Disagreement and reflection on how difficult reality is isn't about shutting you down, it's having a conversation. Everyone here would be happy to hear your thoughts on actual options that would legally impact Bezos influence which are realistic.
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Jeff Bezos, richest man in the world, criticized for Amazon donating only $690,000 to help Australia
- Thread starter Deleted member 43084
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Disagreement and reflection on how difficult reality is isn't about shutting you down, it's having a conversation. Everyone here would be happy to hear your thoughts on actual options that would legally impact Bezos influence which are realistic.
how else will you slow down warming
liberals say they care about climate change but are clearly unwilling to accept the reality that radical change is the only way of replacing our primary source of energy.
it's a moment
One trillion and they would still be kicking down his door in outrage.
Everyone also neglects the fact that this is almost certainly supplemental to the amount he was set to donate elsewhere this year anyway. People who don't plan their giving for the year do this every time they go all in on the hottest cause of the month and someone else doesn't.
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What about the 2 years of Democratic House and Senate seat majority? He just didn't feel like pushing legislation that would help the average American?
It wasn't as easy as your framing it as in congress. His admin pushed a lot of legislation that did that. This revision of Obama's legacy that he did nothing is irresponsible.
Say we agree, you haven't provided a good solution to make that radical change a reality. You can't solve climate change with bills which won't pass congress.
Well yeah fuck them for these things, but that's a different thing altogether really, I can still say fuck off Amazon for tax evasion (which every big companies get away from, unfortunately) or scummy business practices and still appreciation a donation instead of complaining about it. Just me tho :P
Sorry I wasn't speaking from a US perspective. The UK Green New Deal was feasible, radical and a Labour majority/Labour SNP coalition would have enough votes to push it through. The majority of the LDs and Caroline Lucas would've voted for it as well
Perhaps but this was DOA when Corbyn failed to become PM twice.
You guys aren't wrong but I mean capitalism and billionaires are like topic of the week on the internet. Feels like the discussion just goes in circles.
There's a lot to criticize, and I'm not defending Bezos or billionaires in the slightest, but I dunno out of all the times his name comes up, knowing that a hefty sum of money (regardless of the source) went towards Australia, I feel like losing our heads over the 1% still existing doesn't really lead anywhere.
Revolution.
I'm sorry, there are no more options. You only need a spark and guts. We can debate about it as the world dies though, we at least will be happy with ourselves knowing we were "realists" and "moderates".
Well duh, my solution is liberals should vote Labour next time lol
With a Labour majority or a socialist coalition, radical changes can be made in the UK.
They would have, except Corbyn was terrible at energising them. Can't become PM without a united party.
Where is this "revolution" then? Bezos looks safe to me, which hinders your argument that that's all it takes. We're debating right now because your revolution never unseated the billionaires from power.
But isn't this exactly what the issue is? Big corporations evade taxes in the millions, making it so that the governments cannot use that to finance fighting crisises like this, but then we should appreciate and applaud it when they voluntarily choose to give a tiny amount to fight them?
I don't know, that just sounds wrong to me.
"Oh gosh golly the planet is on fire, but boy this Jeremy fella just lacks energy, welp, better throw my vote away to the less green, 11 seats in parliament, do nothing, austerity loving Liberal Democrats!"
That's his job as leader of the party, nobody's entitled to votes as I've been told repeatedly from the other side of the pond.
There is no revolution (so far), and it won't happen until the US and the first world countries start actually revolting about these topics. So it'll probably never happen in our age. That's the point. There is no other option because billionares can shape the politics world so we can't expect any election actually changing stuff. But it will probably never happen either for a mixture of reasons.
The world is doomed. But hey, at least Amazon Prime has good shows, or so I've been told.
Then why are you going on about revolution in this thread when you know it's not happening?
Well, that's the thing. It really isn't. Amazon avoided paying over 100x more tax than they just donated - in Australia alone.
And these very public donations are just another tax avoidance. But worse because it's a 'donation' that convinces people they are doing a good thing. When, in reality, it's merely a promotional vehicle that allows them to continue to hoard wealth.
Now, you could argue that the Australian gov't would have still fucked this up anyway, but Amazon dodged out of paying them over $100m that could have potentially prevented their de-funding in the first place. Amazon's business practices are directly relevant to the reason(s) why vestigial corporate donations like this are appropriately met with cynicism and criticism.
I mean this works when discussing non-voters but they were sufficiently energised to get out and vote for a party far smaller than the Labour party with a less green initiative.
I think they didn't like our green policies....
I don't like that excuse. I get why and where it's used and think it's a useful way of pushing US Dems into developing a real black agenda, but it can't be a way of hand-waiving all accountability in the electorate
On the employment side, it's a similar story.
The workers can quit at any time. Yet, they'd rather stick around and be "exploited" than simply quit and move on to the next $15/hr unskilled labor job.
