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schrototo | 8 years ago

How about he spend it on paying his workers a living wage?

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comboy|8 years ago

Oh come on.

When we talk about him, personally, that's his wealth. He can give it to charity, use it to improve the world or burn it on pleasures. It's his money that society agreed to give him - it's society that owes him. I know the system has many flaws, FED etc. but this in general is how money works. You give something, and in exchange you get right to receive something.

When we talk about Amazon he decided to optimize for customer, not employee satisfaction. I'm not a fan of what Amazon is doing currently (as an e-commerce) but when you sum amount of welfare it provided over the whole humanity, it seems quite possible that it is a very positive number - I'm assuming unhappiness of employees counts negatively towards it. Apart from the whole economical aspect, creating work places and opportunities for other companies to create them, just looking at cheaper prices, let's say employee A earns $500 less than he could. And that per one employee we have 10,000 customers in similar living situation that saved $20. The net result for people in this life situation is $200,000 - $500.

And then there's difficult problem of general optimization function if you want to do whatever best you can for the humanity. Given GCRs associated with all of us living on the same rock, if you think about humanity as a whole and its future, it may turn out that space exploration has extremely high priority and it would be EV+ even if we would have to scarify lives of most of those currently alive.

jacknews|8 years ago

Legally, yes it's his wealth. Who's actually built the company though, him alone? It really should belong to eveyone who's helped built it.

legitster|8 years ago

I mean, if he is spending the money on space-tech, he is putting it back into someone's wages. So would it be better if he put it back in the pockets of the 500,000 workers who are already contributing to the economy (and they are already making slightly above market rate for their labor), or would you rather him invest in these new jobs?

drharby|8 years ago

Because thats his perogative?

PhasmaFelis|8 years ago

I don't understand why you think this is a good argument. There are plenty of things people are allowed to do that they really shouldn't.

saudioger|8 years ago

prerogative, and yeah - if you're the richest person on the planet it would be nice if the employees that got you there weren't living paycheck to paycheck.

saudioger|8 years ago

He'd rather get off planet than deal with the needs of all you plebes.

lucb1e|8 years ago

To explain my downvote: not contributing to the conversation.

sneak|8 years ago

He pays the workers the lowest wages they will consent to work for, just like all employers.

Don’t blame employers for the iron law of wages.

asdsa5325|8 years ago

It's not an iron law. Plenty of employers spend more money, in order to increase retention and productivity. Believe it or not, there are many employers who actually care and see their employees as human.