Good morning all! I admit that my take on all of this is going to be idiosyncratic, but when is it not?!
Firstly, the space program of the 1960s. My father was an aeronautics engineer who designed telecommunications satellites--most of which are the ones folks in the developed world (and beyond--he had a very interesting career!) have used since the 1960s for fun stuff like telephone calls. For us the space program was central to our lives and I followed it closely. My dad was also a raging lefty--which could make it hard to work for some of the people who paid his salary--and I think the thing that disappointed him most about the direction the space program went after 1968 was the fact that despicables like Nixon and Reagan were in charge of it after the hopefulness of the Kennedy years. My sorrow at the death of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and my disgust that Nixon got to be the one to congratulate the Apollo team still resonates in me: it was a pivotal moment in my life.
Secondly, the current space programs, both publicly funded and private (i.e. Bezos and Branson and their ilk): The USA has done a terrible job of maintaining and expanding a responsible and useful space program. The fact that there has never been a good replacement for the space shuttle; the fact that the decision to abandon deep space development for decades while littering our near-space environment with junk has hampered the growth of a responsible program: these are elements of shortsightedness that generations of Republican administrations (and arses like Clinton, whose programs were driven by popularity ratings) have wrought. The most innovative stuff is coming out of the three private companies--Space-X, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin--because these sociopaths (and really, they are all three sociopaths) have enough money to be able to throw it around with wild abandon, while the USA pinches pennies and lets its own citizens starve and struggle. I know that a robust NASA will not solve world hunger, but again: isn't that the job of government, not private individuals?
Thirdly, Bezos and Amazon: I admit I am conflicted. The guy is remarkably weird. But he also had a model to get, initially, books and information out to places where there was a dearth of both and he was willing to lose money like it was sludge going downstream for years in order to make that happen. I taught for almost 2 decades at a university in a part of the country that had virtually no bookstores for 100 miles in any direction and the public libraries were terrible. I was dependent on Amazon--especially in the long winter months when travel to a Barnes and Noble or Borders was almost impossible--as were all my students and colleagues. And Bezos was losing money for all those years but kept doing what he was doing, patiently building up his retail model. Is he deeply strange? Yes. Is he tone-deaf? Yes. Should he be paying a s***-ton more in taxes? Oh my goodness, yes. But in many parts of the country, his company was a lifeline, and it remains one of the better-paying jobs for a whole lot of people.
What I don't understand is why people rail about Bezos but not about the Walton family, whose business model did more to kill off Main Street, USA than Amazon ever did. Perhaps because Bezos is in-your-face strange, and the Waltons seem so, um, homey? I buy from Amazon because I refuse to give the Waltons any more of my hard-earned money.
Love this! Yes to reading via Kindle or to purchasing books. Yes to Video via Amazon Prime and not subscribing to cable TV when part of that subscription supports Fox News. No way to stuff but I live just a couple of miles from a Target Store - and for a giant corp, Target is pretty good on issues I care about including what their corporate foundation supports - the arts and LGBTQ issues. They also treat their employees pretty well locally-including hiring lots of new Americans.
But no f#cking way to Sam’s Club or Walmart- even though both are closer to me than Target. I watched what happened to locally owned businesses when Walmart moved in. Businesses that had flourished for years disappeared, especially in rural small towns here in Minnesota. Heartbreaking especially when I think about the outflow of wealth to the Walton family rather than to a community member who was likely to support everything from the local kids’ softball teams to sponsoring community building activities like county fairs. Gads!
Bezos’ efforts to expand space travel bother me enough that I dropped my subscription to The Washington Post. Besides, it is time for a different perspective on what constitutes news. But, despite the vast array of goods available at Walmart, including inexpensive prescription eyeglasses, i will never walk through those doors. Target gives away 5% of their pretax profits. Walmart gives away …. ? Money to Republican candidates. Nope.
I didn't know that about Amazon's beginning. Thanks for sharing. And I too don't understand why there isn't enough said about the Waltons as they certainly did ruin many main street businesses and pay their people little. I don't shop there either and do try to spend my money in small shops and antique malls. You would be surprised at what you can find. Same for second hand shops.
I think it's because Bezos is far more visible than the Waltons. But I doubt he's any better than them as a human being. And while Amazon may be one of the better paying jobs for a whole lot of people, the stresses in those jobs are absolutely in human--the way they are monitored constantly, and forced to always be moving to fill orders. If I remember correctly, Amazon has a high rate of on the job injuries.
And as for Bezos' notion that the solar system can support a trillion people--if that's true that he thinks that, and I find that hard to believe because it's so nutty, that's utter nonsense. Mars, the closest thing to a habitable planet outside of Earth, is completely uninhabitable. Anyone who spends any time on that planet--should Earthlings decide to have bases there--will have to live well underground to avoid radiation, and to go outside in space suits.
The notion of terraforming Mars, which has been bandied about by Musk and probably a few others, is nonsense on a planet suffused with radiation and where the average temperature is way below that of Antarctica.
And who in their right mind would want to live there anyway, with no oceans, no beaches, no lakes, and countryside that looks like they took the ugliest 10 acres in all the terrestrial deserts, and spread that out around the whole planet?
Earth is what we've got. We've grossly overpopulated it, including our own country--especially our own country--since we're the major industrialized nation with the greatest per capita resource use and greenhouse emissions--but if Africa really grows from 1 bn to 3 bn, as projected, we can kiss the rest of the megafauna goodbye.
In 2012, when the population of Earth was 7 billion (it's now 7.8 bn), it would have taken 4.1 Earths to support Earth's entire human population in the lifestyle of the United States. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712
The magnificence of our Earth is cosmic miracle of astonishing beauty and diversity. Instead of cherishing and protecting it, we’re stripping it for parts and planning on sending irreplaceable components to barren planets....for what??
I remember the early 70s, the first Earth Day, and the beginnings of the environmental movement. It included concern about the Earth’s growing population surpassing 3 billion, and how we could provide for the needs of so many people. In addition to promotion of recycling, there were calls for “zero population growth” and that families should not have more than two children. That didn’t work out very well.
Related, at least in my mind: Why do so many people insist on using self checkout, even when there are waits for those lanes, rather than the lanes with human checker outers, which would support real jobs for real people? The Bezoses and Waltons of the world have plenty to answer for, but so do we the people.
I'm with you on this. I always go to the human checker. Among other things, I like interacting with people at the store. It's even better if I feel like I know them--as I do with my pharmacist. I turned down a drug mail delivery service from the hospital where I get most of my care because of that.
As a confirmed introvert, I only pick the human checker because I want to support their job. But I do it every time. I get a so much better deal on my mailpharmacy from Humana that I cannot use my local drug store, except for emergency, one-time presecriptions.
I also get my prescriptions by mail from Kaiser but shop for other items at CVS. For some reason, Walgreens doesn't seem as open and welcoming. I get good service at CVS when I need to ask about where something is shelved, and in both CVS stores I shop in, there are both options plus a human nearby in the event self-checkout acts up. When there's a choice, though, as others here say, I generally choose the 'human' checkout unless I can see there's going to be a wait and I have my dog waiting in the car (windows wide open and, usually, in a shady spot). Thankfully, I live and shop where it's safe to do that.
I would like to hope I have the same reason, David. Alas, I get frustrated by the mistakes the scanner makes (probably my own fault.) I like the helpfulness of the clerks.
I was a checker in my youth. I seldom use self checkout because it can't keep up with me & that pisses me off, lol! The stupid machine can't tell I've bagged the item while I'm scanning the next one.
In the time of Covid with the Delta variant now widespread I try to get in and out of the store as fast as possible with as little interaction as possible with the unmasked people in the stores in my area. That usually means self-checkout. The lanes with human checkers are always backed up.
Interesting though that's not my observation although, admittedly, I shop in only a few locations: Target, Home Depot (no good hardware store within a reasonable distance, and so on. What I see is people with small numbers of items using the self checkout and those with loaded baskets using the 'human' checkout lines. My own choices depend on how many heavily loaded baskets are in the open 'human' lines vs my usual small number of items. I prefer the 'human' lines but don't like standing in line waiting behind loaded 'family sized' baskets. And both at Target & Home Depot that I use, there's a human standing by to assist with the self checkout if needed.
Agreed. But it's approx. 16 miles round trip to the only major alternative, Lowe's, and equally far to San Diego Hardware which I'd prefer to support though I don't have any idea of the owners' political positions. So I go to HD for little things like a specialty light bulb or the hose coupler and a replacement garden hose I needed recently. Not worth my time & gas, or mailing charge if ordered for delivery. Not to mention, both donated to PACs for both parties (covering all bases....):
(from Snopes) What's True
The CEO of Lowe's announced that the company is offering $25 million in grant money for minority-owned businesses trying to reopen amid the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic. Also, Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, gave millions to Trump's 2016 campaign.
What's False
The meme gave the false impression that these donations happened around the same time when they did not. It also failed to mention that Marcus retired from his position in 2002 and that political action committees associated with both Lowe's and Home Depot have contributed money to both major political parties, but more toward Republicans, in the 2020 federal election cycle." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lowes-versus-home-depot-meme/
Pay attention to the number of people in lines along with the size of the basket. In my experience (pre credit & debit cards), taking payment was the longest part of the transaction. An experienced checker can get through a large basket quickly especially if they have someone doing the bagging.
Idiosyncratic, yes. But riveting. What a marvelous read. I am, especially uninformed about space programs and was totally disinterested in Bezos’ trip. Nothing can replace the amazement I felt at 18 when the moon landing took place and my awe at the bravura of Kennedy’s challenge. We were very anti-Russian then - the American fear and loathing of the USSR had certainly transmuted to Canada.
As a side note, the absolute pinnacle of the Cold War for virtually the entire country came when Canada defeated the best of the USSR in an 8 game hockey challenge in called the Summit Series in September of 1972.
Briefly, for I assume (perhaps naively) that many of you know about it, the series produced the most unbelievable sustained dram I have ever witnessed in sports. Canadian sportswriters and the hockey cognoscenti tripped over themselves in predicting how badly the cream of the NHL would savage the “Russkies”. Eight straight wins was a given. People forecast outlandishly high scores on the level of 10-0. There were, to be sure, a very few naysayers but with the surety of our hockey knowledge and from the depths of our patriotic fervor, we lashed those few into silence.
In the practices beforehand (the first four games were in Canada) we laughed at their mismatched uniforms and outdated equipment.
And then in Montreal on September 2 1972, they thumped us 7-3. The nation reeled in shock and the beginning of a deep swell of anger was felt, then quelled. It was, after all, just the first game.
There’s moved on through Canada for games in Toronto (a 4-1 win in Toronto for Canada, allowing for a collective national sigh of relief), Winnipeg (4-4 tie), and then Vancouver, where Canada again lost 5-3.
By this time some things had become obvious. The Russians were far better-conditioned, their skating was noticeably better, and most of all they played a collectivist passing game hanging on to the puck for long, long intervals, retreating when necessary, never shooting until the shot would be deadly. The Canadians, on the other hand, played with heart and dash and flair. We esteemed individual ability over collective accomplishment. The series was a real life metaphor for the struggle between Democracy and Communism. Anybody who imperfectly understood that gulf was perfectly educated in it by the end of the month.
By then the country was wounded and consequently deeply angry - angry in a unified way that I have never seen since.
The players were aware of this of course and at the end of the Vancouver game, Phil Esposito (he who inspired the famous epigram, “Jesus saves. Espo scores on the rebound”), gave an on-ice interview in which he lashed out at the fickleness of the Canadian fans. A quintessentially Canadian moment it was.
His defiance shockingly inspired his teammates. They went to Russia for the final four games. The fates were still against them though and they lost 5-4. This left them in the improbable position of having to win three games in a row in Russia facing a hostile crowd whistling at every opportunity and, it was by now acknowledged, the best goaltender in the world, Vladislav Tretiak. There was a small contingent of brave Canadians who made the trip to Russia to support “our boys”. At every chance, they shouted in unison, “Da da Canada, nyet nyet Soviet”. It was inspiring.
Somehow Canada came back to win the all three of the final games, 3-2, 4-3, and 6-5. The drama in the final game was unbearable. It was a school day and we took all the kids to the gymnasium to watch on a tiny tv. Canada trailed 5-3 going into the third period and then scored 3 unanswered goals., the last with 34 seconds left in the game, to break the tie in both the game and the series.
We exhaled a national and collective sigh of relief. Canada could still claim to be supreme in hockey, our one true popular claim to fame. We had beaten the Russians without two of our most elite players, Bobby Hull and Bobby Orr. We forgave Bobby Clarke for his slash on the ankle of Valéry Kharlamov, Russian superstar had they allowed them. It must be said, more truthfully in fact, that we exulted in what Clarke did. This was war. It’s quite shameful looking back on it.
Nevertheless it was seen as the total vanquishing of the idea of Communism in our eyes. The Soviet Union may not have fallen in fact for nearly two more decades, but in our minds Communism was exposed as a rank failure on September 28, 1972. At the height of it all many felt that we had struck a blow on behalf of our good friend, the United States.
We were so naive, as I look back on it. Everything in our world felt so binary. The Americans put a man on the moon. The Canadians won the Summit Series. Thus the way we organized our society was demonstrably better than the Soviet way.
Leave it to a Canadian to use hockey rather than American-style football in a sports metaphor! This one I actually understand though as several of my college classmates and the coach were on the American Olympic hockey team that won gold in 1980. Will never forget the game against Russia. Unbelievably exciting and well-plyed game!
As to whether it was a simpler time? Some days I think it was. But I do always wish that today’s Americans believed in and trusted science in the same way we seemed to back then (climate change, vaccines) and that hockey could actually be played outdoors most winters here in Minnesota. Being a rink rat as a kid was perfect…. Climate change has robbed kids of the challenges of just spending hours reveling in the wonders of winter.
I don't pay any attention to sports, except for baseball, and then only when th' Saux are playing. But I loved your account of these hockey games, and the exultation of our northern neighbors in beating the Russkies.
