Jeff Bezos

[FoxEye]

I think Bill Gates started from scratch with his code for the IBM personal computer and writing a basic compiler. Fairly sure he was in college starting this then jacked it in.

AFAIK, Gates bought DOS from someone else Then sold it to IBM.

Since Gates’s first meeting with IBM, he had conveniently gotten his hands on a microcomputer operating system similar to Kildall’s, from nearby Seattle Computer Products. SCP, which sold microcomputer boards, needed an operating system that ran on the new Intel 8086 processor. Because DRI was late in porting its system to that processor, SCP hired programmer Tim Paterson to create one. It called this system QDOS, for “Quick and Dirty Operating System.” Gates bought the rights to QDOS for $75 000 and hired Paterson to modify it into MS-DOS; that’s what he licensed to IBM for its PC as PC-DOS.

 

[FoxEye]

People get excited by his wealth but the majority is tied up in Amazon stock, he's rich because he owns 11% of the company. I often wonder why people don't look at people like Jeff Bezos as an inspiration to achieve their own goals rather than to try and take some moral high ground and talk about how much money he has compared to people who work for him in order to cover up their envy.

The consequences of having such a large share of the world's power and resource concentrated in one person/ one organisation are yet to fully play out.

Part of those consequences will be the rise and eventual normalisation of non-human labour. Companies with virtually unlimited wealth (Google/Amazon/Microsoft) are much more interested in spending $billions to develop full automation and AI.

The real unknown comes when most of us have no jobs anymore.

Far from being envious, I'm curious about what (somewhat horrifying) future scenarios will come to pass.

Btw I don't believe in the scenario where humans are freed from menial labours and spend all day on creative endeavours. I believe we will see a much more "terminal" eventual solution to the non-productive human population.

I firmly believe that non-productive humans will become a global destitute class, and that the human population will shrink massively. Whether by forced sterilisation or .. other means. The history of humanity does not show us to be very concerned with the well-being of non-productive citizens. And unlike now, where high-unemployment is a pain but manageable, the future of almost zero employment is going to be a much different class of problem, requiring much more radical thinking. Or course we'll have to disarm the US population (etc) before that moment arises.

Heh, maybe we'll be packed up and shipped off to Mars by Musk (in his immortal machine form, that is )

 

[Wizzfizz]

^ Piloted by Picard (aka Bezos)

 

[Irish_Tom]

Whatever you may think about the hyper rich, consider what it takes to merely succeed in this hyper competitive world, let alone thrive.

Then consider that he took his business from this:

To this:

I think it's worth highlighting that in the first photo, taken circa 1999, Bezos was already worth over $1bn — possibly as much as $9–10bn:

“And where are Amazon’s headquarters? The public relations people told us to come to 1516 Second Avenue between Pike and Pine in Seattle,” says Simon, as he walks down the block.

“But when we passed the pawn shop and the porno parlor, the wig store and the downmarket teriyaki joint, we didn’t see anything vaguely cutting-edge. No corporate drives or office towers. Just a heroin-needle exchange and an old building called Columbia, but it had the number 1516 so we walked inside — and there it was.”

When Simon got upstairs, he was surprised — yet again — by the banality of the office, including the badly stained carpet and Bezos’ desk, made out of a door propped up on two-by-fours.

Even in 1999, Bezos was likely a billionaire several times over. (Simon asked Bezos later in the segment about being worth $9 billion to $10 billion dollars — a figure which Bezos neither confirmed nor denied.) So why the makeshift workspace?

“It’s a symbol of spending money on things that matter to customers and not spending money on things that don’t,” says Bezos, who at the time was wearing a blue dress shirt and khakis and drove a Honda.

When Simon zinged the billionaire for driving a Honda, Bezos’ response: “This is a perfectly good car.”

Bezos is far from a 'rags to riches' story, and the modest state of the office in the first photo is more out of choice than necessity. It's probably why he's worth so much now.

That's not to take anything away from his achievements, just adding some context.

I think Bill Gates started from scratch with his code for the IBM personal computer and writing a basic compiler. Fairly sure he was in college starting this then jacked it in.

