
Mr. Amazon Steps Out - SREinSF
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/technology/jeff-bezos-amazon.html
======
staunch
You can learn far more about Jeff Bezos from watching a few long interviews.
He recently did a very interesting interview with his brother:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq89wYzOjfs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq89wYzOjfs)

He's very much the kind of person you want in the supremely high position that
he's found himself in. He's basically another Bill Gates but more upbeat and
creative.

~~~
stnmtn
This is great and all, but I don't want any person making the amount of money
Bezos is making. He makes more in 5 days than most people make in 5 lifetimes.
He wields immense power that will only get stronger as corporate consolidation
increases.

For example, in the race for states to try to get Amazon's HQ2 in their city,
the future of corporate power is so apparent and scary. One city offered that
all employees of Amazon would just pay their taxes directly to Amazon instead
of to the state to try to entice Amazon. That's something that happens in
cyberpunk like Snow Crash, and it's already beginning to happen in real life.
We just don't pay that much attention to it because the companies don't have
scary names like the Tyrell Corporation, they're instead fun things like
Amazon, Disney, Google; and being okay with the massive power Bezos wields
because he's a nice guy seems kind of short-sighted to me

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ilamont
I can only imagine the PR backstory for this puff piece.

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natalyarostova
Bezos is gearing up to be a major player in DC, and the times wrote that
infamous piece on how bad Amazon is. Although that's sort of a conspiratorial
theory, which may or may not be true.

~~~
rising-sky
It's also possible that he's now the richest person ever (not accounting for
inflation), so it's a good time to write an article about such an individual.
There are probably a bunch of similar articles on Bill Gates from his tenure.

~~~
adventured
Bezos has been quite elusive when it comes to publicity and interviews since
the dotcom bubble era ended (until recently). He went from being quite public
early on, to being very tamped down after, heavily limiting press access.
Perhaps his experience during that era, what Amazon went through with the
press after everything soured, caused that.

From the mid 1980s forward, Gates was always in the public light, always
prominent in the tech world in terms of press and interviews, always at CES
and doing industry conferences, speeches, et al. He was Microsoft's chief
promoter and an extremely public persona. Nearly the exact opposite of how
Bezos was from ~2003-2015.

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olfactory
It's nice to see some image reparation work going on for Jeff. I've been
finding all of the pictures of him that are meant to evoke Voldemort quite
irritating.

Aside from his decision to buy the WaPo, I think he's shown himself to be one
of the few people who really understands long term bets.

So while Google keeps trying to make Android devices sell for iPhone prices,
Amazon just sold me a Kindle Fire for $25 that outperforms my Nexus 7.

The impact of Bezos' infrastructure vision is likely to put Google and Apple
out of business in the next few decades. He's playing a much more long-term
strategy and he's not afraid to take big risks.

~~~
electrograv
_> I've been finding all of the pictures of him that are meant to evoke
Voldemort quite irritating._

This just made me wonder if there's any media or perceptive bias against bald
people in leadership positions.

It seems Steve Ballmer and Jeff Bezos for example are/were criticized
disproportionately more than Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, for example, even
though all of these people have plenty of reasons to be disliked.

~~~
Buldak
Was Steve Jobs not bald? A sorites paradox for tech magnates.

~~~
electrograv
Even in the later stages of Steve Jobs' life, he was not fully "bald" (as is
Bezos or Ballmer) even though he appeared to be losing his hair. For example:
[http://community.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-
content/uploads/...](http://community.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/08/steve-jobs-resigns-apple.jpeg)

And the Steve Jobs of early and mid Apple was _definitely_ not even close to
bald: [http://www.designbolts.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/steve-...](http://www.designbolts.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/steve-jobs-in-suit1.jpg)

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rectang
Because we systematically impoverish students, we can only count on the
largesse of the fabulously wealthy to rescue a lucky few.

~~~
QAPereo
What would happen if everyone just... didn’t pay? What would a default of $1.5
trillion USD held by a government against millions of its citizens look like?
Presumably the administrative costs of hunting down that much money from so
many sources would be prohibitive. I’d guess that an attempt to garnish the
wages of half the country would end in rioting, so that wouldn’t work well.

~~~
adventured
> What would a default of $1.5 trillion USD held by a government against
> millions of its citizens look like?

