Billionaires in Space

[EPW]

As someone who works at amazon, I will say it's not a fun place to work but I am personally against unionization.

[BeBMan]

My nephew had a nice office job at Amazon couple yrs ago. He was rather well off there, but also didn't like it too much from what I recall.

/cents

Probably there's lots of stuff to say about Jeff/Amazon, but at least they made shopping easier and saved The Expanse...

[BeBMan]

Lots of people may have wondered about the size and specific shape of Bezos' ermm... rocket

[Broken_Erika]

it looks like a....

[-Jrabbit]

Holy Crap! Jeff Bezos has donated $100 million each to professor/media commentator Van Jones and chef José Andrés.

Details:

New York (CNN Business)Jeff Bezos, the Amazon (AMZN) founder and world's wealthiest man, said Tuesday after flying to the edge of space that he planned to award $100 million each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef José Andrés.

Bezos said that Jones and Andres were free to do "what they want" with the money.

"They can give it all to their own charity," Bezos said at a press conference after his trip to space. "Or they can share the wealth. It is up to them."

The money, Bezos said, was tied to a "surprise" philanthropic initiative he wanted to announce called the Courage and Civility Award.

The award aims to honor those who have "demonstrated courage" and tried to be a unifier in a divisive world, Bezos added.

"We need unifiers and not vilifiers," Bezos said. "We need people who argue hard and act hard for what they believe. But they do that always with civility and never ad hominem attacks. Unfortunately, we live in a world where this is too often not the case. But we do have role models."

Jones, accepting the award, said that "sometimes dreams come true."

"You bet on me and I appreciate it," Jones told Bezos, later adding that it was money for him to "give to others who have a similar spirit."

Andrés, who has poured his efforts into feeding those in need around the world, said that the award itself "cannot feed the world on its own."

"But," Andrés added, "this is a start of a new chapter for us."

Anderson Cooper, who was anchoring CNN's special coverage on Tuesday, said on-air after Bezos announced the award that it was "quite a surprise."

"None of us knew anything about it," Cooper said.

The philanthropic initiative from Bezos comes as he and fellow billionaires such as Richard Branson, the Virgin Galactic investor, face criticism for spending their wealth on space tourism. Bezos has previously been criticized for not contributing more to philanthropy, but has donated billions of dollars in recent years to causes including climate change and food banks.Critics have said that the world's richest people should work to improve the conditions for people here on Earth, instead of flying off into space. Bezos and supporters of the space programs, however, have countered that both are possible.

"Well, I say they're largely right. We have to do both," he said in an interview with CNN Monday. "You know, we have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We've always done that as a species, as a civilization. We have to do both."

Hey, it's only about 0.1% of his $211B fortune, but maybe this guy has finally figured out that it's a good idea to use his massive resources to do something positive in this world.

link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/20/media...ion/index.html

[N35t0r]

I guess treating his employees like people instead of slaves was of the table?

[N35t0r]

I guess treating his employees like people instead of slaves was off the table?

[Egbert]

Professional fundraisers for charities go for the ego when seeking large donations. It is the ego that motivates more than altruism. The ideal is to pit some wealthy people against one another in a sort of "bidding war" as a contest of who can give the most. You may note that large donations get publicised. It sounds cynical but is the way fundraising often works.

[Uncle Sparky]

[Uncle Sparky]

it looks like a....

[BeBMan]

In a move that pours cold water on the dreams of a few billionaire space explorers, the US has tightened its definition of the word "astronaut".

New Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules say astronaut hopefuls must be part of the flight crew and make contributions to space flight safety.

That means Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson may not yet be astronauts in the eyes of the US government.

(...)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57950149

Take that, you non-astronauts!

[Uncle Sparky]

Since Canada does have astronauts, I think we should be willing to dub them astronauts for a donation of $500,000,000 US each.

[Dinner]

Dinner washes Jeff Bezo's butt with his tongue.

Why? Because I disagree with childish and inane "don't let him return to Earth because he has more money than me" nonsense? That is just calling a spade a spade and recognizing idiocy and envy when I see it.

[Egbert]

I can not understand the fuss. They did not go into space. They therefore never left earth. Are people really going to pay huge sums of money for space tourism that is not actually in space.

Am I missing something?

[EPW]

It's technically space according to an arbitrary definition. Good enough for most rich morons who want to say they've been to space for purposes of status.

[giblets]

Yep, I only hate billionaires because they have more money than me. How they ended up with so much money isn't relevant at all.

[Jon Miller]

I don't particularly hate billionaires, although I don't think there should be billionaires (and some of them are at fault).

But the basic problem is that billionaires pay the financial class to manage their money. The financial class is very good at this, and gets paid very well (millions, in some cases billions), and so they set up the system to make billionaires because that is how they get paid.

To break this will require political will, the billionaires and financial class have not demonstrated the ability to manage themselves.

And of course, there are some billionaires who are actively trying to push the system in their favor (not by just paying millionaires to manage their money). You know, Koch, Murdoch and Mercer. It makes it more difficult to create the political will to get the billionaires under control. A couple of decades ago I would have been sure that the result would have been revolution and many billionaires put against the wall. With advances AI/etc, I am not so sure.

JM

[N35t0r]

To break this will require political will, the billionaires and financial class have not demonstrated the ability to manage themselves.

JM

Your talking like 80% of politicians aren't either billionaires or in their pockets.

[Uncle Sparky]

It depends on the country... the US is almost as much a kleptocracy as Russia now,, but with a strong economy.

[dannubis]

What did the flerfers think ?