Bill Gates is another interesting case — again, hardly a rags to riches story. He is featured in Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Outliers', which made famous the theory of the 10,000 hours rule. I'll refrain from copying the entire chapter dedicated to Gates but it's an interesting read. Essentially, as a kid, he had some unprecedented opportunities to learn to code. Here's a pertinent paragraph:

By the time Gates dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year to try his hand at his own software company, he’d been programming practically nonstop for seven consecutive years. He was way past ten thousand hours. How many teenagers in the world had the kind of experience Gates had?
…
[Gates says] "I had a better exposure to software development at a young age than I think anyone did in that period of time, and all because of an incredibly lucky series of events.”

Again, it's not to detract from his achievements but adds some useful context to explain how/why he was in a position to do what he did.

 

[jpaul]

Unlike microsoft the benefit to humanity of Amazon, seems questionable, yes, economy of scale, and consumer convenience, but, on products,
that they could mostly have bought from the high street, supporting that, now dying, ecosystem instead, with it's in store experts etc.
With Amazon the revenue is just displaced into that companies shares, and, do we have cheaper products finally ?
The original remit with books, probably helped education.

[

I think you mean Felix Baumgartner

my misplaced idolotryidiocy
]

 

[Bigpops]

I've no time for him. I spend my money anywhere other than but Amazon wherever possible, but I don't cut my nose off to spite my face.

 

[FoxEye]

I've no time for him. I spend my money anywhere other than Amazon wherever possible, but I don't cut my nose off to spite my face.

Amazon is not normally the cheapest place for anything I buy, so I avoid them naturally via the normal process of shopping around.

 

[Diddums]

I don't cut my nose off to spite my face.

I spend my money anywhere other than Amazon wherever possible

 

[Roar87]

The consequences of having such a large share of the world's power and resource concentrated in one person/ one organisation are yet to fully play out.

Part of those consequences will be the rise and eventual normalisation of non-human labour. Companies with virtually unlimited wealth (Google/Amazon/Microsoft) are much more interested in spending $billions to develop full automation and AI.

The real unknown comes when most of us have no jobs anymore.

Far from being envious, I'm curious about what (somewhat horrifying) future scenarios will come to pass.

Btw I don't believe in the scenario where humans are freed from menial labours and spend all day on creative endeavours. I believe we will see a much more "terminal" eventual solution to the non-productive human population.

I firmly believe that non-productive humans will become a global destitute class, and that the human population will shrink massively. Whether by forced sterilisation or .. other means. The history of humanity does not show us to be very concerned with the well-being of non-productive citizens. And unlike now, where high-unemployment is a pain but manageable, the future of almost zero employment is going to be a much different class of problem, requiring much more radical thinking. Or course we'll have to disarm the US population (etc) before that moment arises.

Heh, maybe we'll be packed up and shipped off to Mars by Musk (in his immortal machine form, that is )

The thing is, prices have to adapt to the amount of capital customers have. If everyone was unemployed earning £70 a week, then Amazon wouldn't be making much money because they'd have no customers. Basically the market is shaped on supply and demand, there would be a huge surplus of supply if no one had any money, so prices would drop to an affordable level. In a world where drones deliver all your packages, shipping costs are reduced to pennies. In a world where everything is manufactured by machinery and food production is automated, everything is very cheap and in plentiful supply. There's always going to be demand for entertainment, people most likely don't want robots looking after the sick and the elderly, though obviously artificial intelligence in medicine will be great in helping Doctors and researchers. It's really difficult not to cite everyone complaining about the use of machinery in agriculture putting thousands of people out of work, yet now we have higher living standards and more people working inside in comfortable offices and less work place deaths and injuries. Humans just adapt.

