.
I don't have a position one way or the other, it just sounded like you were missing the argument of the post you responded to.
And how did they do that? By wasting earthly resources and real human lives on pointless rocket launches.
The disgusting part isn't that they are going to space. The disgusting part is that ONLY they get to go to space. They are pushing the worst conditions here on earth (forcing shit hours and trash work conditions) so that they can go fly in a rocket.
It's pathetic.
It's because they know exactly what it really means if they cut SpaceX off at the knees and include them. It reveals what they're really saying they want to do. And that's just too far in polite company.
With Blue Origin they think they can chop them down and use them as an example and it's ok, because it doesn't imply a desire to return to the stone age and the crushing of technological progress. Blue Origin is a convenient example in other words, for now. If they use SpaceX, it would go too far in making them look like a luddite, lusting to dial back centuries of progress.
They apparently think it's possible to preordain from the word go which company will be the successful one. It's a product of centrally planned thinking, centrally planned fantasy. Such that it was okay for Musk to be doing what he was with his great wealth back when he had $100 million, and not if he crossed some arbitrary wealth line. It was ok for SpaceX to fail over and over and over again, and to burn through a large sum of money trying to get the Falcon 9 flying. It's just not ok for anybody else to fail trying. It's ok to take N time to succeed at $N money, but not ok if it takes more time and more money. Funny little needle the central planners want threaded.
When Bezos had $20 billion, nobody cared much about him. You'd very rarely see his name eg on Reddit or HN or Imgur or anywhere else outside of the business press. He'd occasionally pop up on HN in an Amazon story, it was rare though. Few people actually knew his name or who he was. That's ~2012, he had been a billionaire for about 14 years by that point and had been working on Blue Origin for around 12 years. So now he's worth $200 billion, everybody knows his name, zillions of people apparently hate him, people post vicious shit about him 24/7. They're all lying. They don't know Bezos anymore today than they did in 2012, what they know is his name is at the top of the rich list now, and the mob loves nothing more than to chop people down. The exact same thing happened to Gates once he took the rich list title.
What you're witnessing is mimic-based mob behavior in action. That's why it's so irrational, so emotional, so very much not thought-out. It's very predictable, most people that join in likely struggle to control their urge to mimic and join the rage mobs, and it goes after anybody that pops their head up too far. It's what social media is largely filled with today, ignorance and rage mobs. It's probably genetically wired in behavior for some people and then amplified depending on the culture and context.
In defense of Branson his other space company Virgin Orbit now does orbital launches also, and has cool capabilities that genuinely differentiate it from other providers. We'll see if Bezos catches up, he's personally focusing on it more now and may make faster progress on New Glenn etc.
A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for. They can leverage their relatively small funding to push much larger government funding in productive directions. They're better than most government administrators and don't have as many constraints, so they can take more risks and pay experts what they're worth on the open market.
The public should be calling for more of this kind of thing across all major areas of civilization. Let's get a public race among billionaires for curing cancer, HIV, and poverty.
If it feeds their egos, all the better. Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals, even among the greatest and most "pure" scientists. They want to win a Nobel, for the money and the recognition. Or they're doing science because it's just extremely pleasurable for them, which is not a selfless reason at all. The sooner people realize that base motivations aren't a sin the better we'll all be. And in reality, motivations are always a mix of (mostly) selfish and selfless reasons.
Motivations aren't what matters. What matters is making progress that can (eventually!) benefit everyone.
Imagine thinking that having to beg fief lords for what should be yours by right is a good thing...
The end state of these things is still government provided utilities: space equivalents to roads and busses
The main benefit of billionaires doing this is that republicans love giving as tax money to rich people, so it can actually be funded, and the funding is what really decides whether a thing will be done
[citation needed]
I'd rather see them paying fair wages and taxes. It's hugely inappropriate that they make billions while their workers struggle to pay rent.
It's only possible, because those poor people are too worked out to protest and do something about effectively being slaves.
These rockets seem more like modern day pyramids, only difference is that they will not last 3000 years.
Like this?: https://kstp.com/kstpImages/repository/2021-07/richard-brans...
I honestly don't think it's something bad to praise when only a handful of organizations have ever done it. [0] Thousands of people have climbed Everest, but it is still a commendable achievement.
> Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that were accomplished in the Cold War?
Plenty of other nation-states have been working on spaceflight longer than that and accomplished less.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights#Sum...
You mean "countries", right, or are you trying to make some point about nationalism?
Spaceplanes are also interesting tech. Maybe not the best choice for earth but could prove useful on other planets with different atmospheres.
