Jeff Bezos: Request for ideas(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Jeff Bezos: Request for ideas
https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776
38 comments
How does one parse thousands of ideas? How does one keep it in a character limit? Post an image like he does? Would it be a novel idea to copy the already posted images and then repost with dummy(but appear real) accounts using automation making this exercise worthless(or does he plan on doing this himself with no attribution?)
You can't possibly think Jeff Bezos had any direct personal involvement with any of this. He likely didn't compose the tweet and likely won't have a hand in reading the results. I doubt anyone associated with him is actually going to read the results.
He (well, Amazon) could be more forthcoming with taxes.
Are you saying that US federal spending is the most effective charity in the world?
Paint me cynical...
He's a smart kid, a lack of insight and focus do not come to mind when I think of his ability to tackle challenges.
In other news today... a lot of middle to upper middles class people, who view Amazon as a cold corporate digital version of Walmart, just had their favourite grocery store taken over.
He's a smart kid, a lack of insight and focus do not come to mind when I think of his ability to tackle challenges.
In other news today... a lot of middle to upper middles class people, who view Amazon as a cold corporate digital version of Walmart, just had their favourite grocery store taken over.
In other news today... a lot of middle to upper middle class people who already get 2 or 3 boxes a week from Amazon will start getting 3 or 4 boxes a week instead.
I don't think the widespread resentment of Amazon as a "cold corporate digital version of WalMart" exists outside of your own point of view, and perhaps a few publishers' offices in New York. Amazon is one of those factors in its customers' lives that pretty much always Just Works. Gotta give credit (and cash, and gift cards) where it's due.
I don't think the widespread resentment of Amazon as a "cold corporate digital version of WalMart" exists outside of your own point of view, and perhaps a few publishers' offices in New York. Amazon is one of those factors in its customers' lives that pretty much always Just Works. Gotta give credit (and cash, and gift cards) where it's due.
> I don't think the widespread resentment of Amazon as a "cold corporate digital version of WalMart" exists outside of your own point of view, and perhaps a few publishers' offices in New York.
Just one opinion, but I already thought of Amazon as "the internet's WalMart". And that was before they took over Whole Foods.
It's not a widespread opinion yet, but I'm guessing as they exert ever more influence, more people will come to a similar association. If Amazon decides to takeover Meijer's next (just as an example) a lot of upper-midwest folks would suddenly make a similar association.
Just one opinion, but I already thought of Amazon as "the internet's WalMart". And that was before they took over Whole Foods.
It's not a widespread opinion yet, but I'm guessing as they exert ever more influence, more people will come to a similar association. If Amazon decides to takeover Meijer's next (just as an example) a lot of upper-midwest folks would suddenly make a similar association.
Forgive me, I conflated a complex issue. And I also regcogise I'm generalizing.
I know more than a few people who dislike what Amazon did to their favourite local bookstore but also shop at Amazon. I'm very long AMZN and I shop at Wholefood & Trader Joes.
I'm just suggesting that (a) Bezos has smart people around him who could give him suggestions and (b) this isn't bad PR.
I know more than a few people who dislike what Amazon did to their favourite local bookstore but also shop at Amazon. I'm very long AMZN and I shop at Wholefood & Trader Joes.
I'm just suggesting that (a) Bezos has smart people around him who could give him suggestions and (b) this isn't bad PR.
Bribe all of congress. It's not that expensive for someone with Bezos money. Why let energy companies, telcos, insurance providers, and military contractors get all the action? Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are bigger than they are!
For less than the cost of SpaceX they could have just bribed congress to give NASA sufficient funding.
For less than the cost of whatever Bill Gates tries to do with education, he could have just bribed congress to fund schools properly.
If they really believed in equal rights regardless of gender, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, race or religion, they could bribe congress to fix those things.
If they cared about the environment, you could bribe congress to fund the EPA more.
Single payer health care, they can just make it happen.
If I had that money, that's sure as hell what I would be doing with it. The fact that they haven't already suggest to me that maybe they don't actually believe in these things as much as they sometimes pretend to. Rich assholes never put their money where their mouth is.
And when I say bribe I mean the legal kind. Where you fund their campaigns through SuperPACs. You can outspend those Koch bros. easily. Why not go for it?
