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Comment by amscanne | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this. Clearly not all people have the same political power, regardless of the existence of billionaires.

AOC, as a party firebrand, has more political power than Jeff Bezos, although it manifests differently. You can argue that the power was "earned" (in the sense that AOC won a primary), but how is the power that Bezos has any less earned? The same argument applies not just to politicians, but literally any influential public figure (artists, authors, journalists, actors, etc.).

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AOC's power stems from democratic support. Jeff Bezos' power stems from monetary wealth. It's the difference between oligopoly and democracy.

No, there will never be absolute equality of power. Certain people will always have a louder voice in the culture than others. But cultural power is fickle and comes and goes easily unlike wealth.

Jeff Bezos' monetary wealth stems from billions of Amazon customers voting with their collective wallets. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

AOC's power will vanish the moment she breaks with the interests of her constituency. Bezos' wealth does not represent a continuing endorsement of his actions.

> [Politician]'s power will vanish the moment s/he breaks with the interests of his/her/their constituency

This is almost never the case. Power corrupts.

How would AOC continue to have power if people were to stop voting for her or caring about what she has to say?

How would Bezos continue to have power if people stopped using Amazon? Most of his wealth is in Amazon stock. Sure, he'd have a few billion left over, but his real political power comes from his companies, not his money.

"A few billion" places his wealth in the top .0001%. It's telling that even in this far-fetched scenario where Amazon and Bezos' "real political power" are destroyed, he's still much more powerful than the vast majority of US citizens.

You seem to be equating wealth and power. Wealth and power are certainly related, but probably on a logarithmic scale. Someone worth $20,000 isn't twice as powerful as someone worth $10,000.

The primary source of political power Jeff Bezos has is his control of a very large employer. Employing lots of people gives you some power over local politics in the areas where you employ those people, and it gives you some level of influence with politicians who might be interested in ensuring you continue to employ lots of people, because it's good for the economy.

Your run of the mill billionaire heir/heiress that doesn't really do any useful economic activity doesn't have a huge amount of political power, in general. They probably have more than you or I do, but not a ton more. Certainly not more in (linear* proportion to the wealth difference.

Once you realize that the relationship between wealth and power is logarithmic, it's not really a super concerning relationship. There are other sources of power that are much more important, and much less transparent.

I would guess that most of Bezos' wealth is stilled tied to the stock price of Amazon, and thus actually represents an endorsement of his actions at least a bit more than if it were all in cash.

if amazon's stock price plunged 95% (basically unthinkable) bezos would still be a billionare.

I don't buy from Amazon because I agree w/ Bezos' politics. Commerce is not an election; we don't live in a corporatocracy.

Buying from Amazon does not imply endorsement of Jeff Bezo's politics and economic interests. Your equivalence between that and AOC's grassroots support is completely nonsensical.

That's strictly not true. People vote for Amazon the product (over Walmart's web experience), they don't vote for Amazon the Jeff Bezos Political Agenda. Those are two totally different things. For instance, there's plenty of right-wing folks who shop on Amazon while simultaneously hating the Washington Post.

As mentioned upthread, this is the difference between democracy and rule by wealth.

>they don't vote for Amazon the Jeff Bezos Political Agenda.

Plenty of companies take a hit on their wallet when the CEO has political agendas the customers don't like.

Sure, but I think that's conflating two things.

You're welcome to take a hit to your wallet when you don't want to enrich a certain business leader. What you shouldn't have to do is take a hit to your wallet because you don't want to politically empower a certain business leader. This is especially true as there's less and less competition, and a few huge players control a disproportionate amount of the market (which is an issue on its own, albeit a separate one).

The idea behind a democracy for better or worse is one individual gets one vote. When you start having to figure out how you're voting by proxy through the leadership of each company you do business with, I'd wager, that wouldn't be within the spirit of the system.

Companies should compete for individual walletshare by merit, and it really should be apolitical. It won't always be, of course, but I think we're better off if we try and limit it. Conflating the two weakens both imo.

The CEO of Crossfit as a recent example.

Excellently put. And put differently: even if people actually thought that Bezos was just a brilliant businessman, why would anyone think that he's a brilliant social strategist? Or resource planner? Or commander-in-chief? Just because someone knows how to build and run a company that's great at selling stuff tells you absolutely about their qualities as a political/national leader.

