If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.
As other commenters mention, Bezo's overall contributions to the world are a net negative, but it's not just the his philanthropy doesn't make up for his other negative activities, it's that it also acts as a way of soliciting public forgiveness for the other indescretions, which shouldn't be accepted.
- extremely poor pay and conditions for Amazon's workers
- dominance driving smaller less-efficient enterprises out of business; this isn't just sentimental: efficiency is about driving cost down, including labour costs. SMEs employ more in aggregate than the large businesses replacing them, so typically Amazon is unlikely to be a net job-creator.
- Amazon pays very little corporate tax, both by running low-profit/high-cashflow, through other methods particularly for it's operations in Europe, and they used to evade sales tax almost completely in the US. Tax = vital public and social services for citizens, so that's a big net negative.
- Jeff Bezos' personal tax story is not dissimilar.
etc. etc.
This isn't a criticism of Bezos or Amazon, but of large multinational corporate entities and their contributions to "charitable" causes in general. CSR is always an a attempt to offset something.
"extremely poor pay and conditions for Amazon's workers" Where should Amazon magically create this money from? It can only come at the expense of customers.
"so typically Amazon is unlikely to be a net job-creator." That's a net positive. Less work, the same job done. Making more work is easy, just let people throw rocks from one pile to the other and back again.
"Tax = vital public and social services for citizens, so that's a big net negative." They may not contribute by not paying taxes, but 0 contribution is not negative contribution.
Yes. The issues I'm raising are largely to do with some extremely large companies.
> Where should Amazon magically create this money from? It can only come at the expense of customers.
Are you saying that no company pays their employees enough? Or that employees in general shouldn't be paid a living wage? Or even that Amazon, a company headed by the actual richest person in the world, really makes zero profit and must absolutely hurt customers in order to make ends meet?
> That's a net positive. Less work, the same job done.
Less jobs is a positive* only if those without jobs have a living income. UBI is a proposed solution: it hasn't been introduced anywhere as far as I'm aware.
> Making more work is easy, just let people throw rocks from one pile to the other and back again.
And who pays these rock throwers? Do their wages come from the taxes Bezos doesn't pay?
* EDIT: To be clear, on the less jobs question, I am generally not in favour of having a less efficient system just to create jobs (it may sound that way above). I'm just a realist, acknowledging that we have a system that requires job-creation as a means to supply members of society with the means to sustain themselves. If we did not require job-creation to do that, I would completely agree that "less work, the same job done" would be a positive thing.
Companies pay enough to get the quality and quantity of employees that they need. Those who are coming up short on either side are the companies who are (presumably) not paying their employees enough.
> Or that employees in general shouldn't be paid a living wage?
In general, my answer is "null" here, as the definition of living wage is continually (and it seems to me, intentionally) slippery/non-specific. Make some definitions that are stable over a long period of time and that labor advocates agree to, and only then can we have a conversation.
> Or even that Amazon, a company headed by the actual richest person in the world, really makes zero profit and must absolutely hurt customers in order to make ends meet?
Amazon does not hurt customers overall. I suspect you either meant to say employees, or perhaps have introduced a new argument that I'm not following.
With respect to profit, Amazon is now profitable on a GAAP, EBITDA, and cash flow from operations basis. I believe that was always the plan and it's coming together now.
Whether or not a company is profitable and whether or not the founder is the richest man in the world does not feedback into an employee pay issue in my opinion. A profitable company can afford to pay its employees for longer, but has no obligation (legally or ethically) to pay them more, IMO.
That's a funny excuse not to engage with the point. Of course it's variable: different regions have different costs of living, and different social supports. Some countries or areas do have a specifically defined value for a living wage, my own definition for the purpose of this discussion is quite obviously: "enough money to meet your basic needs". This is distinct from subsistence, which is what a lot of employees do.
Plenty of people have defined and even calculated living wage, MIT even have a nice online one. Neither is necessary to engage with a discussion about the general idea of worker subsistence.
> Amazon does not hurt customers overall. I suspect you either meant to say employees, or perhaps have introduced a new argument that I'm not following.
You said "at the expense of customers", sorry the wording in my reply was slightly different.
> A profitable company can afford to pay its employees for longer, but has no obligation (legally or ethically) to pay them more, IMO.
As in this context we've defined more as barely enough to meet their basic needs, I'll have to disagree with you on the ethical obligation.
I directly copied text from your post and replied to it. I even tried to make a good faith charitable interpretation of it.
