
Jeff Bezos: Request for ideas - cosmoharrigan
https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776
======
Apreche
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?

~~~
throwaway-1209
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".

~~~
yequalsx
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?

~~~
throwaway-1209
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?

~~~
orbifold
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche))
[Merck]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_Group))
[Bayer]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer))
[Sanofi]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi))

~~~
throwaway-1209
Merck is a US company. Switzerland has no government provided healthcare and
their healthcare costs are also very high.

~~~
orbifold
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.

~~~
throwaway-1209
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.

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devanti
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.

~~~
jarjoura
Just as many people would only donate to organizations where they can be
anonymous. For example, if you were a gay man and wanted to send money to
Russia to help fight the anti-gay sentiment over there, you might not want to
do it with your name easily traceable.

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sunstone
The Elephant Soup Solution:

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.

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throwaway-1209
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.

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neptunespear
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.

------
radiorental
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.

~~~
CamperBob2
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.

~~~
maxsilver
> 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.

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andrewstuart
It'll be interesting to see a summary of all the ideas, after all the snark,
looney and funny replies are filtered out.

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andrewstuart
I tweeted to suggest that he buy a Raspberry Pi computer for every primary
school kid in the world.

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deathhand
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?)

~~~
krapp
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.

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petepete
He (well, Amazon) could be more forthcoming with taxes.

~~~
anonymoushn
Are you saying that US federal spending is the most effective charity in the
world?

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camus2
Pay your warehouse employees a little bit more? because it's easy to feel
charitable when you made money by over-exploiting your workforce.