Amazon tried to unseat a couple Seattle City Council members in the last election. It backfired, and Amazon faces a Council that has voted a huge payroll tax onto Amazon in revenge.

So if Amazon can't even control local elections, I wonder where all this supposed political power is?

Also, AOC was instrumental in preventing Amazon from establishing a second headquarters in NY. As a freshman Congressman.

One failure does not disprove a hypothesis.

It's a pretty big failure for Amazon and a big score for AOC.

His monetary wealth shouldn't give him power over anyone but his own company, nor should it allow him to exercise his right to speech that are denied others for reasons directly related to wealth.

It does in both instances. They're not orthogonal.

What about famous people? Beautiful people? Charismatic people? People with the right family name? Bush, Clinton, Kennedy?

What about the power newspapers have over shaping the national dialogue? what about tv stations? What about unions? What about film makers, authors?

How do we limit their power? or is it only money that we're concerned about?

Actually your example of newspaper and TV stations exactly examplifies why billionaires have such a vast political power which is unhealthy for society. No single TV station, newspaper by itself would ever yield so much power as to be able to shape public opinion in one direction. However take the media empire of the Murdochs which yields a disproportionate amount of power in several countries, very directly pushing the ideology of it's owners.

I'd say the New York Times is far more influential than murdoch's tabloids and fox. But that's just my opinion.

What do all of them have in common?

Recently I've found myself voting for Walmart, and Best Buy, and Newegg, rather than Amazon. Mostly based on price…

I think you have some very distorted concept of democracy. I don't know any definition which includes voting by where you shop.

Also I note that the strategy to paint the political class (as opposed to e.g. the business class or some "new" political class) as all corrupt is a common strategy by totalitarians to undermine democratic processes.

And the power of previous societies aristocrats stemmed from all the peasants voting with their feet and not leaving the "kings/Lords..." land?

I can't believe that we are seriously discussing that using some online retailer is somewhat a voting process equivalent to democratic elections. This really shakes my faith in humanity and the HN community.

This is totally misleading.

A capitalist-ish economy is designed to create winners. If it wasn't Bezos, it would be someone else. What matters about Bezos' wealth (in this context) is not that this specific person controls it, but that we live in a society/economy where there will always be people who accrue this level of power and wealth. The problem isn't that Jeff Bezos is this rich, it's that we live in a society designed to concentrate money in this way.

ps. I was the 2nd employee at amazon, and worked closely with Bezos for 14 months.

Democratic support of a vocal minority and remember her power is predicated on violence, where bezos's power is based on voluntary interaction -- a big difference.

Bezos's power is entirely predicated on violence, as the ownership of any assets he holds are marked as belonging to him through the backing of violent institutions. This is arguably moreso than AOC as she has no executive authority.

She won with 57% of the vote in her district. By definition not a minority. Are you objecting to her winning through a democratic process?

She, as most politicians, compete in a primary - that is where the real election is. Her district was going to vote for the Democrat candidate no matter who was selected in the primary. Lastly 57% may seem like a lot or whatever, but it's ~16,000 votes out of a potential ~700,000 for the district. Hell, 16k out of ~100,000 that voted last time isn't a huge amount.

REF: https://ballotpedia.org/New_York%27s_14th_Congressional_Dist...

But that's just a minor point, overall.

Wealth can disappear, too. Look at the Hearst family. Large corporations routinely go bankrupt, which vaporizes all the value of the stock it had.

AOC does not have more political power than Jeff Bezos and to suggest otherwise is tremendously foolish. Political power is far more than just the ability to change federal statutes, it includes things like being able to get faster approval for the zoning of your particular projects or getting your company tax breaks.

I believe Jeff Bezos has more power than AOC.

Bezos has vastly more power than AOC. His decisions affect the lives of 840,000 direct employees and at least as many again - I'm not sure the figures even exist - "freelance" content suppliers, small businesses, and casual workers.

His tax avoidance policies have a significant impact on the budgets of the larger Western countries.

AOC has a media profile, but - so far - almost no influence at all on US policy. That may change in the future, but given that the Dem Establishment seem to consider her a dangerous extremist, it's possible she'll be sidelined into becoming her generation's powerless token left-leaning icon.

AOC effectively prevented Amazon from establishing a second headquarters in NY.