In 1963 the reusable X-15 broke the same 330,000f (100km) barrier at 353,200 ft using a nearly identical approach, 3 aircraft 199 flights, zero crashes. Blue Origin only nominally beat that at 367,490 ft, but was optimized for altitude rather than extreme speeds of the X-15 @ Mach 6.7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
Blue Origin is an awesome amusement park ride, but not particularly interesting in terms of space exploration. Air launched anti satellite weapons for example are actually the most common approach. The main issue with air launching is scaling problems as you need to support the weight in multiple directions.
What blue origin is doing is vastly simpler.
1. Building a rocket company
2. Being a billionaire
3. Going on a flight on a rocket your company built
The issue stems from how the optics of these 3 lumped together appears to the masses.
To the people who are struggling everyday to make a living, it says: "Hey look at how much of a baller I am, I just went to space and you didn't"
Obviously, investing many personnel hours, pain and billions of dollars into a venture just for a "personal vanity project" is absurd and key driver behind these ventures is probably a desire to build the future.
However, most people don't have the luxury to worry about building the future when they're living paycheck to paycheck.
It is difficult to explain how the pie grows and everyone is better off (even if the inventors are the best off) as we invest in technology. The only solution to prevent public backlash to innovation is to make everyone well off enough to want to invest in building the future (and better PR, Jeff Bezos shame on you).
Branson is more likable but does seem like he's just trying to defend his title of being the eccentric billionaire, rather than thinking too hard about the future.
I thought that too, but apparently the BE-4 engine uses LNG :/
Isn't is an amazing coincidence that Elon was able to find so many rocket engineers with ideas just as NASA was being starved of funding? Just lucky I guess! anotherwinformilos.gif
SpaceX is a privatization that enjoys plenty of easy funding from the government, it's just that spaceflight staff aren't paid via the federal HR department anymore.
Frankly, I don't see the benefit of Elon getting any of my tax dollars.
Blue Origin's is reusable. That's a huge difference.
And if they didn't get government contracts, then where would they be right now? If those contracts had landed in the lap of other companies, maybe they'd be the more successful ones?
I’d be interested to see more progress made toward long term space habitats. You don’t need reusable rockets when you don’t plan on coming back anytime soon.
"I'll encourage journalists to say nice things by letting them believe there's a chance they'll become insanely rich if they do."
... Such a cynical move.
He deserves ostracism rather than recognition.
there's nothing that spacex has done that's "new tech". VTVL rockets were worked out in the 60s and the 90s
spacex does a good job of making it seem like what they're doing is new, though.
I find it extremely weird that people are banking on a (almost literal) moonshot for the survival of our species. Isn't trying to stop/lessen the damage we're doing to the place we currently live and which can sustain us better and more optimistic proposition than hoping a metric shitton of things go perfectly after probably millions of man-hours and trillions of dollars in order for a privileged few to go live on Mars in underground settlements with artificial everything to sustain life there? Ffs, all the rocket tests create enormous amounts of CO2 emissions, among other things, actively helping to make the Earth less habitable.
Where's your anger when it comes to movie development, international tourism, stadium construction, the cosmetics industry, and the rest of the endless list of nonsense that is more wasteful and less beneficial than allocating a tiny proportion of Earth's resources towards rocket tech?
I hope to hear this cynical take when the next Spiderman is announced! (I'll be holding my breath, though)
It's generally: nuclear war, asteroid strike, super volcano bioweapon/plauge and possibly malicious AI.
There are lots of people working on that problem in parallel.
It's worth exploring multiple solutions.
Also, even if we stop damaging the Earth, the sun will damage it in a few hundred million years. We will at some point need a new home.
Also, an extinction level event for a single planet species is a binary thing.. and there's not much you can do after it happens.
Humanity sits atop a food chain that is going extinct, right before our eyes, and it's long past time to stop hiding from it. Human life on Mars is neither feasible nor imminent. We aren't getting level 5 autonomous vehicles or AGI or androids or flying cars or time travel any time soon either. These are ideas we run to when facing the absurdity of our existence becomes too much to bear.
Why not both?
The best we can do is to create general knowledge which allow us to better combat future challenges. Climate change is a potential problem but not existential and not something we can't handle with our current technological understanding.
The idea that humans can somehow survive or progress without an impact is IMO missing the entire premise for human survival if that is in fact what you want.
Figuring out how to solve pollution on Earth is also doable with modern technology. We can terraform Earth to be more habitable as well, we could melt the antarctic icecap and colonize it. Maybe even make a new civilization there without as many problems [government/bureaucracy as we have in the rest of the world?