Don't you also find it interesting that the Walton family grew up in the Ozark Mountains in NW Arkansas, yet they haven't really helped the economy and poor folks in that state, which is one of the ten poorest states in the country?
Linda, Jeff lost money originally because he was underselling the competition, especially among publishers. Once small businesses folded or complied by lowering their margins, he raised prices to his benefit. It was a business strategy from the beginning. Seemingly, he is without remorse as witnessed by his treatment of lower-echelon employees (I've read that he intends for staff to quit after three years because he deems their performance to decline with time.) That is what is so chilling about these guys, and so damning about their quest for wealth...their inability to empathize with other mortals. It's tempting to respect their capitalistic and inventive genius, but so far, their personalities are so off-putting it's tempting to diagnose them with some major mental deficiencies!
Hope, that is true--but the model was invented by Barnes&Noble and Borders. The distress over the loss of the local bookstore was already a thing long before Amazon. I worked in the publishing industry in the 1980s in NYC in the bookstore division of a very large publishing house. The competition between local bookstores and B&N (this was before Borders) was more or less the same as that between Walmart and everyone else. In addition, the innovations (especially e-readers) that Amazon has initiated over the years, while totally transforming the entire publishing industry, have been a godsend to lots of people whose access to books (especially because public libraries are being defunded by legislatures and local governments all the time) is insufficient for their needs.
Linda, today, you expressed your appreciation for Amazon several times. I know that for many, particularly the elderly and most vulnerable, Amazon has been at the ready during the pandemic as well as before it hit. You have praised Amazon's positive role in publishing and pointed to the faults of Walmart, Barnes&Noble, etc.. It seemed appropriate to share other known facts about Amazon, which some subscribers may not be aware of. There are highly disturbing aspects of its business practices with reference to the workers and they are rooted in Bezos' business philosophy. When the subject of labor has more prominence on the Forum, which I'm sure it will, Amazon would be a prime subject of importance. Here are several links that I hope you will have a chance to open and read:
I recommend Nomadland, written several years ago and subsequently turned into a movie , ( I've read the book, not seen the movie), exemplifies some of Amazon's predatory practices... As well, it's eye-opening to see how many van-dwelling/RV living US Americans, who have lost their homes or can't afford conventional living habits, rely on seasonal contract employment through Amazon, the National Forestry and Park Services, Carnivals, Fairs, crop picking and more. The wages and conditions are frequently crappy. The contractors for the NFS and NPS have been able to get away with not paying overtime, among other things. Both Govt. agencies say they are not responsible for their contractors' business practices. Amazon, too, relies on migratory, seasonal help at low pay and pretty horrible conditions...sometimes employees have to walk 200 yards or more to the nearest bathroom then back the same. They are penalized if it doesn't happen "during a break".
What seems to be happening in the US is the solidification of the underclass - those who want to work and are willing to work long, hard hours to put food on the table and pay the light bill. The other subset are those who worked 30, 40, 50 years or more and had hoped to retire but have found, for whatever reason, they are unable to do so. The 80 year old Wal-Mart greeter or bagger likely spent decades prior to their stint at Wal-Mart working full-time elsewhere. The senior, migrant van dweller who takes a seasonal job with Amazon or picking sugar beets (for god's sake!!) has already spent a lifetime working elsewhere.
The simple fact is this:. The American Dream has never been available for the majority of US Americans. The era directly after WWII allowed the so-called American Dream to flourish for roughly 20 years. The rest is myth. There was never really a time that we can legitimately call the "good old days" - anyone with a realistic, honest grasp of our history will acknowledge that fact. We, as a culture, do ourselves a great disservice by perpetuating the lie that we are a just society dedicated to equal rights for all. We have failed on so many levels. The fact that the richest man in the world, a US American, is so because he is unscrupulous, greedy and would rather spend his money on a joyride into space than make life better for his employees says it all.
I recommend reading Nomadland. Get it from your public library, don't give Bezos your dime.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply and recommendation of Nomadland, no time for it now. I'm sure to like it, so, perhaps, sometime this year, My eyes are crying with the amount I read and have set before me...as with the rest of the body, eyes don't get younger. Daria, America doesn't have to be demystified for me. My adolescence was one of reading grown-up history books, along with Franz Fanon and D.H. Lawrence; picketing Woolworths and attending other civil-rights engagements; playing handball and studying ballet. I was a government major in college; political activism has been part of life, and my career as you know was covering public affairs. America's dance now will keep our heads and hearts in stress until...It is quite demanding to be an alert and engaged American citizen.
Something I read recently(sorry, don't remember where), but until recently, Amazon business model was 100% turnover for warehouse employees
per Year! And now, having trouble hiring enough new employees, they've figured out that burning through that many people in one year, maybe not enough desperate people reside close enough to not have heard all the "excellent benefits" garbage and how that all plays out!
Why not support e-readers and rapid mail delivery of written materials in general? (Don't get me started on the USPS deliberately delayed practices.) There is no need for Amazon to corner this market. In fact, there are many sources for e-books now. Amazon's business practices are appalling.
No doubt, Linda. I have ordered books on Amazon, but now I found an Indie book store whose owner delivers the books to my door on her way home. I think Jeff's greater e-commerce accomplishment is having customers enroll in Prime which includes rapid shipping. I for one dislike shipping fees, and that marvelous delusion of getting an order within a few days without paying for shipping is compelling.
Thank you for this. This seems to be the internet way: put the competition out of business by taking losses for the first few years. That's what Uber and Lyft are doing to taxis. They are still losing gobs of money, and we the people will be the ultimate losers.
I still use taxis to go to the airport, have not downloaded either ride-share app. Though I've not said no when someone else calls for Uber for a group of us.
Because some on the autism spectrum have trouble 'getting' social queues, I've wondered if that's the origin (not Blue) of the problem? (and I'm NOT slamming autistic folks here).
In Bezos' case, some serious malignant narcissism maybe?
Great comment Linda, from where we've been to where we are now. My father was a 'rocket scientist' working on the Cape. I grew up watching the Apollo missions go up, sitting on a beach where manta rays would swim by our feet. My favorite launches were at night from Coco Beach. Magical, powerful displays of humankinds' ingenuity, so I was told. At some point when my father's work veered into defence projects, I could see his moral doubts about his job surface. It affected me deeply. It tortured him, but he had a family to provide for. In the present day, rocket launches pass over my daughter's FL home. She watches them from her front door. I've seen a few with her. The crackling of the rocket boosters, the arc over her home, seems unreal. I've watched the millionaires' race to space with a jaded eye. The LFAA posters have put my ambivalence into all the right words today. Thanks all.
My father attended numerous shuttle launches because he was on the design teams of satellites they were launching via the shuttle. He never tired of seeing the launches. He also, when he was working for Republican administrations in the 70s and 80s, never tired of tweaking his bosses because they couldn't do what they needed to do without him. It always amused him.
Linda, I had to go into the local Walmart today because they are the only store in this small town that carries the brand of organic milk I drink. I wouldn't normally go in on a Saturday morning, even at gunpoint, but was going past from an earlier appointment, so I stopped.
Plenty of people I know, including me, have railed against Walmart over the years. Still, in a small town, like you found with Amazon 20 years ago, sometimes these guys are a necessary evil. If I've learned anything in my 73 years, it's that nothing is 100% either way.
Bless your dad! I'm glad he got to participate in the good years of the space program. And it is a shame we let it go to pot.
I was listening to John Lennon's "Imagine" today and thinking about tribalism. I've been doing a lot of reading on neuroscience and the brain and how much of what we think are our decisions are really based on, or driven by, chemistry. Including tribalism.
And it strikes me that until and unless we can begin to see the world population as one tribe, we won't shift the paradigm. There was so much hope when the picture of the earth showed us, for the first time, that we are all residents of Spaceship Earth and all in this together. As they say now, "There is no Planet B."
For me, that awareness was even more salient than the computers, the satellites and all the other whiz-bangs we got from the space race.
Sandra, where I lived--mentioned above--I could do nothing but shop at either Walmart or Kmart. There was literally nothing else available. The local store owners had been destroyed and the downtowns of the villages were decimated. Neither company provided a living wage to their workers; neither provided health care to their workers. Yet they ensured their existence by being irreplaceable because of their business model. I now live in an urban area that has enough variety to be able to ignore Walmart as an option. It is a luxury I can afford, but so many people are stuck with being forced to feed the gaping maw of the Walton family. So I get it.
Thanks, Linda. I confess, I am so conflicted over this, but other than driving 35 miles (one way) to the nearest Harris Teeter grocery store, Walmart it is. But I cuss under my breath every time I come out.
The local super store didn't manage to put the local Ace Hardware or the local builders supply out of business. This small town has lost 3 chicken processing plants, several textile related mills and God knows what else, over the 30 years I've been here. But we've got just about every fast food restaurant (isn't that a contradiction in terms?) you can name, and even a few local mom & pop restaurants! And at least seven, count 'em, SEVEN car parts shops - Advance, NAPA, etc. So, if you're into doing you own mechanicing (to the extent that's possible these days), you're in luck!
Exactamente. Good morning, Linda. I adore your idiosyncrasies. To me, it speaks volumes about our reality…take it or leave it. I enjoyed his interview with Anderson Cooper later after his flight. Bezos is an innovator. So keep at it. Maybe the solar panel energy stations in space he spoke about will do what he theorizes. And I did like the strategic news later that he donated $200 million dollars to Chef Jose Andres and Van Jones to launch his Courage and Civility awards that will support individuals or foundations that promote solutions to problems but that the work is done with courage and civility.
I think I was more excited hearing about that than the “space” flight.
And whatever his “gadszillionaire “ status, I cannot help but appreciate Amazon especially last year during the pandemic. The delivery service helped me to protect my health and the diversity of selection regarding products allowed me to find many essentials for less than I could acquire them at stores in the area. I don’t know the answer to how we despise wealthy individuals making their gazillions on the backs of employees and their tax accountants…..yet also crediting what many of them have brought to the way we live. I realize that “they” have defined many of the conveniences we take for granted and ways thst we live we live.
It’s a conundrum but I stand in appreciation of any philanthropic movement the gadzillionsires create. Gates and his educational foundations have created significant reform. And as I mentioned…I’m a thumbs up for Bezos and his fledgling start of millions going innovators who make change happen with “courage and civility”. One to “bridge builder” Van Jones and Chef Jose Andres founder of World Central Kitchen.
I doubt that this money was possible through the government. So kudos to philanthropy. I don’t care if it’s a tax write off. I look at it money in the right hands creating solutions.
The money they steal from us in taxes could finance a decent social safety net.
The company treats workers terribly.
"Amazon relies on an extreme high-churn model, continually replacing workers in order to sustain dangerous and grueling work pace demands... Workers describe pushing their bodies to the brink to avoid automatic termination for missing quotas.1 Data from the company’s own records have confirmed their accounts showing that Amazon warehouses have stunningly high injury rates.2"
Yes David it's important to keep an eye on the cost of Amazon. Sure it's convenient and Bezos can splash his golden shower on a few attractive causes but it's the business model, who get hurt and the money spent ensuring that he and his kind don't pay taxes that we need to focus on.
Beware of charities designed as tax-avoiding schemes. iDJT is a prime example. It's a common ploy by rich kids. Surely some of that money does go to the poor and needy, but a lot of it goes around in a revolving door.
I disagree about Amazon not killing off Main Street. He effectively targeted retail sector after retail sector. First small bookstores, then health food stores, clothing, and malls are a thing of the past. Small & large cities and states lost sales tax revenue. Oh Jeff Bezos should Thank us very much indeed.
"The most innovative stuff is coming out of the three private companies--Space-X, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin--because these sociopaths (and really, they are all three sociopaths) have enough money to be able to throw it around with wild abandon, while the USA pinches pennies and lets its own citizens starve and struggle."
Yep. Same with private foundations. The rich keep their money and end up controlling it instead of giving it to the government to support "we the people". I could be of two minds about that as well, given how cumbersome and inefficient and politically corrupt government can be.
"Americans increasingly turned away from the post–World War II teamwork and solidarity that had made the Apollo program a success, and instead focused on liberating individual men to climb upward on their own terms, unhampered by regulation or taxes."
In a crisis and with good leadership Democracy works just fine. But sometimes individuals/private enterprise can move the goalposts ahead, too. Why can't there be some kind of balance between "liberating individual men to climb" and still requiring them to do their part in supporting our government so it can take care of our people who are less fortunate?
I suspect Reagan’s policies (Reaganomics) also had a lot to do with the rise of superstores like Home Depot, Staples, Office Max, Walmart, and Sam’s Club, and the death of small / Mom & Pop businesses.
Lisa, It has long been my belief that Reagan was the beginning of the end. He bought and sold the Milton Friedman lie that the market would handle everything. The age of supreme selfishness had arrived.
And the rise of anti-this, that and the other...I agree there was a strange turn for the worse, including mini-wars in Central America which contributed to the rise of over-lords and poverty there.
A thoughtful, articulate and knowledgeable perspective. Thank you for your analysis of what I otherwise would see solely as another example of mega hubris.
Linda Mitchell: Thanks for the perspective on Bezos. He is one weird dude! But Amazon fills a void in some places---and it played a key role in dealing with the pandemic, whatever one thinks of Bezos and his profit model, etc. (Does he lack empathy and a lot of other things--YES. Should he be paying more taxes--YES. Should he be doing some positive things to alleviate suffering, hunger, and other lacks in earthbound society--YES.) I was an "early adopter" of Amazon for books although I still patronize my local bookstore (more now). I still have the mouse pad he sent to early customers as a "gift"---it had a Grocho Marx quote: Outside of a dog a book is man's best friend; inside of a dog, it is dark" (As best I remember). WALMART IS A CURSE UPON THE EARTH --they have destroyed small (and parts of large) towns and they have a wretched pay scale. As downtowns dry up (and the one in Oberlin is doing that as far as traditional stores go). As independent business owners are replaced by the not-well-maid managers of the local WalMart, the question becomes pressing---WHO will be the patrons of local events, who will buy ads in the high school drama program, who will sponsor various things---NOT WalMart. End of the rant for this evening. What a lovely photograph by Buddy. Best to keep the peacefulness of that in mind as we continue into the stormy waters ahead......
