Hacker News Reader

Comment by istingray | Hacker News Reader

I believe you're being downvoted because of the "heirs" mistake. MacKenzie Scott earned her half.

Commenting on the "have something first". If you're 20 years old you have 60 years you can give. Gates is a poor man comparatively.

View on HN

I was comparing Scott to heirs. People who got money without being responsible for it. Of course she was the wife of Bezos but how much is she responsible for the success of Amazon compared to another wife ?

I don't get how you could do more good with 40years of life with 0 on a bank account vs 1 day of life and 60bn on bank account

I don't think in this particular case its reasonable to compare her impact on Amazons success to an heir. Jeff Bezos thought quite publicly how superior she was to other potential wives in terms of her resourcefulness which was applied both directly to Amazon in early days and later to Bezos personally. The unfairness of her unearned wealth is not that different from the cofounder or early investor who steps back and retains equity but is not involved in the day to day.

How did Scott earn her half?

By getting Bezos to sign the dotted line.

The same way any ex-wife "earns" their alimony.

Marriages are team efforts. She was also an early laborer at Amazon.

She earned her half only in a narrow legal sense. No one would seriously assign more than \epsilon "real" credit for her contributions.

According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)#History) she actually played not such a small role in founding the company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com