These billionaires made many billions on covid, while you got a 1400 dollar check so you could survive. These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day. People can't get toilet breaks at amazon warehouse without being harassed.
This guy is a world class parasite. There is nothing "we" about what he is doing. We are not with him. He doesn't care about any of us.
They made billions from excellent businesses on which the world relied during a time of crisis. What would people have done without the likes of Amazon and fast delivery of nearly everything?
>These billionaires pay their workers minimum wage every day.
No one makes minimum wage at Amazon.
>People can't get toilet breaks at amazon warehouse without being harassed.
Citation needed. Individuals out of a population of 1,000,000 diverse people choosing to do things is not a trend.
>He doesn't care about any of us.
I don't care about him either. It's a business transaction that benefits both parties, nothing more, nothing less.
My nephew works at an Amazon warehouse. Makes like 15 bucks an hour for the first 40, and then 20 more at double the rate (his choice to take the extra hours). He's very happy, and nothing suggests he feels taken advantage of.
American people had the most generous COVID response of any country in the world, including the Superdole.
The core fallacy is to assume whatever made Earth less than ideal will not follow us to the new destination. To assume our survivability as species only depends on the locale, not what we will eventually turn that locale into.
This happened with every new frontier. The romanticism of "it will be better in the new place" is baked into our genes probably because of the explore/exploit mechanism; it is natural for any animal to want to wander off when resource/danger ratio in a place isn't ideal. What we omit is that the most important layer of our habitat is the anthroposphere; us and our artifacts. We will drag the best resources and worst dangers with us anywhere we go.
> that their money is better spent here at home reminds me...
What that money represents is an agreement on commanding other humans' goods and services. As such, how much can that be "theirs" if we are taking a plant scale perspective? Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to inject a purely collectivist perspective here; money works great at certain scales, but for entire-humanity-scale issues it is a rather useless construct to think with.
To me a more accurate perspective is "smart but ultimately single person, thus bounded in their rationality, somewhat exploits the imperfections of our value representation/abstraction layer to redirect tons of goods and services of humanity into what is ultimately a useless vanity gesture that will generate no insight into humanity's perennial problems".
there are plenty of existential risks which can't "follow" anything, or happen to more than one planet simultaneously.
does living on two planets eliminate all existential risks? no, and nobody has claimed that.
It’s so insane to me that people honestly believe that we need billionaires to fund all their hedonic desires in order to achieve anything good and useful as a society. It’s provably false and frankly an absolutely pessimistic view of society and humanity.
Once upon a time you needed nation state sponsorship in order to sail across the ocean.
It's absolutely insane to me that people don't see that a billionaire can do as a vanity project something that was ~50yr ago only the purview of superpowers as an obvious sign of societal progress.
Musk/Bezos/Branson are making space travel a paying proposition, which makes all the difference.
Even if we needed big corporations, we still do not need billionaires.
And if you want to argue that billionaires only became so wealthy by exploiting people... well, yes, and? Their wealth already exists so the options are 1) they spend it on stupid stuff like more yachts and mansions, 2) they spend it on humanity-advancing things like space exploration (Musk/Bezos) and philanthropy (Gates), or 3) we have bloody revolutions to claw it back and hope for the best.
Really good book. I won't spoil it too much, but think it offers a powerful challenge to the techno-utopianism of Mars Colony obsessives. The Martians cannot escape their terrestrial ideologies, because those ideologies are still rooted in the old world that they rely on for survival, and because they carried over those ideologies in their own minds.
We fund science and technology research because it improves expected outcomes in the future, for everyone. The idea that we can't fund research until everyone is fed is an oxymoron, we would never be able to get there without funding research.
Endless money and effort has gone into trying to solve world hunger and misery, yet they still exist. Yet inventions like GPS and other technology that came out of the space race has probably had more impact worldwide.
I’m starting to come around to the idea that this kind of thinking is exactly why we have poverty and hunger in the USA. We allow individuals to accumulate endless wealth even when that money could be used to help those who need a helping hand.
I’m not saying we necessarily have the government tax them, as I’m more in favor of workers collectives and union power where more of the profit accrues widely across all workers instead of narrowly to the top.
But the problem with billionaires thinking they can solve the worlds problems is they want to create more and more tech to solve our problems, even though we already have great solutions. We could design our cities around trains and bicycles but instead every person drives a car. That takes vastly more resources to produce and operate than a bunch of bicycles. I spent 15 years in Silicon Valley and the whole place is pretty hostile to bicycles even though it’s all flat!