For less than the cost of SpaceX they could have just bribed congress to give NASA sufficient funding.
For less than the cost of whatever Bill Gates tries to do with education, he could have just bribed congress to fund schools properly.
If they really believed in equal rights regardless of gender, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, race or religion, they could bribe congress to fix those things.
If they cared about the environment, you could bribe congress to fund the EPA more.
Single payer health care, they can just make it happen.
If I had that money, that's sure as hell what I would be doing with it. The fact that they haven't already suggest to me that maybe they don't actually believe in these things as much as they sometimes pretend to. Rich assholes never put their money where their mouth is.
And when I say bribe I mean the legal kind. Where you fund their campaigns through SuperPACs. You can outspend those Koch bros. easily. Why not go for it?
You're effectively saying, become a lobbyist.
And you're right. It's a great idea. A sort of white-hat political force (controlling a tangled web of various corporation/non-profit/PAC type entities) that, instead of trying to gain some narrow advantage at the expense of the public, does the opposite.
If Bezos really has the balls to spend it, he has enough money; a presidential campaign, the most expensive kind, only costs 1.2 gigadollars or so[1].
You only need 60 senators and a couple hundred members of the House of Representatives to get whatever shit done you want. So doling out $10,000,000,000.00 a year or so in the right places would go a long way.
Of course, eight years later you're broke, the patient hegemony of other rich people and corporate interests reasserts itself, and America starts sliding down the path to democratic failure again...
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
And you're right. It's a great idea. A sort of white-hat political force (controlling a tangled web of various corporation/non-profit/PAC type entities) that, instead of trying to gain some narrow advantage at the expense of the public, does the opposite.
If Bezos really has the balls to spend it, he has enough money; a presidential campaign, the most expensive kind, only costs 1.2 gigadollars or so[1].
You only need 60 senators and a couple hundred members of the House of Representatives to get whatever shit done you want. So doling out $10,000,000,000.00 a year or so in the right places would go a long way.
Of course, eight years later you're broke, the patient hegemony of other rich people and corporate interests reasserts itself, and America starts sliding down the path to democratic failure again...
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
You seem kind of cynical about it, but I like where you're going. Fix lobbying. Seems like an excellent plan
Isn't owning the Washington Post (as Bezos does) a step in the direction of influencing social outcomes?
Rupert Murdoch is the primary backer of all things right wing in the world, and does more to influence elections and governments than Russia ever could. He wields that influence through media ownership.
Rupert Murdoch is the primary backer of all things right wing in the world, and does more to influence elections and governments than Russia ever could. He wields that influence through media ownership.
You seem to think money grows on trees. Your suggestions can't be implemented without taxing people like Bezos to death. In fact, I'm pretty sure they can't be implemented at all, no matter who you "bribe".
Every wealthy nation but the U.S. provides universal healthcare. They all provide much more subsidized higher education. They do theses things without taxing people to death. Do you have any evidence to support your belief?
They have different cost structures and much higher taxes, and their healthcare couldn't exist without multi billion research efforts US healthcare consumer pays for. How much pharmaceutical innovation is there outside the US?
There are many multi billion dollar companies that do pharmaceutical research outside the US, their revenue is not exclusively from the US, suggesting there would be no healthcare without the US, is like suggesting there would be no cars without the US
[Roche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche) [Merck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_Group) [Bayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer) [Sanofi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi)
[Roche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche) [Merck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_Group) [Bayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer) [Sanofi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi)
Merck is a US company. Switzerland has no government provided healthcare and their healthcare costs are also very high.
Merck isn't a US company, it is a German company. There is a US company with the same name that originates from a seizure of US assets of the German company with the same name.
Also known as the Merck that actually invents new drugs and rakes in almost three times the revenue of the German counterpart. I wonder if the fact that it's a US company has something to do with that. Hmm.
You are making factual claims without providing evidence. It might be true that advancements in healthcare wouldn't be st the level it is today without the U.S. but to ascertain that their healthcare wouldn't exist without the U.S. is clearly incorrect.
Even supposing all pharmaceutical innovation comes from the U.S. still does not show that without the U.S. there would be none. Clearly there is a market for drugs and the U.S. is not the only country with research capabilities.
