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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

// Tell me how a person can "earn" enough money by doing work that produces 60,000 lifetimes worth of wealth.

According to a quick Google, Amazon has 310 million customers. Think about that - Bezos built something that a third of a billion of humans find valuable enough to use. Isn't that equally, if not more, impressive than the "60,000" lifetimes measure?

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This argument doesn't make sense. For one, Bezos is not the only person responsible for Amazon's success. The company literally is one of the largest employers in the U.S. and a notable employer in many other places. Tens of thousands of people contribute to Amazon's success, directly and indirectly, which in my view makes Bezo's wealth even more absurd.

Secondly, there are a ton of people who have contributed significantly to things a lot of people use. Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs were instrumental to the development of the iPhone (about 1 Billion users worldwide). The "Tetra Pak" and similar containers are used by hundreds of Millions of people every day. There are ton of other examples. Being loved/used/supported by a large share of the population does not entitle you to essentially infinite money.

// Tens of thousands of people contribute to Amazon's success, directly and indirectly, which in my view makes Bezo's wealth even more absurd

Did these people not get paid? Many of them are also millionaires or very least FAANG-level comp, and then for the warehouse/drivers is it not their best opportunity (hence they working there?)

// Steve Jobs were instrumental to the development of the iPhone

Jobs was worth 10B when he died, and that share of Apple would be worth a lot more today. Are you saying that Jobs-level wealth is ok while Bezos level isn't? How do you decide and more importantly WHO gets to decide?

I’m saying that absurd wealth is exactly that: absurd. Wealth, especially extreme wealth, is to a large extend self perpetuating and not reliant on individual performance and relies instead on redistribution from below to exist. As such it should be taxed out of existence. My personal preference for that would be a very high inheritance tax, including on trusts and foundations, because it retains a decent motivation for wealth creation and allows to pass on a large number of intangible benefits (education, etc) to one’s children.

Einstein and Schroedinger have built something that is useful to that many people and they didn't earn much out of it.

It sounds as absurd to me.

It's less about building something that is useful to many people, and more about selling something that is useful to many people. The fact that what they built was sold by others is a problem they should have thought about.

Apologies if I am misreading you, but you sound really money obsessed as if that was the only measure in life.

I suspect that both Einstein and Schroedinger went into science because they loved intellectual work, the academic lifestyle, the thrill of discovery, and perhaps the fame and recognition. Because they were successful, they attained that which they wanted (granted, I am guessing at their motivations...)

Bezos set out to build a valuable business and as a result of his success, ended up with... a valuable business.

If you evaluate life meaning purely based on dollars (as you seem to be) then yeah Bezos is ahead. If you evaluate life on more complex criteria as I described above, the scientists got what they set out to get, just as much.

People are freely spending their money with Amazon all the time because they find it to be valuable--even paying a premium for having things shipped that they could get by running to the store themselves.

Ruth Georgie Erica is presumably still alive. You could obviously send her payment for whatever value you feel her father brought to your life. Is it absurd that you haven't sent her money or do you only see absurdity in other people's actions and not your own?

No, it's not, because i know that the wages of a single human lifetime are many orders of magnitude more valuable than buying a thing at a particular store.

You are entitled to your opinion of course, but just recognize that the sole reason Bezos is rich is that millions of customers and investors disagree with you. He's only as rich as people find his work to be of value.

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