I think when you have $100B your mind comes up with big industrialized solutions to problems when the real solution in my mind is to reduce our resource utilization (which we can do without reducing quality of life).
Bezos built Amazon along with the help from thousands of workers. It is only a trick of our legal system that he was able to hold on to all the wealth that the company created. And it should be noted that Amazon draws a lot of profit (presumably) from millions of cheap plastic objects from overseas which will break and end up in landfills in some poor country. Or think of the millions of overseas workers caught up in abusive labor arrangements [1], paid pennies per day, who helped create the goods that are sold on Amazon.
I really don’t see Bezos as a hero, but as a complex figure who got more than he deserves. America is chock full of poverty and Bezos is directly opposed to the growth of worker unions which I think could help ease a lot of that poverty.
"we pioneered the west" lmao.
"how we survive as a species" wtf lmao
op is heavily romanticizing technology and throwing humanity under the bus without even realizing it.
So you're saying he's found a way to make carbon sequestration profitable at scale? Maybe he is a hero.
This is unbelievably pessimistic. You're literally saying that Earth is beyond repair and the only way for humans to survive is to move to a rock in orbit that we've spent a total of 3 days on in the past 70 years, or to a planet no one has visited that has radiation that makes life essentially impossible for us.
Assuming that's true, let's run some numbers. Assuming we can get to 3 launches per day (weather, launch sites, Mars being in the wrong place, etc are limiting factors), and we get 100 years of launches before everyone dies, and we can fire 100 people in to space at a time, that means the future of the human race rests on slightly more than 10 million people. The other 6,990,000,000 of us will perish with the rest of life on Earth.
Damn. If you're right then humans are going extinct.
It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. It's just that what the parent poster means by "how we survive as a species" and what you mean are...different things.
Going to the moon, going to mars, are necessary for the survival of our species...on a 100,000 year time horizon.
At some point, something catastrophic may happen to earth. An asteroid impact, or a Gamma Ray Burst, or some other unexpected cataclysm. If a GRB happened to hit earth in 10,000 years, we only survive as a species if we're self-sufficient on other rocks by then.
If your time-frame of "how we survive as a species" is the next 100 years, then colonizing the moon or mars isn't on the list of potential solutions. I know of very few people who advocate that the moon and mars are the solutions to our climate change issues. Climate change is a crisis that we have to confront within the next 100 years. It's extremely unlikely that any moon or mars base would be self-sufficient within that time frame.
To survive as a species, the human race has to eventually be able to survive a fatal blow to earth and keep going. Hell, eventually we have to be able to deal with a fatal blow to this entire solar system.
The real criticism I have is that it's a false dichotomy. We need BOTH exploration and exploitation. Both greed and fear. Both mutation and rote replication. A species can't survive without a balance of both.
For fictional yet science based scenario see this Orions Arm article:
https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/49b46fd2198ed
The biggest problem is actually not to lift all the people out of Earth's gravity well, but where to put them afterwards...
The Earth is fucked. Not by humans, just by itself. It will be fucked within a few hundred million years simply because the sun is going to get bright enough to boil away the oceans.
If we want any hope of our legacy to carry on in the universe, we need to begin exploring the possibilities now, because we have the scientific knowledge and technological capabilities to begin that exploration process.
It is stupid to be cynical of rich people spending money on productive ventures, yet I don't buy the idea that spending on getting the hell off of Earth is the best way to save the species. It might be...which is pretty damned depressing in my opinion.
What are the alternatives? On a long enough timeline, it won't be possible for life to survive here. And even on shorter timelines, trusting in untested asteroid deflection plans seems pretty risky, as well. Seems that diversifying ourselves in multiple locations as soon as possible is the best way to guarantee survival of the species (or whatever derivative species we become).
I mention it because the premise is that a meteorite hits the earth off the east coast of the United States and what the after-effects of such an event would be. It's horrific. A slow death at first that rapidly increases over a period of 50 years. It would be paradoxical because the immediate effects would be cold but the long-term effects would be a planet so hot that it couldn't sustain life.
Our global response to COVID has proven that we wouldn't be able to handle such a thing. How would you convince people that, sure, it's cold now but it's going to get hotter in 3-4 years? A LOT hotter. We can't even get these people to not freak out over having to wear a tiny piece of fabric in Costco!
We know something like this is going to happen. It's just a matter of when. Spending money to get off the earth could very well be the best way to save the species.
The point is we have a huge, open continent. At the present moment there’s absolutely zero demand to colonize it. Why? Because it’s inhospitable and hard to get to. But it’s a hell of a lot more hospitable and accessible than Mars. So, honest question why would we expect anyone to move to Mars if they can’t even be bothered to move to Trinity Peninsula?