Taxes are not that much higher elsewhere. People are not being taxed to death elsewhere.
Even supposing all pharmaceutical innovation comes from the U.S. still does not show that without the U.S. there would be none. Clearly there is a market for drugs and the U.S. is not the only country with research capabilities.
Taxes are not that much higher elsewhere. People are not being taxed to death elsewhere.
You're saying the rest of the world is so poor, their health care systems are bouyed as a /side effect/ of the research that companies do, financed by the their average American customer?
They aren't poor. But for some reason they don't like to pay for drugs, R&D or defense. That's gotta change.
Why does it have to change? It's a free market, internationally. Perhaps if they don't want to pay for drugs, drug companies should stop selling to them.
How's education related to pharmaceutical innovation? How's single payer health care related to it, anyway?
It seems the barbarians are certainly at the gates. Oh well, we had a good ride.
It seems the barbarians are certainly at the gates. Oh well, we had a good ride.
Our education system and business environment produces a hell of a lot more innovation (including pharma) than the rest of the world produces combined. The rest of the world then piggy backs on all that and invests diddly squat into R&D, all while being smug about their social safety net. Don't be so quick to dismiss the US way of doing things. While imperfect, it's not beyond repair either.
I'll ask again. Do you have any evidence to back up your claims? You are arguing by assertion. Where is the evidence your assertions are correct?
So your position is that it's good that it's illegal to arbitrage prescription drugs across the US border? I'd love to hear more.
No. I'd love to see lower drug pricing in the US. One must understand, hovewer that this will cause the prices to rise everywhere else. Which is quite all right with me. About time those folks started paying their fair share. They might even get their own pharma research going if they have to pay through their nose like we do.
The problem I find with most philanthropic efforts, most namely charities, is that it's a black box with little measure of accountability. You don't know how exactly the money is spent, and how effective it was.
If someone can start a 100% transparent charitable organization, where each line item of expense is open to the public, it would give people more confidence in giving, and it would give the organizations more incentive to make effective and efficient decisions. Kind of like a manager overseeing your moves, except it's the public since they provide the funding.
In terms of where to focus the efforts -- I find providing education is the only short term effort that can lead to long term and everlasting gains.
If someone can start a 100% transparent charitable organization, where each line item of expense is open to the public, it would give people more confidence in giving, and it would give the organizations more incentive to make effective and efficient decisions. Kind of like a manager overseeing your moves, except it's the public since they provide the funding.
In terms of where to focus the efforts -- I find providing education is the only short term effort that can lead to long term and everlasting gains.
You might be interested to hear about GiveWell and Effective Altruism.
http://www.givewell.org/
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
GiveWell, in particular, publishes a bunch of information (cost/benefit analyses, intervention reports, etc.) about their charitable success/initiatives.
http://www.givewell.org/
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
GiveWell, in particular, publishes a bunch of information (cost/benefit analyses, intervention reports, etc.) about their charitable success/initiatives.
Just pool the money with Buffett and Gates, and do something jointly. Eradicate some deadly disease, cure cancer, something like that. Really bring those billions and project management skills to bear on it.
I tweeted to suggest that he buy a Raspberry Pi computer for every primary school kid in the world.
It'll be interesting to see a summary of all the ideas, after all the snark, looney and funny replies are filtered out.
Pay your warehouse employees a little bit more? because it's easy to feel charitable when you made money by over-exploiting your workforce.
On the microscopic chance that Jeff Bezos sees this: mellow out, man! There was an anecdote, I can't remember from where, maybe from the "Faces of Amazon" page, related to Jeff's response to the NYT criticism back in 2015. Jeff's response was, "should that happen to you, escalate to HR or email me directly". Someone did exactly that and got fired for it.
1) First, buy an under utilized country (or a piece of country eg Newfoundland, Sakhalin Island, Princes Royal Island or similar)
2) install the British Institutions OS (run by retired Commonwealth employees). just like Hong Kong or Singapore.
3) allow visa free travel and residence for any non-criminal person on earth
4) To prime the pump, buy stuff from this new country and sell it through any handy distribution channel you might have
N.B. Don't forget to recirculate income from the top of the economy to the bottom or the heart will stop.