He's my favorite example to bust the "smarts and hard work" myth of billionaires. He had parents with good, union jobs that allowed him to go to Princeton, where he dropped out of a physics major (into CS) because it was too difficult. The school's connections, though, got him a job at a hedge fund, where he was assigned to study the investment potential of e-commerce on the nascent Web. He saw the enormous potential, but was so bad at his job that he couldn't convince the other executives that they wanted some of that money. So he left the job, got a large loan from his parents, and started Cadabra in a garage he rented in a conscious nod to Silicon Valley mythos. Oh, Cadabra? He was going to call it that, but his lawyer convinced him to go with his second choice of name, because that one sounds too much like cadaver. The company was profitable in a month, and then he used all manner of dirty tricks to run the competition out of the market.

Nothing in his story indicates anything but dumb luck of randomly being the one in the right time and place to succeed. If it was smarts and hard work, there were hundreds of other e-commerce contenders who put in at least as much as he did.

Look, I get it. Jeff Bezos will keep hoarding. That makes sense in that selfish, nihilist worldview. What I can't understand, is why all fucking people are voting against their own fucking self interests to allow this bullshit. If people didn't just vote against their fucking better interests we would be in a much better situation.

Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

The fact that people can't stop using this shitty ass marketplace is proof we are doomed. Its NOT THAT FUCKING HARD to buy ANYWHERE ELSE . i have not used Walmart or amazon in over a decade. Never really used it before either because I knew their plan. Destroy all other businesses so there is nowhere to go, take over the entire market, then sell shit product for more while being the only employer left. Tale as old as time.

The stupidity of humans makes us deserve this honestly. Now pair this with people who won't get off their ass to vote. To fill in a bubble on paper. 100% doomed, dont even try to fix it.

NATIONALIZE AMAZON

Use it to fund UBI and other social causes.

The thing that's unacceptable is not that manual labor gets replaced by robots. That's a good thing.

The thing that's unacceptable is that Jeff Bezos can amass such wealth and that you don't get a basic income and housing without needing to work for it.

It's unacceptable that people like Jeff Bezos exist.

If you do actually believe that, then why not do something about it?

Just some back of the envelope math. With $290 billion, he could give each of those 600,000 people $10k a year for the next 48 years and still have $2 billion left over. And that is without considering interest or investment in the meantime.

Elon is worth more than the next three richest billionaires combined.

Pure capitalism has an implied responsibility after one becomes overwhelmingly successful, they would be inclined to reinvest the excess into society. Donations to schools, social programs, not-for-profits, and so on. And higher wages for the workers who made you immensely successful, better benefits, higher quality of life overall to incentivize people wanting to work for you, and if all successful companies did this, trickle-down economics would be real.

In unregulated corrupted capitalism, however, that excess instead is used to lobby government to make even more successful, shaping laws to shield companies from labor rights, destroy unions, surpress minimum wage, dodge taxes, and deflect hidden production costs like environmental pollution or outsourced slave labor. They use their economic leverage to remove legal responsibilities they have participating in society, while at the same time leaning on society's resources like roads, police, emergency services, and infrastructure more than any individual ever could. Imagine how successful Bezos would be if taxpayers didn't provide roads for his deliveries.

It's all a big game of monopoly to them and at the end of the game, one guy has all the money and everyone else is bankrupt, in poverty, jail, or just trying to collect $200 a week to not starve. And then new generations are born into the game wherever their parents were at on the board, with no game reset. People wonder why the birth rate is dropping.

At the end of the game though our pieces all go into the same box.

It works so much better when you use all the zeroes. Makes it easier to compare.

• 290,000,000,000 dollar net worth
• 10,000,000 dollar penthouse
• 120,000,000 dollar met gala
• 500,000,000 dollar yacht
• 600,000 workers

With his net worth, he could give every one of those workers $100,000 and still have ~80% of his net worth.

The problem isn't Amazon, which employer millions of people and provides services that people obviously love. In fact, many cottage businesses have found success on Amazon, as well as many authors being able to publish their books with the permission of the publishing industry, and much more. Why should we get rid of all that? None of that is the problem.

The problem is profit. If Amazon employees made double or triple their salaries, treated them respectfully, and had great benefits, nobody would complain about them. They'd probably be lauded as a great company.

What's causing it is Bezos' untreated OCD, which manifests as uncontrolled compulsive financial hoarding. He sucks so much profit out of the business, that it severely hurts the employees, and the company's corporate image. If he could figure out how to live below his means, he'd find out that he really doesn't need enough money for a million lifetimes, he could share that money with his employees, make his customers more comfortable buying from Amazon, and they'd make even more money than they were.

Or America could do what they do with uncontrolled hoarders whose collections start to have a negative affect on those around them - we get them mental help, and give all those cats to new families. That's what we should do with Bezos. Comfine him a mental hospital until his mania for profit subsides, and give all his neglected money to people who will appreciate it. Or nationalize Amazon, and run it as a government held non-profit, with the proceeds going to fund social programs.

MET gala like last years MET was so obvious it was a distraction from billionaire caused problems, because they make RICH people do outlandish things. most platforms are saying "ooh look at rich people showing off how rich they are". he has a 750mil superyacht. and married a plastic surgeried alien.

It’s inevitable that people like Jeff Bezos exist. It’s called capitalism. The System is working as expected.

"Unacceptable!"

... Except the malleable masses, addled on rage-bait, rightwing 'news' and bot-driven social media not only accept it but mindlessly endorse and defend it.

290B$ with poor investment performance yields 8%, which means he makes 23B$ a year for simply existing.