"It's the way things are" are perhaps in all seriousness the 5 most dangerous words in the English language.
It’s cousin to the famous phrase, “why do we climb the mountain? Because it is there.” It’s not a rational thing but it is a very real part of being human nonetheless.
To rephrase it: “we need to shake things up! I propose we do so by stopping to change”.
I'm not convinced that exploration is such a self-justifying good that we should look past the very real and very urgent problems that are aggravated precisely by the people "leading the way" here.
But all these places are desolate of life and not even resource rich, so there is little point to go there. Mars is like this as well. It's not like you are colonizing a rich continent like America.
Ultimately, however, these billionaires are not contributing to reaching beyond. We've been to space before -- in fact, the first space pioneers went further into space than any of these billionaires. Over half a century ago.
Their money would have been better spent on putting together new space telescopes or probes to look further afield, actually reaching for what's next, rather than reaching for familiar ground and taking themselves to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere -- to say nothing of the fact that it was largely for the sake of PR/spectacle.
Musk less so -- as another poster has said, SpaceX seems well-intended and useful.
1. I don’t think we should be looking towards “what’s next” when we have plenty of more pressing issues to solve here and now. I’d rather we more equitably distribute resources so everyone has food, healthcare, and housing before we start trying to colonize mars.
2. I would rather the money be spent in a more democratic way. I don’t want to let a few people decide “what’s next” for me, let’s redistribute that wealth and let the public decide what’s most pressing.
The moon and mars are both ridiculously unsuitable for human life.
Why on earth would that possibly be an option rather than making even a cursory attempt to slow or stop the destruction of our perfect planet?
It's a ridiculous idea. How could anyone think this was a worthwhile endeavor?
The survival of our species depends on us being able to keep ecosystems running, and we can do that on earth.
The problem with the West Wing, was that it added a pompulus romantic sheen to subjects that arguably didn't deserve it.
We won't get to Mars with a bunch of private-money capitalists competing. Much like in the 50s and 60s, it's going to take a concerted effort of government sponsored and driven research.
We already did that. Why not just support NASA?
Government is good when the public externalities are large, the private benefit is small and there's an extremely large capital requirements.
This is not the case any longer for rocket tech, and so it makes zero sense to have the government do it. It'd be like asking the government to make smartphones, which is an obviously ridiculous proposition.
Even if we assume everyone is rational and the system works as-designed, NASA must work to keep each state and even district within that state happy. That means hundreds of small contracts and explosions of complexity in order to do some of the work in each state.
NASA's mission designs for the last 50 years have been a mess of complexity and ridiculously expensive, and rarely happened as a result. Only now with the commercial contractors are things starting to change.
this is like saying a book store on every corner should replace libraries.
shitty equivelence,
The west was already fully populated.
Really? Which billionaires personally funded the Apollo program? The progress of our species shouldn't have to rely on the fickle preferences of one person, their enormous wealth should be taxed and the money should be used for programs like NASA and its benefits which help all of us.
In the past few years we've seen SpaceX get reusable boosters working, a mission to the ISS, etc. Though people like to diminish blue origin's accomplishments due to not hitting orbit they were able to land their reusable booster on the first try too.
In a short amount of time we've seen tremendous progress in bringing down the costs of launching. It's frankly inconceivable NASA would do the same.
I have a few friends that have spent years at JPL and the amount of bureaucracy, waste, and red tape they had to deal with all went away when they started working at SpaceX and then Blue Origin.
Also I'm curious why you think that a government is better suited at spending money. From what I've seen this leads to lobbyists doing all they can to curry favor and secure contracts despite the fact that they deliver a sub-par product.
The government has had first dibs on space for a very long time, and they've done nothing with it. Talk about taxing billionaires until you're blue in the face - whether you do or not has no effect on NASA. There's plenty of money to put towards it now, and it's not a priority.
I'm glad that billionaires are taking up an important cause for the future of our species when our government is failing to do so.
Likewise, NASA has always chosen "buy" over "build" where applicable (like contracting out spacesuit construction to major textile manufacturers). If they'd done everything in-house, that means fewer resources where it matters. Public-private partnerships make NASA more effective, not less.
Mars is a barren rock that is less desirable for human inhabitation than even the most remote land regions on Earth (such as the middle of the Sahara desert and the middle of Antarctica). Mars has no atmosphere, its mean surface temperature [1] is about the same as the average daily low temperature in winter at the south pole [2], its surface gravity is about 38% of Earth's [3] which can lead to muscle and bone atrophy, and it receives about 44% as much sunlight as Earth [4] which makes it harder to grow crops and can cause seasonal affective disorder.