On top of this, employees terminated for performance seem to want back in to this exploitative situation, wasting valuable time complaining about the performance standards of a former employer instead of simply moving on to one of the many superior employment situations available to them.
In your world, hundreds of thousands of adults are behaving irrationally.
While that may be true, that still puts them in a category far away from the one relevant to "bootlicker".
My point stands that they've put together an offering for customers, employees, and partners so good relative to the options that they're basically looked at as the only option. No tricks, no crazy marketing ... they just went out and did the hard work of building the best, and people recognized it and continue to reward them massively. That's incredible and exactly the kind of American success story you'd think people would rally behind.
Because there is no other option. There's no one that you can vote that can do deep change in a liberal democracy with a congress that's being bought by billionares.
Or well, perhaps you can revolt so they get afraid and do some quick changes, but I doubt they will be deep enough or soon enough
It works for everyone since everyone has to vote. Since the left took over the party they were in position where they had to appeal to these voters which the UK badly needed. There's more to it then that but those aren policies don't happen when someone can't get elected. Labour wasn't in position to feel entitled to those votes and this cost them everything.
You just admitted in our previous exchange that this option is unavailable. This solution is more than one man and I think the left remains too tightly wound around the Great man mindset to fix things when they need to focus more on congress.
Agreed.
Who am I to tell someone how they should spend their money?
I didn't earn it, it's not mine therefore it's not my business.
I didn't earn it, it's not mine therefore it's not my business.
I read a while back in something that corporate donations and even philanthropic donations (for people who are millionaires/billionaires) is insanely difficult?
Like you can't just SWIFT transfer a few million bucks to a country on the other side of the planet. It'll get rejected by banks, flagged up for Interpol investigation, etc, etc...
Apparently there is TONS of red tape and taxation and stuff which makes it harder the larger the amount you're donating.
I need to do some actual reading into this because it sounds realistic but I don't have any good facts. It would explain why donation sums at this level always seem to paltry.
Like you can't just SWIFT transfer a few million bucks to a country on the other side of the planet. It'll get rejected by banks, flagged up for Interpol investigation, etc, etc...
Apparently there is TONS of red tape and taxation and stuff which makes it harder the larger the amount you're donating.
I need to do some actual reading into this because it sounds realistic but I don't have any good facts. It would explain why donation sums at this level always seem to paltry.
Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying
Not that the world's richest person should donate more and use more of his money for philanthropy
Nope, I am advocating for murder, you got it buddy
Is currently uniavailable, but these thigs are volatile. You never know when something makes the people explode.
The problem is that is a multi-front problem. You can't focus just on congress because on the different systems on the world and how not every congress has the same powers to legislate, you also need that "great person" in charge. And even then, you need popular pressure so they don't sleep on their success of finally reaching power.
Will that change through vote reach? With people being too comfortable in their positions? I think is even less likely than a revolution. And even then, you still need people on the streets.
What makes you think they were entitled?
They did try. Liberals care a lot about climate change so they gave them a costed, think tank approved Green New Deal. No other party went above and beyond like they did.
And yet the LDs increased their vote share lmao. Their voters cared more about protecting their pockets from Labours rise in income tax and position on Brexit than the climate. It's time for some foooking accountability.
Yeah you're right, not gonna argue with your point, I agree that's an issue. Which I don't know how the governments can tackle as they keep letting these huge companies getting away with it.
Yeah it happens everywhere and I agree with you, the donation and the tax avoidance things are connected at the root. Those taxes that they evaded could've been used for the fire prevention / the effort itself. I was just being ignorant I guess.
Pretty much. Doesn't matter what "rich" people do/ donate to help a good cause, it will never be enough due to people feeling way too entitled to everything in today's society.
people here moaning that he "only" donated a small % of he's yearly income (not even that, as it was amazons money), how much did they donate?
Makes me laugh when people say that compared to their yearly income, he only donated 6 cent etc, have they donated even that?
I donated a small amount and I could have done more, but every little helps in the end, doesn't it?
"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism."
So disrespectful. Bezos doesn't walk multiple football fields a day with no breaks to be treated like this.
Just popping in to remind everyone, as we seem to be forgetting, that Amazon didn't even donate money. They donated "provisions and services" (whatever that means), valued, presumably, by Amazon themselves.
French man in 1786: where is this revolution you speak of? The King looks safe to me.
Hindsight is much easier to make with hundreds of years to look back through, socialists today don't have that luxury with their "revolution." You need to accept the possibly that it might just not happen, revolutions were much simpler affairs when tanks weren't invented.
edit: Connecting a social revolution with the French Revolution isn't be good optics since it lead to what was known as the Reign of Terror. The Soviet Revolutions would be out for obvious reasons.
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Didn't he invent Amazon? Maybe I am mistaken.
^ Someone please help this person, they're not doing OK it appears
Very kind of him to donate an amount that's less than what he makes in five minutes.
Abhorrently disgusting.
He EARNS that money, working really, REALLY hard every day! Right!?