Are you accusing me of misquoting your own words to some end?
This is an assertion not presently supported by evidence. With any other resource they need, companies typically respect the law of supply and demand: when there's low supply or high demand (or both), they pay more to get the resource. But when -- and seemingly only when -- that resource is labor, paying a higher price is practically unthinkable. That's why we've seen decades now in the US with little or no (inflation-adjusted) wage growth, despite higher average productivity and periods of low unemployment (either of which ought, in a rational market, to produce higher wages).
Your points seem very weak to me. People perceive value from Amazon's tax "evasion" (efficiency) in buying goods at a cheaper cost. I'm sure you agree that not every dollar that goes to taxes is better spent than if it wasn't.
I highly doubt that net global employment in headcount dropped because of Amazon. For every store clerk that got fired in a US brick and mortar shop, probably 10 sweatshop workers in China were hired to make gizmos at a fraction of the cost.
If you are going to argue that the world would be better off without Amazon when hundreds of millions use and love their services every day, you need to at least make an attempt to quantify the value the company provides. You can't just point at 3 isolated data points. I'm not even saying you're wrong in your conclusions, but they're hardly unquestionable.
Spending money on good causes is great. That's to be definitely something to be encouraged. Putting all of the decision making about which causes are 'good' in the hands of one individual, or a small group of very similar individuals, is very, very bad. That's how entire segments of society get ignored.
I think you mean 2 billion.
I find myself solving problems with capitalism and simultaneously donating 5-10% of my net-income.
I also dont see life being any worse than 'before' for any classes. 'before' being 15 years ago.
The money spent by philanthropists is small compared to the US budget so they aren't in any way a replacement for the welfare state. But what money they do spend seems to go a long way.
And the US is probably the worst example in the western world on how taxation should work.
Case in point is this ridiculous idea that what Bezos is doing here should be applauded and not fixed for being broken.
Very curious about these justification arguments. How on earth is tax-avoidance defensible in a thread about philanthropy?
The defence is more about remaining competitive in a global market than anything to do with how the owners spend their fortunes.
One topic (tax avoidance) is by one entity (AMZN) who has obligations and responsibilities towards shareholders (including most employees), where the other is by a different entity (Jeff Bezos) using his own wealth (that resulted from AMZN).
Jeff Bezos can't use AMZN assets as he sees fit, otherwise the SEC will investigate him, but he can do so with his own assets.
If you want the behaviour of companies to change, you need to have your politicians use their powers to do the right things ...
Capitalism isn't there to fix broken democracy, democracy is supposed to limit capitalism ...
I completely agree in terms of how to practically go about fixing the problems, but we're not discussing that here.
You're right that broken democracy fails to limit capitalism; this allows people without moral limits to exploit, and make large gains from said exploitation. And you're right that fixing that system is what's needed. But lauding those who have exploited that absence of limits, for their apparent morals, is what's being discussed in this thread.
I think that would be a more compelling argument if our governments had a stronger democratic mandate and our political systems offered the people genuine choices in how money was being spent on their behalf. Looking at what's been happening in places like the US and UK recently, I'm not sure it's the best time to be arguing for big government and redistribution of wealth as a vehicle for social responsibility.
The answer to your problem is most definitely not to reduce taxes and Let billionares decide what goes where.
The argument people tend to make here is that the net change he's creating in the world is not for the better. If 1,000 people have to suffer misery because of his company in order to enable 10 people to get the benefit of his personal charity, that doesn't look like "making the world a better place" to many of us.
Exactly, if philanthropy is self-serving then what does that make the act of dissuading such behavior?
People seem to get involved with the argument rather than outcomes nowadays. A frequent argument is that "Bezos should pay his taxes because I do." While I do feel as though it's unfair that I loose more of my "living money" to taxes, I don't forget for one second what those taxes are doing: waging wars over fossil fuels and progressing climate change. Who cares if the cause is personal glory; if the effect is a better world?
I'd rather have the unfairness of ego-charitable billionaire tax avoidance than the two-term shortsightedness of politician power mongering.
"Extreme taking and extreme giving" is what kings, emperors and other tyrants did (and still do).
A billionaire can give away 99.9% of his/her earnings every month but s/he is acquiring extreme power in exchange.
Being able to control the money tap is power.
> It's not a great way of encouraging charity.
Good. That's what taxation or other forms of redistribution are for.
Contrarily to charity, it does not create patrons/heros/tyrants