In other words, if it were desirable to live on Mars, people would already be living in the middle of Antarctica.
What about mining resources from Mars? The problem with that is that it's prohibitively expensive due to the fundamental laws of physics. Getting stuff (e.g. equipment) to Mars requires escaping the gravity well of the Earth ([5] is a nice visual), which requires 225 kilograms of fuel per kilogram launched [6]. Sending things back is cheaper, and things like fusion engines would help, but it still takes a lot of energy and it's always going to be cheaper to mine on Earth.
Computers have gotten exponentially better over the past few decades because we've learned to make them smaller and more energy-efficient. Space travel hasn't because there are immutable requirements in terms of how much energy you need to do it.
Planet Earth is by far the best place in the universe for the human species, and I don't see that changing in the next millennium. It's really tailor-made for us (or rather, we are tailor-made for it). The best use of resources right now is towards making life on Earth more sustainable.
[1] https://www.space.com/16907-what-is-the-temperature-of-mars.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole#Climate_and_day_and... [3] https://phys.org/news/2016-12-strong-gravity-mars.html [4] http://tomatosphere.letstalkscience.ca/Resources/library/Art... [5] https://xkcd.com/681_large/ [6] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/279947-nasa-wants-to-mak...
And you say:
>I personally don't care that these billionaires are spending their money on vacations to orbit.
See, that's where the whole problem lies. The problem is precisely that our current economic system allocates massive amounts of power to these people, and therefore allocates massive amounts of labour and resources to their vanity projects. The problem is that it concentrates power in a disastrous way. Like it allocates talented engineers to ad-tech and yacht-buliding rather than water purification projects or renewables. Like it allocates thousands of people to staff 5-star hotels to serve the whims of 10 or 20 billionaires and saudi princes, which could be serving 10000 children at daycares or 10000 seniors at nursing homes. Etc etc.
I guess what I mean to say is this, and I apologise for the off-topic tone that my comment took: the insane thing to me is how you simply take this very arbitrary, very non-natural way of organizing economic activity and production, and accept it as completely inevitable, in fact you don't even stop to be critical or skeptical of it, hiding it beneath the simple phrase "I don't care how they spend their money". The true triumph of neoliberal capitalism seems to be making itself look as natural and inevitable as the air we breathe.
> And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West
You really, REALLY aren't selling this the way you think you are by calling it the natural continuation to Europeans "pioneering" the Native Americans, especially given current events [1]. Let me put it this way, selling Mars exploration as a repeat of one of the world's most famous genocides (a blueprint for the holocaust no less [2][3]), really doesn't resonate with me lmao
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57592243
[2] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/nazi-germanys-am...
No, it's not we. It's them: billionaires and their friends. Other people will never go to the moon and mars because billionaires are using their money to lobby politicians in order avoid taxes and get more subsidies at our expense.
Oh, they will. Someone should build the colony. Someone should do the work to maintain and grow the colony, etc.
Having said that, I'm totally okay with billionaires spending money on such activities as it puts money back in the economy. The more the better.
That's the rich people hoarding cash theory.
They don't hoard any cash. All of it is invested in the economy. Even "cash" deposits in the bank are, as the bank loans out a multiple of those deposits.
If we can't make it work here and end up destroying the ecology of Earth, upon which we depend, there's no reason to think we'll survive on the moon or Mars.
Doesn’t Amazon pay highest in its industry? I suppose people always want more, but it seems like they are already among the best.
Of course pay varies by location and what’s good in one state is good in another. But it seems the average warehouse worker pay is $12.61 [0] with states ranging from $9.66 for North Carolina (holy cow) to $14.84 in Washington [1].
Amazon pays $16/hour [2] so that’s quite a big higher than the average and even the highest state.
So it seems like an odd complaint, “the company with the highest pay should pay even more.” And would be more appropriate if they paid crap wages.
Warehouse worker isn’t the easiest job, but I’m not sure how a warehouse worker job for Amazon is harder than other employers.
[0] https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries [1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Wa... [2] https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Amazon-Warehouse-Worker...
I understand progressives wanting to raise taxes and raise minimum wage, but why in the world would you blame someone personally for just paying the going rate? That's what we all do for the taxes and service providers we pay.
Of course, if your facts aren't correct, they won't. To wit, 71% of Amazon workers in the recent unionization drive in Alabama voted against a union, citing, of all things, the good pay and strong benefits of the job.
