In the news

Her sentences give me vertigo. I pray she doesn't include a sub clause. When she gets to the end of a long sentence I unclench my hands. On Boris Johnson dodging flood-hit areas:

"The whole of government is working and empathising with the
individuals that rightly have been affected."

individuals that rightly have been affected

Did she really say that?

Is it all those gay marriagers causing the floods again?

I enjoyed hearing her response to a question about sending in the army to flood affected areas:

(My paraphrasing)

Q: What services and help will the army actually be providing?

A: Mainly they will be providing reassurance that we are doing everything we can to help.

There is a beautiful kind of recursion going on there, with zero content.

Her incompetence with the English language takes her 20 points closer to being deported.

It's a special kind of competence that hides nastiness behind serenely delivered waffle. It doesn't fool you, but Mail/Express/Telegraph readers lap it up. Which is why she's a senior cabinet minister.

Amazon is one of the world’s biggest polluters, emitting 44.4 million
metric tons of carbon—more than most countries in the world. The
company is even spinning its refusal to end contracts with oil and gas
companies as an effort to save the planet, arguing that providing
Amazon Web Services software to these companies is accelerating their
transition to clean energy—and their extraction of fossil fuels from
the earth. In other cases, Amazon’s rapid expansion of its data
centers has led to states like Virginia relying more heavily on fossil
fuels to keep up with energy demands.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v74zpy/jeff-bezos-dollar10b-earth-fund-cant-undo-amazons-damage

Thanks. I agree that it's important to look at the bigger picture. But I don't think some of the comparisons made by this (and other ctrl+c variations) are especially useful - e.g. to countries. There are something like 40 countries that don't even emit 1mt while the US, EU and China make up over half the annual contribution.

What do those stats actually tell us?

Shocker, riches places buy the most shit and the largest manufacturers make the most shit.

Almost a third of Amazon's output is from "other indirect emissions (e.g., third-party transportation, packaging, upstream energy related)". That's punters buying shit and having it delivered, something I would argue is a product of them being the market leader rather than inherent evilness.

Personally I think 8% of your wealth is a big number.

I'd never say that there wasn't more to do, or that there isn't a PR angle (and apparently an HR one too). But I don't think it is as easy to dismiss as some of his other "acts of philanthropy", which are essentially laughable.

Almost a third of Amazon's output is from "other indirect emissions

Right, so ignore the guy profiting from this and blame individuals.

That's punters buying shit and having it delivered, something I would argue is a product of them being the market leader rather than inherent evilness.

You know how amazon became a market leader? By avoiding paying taxes and other costs that retail businesses had to pay just to exist, undercutting any competition and forcing them out of business.

But again, its the individuals fault for all this ...

Personally I think 8% of your wealth is a big number.

His wealth can fluctuate by more than that in a day.It's also, to a large amount, paper wealth - Amazon stock. If he times it right, it's an interesting accounting game with no negative effect on him that he'll notice. Potential wealth turned into real cash, funding its own capital gains tax levy while also, because charity donation, reducing the tax he does have to pay on his official Amazon salary and any other stock trading and investing he does. His salary, by the way, has been fixed at $81K for the last two decades, not because he's a modest man but because his effective wealth dwarfs that by so much that it's not important.

Bezos and his small peer group have taken us back to the robber baron era of the 19th century. Those guys also liked to build the occasional hospital, while steamrollering over a poverty-stricken workforce that vastly outnumbered the number of people their "benevolence" could help.

He's doing this for him, for his own defence, and he can easily afford it. He can't do it every day or every year, but he doesn't have to. He already got what he wanted from you.

Yeah, what Bruce said!

I don't really follow the 'projects' of the super rich. I suspect they do them for various reasons, some presumably a vainglorious legacy polishing (Gates, Buffet), some probably with more dubious reasons (Bezos).

I guess it's better that their some fraction of their wealth stockpile is spent than not, but it's the arbitrary direction of it. The choice of the direction of funding should be made in a more democratic manner rather - or 'tax' if you will.