I have paid zero attention to the Bezos/Branson space race, mostly because, these days, my vision of space travel and space life is influenced by of the post apocalyptic/dystopian fare I've consumed throughout my life. Bezos's thanking the little people who work for him, buy from his Amazon, and read his newspaper reinforces my belief that the class and caste systems that plague us on earth will surely follow us into the heavens. That's no way to live.
"...It’s also a giant first step towards our vision to have millions of WEALTHY people living and working in space.” There, fixed it for ya.
This vision reminds me of one of my dystopian future movies, "Elysium" (2013) where the descendants of Amazon workers grovel in the squalor left of Earth, while the very wealthy live on a huge space station that they can only dream of.
I just finished An Unkindess of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon, a study of structural racism on space ship launched generations in the past. It's an excellent piece of speculative fiction written by a very young, Black, writer. Well worth the read.
I get a kick out of how quickly the “hold” orders at my public library go up on any title mentioned in this forum. Thanks for the title to add to my list.
Another excellent work of fiction is the Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Ms. Butler wrote her book in 1993 about a dystopian near future that looks a lot like the times we're living through now. Climate change has dried the west, tribal loyalties have people murdering those who don't hold the same beliefs, and migrant populations are on the move while borders and cities are being protected by armed security forces. The local, state and federal governments are in total disarray while private international corporate interests are buying towns and putting people into economic slavery. A warning, it is intense and I have to sometimes just close the book, walk away and catch my breath. I wonder as I read the Parable of the Sower is this where we're headed?
I saw this comment an hour after you posted. When I checked the Albuquerque Public Library online, there were already 22 holds on this title. There may be some other impetus for the interest in a 1993 title, but I think there are quite a few of us in Albuquerque who are part of this forum.
I was reading the Guardian today and came across a reference to a 1972 study done at MIT. The study investigates "five
major trends of global concern-accelerating industrialization,
rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion
of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment." The study's conclusion regarding those topics seems to be accurate since mankind chose to continue on a nonsustainable path. You can download a PDF of the entire study in book form. It is worth a read
Until women and women of color who write speculative fiction/science fiction are treated as equals to their male counterparts, color and sex must absolutely be mentioned. Study up on the discrimination in that genre and you will understand what I'm talking about. And, while we're at it, Rivers Solomon is non binary. So chew on that.
I'm sorry to be snarky about this but since part of the issue in today's world is about how, to some, one's color diminishes their value as a human being, it is absolutely necessary to recognize personal aspects of a writer/artist/creator/inventor. There is no Kumbaya until BIPOC, everywhere on this planet, are recognized equally...just look at the female astronaut finally given a trip to space or the WWII era code-breaking black women finally recognized for their stellar achievements. Color blind you say? Right now, as far as many are concerned, color blindness means the only color exalted is white.
One particular segment of the movie (code-breaking black women) that really got to me was how she had to walk or run so far just to use a bathroom! Likely not unusual at all! One more putdown among so many.
my immediate thought when kevin costner smashed the 'colored bathroom' sign was, 'oh great, now what bathroom can she use?' were we supposed to think that now that the sign is destroyed, she could use any bathroom on the entire post? an empty symbolic act, or did it play out another way?
Daria, the first thing I want to say is that there is no need to apologize for being snarky, as you put it. You, of course, are welcome to your opinion and I am not convinced you were being snarky:) And honestly if you sit back a moment and think about it, though what you wrote might in fact be accurate as to how one must proceed to change the passage of the past for the better of the future, it nonetheless, does not change the accuracy of my opinion: that racism in all forms continues to exist as long as we all feel the need to mention that our skins might have different colors and other attributes.
John, I've given your comment some thought. First let me say that you have a right to your opinion - but opinions cannot be accurate, only valid. Let's deal specifically with the Americas. For centuries, from the Artic Circle to Tierra del Fuego BIPOC persons have been compromised by white Europeans. We brought disease and slavery to the indigenous peoples. We took their land and their natural resources. We brought Africans out of Africa to work and be traded like animals. Do we ignore the fact that the work of Black civil rights, politicians, academics, artists, scientists and writers and deem them colorless when the fact that they ARE black (or BIPOC) drive their existence? If you are white your assertion that "colorblindness" is the panacea for all racial ills is very much part of the issue. Tell that to Douglass, Carver, MLK, Baldwin, Butler and any number of Blacks who have brought their life's blood and effort into the mainstream. If you are white, as am I, neither of us has the right to dictate colorblindness as the solution to BIPOC acceptance into the mainstream. You are suggesting that BIPOC wipe away their identities to assuage the white culture's guilt in diminishing them as leaving, breathing human beings. Their color is important. It's their identity.
Or maybe race (and other "convenient" categories) will continue to be used as an excuse for exploitation of some humans by other humans until all the colors and tones of skin, hair, eyes, etc. become simple human variations to enjoy and celebrate. Color is a gift that can illuminate. Blindness to it is quite impossible unless literally blind. Let's transform our social structures so that such exploitation becomes unthinkable and nearly impossible. These changes are part of the many ways in which we humans need to evolve. Having been on this planet a loooooong time, I do not expect to see these changes, but can plant seeds, visionary seeds, hopeful seeds, courageous seeds, seeds of cooperation and creativity. There are lots of us planetary gardeners out there. May we begin to prepare the soil for our transformation.
There's also the "Blade Runner" perspective, in which the wealthy space dwellers still need an exploited proletarian work force to do the same jobs they were stuck with on earth. "A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, a chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure."
This is exactly along the lines of what I was also thinking - the Rick get to live in (supposed) safety and luxury in space while the rest of us are left to struggle and survive here on a planet wracked by increasingly erratic natural events sparked by global warming that was created in large part by the same (type of) people who have now (presumably) escaped this increasingly inhospitable planet. And I am not a reader of dystopian literature.
I was thinking the opposite. Earth becomes to expensive. The lower and middle classes live and work in space. I’m reminded of the message in the movie “AD Astra”.
OR the movie I cant seem to forget: WALL-E. Where earth has become the landfill of humans & humans (unable to function physically) live on space stations. The caretaker of the garbage is a robot! Sounds like an animated verson of your movie, Rob.
When the composer wrote that song in the late 60s, he had no inklng that humans had the capability to cause destruction to the planet earth and society within 100 years. Maybe his lyrics were actually a sign of hope that the dystopian future was so much further away.
Thanks Lynell - forgot the words - love the music! Doubt very much this planet will make it to 2525, tho. And as far as space being a dumping ground? As Skip says Bezos is a jerk - apparently from all the evidence currently, being a jerk is even easier when you have lots of currency!!!
Heather, I so admire your ability to gather facts into a narrative. Your Letters have explained history to me in a way I can understand for the first time ever. I appreciate you so much. Still, I am aware that others might take the same facts, combine them with other facts, and see a different story. You have taught me to be wary of all truth tellers, even yourself.
As to this topic, I'll add my little opinion: I don't care a whit about space travel, and I think that technology creates as many problems as it solves, if not more. The only "progress" I care about is in the fuller utilization of our human capacity to lift each other up. There is so much to be done.
Continuing to ignore our challenges here on earth and focusing instead on leaving the planet behind will only provide greater urgency to our departure while taking all our problems along with us. Wherever you go, there you are. There is so much to do, but it seems to me most of us are focused on the wrong problems and priorities. That makes for a rather dystopian future.
"“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this..." This might be the most tone deaf thing I've ever heard from someone who should know to fake it better.
Good morning Nomi. I’m about to get in some hot water. I’ll say first that I, too, groaned when I heard Bezos say it. But I don’t have the outrage expressed today in forum. You know what I thought when I heard it? “Dang it, Bezos, that’s not going to resonate very well, but it’s true. And people are going to be uppity about it because we are the ones who support Amazon but I guess we don’t want to be thanked because it reminds us that we have participated in creating this gadzillionsire thanking us.
I would have preferred that he just jumped up and down and shouted I f**king did it! It would have been an honest statement. Claptrap humility from an egomaniac who really did this out of earth thing was really dumb. Groaner.
Hahaha, yeah. Tho, thanking the customers, and the underpaid tormented workers is pretty honest too. Just obscene. I would have preferred your version as well.
Imagine the good that could be accomplished if the rich and mega-rich just paid their fair share of taxes. How about using those tax dollars on renewable energy, combating climate change and making life better on our own planet. If there is intelligent life on any other planets, I feel pretty confident they don't want us to come and trash their environment like we've done to our own. Bezos needs to get over himself and stop playing with his penis rocket.
So totally agree. It feels like a science fiction movie about rich white men littering on us from space. They've soiled the planet why not soil the universe.
Things are so damn bad here we should put a sign at the southern border and stop the millions of “ visitors” that we are a doomed awful society where they will be paid nothing and taxed to death by the pernicious Penis Rocket Men who will destroy their lives. Beware folks. DH Rocket Men ahead !! Stay in Cuba, Venezuela and Guatemala…
When you’ve been able to amass your money by not paying your fair share of taxes, your “privately funded” venture is a diversion of rightfully public funds. This new space race is publicly funded, but absent public controls and alignment. Socialize the expenses, privatize the profits.
at the end of her letter, HCR writes that in 2021 bezos had an income of 4.22 billion and paid 973 million in taxes. that's a tax rate of 23%. so, he is hardly paying no taxes. his wealth, she writes, amounts to 99 billion. but wealth is not income until you sell your property, or it is inherited. that amazon avoids taxes might be correct, but it doesn't seem that bezos himself avoids them. have i got it wrong?
"After May 4, 1970, when the shooting of college students at Kent State University in Ohio badly weakened Nixon’s support, he began to rally supporters to his side with what his vice president, Spiro Agnew, called “positive polarization."
Combined with the unsubtle racism of Nixon's Southern Strategy, thus began the decades long Republican policy of dividing Americans against each other that has led us to what we have today; two Americas that reside in different universes, and our national wealth controlled by a handful of unelected, supremely, in some cases psychotically, self-centered white men.
Jeff Bezos could not have existed in Kennedy's America. We must make that so again.
If you’re saying that Amazon (internet retailer) couldn’t have existed in Kennedy’s America, that’s true. If you’re saying that ridiculously wealthy men couldn’t have existed in Kennedy’s America, I have to disagree. The Rockefellers, Howard Hughes, the Mellons, H.L. Hunt, J. Paul Getty, the Fords (and many others) - all were billionaires (in 2020 dollars) in Kennedy’s America. Hughes, with his aviation pioneering (Spruce Goose) was similar to Bezos’ space flight. Kennedy himself was born into fabulous wealth, his father was a billionaire in today’s dollars. Ridiculous wealth and cavalier billionaires aren’t recent inventions.
Keep in mind that they actually paid taxes. The tax rates were higher and all the loopholes the wealthy use now were not available. Also, a man could work 40 hours a week, have a wife and 3 kids, a car or two and be comfortable. You could even afford to send your kids to college. These we’re working people, not college educated. I grew up in one of those families (except my mother worked too). Our neighbors worked all blue collar jobs; mills, auto industries. No one cared if you were a Democrat or Republican. It’s impossible to find that America now. I was just out of the military when Reagan took it away.
I don’t believe the combined wealth of all of those names equals Bezos alone, let alone Zuckerberg and the others, whether you use hard numbers or as a percentage of national wealth.
All the people on that list either lived before the graduated income tax or attained the bulk of their wealth after 1980, thus affirming my point that robber baron levels of wealth and influence were not prevalent in post WWII America; Truman. Ike, JFK, until the Reagan Administration began the re-organization of the tax structure to favor the accumulation of wealth among fewer and fewer people.
You’re changing your argument. You never said anything about robber barons or WWII in this thread. You said you “don’t believe the combined wealth of the people on that list equals Bezos’ alone”. That’s not right. It’s true that the tax laws changed over the last 100 years, first to impose higher taxes on wealth, then to reduce taxes on wealth. My only point is that we’ve seen wealth like Bezos’ before, many times. Bezos is far from unique. And, as billionaires go, not particularly evil.
You're right, Ralph. In the Kennedy years we still had an estate tax with teeth, and the top marginal rate was maybe less than the 90% under Eisenhower, but substantially more than today. And CEOs made far less than today and were paid WAGES, not stock options that would benefit from capital gains taxes).
The wealthiest man ever in US history was John D Rockefeller. I take it you don’t like Bezos, but in terms of accomplishments for their time, the Spruce Goose and Hughes Aerospace was very much like Bezos’ Blue Origin.
I guess the Kent State shootings did undermine Nixon’s support somewhat, but what I remember most from that period is the obscene delight American warmongers took in the event, especially the white working class, who loathed all college students and thought any of them protesting Vietnam deserved a bullet.
Jeff Bezos’s remarks thanking Amazon employees and customers were repugnant. Those employees are real people that he takes advantage of in order to make billions of dollars.
I agree with you and JennSH, except for Marie-Antoinette. She never said "let them eat cake" (serious historians all agree on that). That was a fake news (already!) published by a violently anti-monarchy paper named "Le Père Duchesne", which was a kind of Fox News on paper, publishing lies and exaggerations all year round at the time (1790-1794).
Of course. I'm as outraged as you. I post a comment on my (fledgling) blog about it. Excerpt: "When Jeff will go upthere next tuesday and feel as light as a feather, his employees will bear the burden of gravity, working hard in those gigantic warehouses for a starting salary of 15$ an hour. The American Dream is not the same for everyone."