Just make federal minimum wage $15 / hour and be done with it. Why is there so much rhetorical energy wasted on singling out one billionaire or another, as if they are going to feel bad and unilaterally raise everyone's wages in some kind of real world Ebeneezer Scrooge moment?
Democrats technically control Presidency and both US Houses of Congress, but it's looking like they won't accomplish anything because of Manchin's love for the sanctity of the filibuster is greater than his love for delivering concrete economic benefits for his constituents.
Is this an annual event? I never saw a definitive answer on that.
In 2020, she gave away nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations. And has distributed $2.74 billion so far this year to about 286 orgs. From what I've read, these grants/donations don't come with any strings attached unlike grants from a lot of big foundations.
One of the challenges of this "pay it forward on steroids" approach is that it will likely be hard to attribute measurable changes to the original investments.
It does seem notable that Bezos has captured a huge set of resources, then paid it out to others for redistribution under their policies and procedures; he's essentially acting like a government which raises some concerns.
I will caution people to not read too little or too much into this.
Personally I live by the maxim of “I don’t need a reason to do something nice, but I do need a reason to do something mean.” So I suggest we all wait and see what else he does before further analysis.
Will this counterbalance the negative responses of the last few days? Probably not, the criticisms about the power wealthy individuals wield in society aren't affected, but it's a well timed gesture of good faith and the recipients are well chosen.
The essential problem with the idea of government is that it requires people to cooperate in good faith. People who say government doesn't work are essentially arguing that people cannot cooperate with each other.
Given our level of social and technological progress, you'd think people would give up on this idea but it persists. In a hunter gather society, yes, like one of the ten guys in the tribe could provide way more meat than the other nine combined. In a global society of billions, it requires cooperation, coordination and institutions. A single person is an angstrom of humanity.
Our personal vanity tempts us to ignore the hundreds if not tens of thousands of people that make great companies possible not even counting the public institutions and services. We like to believe a single person can be so important because that makes us feel like we can be important.
In reality, no person is important. Bezos isn't important, Musk isn't important neither you or I are important. How the billions of people work together is important. We should be focusing our efforts on improving how we work together. Our systems of cooperation (aka governments, companies, communities) are the only important thing.
edit:
And by this I meant things like paying for poor kids college tuition etc. I guarantee no one in the media will be talking about this story, and where Van Jones puts the money, beyond this press conference.
I'm also interested in the logistics of a gift this large. I mean, Bezos would have to pay a large gift tax for gifts sent directly to individuals. Obviously he can afford it, but curious if there was some attempt to save on taxes if the end desire is for all of this money to go to charity.
The idea of a billionaire spending time minmax-ing their donations seems highly unlikely.
Bezos donated $200M, his net worth: $211 billion
Scale that to a normal human’s net worth - let’s take the national average: $121,411
And you see that he just gave away the equivalent of $120 dollars. Barely pocket change.
Bribing influential CNN contributors who hold progressive or far-left economic policies is probably one of the better ways to help shift the media narrative towards one that benefits Bezos.
It's a strange donation tbh. Also CNN is a very partisan news source and Van Jones isn't a "middle of the aisle" type. I personally find the Jose donation fine but am kind of put off by this donation to a CNN "journalist".
Sounds like a win then.
1 https://www.marssociety.org/news/2021/07/14/mars-society-sel...
2 https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/smithsoni...
Or is he thanking the Amazon workers again for making it possible for him to donate 200M ?
At least I had a role in electing the government and can change my vote based on their performance.
The real crux. You want control over what other people do.
That's insane.
Live a few years here in Wisconsin, and then talk to me about how we should give the thieves in the government more money. Foxconn much? Better to choose a few good people and give it to them. Best part about the Bezos method is that all of us can also make a boatload of money and give it to people we trust to distribute it.
Under your proposition, all of us have to give it to people in government who we already know we should have zero trust for.
It is not about money, it about money as a proxy for power over the country.
The guy you're talking to does not have enough money to affect disproportional change. It does not matter to anyone else what he does with it as it can't possibly infringe on their rights, unlike when corporations manipulate media and government.
My attempt at math: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%2F+%281.05%5E%281...
I'd much prefer if Bezos spent $200M in building an education institute or an apprentice shop for tradesmen or to humanitarian aid or doctors without borders or open source courseware or human genome project...
Why?
Cash transfers to poor people is starting to look like an effective way to alleviate poverty. Despite the old stereotype of poor people blowing it all on booze and drugs, in reality, most people put it to good use. This is also another reason why UBI has started gaining more support.