Quite interesting breakdown of the idea of 'directing' that money by early/mid 20th century billionaires and how we've arrived where we are today in Dark Money

You know how amazon became a market leader? By avoiding paying taxes and other costs that retail businesses had to pay just to exist, undercutting any competition and forcing them out of business.

There's two stories here. The first is how did they get rich selling commoditised stuff. Books then whatever widgets. When they did that, any mail order co. could set up and play by the same rules as Amazon. Plenty of other pure play e-commerce outfits were setting up. Amazon were just better than both the new entrants and the established retail cos. where it mattered; business, tech, fulfilment, customer experience, which risks to take, luck. The combined effect of Amazon and the others put some slow old businesses in trouble. This it turns out was small beer.

The second story is how did they become a market leader in being fucking massive. They took big risks whilst delivering what people wanted; ridiculously good subscription buying services (Prime), a marketplace platform, a media platform that wasn't shit, and then they re-sold the tools they used to deliver their services to other businesses. They pretty much created a market for these. Nobody was really 'retailing' this kind of stuff.

Personally I don't think tax avoidance enabled this. I don't think being stingy with employee pay and conditions enabled this. I think both of those are a symptom of how big they are now. It's undeniable that they do it, but I don't think you can claim their success is because of it.

tl;dr they were dominating where it mattered before they were 'evil'.

Early on as a book seller - you're likely right. They were way more agile, and put themselves in a position where they could just eat their competitors lunch.

ridiculously good subscription buying services (Prime)

Personally I don't think tax avoidance enabled this

Prime at least is physical delivery, which makes it easier to follow (for me at least). To deliver this they've taken advantages of roads and other infrastructure , educated workforce, educated and skilled customer base etc, but not paid for any of it through taxes.

They wouldn't be able to offer their service without it all being in place, but they've contributed nothing towards it.

I imagine you could make a similar claim for their IT side. They seem to set up their data centres in countries with decent infrastructure and skills to exploit (Ireland, Luxembourg), but which also conveniently behave as tax havens.

Every. Single. Day. I'm like oh FFS what now

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This.

They wouldn't be able to offer their service without it all being in place, but they've contributed nothing towards it.

Yeah I don't take issue with this. Well, maybe the 'nothing' bit, I'm not sure that's entirely fair. I'm saying it's not the hugely significant factor in their meteoric success and now dominance that it's sometimes made out to be. It's certainly a factor in their ongoing business model, it's probably not right, but businesses gonna business.

At best it gave them a bit more bandwidth to play with but that would be nothing if they hadn't delivered hot shit at the right time in the right way.

I'm so glad that this isn't an Amazon link!

Was a genuine effort!

I imagine you could make a similar claim for their IT side. They seem to set up their data centres in countries with decent infrastructure and skills to exploit (Ireland, Luxembourg), but which also conveniently behave as tax havens.

They don't have a data centre in Luxembourg but they are one of the largest employers in the country and are a major reason for immigration to Luxembourg (whether from existing Amazon people or new ones). Can't speak as to whether they did a deal on company tax but I do know there are (or at least were) a number of "tax efficient" schemes for growing companies in Luxembourg which don't need a company to be new globally, just new in Lux. It does have a lot of advantages (access to the slightly depressed border region talent pool, multi-lingual population, immigrant friendly/tolerant culture etc) but also it isn't cheap so they have to pay well.

Amazon lost money for its first 14 years, so it’s not like this is a normal business. If your local corner shop lost money for 14 years you wouldn’t expect it to then turn into the biggest shop in town.

Well, quite. Your local corner shop isn't going to do this;

At the time, anyone running a 'shop' was wasting too much time running a shop when they should have been a technology company predicting and making the future.

it’s not like this is a normal business

Define a normal business!

It might if it's where Hippy buys his snacks.

I think it was mainly losing money since it was pumping all its revenues into future growth, rather than having anything left over at the end of each year. Fairly common in the tech world (though Amazon was probably a pioneer of it at that scale).

Assume only reason they aren't still doing this is that it's no longer possible to spend money at the rate they're making it.

Apparently Priti Patel is a little difficult to work with

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/home-office-at-war-after-staff-accuse-priti-patel-of-bullying-qhr7dw9cw