So, for a different perspective: I recently spoke to someone who has been working at an amazon warehouse for the past several months. They have had an incredibly difficult life and this is the best and highest paying job they have ever had. They are proud to finally be earning what is, for them, a decent wage and are grateful for the work and to be able to support their family. That may change as time passes but I just wanted to share that for a difference in perspective. I am by no means defending Bezos or the many headed hydra that amazon has become but, with all due respect, thought it important to share so that we don’t become an echo chamber.
To quote the great Patterson Hood of the even greater Drive By Truckers, it's knowing "when to print the legend and when to leave the facts in." If she didn't say it, she should have.
I respecfully disagree. True journalism is to print the facts, and nothing but the facts. The last four years brilliantly (and pathetically) showed how much damage "alternate facts" could do. And, contrary to general opinion at the time, Marie-Antoinette was somebody compassionate and generous. She discreetly helped countless poor people and their children. The main reproach to her was her extravagant spending in clothes and toiletries. the French people nicknamed her "Madame Déficit". They thought she alone would ruin France.
I was being a lot less serious than you, not quite joking, sort of ironic. But you're right, in these dangerous times it's dangerous to joke about the truth or to suggest that it's optional. My apologies.
But, I have a very dear friend who almost lost it all with buyouts and consolidation of a career corporate job. He went from a very high-salaried management position to suddenly unemployed and then to being a middle-aged entry-level Amazon warehouse worker. However he has extremely positive feelings about the Amazon job and the opportunities and benefits presented. He had a complete turn-around in his life and yet manages to keep perspective. He is my personal living hero!
How many among us would be him or a reasonable facsimile had we walked the proverbial mile in his shoes?
Some, but not many would be my guess. The winds, wafting us upwards, have very strong currents. He is a natural outgrowth of unfettered capitalism. His billions (?) trillions (?) do not appear to be made illegally.
Many, many Amazon decisions which result in abuse of the system, are made downstream of him.
I neither deify nor disparage him. He is a logical endpoint.
I agree that he is the logical endpoint to where our country's policies have been headed for at least the last 40 years. A perfect compilation in one person.
I suppose she embodies the direction of the last 40 years. He is not, however, responsible for them. It took millions of decisions, small and large, for him to become the avatar of laissez-faire, extrapolative capitalism. It so happens that each decision threaded him upward. Getting to the pinnacle has placed him in uncharted territory. He is quite spectacularly different from us.
And we from him. I condemn the system. But I think it too easy to just dismiss him as a jerk as some have done.
He may be totally so. Or not.
When the United States finally recognized that they had a John D. Rockefeller, they broke his company up and made an attempt to “shorten the tail” of capitalism. Much of what followed was salutary, but sadly cyclical as the Eighties onward showed. Everything that was old is new again.
Perhaps Bezos and a few others will be the cautionary tale upon which America pivots again.
Agree with this point. The Gilded Age Robber Barons were brought back beginning in the 80s with the rewrite of corporate culture that made the profit margin the be-all, end-all. Kurt Andersen's book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America covers this recent history very well.
I only hope that Lina Khan. as head of FTC can make progress in dismantling some of the monopolies/concentrated control of industries
alongside the enthusiasm that Liz Warren and Amy Klobuchar have for breaking the stranglehold!
Bezos’ comment reminds me of the Christmas party where all company employees received a crisp 100 dollar bill as a bonus, while the firm owners had pulled down millions that year. “Thank you.” I mean, what condescending BS.
We click "buy" because Amazon has always been a well-conceived business model that provided services, access, and filled needs that were not available in many places. Its destructiveness in America arises from two parties' operatives willingly turning over their ownership to business and favorably backing only those candidates with defective ethics wherever possible who will take orders from business NOT to regulate business. The American people have seen their government, their health care, their access to information, their educational credibility and even control of their police and military taken from them by oligarchs. Oligarchs joy-riding in their rockets is fully symbolic that now the adventure of space travel are firmly under control of oligarchy.
That sounds right to me. Though the night Neil Armstrong etc landed on the moon my brother and I (teenagers) went outside and lay under the stars to look at the untouched, unspoiled Moon one last time before it was sucked into the web of "expansion" that has muddied and bloodied the earth and its atmosphere. I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid, read every book in my small-town library about space, the solar system, stars, the Big Bang, you name it. My most amazing dream ever was of gazing at Jupiter through the Mt. Palomar telescope. But men landing on the moon was nothing to me but loss. Still, compared to the Bezos Penetration it was fun. At least we were all thinking about the moon together, all over the country and the earth. The one good part of the moon landing for me was a beautiful film, so beautiful I bought a copy to watch when I feel the need: "In the Shadow of the Moon," a documentary interviewing all the surviving astronauts who'd been to the moon. Men "changed utterly"--wise. And in love with the earth.
What an uplifting story! John Kennedy was no saint, but during his brief time in office he did manage to help bring out an optimism about the ourselves and our future. Johnson lacked his charisma, but (except for Vietnam — and that’s a huge but) did accomplish passage of the Voting Rights Act and other key legislation that continued to extend the vision of FDR’s New Deal to groups previously left out of the American Dream.
And then the Movement Conservatives come to power. And with them the notion that the government is the problem reignites our inner demons. Now we have the Super Haves, maintaining their wealth by scaring those in the middle that those at the bottom are trying to use the government to steal the middle’s resources and wealth for the benefit of the bottom. Meanwhile the rich get richer and richer and richer.
And then earlier this week, Bezos returns from his privately funded space venture and makes remarks that clearly were not vetted by his public relations people, admitting that his efforts were largely funded by his employees and customers, leaving out the part about how his ability to pay next to nothing in taxes sufficiently enriched him so he could underwrite his private space venture while shifting the burden of paying taxes to those of us in the (former) middle class.
Important, especially in today's battle over voting rights, that in 1964 Johnson "jaw-boned" the votes to pass the Voting Rights Act, the foundation upon which we remain arguing today.
I used to be really enthused by the idea of people living in space. Now, the idea depresses me. I wouldn't want to live in an artificial, sunless environment away from Earth. I no longer think all the resources being poured into getting humans into space are necessarily worth it. Although, now, we can't do without satellites for communication. Michigan is supposed to have a spaceport in the fairly near future for launching satellites. But, everytime they shoot a rocket up, it puts more exhaust in the atmosphere, and another hole in the ozone.
Maybe we don't have the right to impose that decision on our great-great-great whatevers. The billionaires have so befouled the Earth with the by-products of their greed that it's no longer good enough for their progeny?
Yes, how can we venture out on exploration joy rides when our own house is on fire? Looking and dreaming of another planet to live on while this one burns?
We already KNOW that there isn't anywhere else in this solar system that is habitable. We'd have to travel a VERY long way to even think of moving to. If there are other livable places, those occupants will not want us. What's next? "Manifest Destiny" in space?
Just keep thinking about all the homeless or housing insecure families that could have been given housing and food security right here on this planet for the cost of that space flight.
There are so many blind spots for the visionaries of today. This country, the environment and all the people who have legitimate fear of being able to make a future for themselves right here on the planet that we live on. If this countries government and corporations were taking care of its citizens there would be much less air and space for the endless idiocy of the far right. The far right is fueled by real peoples fears of the future along with some serious mental health issues and antiquated myths of what it means to be an American. Saving our environment, ending homelessness and helping the working classes are the real moon shots of our time. Going to the stratosphere in a private space ship and then thanking me for buying stuff on Amazon is insulting and amazingly tone deaf.
Every issue is complicated and nuanced and we try to compress it into tidy bullet points and sound bites. We could take any social or political issue and if we really looked at it, we’d find it was more a dodecahedron than something with just 2 sides. I don’t know how to start having that conversation.
Morning Beth. I love your mathematical analogy. It’s exactly how I feel. I feel hemmed in by 2 sides discussion but our country if so firmly trapped in that model right now.
Yes, Beth and Christine!! We think things are mutually exclusive when they are not. Our current political bifurcation militates against complex thought of 12 sides (or its exponent) of any issue. Complex thinking can lead to a frustrating and paralyzing inactivity for two-siders but, as someone here already commented, we have to learn how to do multiple things at the same time. This goes beyond our conventional take on "multi-tasking", I think, as it goes beyond the "ambidextrous" individual and demands the concerted action of many who are imagining and thinking with new models. At this contagious moment we seem so stupid as a species; not sure we are up to the demand. But, love the idea of getting the conversation going. We approach it, at times, here on this site....maybe the conversation has already begun?
I appreciate how you feel but so far this site has been exemplary for its genuine civility. As more diverse thinking shows up here I hope the civility continues.....contributing and engaging without insult, ad hominems or name -calling....all sadly ubiquitous on social media. A "safe" place does not have to be an "echo chamber". Thank you!
If the government does something—like develop the complex technologies needed for space flight—we all pay for it with our taxes, we all benefit and we all own it, collectively. If a private company like Amazon does something—even if they use technology developed by the government and owned by us all—we all pay for it, a small number of people benefit exorbitantly, and anywhere from one person to a handful owns it. Tell me again which system you prefer.
Every time I adjust the temperature in my home - turn the heat or the AC on or off - I smile. My dad was a manufacturer’s rep who sold lots to Honeywell. Honeywell thermostats were developed and improved because of space exploration, something for which my dad was really proud. Products he represented used in space; then improving comfort here on earth.
Thanks for sharing the Honeywell example. I would have been proud too if that were the background of my occupation. I'm not a technical expert on space exploration but I do wonder just how novel are the technologies employed by the private ventures and whether we will benefit from the same trickle-down into consumer goods. They might, but we probably won't be getting another Honeywell.
Morning Kirk. I think Americans forgot about that ownership that we had and now complain when we have done little to get it back through several administrations.
Maybe the private innovation now will force government to get back in the game as Kennedy envisioned it.
We could compare this billionaire's selfish enterprise with what his ex-wife is doing. MacKenzie Scott recently gave 8.5 billion dollars to various organizations and associations, dedicated to helping people to have a better life. In her own words: https://mackenzie-scott.medium.com/seeding-by-ceding-ea6de642bf
As Louis Aragon, a French poet, said, "La femme est l'avenir de l'homme" (woman is man's future).
Jeff Bezos is on a multimillion dollar ego trip funded by his employees and customers. Accompanying him is a story he tells as to why he is pursuing space and as we might expect from a man talking about himself he is declaring what the future should be like and he wants that future for his future generations. It is all about Jeff Bezos folks while back here on Earth the old news about poverty, crumbling infrastructure, right-wing oppression of minorities, etc. struggling to survive go begging for attention. We have lots to address here at home without chasing some egomaniacs dream about the future.
...and his statement at the end is a slap in the face of his workers and his customers that aren't rich, and the many people in this country can barely afford to keep food on the table and a roof over the family's heads.
Good morning all! I admit that my take on all of this is going to be idiosyncratic, but when is it not?!
Firstly, the space program of the 1960s. My father was an aeronautics engineer who designed telecommunications satellites--most of which are the ones folks in the developed world (and beyond--he had a very interesting career!) have used since the 1960s for fun stuff like telephone calls. For us the space program was central to our lives and I followed it closely. My dad was also a raging lefty--which could make it hard to work for some of the people who paid his salary--and I think the thing that disappointed him most about the direction the space program went after 1968 was the fact that despicables like Nixon and Reagan were in charge of it after the hopefulness of the Kennedy years. My sorrow at the death of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and my disgust that Nixon got to be the one to congratulate the Apollo team still resonates in me: it was a pivotal moment in my life.
Secondly, the current space programs, both publicly funded and private (i.e. Bezos and Branson and their ilk): The USA has done a terrible job of maintaining and expanding a responsible and useful space program. The fact that there has never been a good replacement for the space shuttle; the fact that the decision to abandon deep space development for decades while littering our near-space environment with junk has hampered the growth of a responsible program: these are elements of shortsightedness that generations of Republican administrations (and arses like Clinton, whose programs were driven by popularity ratings) have wrought. The most innovative stuff is coming out of the three private companies--Space-X, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin--because these sociopaths (and really, they are all three sociopaths) have enough money to be able to throw it around with wild abandon, while the USA pinches pennies and lets its own citizens starve and struggle. I know that a robust NASA will not solve world hunger, but again: isn't that the job of government, not private individuals?
Thirdly, Bezos and Amazon: I admit I am conflicted. The guy is remarkably weird. But he also had a model to get, initially, books and information out to places where there was a dearth of both and he was willing to lose money like it was sludge going downstream for years in order to make that happen. I taught for almost 2 decades at a university in a part of the country that had virtually no bookstores for 100 miles in any direction and the public libraries were terrible. I was dependent on Amazon--especially in the long winter months when travel to a Barnes and Noble or Borders was almost impossible--as were all my students and colleagues. And Bezos was losing money for all those years but kept doing what he was doing, patiently building up his retail model. Is he deeply strange? Yes. Is he tone-deaf? Yes. Should he be paying a s***-ton more in taxes? Oh my goodness, yes. But in many parts of the country, his company was a lifeline, and it remains one of the better-paying jobs for a whole lot of people.
What I don't understand is why people rail about Bezos but not about the Walton family, whose business model did more to kill off Main Street, USA than Amazon ever did. Perhaps because Bezos is in-your-face strange, and the Waltons seem so, um, homey? I buy from Amazon because I refuse to give the Waltons any more of my hard-earned money.
Love this! Yes to reading via Kindle or to purchasing books. Yes to Video via Amazon Prime and not subscribing to cable TV when part of that subscription supports Fox News. No way to stuff but I live just a couple of miles from a Target Store - and for a giant corp, Target is pretty good on issues I care about including what their corporate foundation supports - the arts and LGBTQ issues. They also treat their employees pretty well locally-including hiring lots of new Americans.
But no f#cking way to Sam’s Club or Walmart- even though both are closer to me than Target. I watched what happened to locally owned businesses when Walmart moved in. Businesses that had flourished for years disappeared, especially in rural small towns here in Minnesota. Heartbreaking especially when I think about the outflow of wealth to the Walton family rather than to a community member who was likely to support everything from the local kids’ softball teams to sponsoring community building activities like county fairs. Gads!
