[altusbrown]

Do you think Amazon would just exist if Bezos didn't do what he did?

Do you think groups of people spontaneously collect in ways that produce more value than they cost to exist? Even if there is no way to benefit from it individually at scale?

If you do, I can understand where you are coming from - it doesn't line up at all with my experience or extensive datasets I have, but I'd understand it.

If that can't just happen, then how did he not earn it?

[CRConrad]

> Do you think Amazon would just exist if Bezos didn't do what he did?

Something else very similar would probably exist. And in that universe, people would probably go "Do you think DeNile would just exist if Ben Jeffries didn't do what he did?".

[altusbrown]

Based on your comment, I'm assuming you would expect them to be led by someone doing the same things - which just highlights the role doesn't?

[anoncake]

I'm not saying Bezos didn't earn anything. But not billions.

[altusbrown]

Amazon currently employs 798,000 employees. It touches essentially every household, and based on revenue and customer counts is clearly a well used service with utility for a great many people. It is valued by investors at 1660 billion dollars (1.6T market cap), and in 2020 earned revenue of 386 billion dollars. Those employees seem to feel it's a positive deal for them, and the investors certainly seem happy to value it at that amount. Not everyone is happy, but that is true of most things in my experience. They still seem happier than a lot of people at Walmart or the like.

How much would be appropriate for the person who had the vision (back before Amazon existed) to build it, pulled the right folks together, hired and fired who it took to make it work, and structured them and the work they were doing to produce that over a decade - including all the reviews and direction through good times and bad? 1%? 5%? 25%? Even 1% is 16 billion dollars. Most people would argue it should be a lot more than 5% if you stripped out the dollar amounts and the names.