 

[413x]

The thing is, prices have to adapt to the amount of capital customers have. If everyone was unemployed earning £70 a week, then Amazon wouldn't be making much money because they'd have no customers. Basically the market is shaped on supply and demand, there would be a huge surplus of supply if no one had any money, so prices would drop to an affordable level. In a world where drones deliver all your packages, shipping costs are reduced to pennies. In a world where everything is manufactured by machinery and food production is automated, everything is very cheap and in plentiful supply. There's always going to be demand for entertainment, people most likely don't want robots looking after the sick and the elderly, though obviously artificial intelligence in medicine will be great in helping Doctors and researchers. It's really difficult not to cite everyone complaining about the use of machinery in agriculture putting thousands of people out of work, yet now we have higher living standards and more people working inside in comfortable offices and less work place deaths and injuries. Humans just adapt.

Going to be a fascinating couple of decades.
I think adaption will be a net loss of population from the developed world. Which, if handled correctly, is obviously a great thing as we are overpopulated.

We simply won't need people going forward as robots will replace so many.

But humans have adapted in the past. But I dunno if we can to the environmental apocalypses that are on the way.

Humans will be around for a long while. But I don't know if the net standard of living can rise anymore.

It would take a shift away from capitalism in its current guise.


Really, I'm suprised bodies like the EU aren't taking the threat of the US massive corporations funneling money out of the EU into near individuals pockets a bit more seriously.

Right now I'd expect us to be well underway clawing some of that back in taxes etc

 

[FoxEye]

The thing is, prices have to adapt to the amount of capital customers have. If everyone was unemployed earning £70 a week, then Amazon wouldn't be making much money because they'd have no customers. Basically the market is shaped on supply and demand, there would be a huge surplus of supply if no one had any money, so prices would drop to an affordable level. In a world where drones deliver all your packages, shipping costs are reduced to pennies. In a world where everything is manufactured by machinery and food production is automated, everything is very cheap and in plentiful supply. There's always going to be demand for entertainment, people most likely don't want robots looking after the sick and the elderly, though obviously artificial intelligence in medicine will be great in helping Doctors and researchers. It's really difficult not to cite everyone complaining about the use of machinery in agriculture putting thousands of people out of work, yet now we have higher living standards and more people working inside in comfortable offices and less work place deaths and injuries. Humans just adapt.

There's a fairly significant difference in putting "everybody" in one sector out of work (note - this really hasn't happened anyhow, even in agriculture), vs putting everybody in non-arts-and-entertainment sectors out of work (eventually).

Going to be a fascinating couple of decades.

Quite. Could be fascinating and terrible at the same time Although my doom and gloom prediction is likely to take longer than that to play out Maybe 50 years, or 100.

 

[413x]

There's a fairly significant difference in putting "everybody" in one sector out of work (note - this really hasn't happened anyhow, even in agriculture), vs putting everybody in non-arts-and-entertainment sectors out of work (eventually).


Quite. Could be fascinating and terrible at the same time Although my doom and gloom prediction is likely to take longer than that to play out Maybe 50 years, or 100.

For kids now it'll either be amazing (live in a virtual world, no need for jobs etc).

Or it will be hell. No jobs, but not enough to live like parents did. No inheritance to speak of or pensions. Liking bezos' balls on his robotic clone to get thier amazon optimus prime subscription renewed.

Something has to happen to house prices and our debt, net job loss at some point

Feels like uncharted waters as tech is rapidly accelerating. And fewer and fewer companies now control monopolies and basically kids minds.

At 35,i feel I'm catching the leading edge of this.

 

[Semple]

The consequences of having such a large share of the world's power and resource concentrated in one person/ one organisation are yet to fully play out.

Part of those consequences will be the rise and eventual normalisation of non-human labour. Companies with virtually unlimited wealth (Google/Amazon/Microsoft) are much more interested in spending $billions to develop full automation and AI.

The real unknown comes when most of us have no jobs anymore.

Far from being envious, I'm curious about what (somewhat horrifying) future scenarios will come to pass.

Btw I don't believe in the scenario where humans are freed from menial labours and spend all day on creative endeavours. I believe we will see a much more "terminal" eventual solution to the non-productive human population.