Bezos’ efforts to expand space travel bother me enough that I dropped my subscription to The Washington Post. Besides, it is time for a different perspective on what constitutes news. But, despite the vast array of goods available at Walmart, including inexpensive prescription eyeglasses, i will never walk through those doors. Target gives away 5% of their pretax profits. Walmart gives away …. ? Money to Republican candidates. Nope.
I don’t object to Bezos’ success, but, I have no respect for someone who abuses his employees and doesn’t pay his fair share of taxes.
I didn't know that about Amazon's beginning. Thanks for sharing. And I too don't understand why there isn't enough said about the Waltons as they certainly did ruin many main street businesses and pay their people little. I don't shop there either and do try to spend my money in small shops and antique malls. You would be surprised at what you can find. Same for second hand shops.
I think it's because Bezos is far more visible than the Waltons. But I doubt he's any better than them as a human being. And while Amazon may be one of the better paying jobs for a whole lot of people, the stresses in those jobs are absolutely in human--the way they are monitored constantly, and forced to always be moving to fill orders. If I remember correctly, Amazon has a high rate of on the job injuries.
And as for Bezos' notion that the solar system can support a trillion people--if that's true that he thinks that, and I find that hard to believe because it's so nutty, that's utter nonsense. Mars, the closest thing to a habitable planet outside of Earth, is completely uninhabitable. Anyone who spends any time on that planet--should Earthlings decide to have bases there--will have to live well underground to avoid radiation, and to go outside in space suits.
The notion of terraforming Mars, which has been bandied about by Musk and probably a few others, is nonsense on a planet suffused with radiation and where the average temperature is way below that of Antarctica.
And who in their right mind would want to live there anyway, with no oceans, no beaches, no lakes, and countryside that looks like they took the ugliest 10 acres in all the terrestrial deserts, and spread that out around the whole planet?
Earth is what we've got. We've grossly overpopulated it, including our own country--especially our own country--since we're the major industrialized nation with the greatest per capita resource use and greenhouse emissions--but if Africa really grows from 1 bn to 3 bn, as projected, we can kiss the rest of the megafauna goodbye.
In 2012, when the population of Earth was 7 billion (it's now 7.8 bn), it would have taken 4.1 Earths to support Earth's entire human population in the lifestyle of the United States. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712
The magnificence of our Earth is cosmic miracle of astonishing beauty and diversity. Instead of cherishing and protecting it, we’re stripping it for parts and planning on sending irreplaceable components to barren planets....for what??
Yes, Diane!! Think of all the good these show-off gazillionaires could be doing (and are, in a few ways) to better our Earth, even end poverty!!
I remember the early 70s, the first Earth Day, and the beginnings of the environmental movement. It included concern about the Earth’s growing population surpassing 3 billion, and how we could provide for the needs of so many people. In addition to promotion of recycling, there were calls for “zero population growth” and that families should not have more than two children. That didn’t work out very well.
I've been frustrated since then by the failure to stabilize the human population. And now we really need to reduce it.
Related, at least in my mind: Why do so many people insist on using self checkout, even when there are waits for those lanes, rather than the lanes with human checker outers, which would support real jobs for real people? The Bezoses and Waltons of the world have plenty to answer for, but so do we the people.
I'm with you on this. I always go to the human checker. Among other things, I like interacting with people at the store. It's even better if I feel like I know them--as I do with my pharmacist. I turned down a drug mail delivery service from the hospital where I get most of my care because of that.
As a confirmed introvert, I only pick the human checker because I want to support their job. But I do it every time. I get a so much better deal on my mailpharmacy from Humana that I cannot use my local drug store, except for emergency, one-time presecriptions.
I also get my prescriptions by mail from Kaiser but shop for other items at CVS. For some reason, Walgreens doesn't seem as open and welcoming. I get good service at CVS when I need to ask about where something is shelved, and in both CVS stores I shop in, there are both options plus a human nearby in the event self-checkout acts up. When there's a choice, though, as others here say, I generally choose the 'human' checkout unless I can see there's going to be a wait and I have my dog waiting in the car (windows wide open and, usually, in a shady spot). Thankfully, I live and shop where it's safe to do that.
I would like to hope I have the same reason, David. Alas, I get frustrated by the mistakes the scanner makes (probably my own fault.) I like the helpfulness of the clerks.
Yep--me too!!
I was a checker in my youth. I seldom use self checkout because it can't keep up with me & that pisses me off, lol! The stupid machine can't tell I've bagged the item while I'm scanning the next one.
In the time of Covid with the Delta variant now widespread I try to get in and out of the store as fast as possible with as little interaction as possible with the unmasked people in the stores in my area. That usually means self-checkout. The lanes with human checkers are always backed up.
Interesting though that's not my observation although, admittedly, I shop in only a few locations: Target, Home Depot (no good hardware store within a reasonable distance, and so on. What I see is people with small numbers of items using the self checkout and those with loaded baskets using the 'human' checkout lines. My own choices depend on how many heavily loaded baskets are in the open 'human' lines vs my usual small number of items. I prefer the 'human' lines but don't like standing in line waiting behind loaded 'family sized' baskets. And both at Target & Home Depot that I use, there's a human standing by to assist with the self checkout if needed.
If there is any alternative to Home Depot, please try to use it. Home Depot gives millions to idjt and his widgets.
Agreed. But it's approx. 16 miles round trip to the only major alternative, Lowe's, and equally far to San Diego Hardware which I'd prefer to support though I don't have any idea of the owners' political positions. So I go to HD for little things like a specialty light bulb or the hose coupler and a replacement garden hose I needed recently. Not worth my time & gas, or mailing charge if ordered for delivery. Not to mention, both donated to PACs for both parties (covering all bases....):
(from Snopes) What's True
The CEO of Lowe's announced that the company is offering $25 million in grant money for minority-owned businesses trying to reopen amid the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic. Also, Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, gave millions to Trump's 2016 campaign.
What's False
The meme gave the false impression that these donations happened around the same time when they did not. It also failed to mention that Marcus retired from his position in 2002 and that political action committees associated with both Lowe's and Home Depot have contributed money to both major political parties, but more toward Republicans, in the 2020 federal election cycle." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lowes-versus-home-depot-meme/
Pay attention to the number of people in lines along with the size of the basket. In my experience (pre credit & debit cards), taking payment was the longest part of the transaction. An experienced checker can get through a large basket quickly especially if they have someone doing the bagging.
Idiosyncratic, yes. But riveting. What a marvelous read. I am, especially uninformed about space programs and was totally disinterested in Bezos’ trip. Nothing can replace the amazement I felt at 18 when the moon landing took place and my awe at the bravura of Kennedy’s challenge. We were very anti-Russian then - the American fear and loathing of the USSR had certainly transmuted to Canada.
As a side note, the absolute pinnacle of the Cold War for virtually the entire country came when Canada defeated the best of the USSR in an 8 game hockey challenge in called the Summit Series in September of 1972.
Briefly, for I assume (perhaps naively) that many of you know about it, the series produced the most unbelievable sustained dram I have ever witnessed in sports. Canadian sportswriters and the hockey cognoscenti tripped over themselves in predicting how badly the cream of the NHL would savage the “Russkies”. Eight straight wins was a given. People forecast outlandishly high scores on the level of 10-0. There were, to be sure, a very few naysayers but with the surety of our hockey knowledge and from the depths of our patriotic fervor, we lashed those few into silence.
In the practices beforehand (the first four games were in Canada) we laughed at their mismatched uniforms and outdated equipment.
And then in Montreal on September 2 1972, they thumped us 7-3. The nation reeled in shock and the beginning of a deep swell of anger was felt, then quelled. It was, after all, just the first game.
There’s moved on through Canada for games in Toronto (a 4-1 win in Toronto for Canada, allowing for a collective national sigh of relief), Winnipeg (4-4 tie), and then Vancouver, where Canada again lost 5-3.
By this time some things had become obvious. The Russians were far better-conditioned, their skating was noticeably better, and most of all they played a collectivist passing game hanging on to the puck for long, long intervals, retreating when necessary, never shooting until the shot would be deadly. The Canadians, on the other hand, played with heart and dash and flair. We esteemed individual ability over collective accomplishment. The series was a real life metaphor for the struggle between Democracy and Communism. Anybody who imperfectly understood that gulf was perfectly educated in it by the end of the month.
By then the country was wounded and consequently deeply angry - angry in a unified way that I have never seen since.
The players were aware of this of course and at the end of the Vancouver game, Phil Esposito (he who inspired the famous epigram, “Jesus saves. Espo scores on the rebound”), gave an on-ice interview in which he lashed out at the fickleness of the Canadian fans. A quintessentially Canadian moment it was.
His defiance shockingly inspired his teammates. They went to Russia for the final four games. The fates were still against them though and they lost 5-4. This left them in the improbable position of having to win three games in a row in Russia facing a hostile crowd whistling at every opportunity and, it was by now acknowledged, the best goaltender in the world, Vladislav Tretiak. There was a small contingent of brave Canadians who made the trip to Russia to support “our boys”. At every chance, they shouted in unison, “Da da Canada, nyet nyet Soviet”. It was inspiring.
Somehow Canada came back to win the all three of the final games, 3-2, 4-3, and 6-5. The drama in the final game was unbearable. It was a school day and we took all the kids to the gymnasium to watch on a tiny tv. Canada trailed 5-3 going into the third period and then scored 3 unanswered goals., the last with 34 seconds left in the game, to break the tie in both the game and the series.
We exhaled a national and collective sigh of relief. Canada could still claim to be supreme in hockey, our one true popular claim to fame. We had beaten the Russians without two of our most elite players, Bobby Hull and Bobby Orr. We forgave Bobby Clarke for his slash on the ankle of Valéry Kharlamov, Russian superstar had they allowed them. It must be said, more truthfully in fact, that we exulted in what Clarke did. This was war. It’s quite shameful looking back on it.
Nevertheless it was seen as the total vanquishing of the idea of Communism in our eyes. The Soviet Union may not have fallen in fact for nearly two more decades, but in our minds Communism was exposed as a rank failure on September 28, 1972. At the height of it all many felt that we had struck a blow on behalf of our good friend, the United States.
We were so naive, as I look back on it. Everything in our world felt so binary. The Americans put a man on the moon. The Canadians won the Summit Series. Thus the way we organized our society was demonstrably better than the Soviet way.
Would that things were as simple now.
Leave it to a Canadian to use hockey rather than American-style football in a sports metaphor! This one I actually understand though as several of my college classmates and the coach were on the American Olympic hockey team that won gold in 1980. Will never forget the game against Russia. Unbelievably exciting and well-plyed game!
As to whether it was a simpler time? Some days I think it was. But I do always wish that today’s Americans believed in and trusted science in the same way we seemed to back then (climate change, vaccines) and that hockey could actually be played outdoors most winters here in Minnesota. Being a rink rat as a kid was perfect…. Climate change has robbed kids of the challenges of just spending hours reveling in the wonders of winter.
Amen.
Thanks for this play by play. Love it!!
I don't pay any attention to sports, except for baseball, and then only when th' Saux are playing. But I loved your account of these hockey games, and the exultation of our northern neighbors in beating the Russkies.
So enjoyed your post!
Don't you also find it interesting that the Walton family grew up in the Ozark Mountains in NW Arkansas, yet they haven't really helped the economy and poor folks in that state, which is one of the ten poorest states in the country?
Linda, Jeff lost money originally because he was underselling the competition, especially among publishers. Once small businesses folded or complied by lowering their margins, he raised prices to his benefit. It was a business strategy from the beginning. Seemingly, he is without remorse as witnessed by his treatment of lower-echelon employees (I've read that he intends for staff to quit after three years because he deems their performance to decline with time.) That is what is so chilling about these guys, and so damning about their quest for wealth...their inability to empathize with other mortals. It's tempting to respect their capitalistic and inventive genius, but so far, their personalities are so off-putting it's tempting to diagnose them with some major mental deficiencies!
Hope, that is true--but the model was invented by Barnes&Noble and Borders. The distress over the loss of the local bookstore was already a thing long before Amazon. I worked in the publishing industry in the 1980s in NYC in the bookstore division of a very large publishing house. The competition between local bookstores and B&N (this was before Borders) was more or less the same as that between Walmart and everyone else. In addition, the innovations (especially e-readers) that Amazon has initiated over the years, while totally transforming the entire publishing industry, have been a godsend to lots of people whose access to books (especially because public libraries are being defunded by legislatures and local governments all the time) is insufficient for their needs.
Linda, today, you expressed your appreciation for Amazon several times. I know that for many, particularly the elderly and most vulnerable, Amazon has been at the ready during the pandemic as well as before it hit. You have praised Amazon's positive role in publishing and pointed to the faults of Walmart, Barnes&Noble, etc.. It seemed appropriate to share other known facts about Amazon, which some subscribers may not be aware of. There are highly disturbing aspects of its business practices with reference to the workers and they are rooted in Bezos' business philosophy. When the subject of labor has more prominence on the Forum, which I'm sure it will, Amazon would be a prime subject of importance. Here are several links that I hope you will have a chance to open and read:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/01/study-amazon-workers-injured-at-higher-
rates-than-rival-companies.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/26/amazon-workers-are-rising-up-around-the-world-to-say-enough
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/21/tech/workers-amazon-prime-day/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/magazine/amazon-workers-employees-covid-19.html
Here's another link--about the years Amazon employees spend trying to get Amazon to pay their medical costs for their injuries
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/24/business/insult-injury-working-an-amazon-warehouse-is-dangerous-its-also-first-many-problems-facing-injured-workers/?p1=Article_Recirc_Most_Popular
Great post, Fern.
