I think he's probably bored at this point. Whats there really left to do at Amazon? AWS and the website are eating the world. He's 57. Why not at this point go play with his rockets and spend time inside that WaPo newsroom that he loves.
Americans adopt that narrative voluntarily when it comes to entrepreneurs, he doesn't need to interfere with the Wapo newsroom for that. (and to my knowledge hasn't).
WaPo has publicized quite a few articles critical of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, even after WaPo was acquired. So this is something that seems to be just another baseless "jeff bad" take.
The questions shouldn't focus on what he lets get printed - we still live in an age where journalism seems to have minimal consequences no matter the quality - but what happens if e.g. the WaPo Guild takes action in solidarity with an Amazon union.
>but what happens if e.g. the WaPo Guild takes action in solidarity with an Amazon union?
Luckily, we don't need to wonder, because WaPo has actually posted that kind of an article just yesterday, and it was extremely critical of Amazon's anti-unionization efforts [0]. The article's headline is "Amazon’s anti-union blitz stalks Alabama warehouse workers everywhere, even the bathroom". Even the headline itself wasn't sugarcoated or softened in the slightest.
This is not an especially a sympathetic article to either side, but I'm talking about things beyond the core remit of a newsroom. If Amazon workers strike, what happens if the WaPo Guild refuses to cross the picket line by accepting Amazon deliveries, using AWS, or run articles alongside Amazon ads?
There is a difference between "does not have editorial oversight" - which I believe - and "has no say in what can be published" - which is trivially false since as owner he could do anything from hire only sports reporters to shut the whole thing down if he wanted.
I think having one in Musk is enough (though Musk is married now). Don’t need planet of the billionaire bachelors in the midst of their midlife crises.
As chairman and being involved in the WaPo newsroom and possibly K street would actually help Amazon. But you'd probably have to enjoy politics and does Bezos? Bezos built Amazon so is he OK with it being chopped up if it comes to that or not?
Hopefully the latter. We've got an excess of billionaires trying to mould society with their vast sums of wealth.
Blue Origin would be a great use of his time. Massive long-term benefit to humanity, few implications on global governance or the lives of most individuals.
Or his own private charter city, so people have to consent to live in his world.
Or he could blow it all on yachts, hookers and blow.
I don't understand why space rockets and lunar lander is important except if they help us clean our planet. It's a long bet on a long time horizon. But maybe it's a good way to spend government money.
I think there’s a common misunderstanding about how tax write-offs work. If you donate x dollars, and your marginal tax rate is t, you end up losing x - xt dollars. That means you have less money than if you didn’t donate, even after accounting for the write-off. Arguments that somebody only donated money for the tax write-off usually don’t make sense.
Possibles exceptions to this include hard-to-value assets like art, where someone could potentially exaggerate the value by at least 1/t to defraud the tax authorities, but this doesn’t seem relevant to donating publicly-traded Microsoft stock. Bill Gates would be richer if he didn’t make these donations.
Bill Gates was a ruthless business man, but through the influence of his wife/father/Warren Buffet or some combination,
he's soften a bit and seems to have decided to give a lot away and convince others to do so as well.
There's lots of weirdness in society about having the wealthiest having influence starting to approach government program status, but here we are. (perhaps they're trying to blunt the income inequality complaints, but maybe they really have come around to caring...)
It's actually the other way around: Buffett followed Gates' lead on large-scale philanthropy, designating the Gates Foundation as the benefit of his largesse. Yes, each man had long-standing intentions for philanthropy, but it really reached fruition together.
I anticipate this comment will not go over well, as it seems I must just not see the truth that Bill Gates is a perfectly benevolent being who has ascended from human qualities
He’s not benevolent or lead a perfectly good life. But he decided to spend his billions on trying to improve the world and you all are still hung up on the anti trust things he did at Microsoft. Or think he’s doing it to “gain power and influence” or as a tax dodge.
You don’t have to forgive him. But stop coming up with weird conspiracy theories about why he’s spending his money and let go of the unscrupulous business decisions.
stop coming up with weird conspiracy theories about why he’s spending his money
Well firstly, no I don't have to do any of that. And secondly, it's not a theory about a conspiracy. It's more of a speculation. Finally, I highly doubt his benevolence, that's my whole point as I said in my original post - he probably enjoys the influence a lot more than he enjoys helping people.
What does Bill Gates care about optimizing tax? He is old, isn't planning on giving his money to his children and he has so much money he wouldn't even be able to spend it if he wanted to. It makes no sense. Im pretty sure he does care about his legacy on the other hand.
isn't planning on giving his money to his children
1. none of "giving pledge" signees pledged 100% – they do pledge most of it, although inheriting "almost nothing" of billions is still pretty comfy.
2. the biggest cushion the heirs of Giving Pledgers will inherit is something money can't buy: influence. After all the Gates foundation is a family trust and as such will be run by the trustee's heirs, when their parents die [1]
The US and the world really need an organized approach to pandemics and it needs to be free of political influence. Said work is going to require a lot of academic and government support. If Gates can bootstrap that, that would be a good legacy.