It wouldn't be half the country first of all. It's a small minority of adults
having problems paying their student loans (mostly those that were wildly
reckless in their easy borrowing). The median student loan is a mere ~$13,000,
against a median full-time wage of nearly $50,000.

If you took out $250,000 in student loans for a career path that pays $65,000
max per year, that's on you for being so financially foolish. It's not
difficult to look around at cost effective alternatives to such a crazy
student debt load.

You can easily go to extremely high quality in-state public universities at a
modest cost. A four year degree in the US will get you a $60,000 salary on
average right out of school. The typical person holding the median full-time
job making $50,000, does not even have a four year degree. After five to seven
years in the job market, your income is going to be $75,000 or more. You can
do better than that in engineering fields. The unemployment rate with a four
year degree, is typically about half the national U3 level, you practically
can't not be employed.

Here's the fact of the matter: US wages are so extraordinarily high, a four
year degree is a steal, just so long as you don't do something crazy like take
on $200k in debt for a path that can never pay a good wage.

Go to an in-state public university, pay $10,000 to $15,000 per year _net_ (a
part-time job, as was very common in decades past, is still a good idea, along
with seeking grants), get a job making $60,000 and work your income up to
closer to $75,000 to $90,000 over time. That student debt becomes meaningless.
It is not complex.

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erikj
The title made me think that Bezos leaves Amazon.

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sunstone
Jeff who?

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astebbin
I would love to see Jeff Bezos run for President in 2020. The trust he has
built in the Amazon brand, the value he has placed upon investigative
journalism and the survival of the free press, his deep knowledge of and
interest in technology, his (presumed) familiarity with U.S. tax law, and the
enormous success he’s achieved as a businessman would all work in his favor. I
think Donald Trump senses this, and that’s why he singles Jeff out for
criticism.

~~~
blackbagboys
The very last thing we need is another megalomaniacal billionaire handed the
reigns to an excessively powerful executive apparatus.

People need to remember that billionaires are not your friends. The only thing
that can improve society is concerted, collective action. The fetishization of
hyper-competent business leaders as the solution to society’s problems is a
quasi-fascistic fantasy; it’s of a piece with a yearning for a “strongman” or
those thinkpieces that glorify Singapore or the CCP’s supposed technocratic
excellence.

~~~
natalyarostova
That's really not the only thing that can improve society. Singapore, as you
note, improved without it. Well, many places have. You may not like the
consequences that come about from a quasi-fascistic techno-reactionary
government, which is fine. On the other hand, there are benefits to such
systems. If Amazon owned Seattle, do you think there would be such filth and
homeless squalor throughout the city? Or the daily opioid deaths on our
streets. Would Bezos be okay with that? How about our traffic? It is funny to
me that a city with perhaps the top logistics talent and management in the
world has an ineffectual transportation system due in part to the challenges
of collective action and the biases in underfunding public goods endemic and
researched in the study of the interaction between representative government,
taxation, and investment.

Don't misinterpret me as advocating for that world, radical change tends to do
more harm than good. But there is nothing wrong with holding a clear view of
why people find it an enticing proposition. It's a little intellectually
dismissive to just call it some base fetishization or fantasy. Or at least
that's how I interpreted your comment, perhaps my interpretation was
uncharitable.

~~~
stuntkite
Spent 2 years in South Lake Union and just moved to Texas about six months
ago. Bezos does own a large part of Seattle, he has evicted low wage
undesirables, junkies, and for the most part cars. It's a cultureless void of
amazon dormitories packed with 20 something white, indian, and chinese dudes.
It's expensive as fuck and has a great business propoganda museum on the
waterfront.

They have a stand that gives away blemishless perfectly ripe bananas daily but
good luck finding a half decent place to eat open past 7 on a weeknight let
alone a dive bar that hosts interesting bands on a small stage.

Clean and perfect! Ready to work! Thank you master for selling me the future I
always dreamed of! May I die happy in service of your almighty brand!

~~~
natalyarostova
Yeah, SLU lacks culture. I couldn't stand to live there, and during the day
working there it's somewhat depressing. I'm also growing tired of the rich
culture in cap hill though, which comes with homelessness, addiction, and
filth. I'd prefer some metaphorical place between the two.