As an addition to your post:
I recommend Nomadland, written several years ago and subsequently turned into a movie , ( I've read the book, not seen the movie), exemplifies some of Amazon's predatory practices... As well, it's eye-opening to see how many van-dwelling/RV living US Americans, who have lost their homes or can't afford conventional living habits, rely on seasonal contract employment through Amazon, the National Forestry and Park Services, Carnivals, Fairs, crop picking and more. The wages and conditions are frequently crappy. The contractors for the NFS and NPS have been able to get away with not paying overtime, among other things. Both Govt. agencies say they are not responsible for their contractors' business practices. Amazon, too, relies on migratory, seasonal help at low pay and pretty horrible conditions...sometimes employees have to walk 200 yards or more to the nearest bathroom then back the same. They are penalized if it doesn't happen "during a break".
What seems to be happening in the US is the solidification of the underclass - those who want to work and are willing to work long, hard hours to put food on the table and pay the light bill. The other subset are those who worked 30, 40, 50 years or more and had hoped to retire but have found, for whatever reason, they are unable to do so. The 80 year old Wal-Mart greeter or bagger likely spent decades prior to their stint at Wal-Mart working full-time elsewhere. The senior, migrant van dweller who takes a seasonal job with Amazon or picking sugar beets (for god's sake!!) has already spent a lifetime working elsewhere.
The simple fact is this:. The American Dream has never been available for the majority of US Americans. The era directly after WWII allowed the so-called American Dream to flourish for roughly 20 years. The rest is myth. There was never really a time that we can legitimately call the "good old days" - anyone with a realistic, honest grasp of our history will acknowledge that fact. We, as a culture, do ourselves a great disservice by perpetuating the lie that we are a just society dedicated to equal rights for all. We have failed on so many levels. The fact that the richest man in the world, a US American, is so because he is unscrupulous, greedy and would rather spend his money on a joyride into space than make life better for his employees says it all.
I recommend reading Nomadland. Get it from your public library, don't give Bezos your dime.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply and recommendation of Nomadland, no time for it now. I'm sure to like it, so, perhaps, sometime this year, My eyes are crying with the amount I read and have set before me...as with the rest of the body, eyes don't get younger. Daria, America doesn't have to be demystified for me. My adolescence was one of reading grown-up history books, along with Franz Fanon and D.H. Lawrence; picketing Woolworths and attending other civil-rights engagements; playing handball and studying ballet. I was a government major in college; political activism has been part of life, and my career as you know was covering public affairs. America's dance now will keep our heads and hearts in stress until...It is quite demanding to be an alert and engaged American citizen.
Something I read recently(sorry, don't remember where), but until recently, Amazon business model was 100% turnover for warehouse employees
per Year! And now, having trouble hiring enough new employees, they've figured out that burning through that many people in one year, maybe not enough desperate people reside close enough to not have heard all the "excellent benefits" garbage and how that all plays out!
And that probably holds for drivers also!
Why not support e-readers and rapid mail delivery of written materials in general? (Don't get me started on the USPS deliberately delayed practices.) There is no need for Amazon to corner this market. In fact, there are many sources for e-books now. Amazon's business practices are appalling.
No doubt, Linda. I have ordered books on Amazon, but now I found an Indie book store whose owner delivers the books to my door on her way home. I think Jeff's greater e-commerce accomplishment is having customers enroll in Prime which includes rapid shipping. I for one dislike shipping fees, and that marvelous delusion of getting an order within a few days without paying for shipping is compelling.
Workers are simply human capital. Their value is derived exclusively from productivity.
Thank you for this. This seems to be the internet way: put the competition out of business by taking losses for the first few years. That's what Uber and Lyft are doing to taxis. They are still losing gobs of money, and we the people will be the ultimate losers.
I still use taxis to go to the airport, have not downloaded either ride-share app. Though I've not said no when someone else calls for Uber for a group of us.
I was under the impression that those predatory business practices were illegal. But that was from Econ and a long time ago.
But how bad was it that independent taxi drivers had to pay $150,000 for a license? There has got to be a middle way here.
I ***think*** that's just NYC.
Thank you, Hope. You are speaking for working women and men as well as our children, mothers and fathers...and all of us down the line.
Because some on the autism spectrum have trouble 'getting' social queues, I've wondered if that's the origin (not Blue) of the problem? (and I'm NOT slamming autistic folks here).
In Bezos' case, some serious malignant narcissism maybe?
It's definitely the season for narcissism!
Great comment Linda, from where we've been to where we are now. My father was a 'rocket scientist' working on the Cape. I grew up watching the Apollo missions go up, sitting on a beach where manta rays would swim by our feet. My favorite launches were at night from Coco Beach. Magical, powerful displays of humankinds' ingenuity, so I was told. At some point when my father's work veered into defence projects, I could see his moral doubts about his job surface. It affected me deeply. It tortured him, but he had a family to provide for. In the present day, rocket launches pass over my daughter's FL home. She watches them from her front door. I've seen a few with her. The crackling of the rocket boosters, the arc over her home, seems unreal. I've watched the millionaires' race to space with a jaded eye. The LFAA posters have put my ambivalence into all the right words today. Thanks all.
My father attended numerous shuttle launches because he was on the design teams of satellites they were launching via the shuttle. He never tired of seeing the launches. He also, when he was working for Republican administrations in the 70s and 80s, never tired of tweaking his bosses because they couldn't do what they needed to do without him. It always amused him.
He sounds like wonderful man with a great sense of irony . Lucky you!
Linda, I had to go into the local Walmart today because they are the only store in this small town that carries the brand of organic milk I drink. I wouldn't normally go in on a Saturday morning, even at gunpoint, but was going past from an earlier appointment, so I stopped.
Plenty of people I know, including me, have railed against Walmart over the years. Still, in a small town, like you found with Amazon 20 years ago, sometimes these guys are a necessary evil. If I've learned anything in my 73 years, it's that nothing is 100% either way.
Bless your dad! I'm glad he got to participate in the good years of the space program. And it is a shame we let it go to pot.
I was listening to John Lennon's "Imagine" today and thinking about tribalism. I've been doing a lot of reading on neuroscience and the brain and how much of what we think are our decisions are really based on, or driven by, chemistry. Including tribalism.
And it strikes me that until and unless we can begin to see the world population as one tribe, we won't shift the paradigm. There was so much hope when the picture of the earth showed us, for the first time, that we are all residents of Spaceship Earth and all in this together. As they say now, "There is no Planet B."
For me, that awareness was even more salient than the computers, the satellites and all the other whiz-bangs we got from the space race.
Sandra, where I lived--mentioned above--I could do nothing but shop at either Walmart or Kmart. There was literally nothing else available. The local store owners had been destroyed and the downtowns of the villages were decimated. Neither company provided a living wage to their workers; neither provided health care to their workers. Yet they ensured their existence by being irreplaceable because of their business model. I now live in an urban area that has enough variety to be able to ignore Walmart as an option. It is a luxury I can afford, but so many people are stuck with being forced to feed the gaping maw of the Walton family. So I get it.
Thanks, Linda. I confess, I am so conflicted over this, but other than driving 35 miles (one way) to the nearest Harris Teeter grocery store, Walmart it is. But I cuss under my breath every time I come out.
The local super store didn't manage to put the local Ace Hardware or the local builders supply out of business. This small town has lost 3 chicken processing plants, several textile related mills and God knows what else, over the 30 years I've been here. But we've got just about every fast food restaurant (isn't that a contradiction in terms?) you can name, and even a few local mom & pop restaurants! And at least seven, count 'em, SEVEN car parts shops - Advance, NAPA, etc. So, if you're into doing you own mechanicing (to the extent that's possible these days), you're in luck!
Exactamente. Good morning, Linda. I adore your idiosyncrasies. To me, it speaks volumes about our reality…take it or leave it. I enjoyed his interview with Anderson Cooper later after his flight. Bezos is an innovator. So keep at it. Maybe the solar panel energy stations in space he spoke about will do what he theorizes. And I did like the strategic news later that he donated $200 million dollars to Chef Jose Andres and Van Jones to launch his Courage and Civility awards that will support individuals or foundations that promote solutions to problems but that the work is done with courage and civility.
I think I was more excited hearing about that than the “space” flight.
And whatever his “gadszillionaire “ status, I cannot help but appreciate Amazon especially last year during the pandemic. The delivery service helped me to protect my health and the diversity of selection regarding products allowed me to find many essentials for less than I could acquire them at stores in the area. I don’t know the answer to how we despise wealthy individuals making their gazillions on the backs of employees and their tax accountants…..yet also crediting what many of them have brought to the way we live. I realize that “they” have defined many of the conveniences we take for granted and ways thst we live we live.
It’s a conundrum but I stand in appreciation of any philanthropic movement the gadzillionsires create. Gates and his educational foundations have created significant reform. And as I mentioned…I’m a thumbs up for Bezos and his fledgling start of millions going innovators who make change happen with “courage and civility”. One to “bridge builder” Van Jones and Chef Jose Andres founder of World Central Kitchen.
I doubt that this money was possible through the government. So kudos to philanthropy. I don’t care if it’s a tax write off. I look at it money in the right hands creating solutions.
The money they steal from us in taxes could finance a decent social safety net.
The company treats workers terribly.
"Amazon relies on an extreme high-churn model, continually replacing workers in order to sustain dangerous and grueling work pace demands... Workers describe pushing their bodies to the brink to avoid automatic termination for missing quotas.1 Data from the company’s own records have confirmed their accounts showing that Amazon warehouses have stunningly high injury rates.2"
https://s27147.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/Data-Brief-Amazon-Disposable-Workers-Injury-Turnover-Rates-California-Fulfillment-Centers3-20.pdf
Yes David it's important to keep an eye on the cost of Amazon. Sure it's convenient and Bezos can splash his golden shower on a few attractive causes but it's the business model, who get hurt and the money spent ensuring that he and his kind don't pay taxes that we need to focus on.
You’ve made your opinion of Bezos snd Amazon very clear, David. Are you making a point to me about philanthropy?
I'm saying that his philanthropy likely does not make up for his treatment of workers and his failure to pay taxes.
Gotcha. I still love philanthropy.
Beware of charities designed as tax-avoiding schemes. iDJT is a prime example. It's a common ploy by rich kids. Surely some of that money does go to the poor and needy, but a lot of it goes around in a revolving door.
I disagree about Amazon not killing off Main Street. He effectively targeted retail sector after retail sector. First small bookstores, then health food stores, clothing, and malls are a thing of the past. Small & large cities and states lost sales tax revenue. Oh Jeff Bezos should Thank us very much indeed.
"The most innovative stuff is coming out of the three private companies--Space-X, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin--because these sociopaths (and really, they are all three sociopaths) have enough money to be able to throw it around with wild abandon, while the USA pinches pennies and lets its own citizens starve and struggle."
Yep. Same with private foundations. The rich keep their money and end up controlling it instead of giving it to the government to support "we the people". I could be of two minds about that as well, given how cumbersome and inefficient and politically corrupt government can be.
"Americans increasingly turned away from the post–World War II teamwork and solidarity that had made the Apollo program a success, and instead focused on liberating individual men to climb upward on their own terms, unhampered by regulation or taxes."
In a crisis and with good leadership Democracy works just fine. But sometimes individuals/private enterprise can move the goalposts ahead, too. Why can't there be some kind of balance between "liberating individual men to climb" and still requiring them to do their part in supporting our government so it can take care of our people who are less fortunate?
Well said.
I suspect Reagan’s policies (Reaganomics) also had a lot to do with the rise of superstores like Home Depot, Staples, Office Max, Walmart, and Sam’s Club, and the death of small / Mom & Pop businesses.
Lisa, It has long been my belief that Reagan was the beginning of the end. He bought and sold the Milton Friedman lie that the market would handle everything. The age of supreme selfishness had arrived.
And the rise of anti-this, that and the other...I agree there was a strange turn for the worse, including mini-wars in Central America which contributed to the rise of over-lords and poverty there.
This is a traveling day on LFAA in a down to earth way. Thank you, Linda. Our opinions are not in one place,
A thoughtful, articulate and knowledgeable perspective. Thank you for your analysis of what I otherwise would see solely as another example of mega hubris.
Linda Mitchell: Thanks for the perspective on Bezos. He is one weird dude! But Amazon fills a void in some places---and it played a key role in dealing with the pandemic, whatever one thinks of Bezos and his profit model, etc. (Does he lack empathy and a lot of other things--YES. Should he be paying more taxes--YES. Should he be doing some positive things to alleviate suffering, hunger, and other lacks in earthbound society--YES.) I was an "early adopter" of Amazon for books although I still patronize my local bookstore (more now). I still have the mouse pad he sent to early customers as a "gift"---it had a Grocho Marx quote: Outside of a dog a book is man's best friend; inside of a dog, it is dark" (As best I remember). WALMART IS A CURSE UPON THE EARTH --they have destroyed small (and parts of large) towns and they have a wretched pay scale. As downtowns dry up (and the one in Oberlin is doing that as far as traditional stores go). As independent business owners are replaced by the not-well-maid managers of the local WalMart, the question becomes pressing---WHO will be the patrons of local events, who will buy ads in the high school drama program, who will sponsor various things---NOT WalMart. End of the rant for this evening. What a lovely photograph by Buddy. Best to keep the peacefulness of that in mind as we continue into the stormy waters ahead......
I have paid zero attention to the Bezos/Branson space race, mostly because, these days, my vision of space travel and space life is influenced by of the post apocalyptic/dystopian fare I've consumed throughout my life. Bezos's thanking the little people who work for him, buy from his Amazon, and read his newspaper reinforces my belief that the class and caste systems that plague us on earth will surely follow us into the heavens. That's no way to live.
"...It’s also a giant first step towards our vision to have millions of WEALTHY people living and working in space.” There, fixed it for ya.
This vision reminds me of one of my dystopian future movies, "Elysium" (2013) where the descendants of Amazon workers grovel in the squalor left of Earth, while the very wealthy live on a huge space station that they can only dream of.
I just finished An Unkindess of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon, a study of structural racism on space ship launched generations in the past. It's an excellent piece of speculative fiction written by a very young, Black, writer. Well worth the read.
I get a kick out of how quickly the “hold” orders at my public library go up on any title mentioned in this forum. Thanks for the title to add to my list.
