Just because they could afford to give more doesn't make this money meaningless.

I'm not saying we need to like, bow down and praise Bezos over this, or that it erases any other bad things he may have done...but let's try to acknowledge that hundreds of millions toward this kind of charity is an actual good thing and not just a pointless PR stunt.

That doesn't mean that $400MM is a small amount of money, it means the LOTR reboot was an expensive TV show or whatever it was. It is a large amount of money.

what a nonsense comparison. anyway, you're showing a misunderstanding of the complexity of capital allocation.

So he should have donated 1 billion? why not 2? why not 5? why not 10? well hang on, 10 billion for greening some areas? That's not an optimal use of 10 billion. 8 of those should go to doctors without borders. wait hang on, have you seen the ukrainian refugee crisis? and you're putting 8 billion towards doctors without borders? they should get at least 3 of that. wow so you've donated 10 billion dollars but not a single dollar towards educating women in third world countries? etc ad nauseum.

I guess your take is probably that it's his responsibility to donate 100% of his wealth optimally across the world, and spend the rest of his life doing that. but i'm appealing to people with more sense when I say: don't underestimate how difficult it is to "correctly" spend a large amount of wealth.

It's bigger than that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_Yo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation

And now

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Philanthropy (not significant enough yet to warrant it's own page)

A classic move by exploitative billionaires to launder their legacy. But what's the alternative? NOT doing it? We should support it, and shame the billionaires that DON'T. do this.

It's also in the ballpark of what one AMZN warehouse in Alabama may have cost to build. ($325M)[1]

I'd like to compare this $400M action to the effort AMZN has spent on paving the planet. ('Making a dent', one might say)

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/amazon-breaks-ground-o...

I mean, nobody should have this much money, so it isn’t like I want to defend the guy, but it was the most expensive show ever. If “less expensive than Rings of Power” is the benchmark, almost every other project in the world is a tiny indie affair. IMO the lesson there is “money can’t buy competence.”

I bet they can make some nice parks for $400M. According to Wikipedia, Disneyland cost $130M adjusted to 2021 dollars. 3 Disneylands isn’t nothing.