> the Dem Establishment seem to consider her a dangerous extremist

They invited her to speak at the Dem convention. That makes her mainstream.

Certainly in some ways. But AOC (with others) arguably shifted an entire mainstream party's platform. I think that the "hard power" that Bezos has is larger, but the "soft power" wielded by political and cultural elites is massive and easy to underestimate.

Is AOC either politically or culturally elite?

What kind of power, though? Political power and economic power are fundamentally different.

Forms of power are fungible in nearly all societies.

That's not actually true. Why didn't Bloomberg win the primary this year, for all his money?

He didn't, but with his donations to the DNC and the creation of Hawkfish, he'll have an inordinate amount of power in the direction of the party for years to come regardless because of his money.

I said that different sorts of power were fungible. I did not say that a specific sum can be used to acquire a highly specific office by any particular individual. It's entirely possible to use vast wealth inefficiently and fail to acquire political power or influence.

It's possible to use the same wealth efficiently to pay individuals to study the problem of which individuals to contribute to in order to acquire increasing and undue influence.

Your argument is that you shot at someone five times and failed to injure them thus guns doing kill people.

He still got more votes and media attention than any private citizen of average wealth possibly could expect.

How did Bloomberg get into the primary this year, as opposed to say, you?

I would like to introduce you to a family which is called the Murdochs. This family alone has probably yielded more political power than most elected officials in many western democracies combined. You don't even need to look at Fox news, but only look at Australien politics, where Rupert Murdoch (who isn't even an Australien citizen or taxpayer anymore) has had the most intimate access to politicians. I encourage you to look at the repeal of the NBN (which was very popular) and the role of Murdoch newspapers in getting the labor government voted out.

AOC has to actually work for her political power. Billionaires can sic 1000 lawyers and lobbyists at whatever initiative they want, without lifting a finger.

And that's just an example :-)

Activists do it as their day job, for billionaires it's just one of the many side effects of their wealth.

> AOC has to actually work for her political power.

Meanwhile, Amazon was gifted to Bezos by God himself at the age of 15.

Ummm... are you misreading my comment?

Bezos had to work to found a successful business. Which came with a ton of benefits.

Political power is a (un?)intended side effect of owning that successful business. That side effect is the problem.

I'm not sure how this is apparently a controversial point. There's vast and obvious evidence that this is the case. More Dunning-Krugerism from the tech industry.

Good thing you're immune.

"Political power" is an unavoidable side effect of having power, simply – this almost reads like a tautology, but it's worth keeping in mind that the former is effectively an extension of the latter.

I argue money is power in a free market society. I'm not sure there is a way to fix the first part of that sentence without completely modifying the latter.

It was actually gifted to him by his parents, in the form of a $300,000 loan. How is it so difficult to accept that the vast majority of the wealthy were helped by having wealthy parents rather than pulling themselves up their bootstraps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Business_career

How many people with $300k go on to build Amazon? Nobody is saying he didn't have any help, and that's frankly not the bar we want to measure people by.

Statistically, people with wealthy parents are far more likely to be wealthy than those of poor parents. Bezos would have been far less likely to create Amazon did he not get that loan. Do you dispute this?

I don't dispute that, but also don't want to write policy to change that. It isn't really an informative fact. It's almost obvious, really.

Maybe. So what? No one is an individual. “He” is also a product of his parents’ DNA mixing to produce an intellectually healthy and superior brain. His parents also stuffed copious amounts of useful information into that brain. As did people around him growing up. And his parents used savings, likely derived from many generations of people passing on their wealth/culture/knowledge, to aid in the continuation of their DNA’s importance to humanity.

$188,700,000,000 - $300,000 = $188,699,700,000

This is exactly the same level of mathematical sophistication as in Paul's original post.

I don't exactly give a shit, I googled Bezos current net worth. I'm savvy enough to know it's not liquid cash, if you're trying to make a snarky remark. Or you could just say what you mean.

> loan

People borrow $300,000 all the time to buy a house.

Actually there is significant research that successful people significantly overestimate their skills/contributions even if they rely largely on luck or advantageous starting conditions. There is also significant research that shows that even in a relatively "fair" trading scenario wealth distribution very quickly becomes completely unequal, just based on luck in the first couple of trades [1]

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-ine...

Why do you think AOC has any actual power at all?

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