Danielle, now that is interesting!
Thanks, Daria. I'll be looking for this one -- to read and to pass on.
Another excellent work of fiction is the Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Ms. Butler wrote her book in 1993 about a dystopian near future that looks a lot like the times we're living through now. Climate change has dried the west, tribal loyalties have people murdering those who don't hold the same beliefs, and migrant populations are on the move while borders and cities are being protected by armed security forces. The local, state and federal governments are in total disarray while private international corporate interests are buying towns and putting people into economic slavery. A warning, it is intense and I have to sometimes just close the book, walk away and catch my breath. I wonder as I read the Parable of the Sower is this where we're headed?
I saw this comment an hour after you posted. When I checked the Albuquerque Public Library online, there were already 22 holds on this title. There may be some other impetus for the interest in a 1993 title, but I think there are quite a few of us in Albuquerque who are part of this forum.
I was reading the Guardian today and came across a reference to a 1972 study done at MIT. The study investigates "five
major trends of global concern-accelerating industrialization,
rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion
of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment." The study's conclusion regarding those topics seems to be accurate since mankind chose to continue on a nonsustainable path. You can download a PDF of the entire study in book form. It is worth a read
https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf
Until the world is blind to the color and tone of someone’s skin, then racism continues to exist.
Until women and women of color who write speculative fiction/science fiction are treated as equals to their male counterparts, color and sex must absolutely be mentioned. Study up on the discrimination in that genre and you will understand what I'm talking about. And, while we're at it, Rivers Solomon is non binary. So chew on that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_Solomon
I'm sorry to be snarky about this but since part of the issue in today's world is about how, to some, one's color diminishes their value as a human being, it is absolutely necessary to recognize personal aspects of a writer/artist/creator/inventor. There is no Kumbaya until BIPOC, everywhere on this planet, are recognized equally...just look at the female astronaut finally given a trip to space or the WWII era code-breaking black women finally recognized for their stellar achievements. Color blind you say? Right now, as far as many are concerned, color blindness means the only color exalted is white.
One particular segment of the movie (code-breaking black women) that really got to me was how she had to walk or run so far just to use a bathroom! Likely not unusual at all! One more putdown among so many.
my immediate thought when kevin costner smashed the 'colored bathroom' sign was, 'oh great, now what bathroom can she use?' were we supposed to think that now that the sign is destroyed, she could use any bathroom on the entire post? an empty symbolic act, or did it play out another way?
Hidden Figures almost instantly became one of my all time favorite movies! Loved it.
Daria, the first thing I want to say is that there is no need to apologize for being snarky, as you put it. You, of course, are welcome to your opinion and I am not convinced you were being snarky:) And honestly if you sit back a moment and think about it, though what you wrote might in fact be accurate as to how one must proceed to change the passage of the past for the better of the future, it nonetheless, does not change the accuracy of my opinion: that racism in all forms continues to exist as long as we all feel the need to mention that our skins might have different colors and other attributes.
John, I've given your comment some thought. First let me say that you have a right to your opinion - but opinions cannot be accurate, only valid. Let's deal specifically with the Americas. For centuries, from the Artic Circle to Tierra del Fuego BIPOC persons have been compromised by white Europeans. We brought disease and slavery to the indigenous peoples. We took their land and their natural resources. We brought Africans out of Africa to work and be traded like animals. Do we ignore the fact that the work of Black civil rights, politicians, academics, artists, scientists and writers and deem them colorless when the fact that they ARE black (or BIPOC) drive their existence? If you are white your assertion that "colorblindness" is the panacea for all racial ills is very much part of the issue. Tell that to Douglass, Carver, MLK, Baldwin, Butler and any number of Blacks who have brought their life's blood and effort into the mainstream. If you are white, as am I, neither of us has the right to dictate colorblindness as the solution to BIPOC acceptance into the mainstream. You are suggesting that BIPOC wipe away their identities to assuage the white culture's guilt in diminishing them as leaving, breathing human beings. Their color is important. It's their identity.
Or maybe race (and other "convenient" categories) will continue to be used as an excuse for exploitation of some humans by other humans until all the colors and tones of skin, hair, eyes, etc. become simple human variations to enjoy and celebrate. Color is a gift that can illuminate. Blindness to it is quite impossible unless literally blind. Let's transform our social structures so that such exploitation becomes unthinkable and nearly impossible. These changes are part of the many ways in which we humans need to evolve. Having been on this planet a loooooong time, I do not expect to see these changes, but can plant seeds, visionary seeds, hopeful seeds, courageous seeds, seeds of cooperation and creativity. There are lots of us planetary gardeners out there. May we begin to prepare the soil for our transformation.
There's also the "Blade Runner" perspective, in which the wealthy space dwellers still need an exploited proletarian work force to do the same jobs they were stuck with on earth. "A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, a chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure."
This is exactly along the lines of what I was also thinking - the Rick get to live in (supposed) safety and luxury in space while the rest of us are left to struggle and survive here on a planet wracked by increasingly erratic natural events sparked by global warming that was created in large part by the same (type of) people who have now (presumably) escaped this increasingly inhospitable planet. And I am not a reader of dystopian literature.
That would be rich, not “Rick”! Omg. My kingdom for an edit button!
For brief (VERY) moment, wondered what a rick was!! Mind is a bit slow some days - not enough coffee?
I was thinking the opposite. Earth becomes to expensive. The lower and middle classes live and work in space. I’m reminded of the message in the movie “AD Astra”.
I see those jobs, though, as mostly in service to uber-wealthy "star dwellers."
Exactly
OR the movie I cant seem to forget: WALL-E. Where earth has become the landfill of humans & humans (unable to function physically) live on space stations. The caretaker of the garbage is a robot! Sounds like an animated verson of your movie, Rob.
"Idiocracy" 2006 gets my vote.
Good one, Bob. Thanks for fixin’ it.
Morning, Daria!! Not to worry! According to Bezos, we've found a new dumping ground...space! Or did we?
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=in+the+year+2525+song+lyrics&view=detail&mid=1A7B65066A43F1219E9F1A7B65066A43F1219E9F&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3din%2bthe%2byear%2b2525%2bsong%2blyrics%26FORM%3dSBRS02%26sid%3d25E869BB6BD1677B304E79CE6A2C66F5%26format%3dsnrjson%26jsoncbid%3d0
Bezos is a jerk
Actually, I'm thinking his 'spaceship' design maybe something more Freudian.
Just like the Amazon "logo".
Ain't that the truth!
To put it mildly!
When the composer wrote that song in the late 60s, he had no inklng that humans had the capability to cause destruction to the planet earth and society within 100 years. Maybe his lyrics were actually a sign of hope that the dystopian future was so much further away.
Thanks Lynell - forgot the words - love the music! Doubt very much this planet will make it to 2525, tho. And as far as space being a dumping ground? As Skip says Bezos is a jerk - apparently from all the evidence currently, being a jerk is even easier when you have lots of currency!!!
Well, good morning to you Lynell! Thanks for the blast from the past!
Ugh, Bezos thanking not Bezos's 😑
I cannot agree with you more.
Somehow, when I heard Jeff make that statement, I thought I heard sarcasm and disdain.
That's difficult to feel the same.
Heather, I so admire your ability to gather facts into a narrative. Your Letters have explained history to me in a way I can understand for the first time ever. I appreciate you so much. Still, I am aware that others might take the same facts, combine them with other facts, and see a different story. You have taught me to be wary of all truth tellers, even yourself.
As to this topic, I'll add my little opinion: I don't care a whit about space travel, and I think that technology creates as many problems as it solves, if not more. The only "progress" I care about is in the fuller utilization of our human capacity to lift each other up. There is so much to be done.
Continuing to ignore our challenges here on earth and focusing instead on leaving the planet behind will only provide greater urgency to our departure while taking all our problems along with us. Wherever you go, there you are. There is so much to do, but it seems to me most of us are focused on the wrong problems and priorities. That makes for a rather dystopian future.
I do so agree with you! Take those billions and fix the planet we live on and we wouldn't need another to escape to.
100%!
Pam, that’s almost exactly what Neil DeGrasse Tyson said about Bezos yesterday.
So glad he did!!!
Exactly! “Wherever you go, there you are”. We need to fix our problems here first, so we don’t trash the rest of the universe.
To protect the most vulnerable among us, the animals, the planet itself.
Hear! Hear! I am with you again Becky!
You guys are smok'in today!!! Best commentary ever, Wicked Smart Tribe! Much appreciated!
"“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this..." This might be the most tone deaf thing I've ever heard from someone who should know to fake it better.
Indication of his limitations. NOT an intellectual.
Yeah, I'd say he's beyond faking it, probably headed for Lex Luthor territory.
Or already there.
Nauseating.
Good morning Nomi. I’m about to get in some hot water. I’ll say first that I, too, groaned when I heard Bezos say it. But I don’t have the outrage expressed today in forum. You know what I thought when I heard it? “Dang it, Bezos, that’s not going to resonate very well, but it’s true. And people are going to be uppity about it because we are the ones who support Amazon but I guess we don’t want to be thanked because it reminds us that we have participated in creating this gadzillionsire thanking us.
Morning, Christine!! Gotta give the man his due...he built a better mousetrap.
Agreed!
Yep.
You read my mind. Tone deaf, indeed.
I would have preferred that he just jumped up and down and shouted I f**king did it! It would have been an honest statement. Claptrap humility from an egomaniac who really did this out of earth thing was really dumb. Groaner.
Hahaha, yeah. Tho, thanking the customers, and the underpaid tormented workers is pretty honest too. Just obscene. I would have preferred your version as well.
Imagine the good that could be accomplished if the rich and mega-rich just paid their fair share of taxes. How about using those tax dollars on renewable energy, combating climate change and making life better on our own planet. If there is intelligent life on any other planets, I feel pretty confident they don't want us to come and trash their environment like we've done to our own. Bezos needs to get over himself and stop playing with his penis rocket.
I have heard that inter-stellar travelers remember to lock their doors when passing by Earth.
Hahahahahaha! Good morning kimceann. That is dang funny.
And to all Amazon emloyees... as Judge Judy sez..'Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.'
employees
That’s funny!
BWA HA HA! Right?
😏
So totally agree. It feels like a science fiction movie about rich white men littering on us from space. They've soiled the planet why not soil the universe.
“Elysium” (2013)
Things are so damn bad here we should put a sign at the southern border and stop the millions of “ visitors” that we are a doomed awful society where they will be paid nothing and taxed to death by the pernicious Penis Rocket Men who will destroy their lives. Beware folks. DH Rocket Men ahead !! Stay in Cuba, Venezuela and Guatemala…
Love the PPRM! Nailed it, as it were.
Splendid! Captures the moment precisely.
When you’ve been able to amass your money by not paying your fair share of taxes, your “privately funded” venture is a diversion of rightfully public funds. This new space race is publicly funded, but absent public controls and alignment. Socialize the expenses, privatize the profits.
We the people need to elect legislators who will get rid of tax loopholes for the rich!
at the end of her letter, HCR writes that in 2021 bezos had an income of 4.22 billion and paid 973 million in taxes. that's a tax rate of 23%. so, he is hardly paying no taxes. his wealth, she writes, amounts to 99 billion. but wealth is not income until you sell your property, or it is inherited. that amazon avoids taxes might be correct, but it doesn't seem that bezos himself avoids them. have i got it wrong?
"After May 4, 1970, when the shooting of college students at Kent State University in Ohio badly weakened Nixon’s support, he began to rally supporters to his side with what his vice president, Spiro Agnew, called “positive polarization."
Combined with the unsubtle racism of Nixon's Southern Strategy, thus began the decades long Republican policy of dividing Americans against each other that has led us to what we have today; two Americas that reside in different universes, and our national wealth controlled by a handful of unelected, supremely, in some cases psychotically, self-centered white men.
Jeff Bezos could not have existed in Kennedy's America. We must make that so again.
If you’re saying that Amazon (internet retailer) couldn’t have existed in Kennedy’s America, that’s true. If you’re saying that ridiculously wealthy men couldn’t have existed in Kennedy’s America, I have to disagree. The Rockefellers, Howard Hughes, the Mellons, H.L. Hunt, J. Paul Getty, the Fords (and many others) - all were billionaires (in 2020 dollars) in Kennedy’s America. Hughes, with his aviation pioneering (Spruce Goose) was similar to Bezos’ space flight. Kennedy himself was born into fabulous wealth, his father was a billionaire in today’s dollars. Ridiculous wealth and cavalier billionaires aren’t recent inventions.
Keep in mind that they actually paid taxes. The tax rates were higher and all the loopholes the wealthy use now were not available. Also, a man could work 40 hours a week, have a wife and 3 kids, a car or two and be comfortable. You could even afford to send your kids to college. These we’re working people, not college educated. I grew up in one of those families (except my mother worked too). Our neighbors worked all blue collar jobs; mills, auto industries. No one cared if you were a Democrat or Republican. It’s impossible to find that America now. I was just out of the military when Reagan took it away.
Oops, Sharon, I should have read further down before jumping in! Great minds, eh? LOL
Yes, it's a bit remiss to complain about money and privilege in context of the wealth and power of the Kennedy clan, itself.
I don’t believe the combined wealth of all of those names equals Bezos alone, let alone Zuckerberg and the others, whether you use hard numbers or as a percentage of national wealth.
Not even close.
You may not believe it, but Bezos only ranks 4th all time in measures of wealth, and Zuckerberg is quite a ways further down the list. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/04/16/30-richest-americans-of-all-time/39338941/
All the people on that list either lived before the graduated income tax or attained the bulk of their wealth after 1980, thus affirming my point that robber baron levels of wealth and influence were not prevalent in post WWII America; Truman. Ike, JFK, until the Reagan Administration began the re-organization of the tax structure to favor the accumulation of wealth among fewer and fewer people.