I firmly believe that non-productive humans will become a global destitute class, and that the human population will shrink massively. Whether by forced sterilisation or .. other means. The history of humanity does not show us to be very concerned with the well-being of non-productive citizens. And unlike now, where high-unemployment is a pain but manageable, the future of almost zero employment is going to be a much different class of problem, requiring much more radical thinking. Or course we'll have to disarm the US population (etc) before that moment arises.

Heh, maybe we'll be packed up and shipped off to Mars by Musk (in his immortal machine form, that is )

It is definitely an interesting situation of potential futures. An economy only runs when everyone chips in, and that means many menial labour tasks that most people don't want to do. When full automation kicks in, and most of those menial labour tasks don't need doing by a human, which would then mean a large proportion of the population having to rely on the state.

Amazon is not normally the cheapest place for anything I buy, so I avoid them naturally via the normal process of shopping around.

I'm curious, what were the last three things you purchased that wasn't cheaper on Amazon? I ask because i do shop around when i need to purchase something, but normally always find that it's cheaper on Amazon.

 

[FoxEye]

I'm curious, what were the last three things you purchased that wasn't cheaper on Amazon? I ask because i do shop around when i need to purchase something, but normally always find that it's cheaper on Amazon.

Mobile phone case (was £3.50 on eBay and the same one was £6 on Amazon), some fish filters (cheaper on eBay by 50p or something).

My Nokia 5.3 was £150 at Argos and at the time the cheapest on Amazon was £180 I think, although it had been £150 before that (but not in the colour I wanted, hence why I waited).

Amazon's prices obviously vary on a near daily basis being algorithmic. But when I buy something I normally find Amazon's prices are easy to beat elsewhere.

For small ticket items, eBay is almost always cheaper. I assume because Amazon's fees for marketplace sellers are higher than eBays?

 

[Semple]

Mobile phone case (was £3.50 on eBay and the same one was £6 on Amazon), some fish filters (cheaper on eBay by 50p or something).

My Nokia 5.3 was £150 at Argos and at the time the cheapest on Amazon was £180 I think, although it had been £150 before that (but not in the colour I wanted, hence why I waited).

Amazon's prices obviously vary on a near daily basis being algorithmic. But when I buy something I normally find Amazon's prices are easy to beat elsewhere.

For small ticket items, eBay is almost always cheaper. I assume because Amazon's fees for marketplace sellers are higher than eBays?

Ah fair enough, you did just remind me that i had purchased a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable recently and that was miles cheaper on ebay than Amazon.

Normally i struggle to find anywhere that beats it. Sometimes pricing can be on par, but admittedly i tend to have less hassle with sellers on Amazon versus Ebay, so the default would be choosing Amazon.

 

[Merlin5]

I'd be surprised if he had $10bn in liquid cash, he probably has half that.

Didn't know that. How is he able to put food on the table? Must be living hand to mouth.

 

[jpaul]

Was Getty richer, considering inflation, or Nebukanezzer ?
In the recent film, although Getty wasn't inclined to pay the ransom, he was shown as having little liquid cash

 

[413x]

Ebay is generally cheaper. Especially for small tat like cables etc.

Id say I spend more on ebay but my purchase count is much much more on ebay.

Amazon tend to be cheaper on big heavy good. Because of their delivery. But ebay are almosy always cheaper on light cheap tat

90 percent of my non food shopping must be between ebay and amazon

If I look at my desk nothing is new. Not a single item.
It's all ebay, amazon or open box. Ocuk forum. Even my monitor is b-grade ocuk

Only my ebike (from Germany) is new in the last 6 months

 

[Tephnos]

 

[Gerard]

Ebay is generally cheaper. Especially for small tat like cables etc.

Id say I spend more on ebay but my purchase count is much much more on ebay.

Amazon tend to be cheaper on big heavy good. Because of their delivery. But ebay are almosy always cheaper on light cheap tat

90 percent of my non food shopping must be between ebay and amazon

If I look at my desk nothing is new. Not a single item.
It's all ebay, amazon or open box

Problem with ebay is the amount of sellers claiming to be in the UK then when you order something you then find out the seller is based in China. Gets irritating especially when you need something in a hurry, and it's usually not obvious the seller is based in China as they usually claim to be based in London.