>One might think of this, then, as Bezos giving our money to people he likes in return for good PR and personal tax benefits.
But as an already-rich person, to agree to be fully, comprehensively bought....this world is crazy.
...adding, I'm available for $10M. negotiable.
It's also interesting to note that the horrendous stories of Frito Lay factory worker conditions are coming out now, despite being a widespread and longstanding issue. Previously, the media narrative around poor work conditions was all "Amazon, Amazon, Amazon", with little indication that it's a systemic issue with--let's be honest--far worse cases in America.
Now Bezos is going full throttle. To what end? Why not operate from the shadows on a megayacht? If it is all ego, why not do this populism drive earlier to mitigate some of the damage?
Personally, I think that if I had a really good plan for $100m I could probably raise it because there is a highly competitive sellers market for things that you can put that much money into and create value from it. I just don't have that plan. :)
There are a zillion holes to throw money down, but something that can sustain its value and grow? Bezos' decision was probably the same as a regular investment "team, market, product" call: there's a real problem that a lot of people have, and here is a long list of people who want to solve it but nobody has a complete solution yet, and if I had to choose the top ones to get exposure to - to make a difference on this problem, these two guys are the best ones I can find to figure out what the solution is, so I'm in for $100m apiece. Same game as any angel or startup investor, he's just playing at the three-comma table.
I genuinely believe the path to that table starts by challenging ourselves to think bigger, which means doubling down when it's the hardest, and testing assumptions when it's easy. It's not sufficient, but it is the necessary condition.
Think of a problem that people with effectively infinite resources would invest in solving and start working on it. To them $100m is a rounding error, what they don't see are credible plans or track records for making the change they would invest in. Jones and Andres had it. The money isn't a prize, it's an investment and a bet. I wish them luck.
But Bezos did not create this system, he’s just using it to his advantage, exactly the way it was designed. At least he’s transparent about it.
First, recognize the trajectory.
Bezos is the definition of someone living out the American dream.
The corporate interest may be trending towards a monopoly—but this is a guy who was abandoned by his biological father, adopted by an immigrant, and was able to use his skills, smarts and efforts to achieve the easiest way for me to buy something.
Second—for all the taxes paid directly and indirectly in the US, the CDC and the FDA could not respond to this pandemic with any sort of competence.
Do I trust these people with money? No.
They could have spent 800 million dollars and avoided a pandemic—but once it started up again they just find it so easy to spend money like gangbusters.
This is a complicated issues. But before asking for higher taxes, ask for better constitutions.
PS-for my money, your tax rate should be based on lifetime earnings. I would love to know how to switch from yearly, to lifetime.
And a small loan of $200,000 from his parents. Also that.
At some point, we cant be expecting more rags to riches stories. We need more acrobats, leaping from our shoulders.
By the way, I claim no hardship or victim status. It gave me a lot of courage to do things I would have been able to do otherwise. The problem was when things settled and they needed me less, and I no longer felt like I had to do anything crazy. Then it was like, “this is it?”.
https://www.who.int/news/item/15-07-2019-world-hunger-is-sti...
This is one of the ways China is able to execute long term strategy better than the west, they can maintain focus.
We're not able to do that without a significant necessity (winning a cold war).
Get over your jealousy of the billionaires. Some people are luckier than you, smarter, work harder. That's just life.
That lucky, smart, hard working, genetically gifted, handsome, strong, virile, well-endowed, wrinkle-free, and blessed by all the gods billionaire would still be able to go to space and give mindblowing amounts of cash to anyone they want even with 1/10th the wealth they have now.
Otherwise, society is going to reach a breaking point as it always has and will again. But that's just life.
sometimes it's their fault. sometimes it's their families. mostly it's their communities.
the existence or lack-of of billionaire going into space is going to have zero impact on homelessness, water quality, medical treatment, and your kids going to college.
Let's say your tax rate is 50% and your taxable income is $1,000,000, so you'll owe $500,000 in taxes. If you donate $100,000 to charity as a "tax write-off", now your taxable income is only $900,000 and you'll only owe $450,000 in taxes, but you lost $100,000 to save that $50,000. At the end of the day, you'll have $50,000 less than if you didn't donate anything.
Before anyone starts with "but what if it drops you into a lower tax bracket!": a) that's not how marginal taxes work, and b) the top tax bracket starts at $518,400 in the US in 2021, and I'm pretty sure Bezos made many times that amount.
"It's a tax write-off" doesn't make sense mathematically. It's not a thing. There's not a plausible way where giving away money can improve your bottom line over not giving it away without having tax rates above 100%, which we don't have.