You’re changing your argument. You never said anything about robber barons or WWII in this thread. You said you “don’t believe the combined wealth of the people on that list equals Bezos’ alone”. That’s not right. It’s true that the tax laws changed over the last 100 years, first to impose higher taxes on wealth, then to reduce taxes on wealth. My only point is that we’ve seen wealth like Bezos’ before, many times. Bezos is far from unique. And, as billionaires go, not particularly evil.
My original argument was, “Jeff Bezos could not have existed in Kennedy’s America.”
I stand by that statement and have read nothing that effectively refutes it.
I do appreciate all who have read my post and thought enough about it to respond.
Thank you.
I never said there was no wealth or privilege in the 1960's; just that it was nowhere near the amassed wealth of a very few today.
To equate Hughes' failed spruce goose project with Bezos' penis rocket is patently absurd.
You're right, Ralph. In the Kennedy years we still had an estate tax with teeth, and the top marginal rate was maybe less than the 90% under Eisenhower, but substantially more than today. And CEOs made far less than today and were paid WAGES, not stock options that would benefit from capital gains taxes).
The wealthiest man ever in US history was John D Rockefeller. I take it you don’t like Bezos, but in terms of accomplishments for their time, the Spruce Goose and Hughes Aerospace was very much like Bezos’ Blue Origin.
I guess the Kent State shootings did undermine Nixon’s support somewhat, but what I remember most from that period is the obscene delight American warmongers took in the event, especially the white working class, who loathed all college students and thought any of them protesting Vietnam deserved a bullet.
Jeff Bezos’s remarks thanking Amazon employees and customers were repugnant. Those employees are real people that he takes advantage of in order to make billions of dollars.
Also, how rude! It is the comment of a very privileged person. To me it equates with Marie Antoinette's "Let the eat cake!"
I agree with you and JennSH, except for Marie-Antoinette. She never said "let them eat cake" (serious historians all agree on that). That was a fake news (already!) published by a violently anti-monarchy paper named "Le Père Duchesne", which was a kind of Fox News on paper, publishing lies and exaggerations all year round at the time (1790-1794).
Thank you. I concede that she didn't say it. However, you get the idea of what I meant if she had said it.
Of course. I'm as outraged as you. I post a comment on my (fledgling) blog about it. Excerpt: "When Jeff will go upthere next tuesday and feel as light as a feather, his employees will bear the burden of gravity, working hard in those gigantic warehouses for a starting salary of 15$ an hour. The American Dream is not the same for everyone."
So, for a different perspective: I recently spoke to someone who has been working at an amazon warehouse for the past several months. They have had an incredibly difficult life and this is the best and highest paying job they have ever had. They are proud to finally be earning what is, for them, a decent wage and are grateful for the work and to be able to support their family. That may change as time passes but I just wanted to share that for a difference in perspective. I am by no means defending Bezos or the many headed hydra that amazon has become but, with all due respect, thought it important to share so that we don’t become an echo chamber.
To quote the great Patterson Hood of the even greater Drive By Truckers, it's knowing "when to print the legend and when to leave the facts in." If she didn't say it, she should have.
I respecfully disagree. True journalism is to print the facts, and nothing but the facts. The last four years brilliantly (and pathetically) showed how much damage "alternate facts" could do. And, contrary to general opinion at the time, Marie-Antoinette was somebody compassionate and generous. She discreetly helped countless poor people and their children. The main reproach to her was her extravagant spending in clothes and toiletries. the French people nicknamed her "Madame Déficit". They thought she alone would ruin France.
I was being a lot less serious than you, not quite joking, sort of ironic. But you're right, in these dangerous times it's dangerous to joke about the truth or to suggest that it's optional. My apologies.
Sorry, I didn't get your irony. I'm happy we both like the truth enough to fight for it. Cheers!
Oh!
Yes, Bezo's comments were a bit tone-deaf.
But, I have a very dear friend who almost lost it all with buyouts and consolidation of a career corporate job. He went from a very high-salaried management position to suddenly unemployed and then to being a middle-aged entry-level Amazon warehouse worker. However he has extremely positive feelings about the Amazon job and the opportunities and benefits presented. He had a complete turn-around in his life and yet manages to keep perspective. He is my personal living hero!
Well said. His arrogance and disregard for others, especially Amazon’s employees, disgusts me to my core.
How many among us would be him or a reasonable facsimile had we walked the proverbial mile in his shoes?
Some, but not many would be my guess. The winds, wafting us upwards, have very strong currents. He is a natural outgrowth of unfettered capitalism. His billions (?) trillions (?) do not appear to be made illegally.
Many, many Amazon decisions which result in abuse of the system, are made downstream of him.
I neither deify nor disparage him. He is a logical endpoint.
I agree that he is the logical endpoint to where our country's policies have been headed for at least the last 40 years. A perfect compilation in one person.
I suppose she embodies the direction of the last 40 years. He is not, however, responsible for them. It took millions of decisions, small and large, for him to become the avatar of laissez-faire, extrapolative capitalism. It so happens that each decision threaded him upward. Getting to the pinnacle has placed him in uncharted territory. He is quite spectacularly different from us.
And we from him. I condemn the system. But I think it too easy to just dismiss him as a jerk as some have done.
He may be totally so. Or not.
When the United States finally recognized that they had a John D. Rockefeller, they broke his company up and made an attempt to “shorten the tail” of capitalism. Much of what followed was salutary, but sadly cyclical as the Eighties onward showed. Everything that was old is new again.
Perhaps Bezos and a few others will be the cautionary tale upon which America pivots again.
Stellar points, Eric.
Agree with this point. The Gilded Age Robber Barons were brought back beginning in the 80s with the rewrite of corporate culture that made the profit margin the be-all, end-all. Kurt Andersen's book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America covers this recent history very well.
I only hope that Lina Khan. as head of FTC can make progress in dismantling some of the monopolies/concentrated control of industries
alongside the enthusiasm that Liz Warren and Amy Klobuchar have for breaking the stranglehold!
Editing: ‘he’ in the first line to replace ‘she’.
Bezos’ comment reminds me of the Christmas party where all company employees received a crisp 100 dollar bill as a bonus, while the firm owners had pulled down millions that year. “Thank you.” I mean, what condescending BS.
Or not even a $100 dollar bill but a frozen turkey from Safeway.
Rather out of touch, no?
“….thriwing pennies to the paupers…”
and yet we click "buy" every damn day on Amazon.
Not me. Haven’t for 21 years. There are plenty of alternatives.
We click "buy" because Amazon has always been a well-conceived business model that provided services, access, and filled needs that were not available in many places. Its destructiveness in America arises from two parties' operatives willingly turning over their ownership to business and favorably backing only those candidates with defective ethics wherever possible who will take orders from business NOT to regulate business. The American people have seen their government, their health care, their access to information, their educational credibility and even control of their police and military taken from them by oligarchs. Oligarchs joy-riding in their rockets is fully symbolic that now the adventure of space travel are firmly under control of oligarchy.
Contrast this with the experience of citizens when we felt in control as stakeholders in space science and technology. This week held NONE of that joy or spirit. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/armstrong-bezos?utm_source=OSS+Newsletter&utm_campaign=db88e853c0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_5_3_2019_14_30_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_995459bc2b-db88e853c0-177103904
That sounds right to me. Though the night Neil Armstrong etc landed on the moon my brother and I (teenagers) went outside and lay under the stars to look at the untouched, unspoiled Moon one last time before it was sucked into the web of "expansion" that has muddied and bloodied the earth and its atmosphere. I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid, read every book in my small-town library about space, the solar system, stars, the Big Bang, you name it. My most amazing dream ever was of gazing at Jupiter through the Mt. Palomar telescope. But men landing on the moon was nothing to me but loss. Still, compared to the Bezos Penetration it was fun. At least we were all thinking about the moon together, all over the country and the earth. The one good part of the moon landing for me was a beautiful film, so beautiful I bought a copy to watch when I feel the need: "In the Shadow of the Moon," a documentary interviewing all the surviving astronauts who'd been to the moon. Men "changed utterly"--wise. And in love with the earth.
So beautiful.
Have you seen the film?!
What an uplifting story! John Kennedy was no saint, but during his brief time in office he did manage to help bring out an optimism about the ourselves and our future. Johnson lacked his charisma, but (except for Vietnam — and that’s a huge but) did accomplish passage of the Voting Rights Act and other key legislation that continued to extend the vision of FDR’s New Deal to groups previously left out of the American Dream.
And then the Movement Conservatives come to power. And with them the notion that the government is the problem reignites our inner demons. Now we have the Super Haves, maintaining their wealth by scaring those in the middle that those at the bottom are trying to use the government to steal the middle’s resources and wealth for the benefit of the bottom. Meanwhile the rich get richer and richer and richer.
And then earlier this week, Bezos returns from his privately funded space venture and makes remarks that clearly were not vetted by his public relations people, admitting that his efforts were largely funded by his employees and customers, leaving out the part about how his ability to pay next to nothing in taxes sufficiently enriched him so he could underwrite his private space venture while shifting the burden of paying taxes to those of us in the (former) middle class.
Important, especially in today's battle over voting rights, that in 1964 Johnson "jaw-boned" the votes to pass the Voting Rights Act, the foundation upon which we remain arguing today.
I used to be really enthused by the idea of people living in space. Now, the idea depresses me. I wouldn't want to live in an artificial, sunless environment away from Earth. I no longer think all the resources being poured into getting humans into space are necessarily worth it. Although, now, we can't do without satellites for communication. Michigan is supposed to have a spaceport in the fairly near future for launching satellites. But, everytime they shoot a rocket up, it puts more exhaust in the atmosphere, and another hole in the ozone.
Maybe we don't have the right to impose that decision on our great-great-great whatevers. The billionaires have so befouled the Earth with the by-products of their greed that it's no longer good enough for their progeny?
Yes, how can we venture out on exploration joy rides when our own house is on fire? Looking and dreaming of another planet to live on while this one burns?
We already KNOW that there isn't anywhere else in this solar system that is habitable. We'd have to travel a VERY long way to even think of moving to. If there are other livable places, those occupants will not want us. What's next? "Manifest Destiny" in space?
Tamara, you are right, we need to be careful.
Just keep thinking about all the homeless or housing insecure families that could have been given housing and food security right here on this planet for the cost of that space flight.
There are so many blind spots for the visionaries of today. This country, the environment and all the people who have legitimate fear of being able to make a future for themselves right here on the planet that we live on. If this countries government and corporations were taking care of its citizens there would be much less air and space for the endless idiocy of the far right. The far right is fueled by real peoples fears of the future along with some serious mental health issues and antiquated myths of what it means to be an American. Saving our environment, ending homelessness and helping the working classes are the real moon shots of our time. Going to the stratosphere in a private space ship and then thanking me for buying stuff on Amazon is insulting and amazingly tone deaf.
Every issue is complicated and nuanced and we try to compress it into tidy bullet points and sound bites. We could take any social or political issue and if we really looked at it, we’d find it was more a dodecahedron than something with just 2 sides. I don’t know how to start having that conversation.
Morning Beth. I love your mathematical analogy. It’s exactly how I feel. I feel hemmed in by 2 sides discussion but our country if so firmly trapped in that model right now.
Yes, Beth and Christine!! We think things are mutually exclusive when they are not. Our current political bifurcation militates against complex thought of 12 sides (or its exponent) of any issue. Complex thinking can lead to a frustrating and paralyzing inactivity for two-siders but, as someone here already commented, we have to learn how to do multiple things at the same time. This goes beyond our conventional take on "multi-tasking", I think, as it goes beyond the "ambidextrous" individual and demands the concerted action of many who are imagining and thinking with new models. At this contagious moment we seem so stupid as a species; not sure we are up to the demand. But, love the idea of getting the conversation going. We approach it, at times, here on this site....maybe the conversation has already begun?
I hope to the heavens so, Carol. But I have felt a bit squeamish today posting what I know will be assumed as “con” comments. Worrisome.
I appreciate how you feel but so far this site has been exemplary for its genuine civility. As more diverse thinking shows up here I hope the civility continues.....contributing and engaging without insult, ad hominems or name -calling....all sadly ubiquitous on social media. A "safe" place does not have to be an "echo chamber". Thank you!
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Not to mention all the living wages and better working conditions those employees should be getting
When will we ever value human capital properly? There is no asset that’s more important.
when will we cease thinking of people as "human capital"?
If the government does something—like develop the complex technologies needed for space flight—we all pay for it with our taxes, we all benefit and we all own it, collectively. If a private company like Amazon does something—even if they use technology developed by the government and owned by us all—we all pay for it, a small number of people benefit exorbitantly, and anywhere from one person to a handful owns it. Tell me again which system you prefer.
Every time I adjust the temperature in my home - turn the heat or the AC on or off - I smile. My dad was a manufacturer’s rep who sold lots to Honeywell. Honeywell thermostats were developed and improved because of space exploration, something for which my dad was really proud. Products he represented used in space; then improving comfort here on earth.
Thanks for sharing the Honeywell example. I would have been proud too if that were the background of my occupation. I'm not a technical expert on space exploration but I do wonder just how novel are the technologies employed by the private ventures and whether we will benefit from the same trickle-down into consumer goods. They might, but we probably won't be getting another Honeywell.
Morning Kirk. I think Americans forgot about that ownership that we had and now complain when we have done little to get it back through several administrations.
Maybe the private innovation now will force government to get back in the game as Kennedy envisioned it.
We could compare this billionaire's selfish enterprise with what his ex-wife is doing. MacKenzie Scott recently gave 8.5 billion dollars to various organizations and associations, dedicated to helping people to have a better life. In her own words: https://mackenzie-scott.medium.com/seeding-by-ceding-ea6de642bf
As Louis Aragon, a French poet, said, "La femme est l'avenir de l'homme" (woman is man's future).
McKenzie Scott just proved that women go to college to get smarter. And boys go to Jupiter only to get stupid’er!
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Jeff Bezos is on a multimillion dollar ego trip funded by his employees and customers. Accompanying him is a story he tells as to why he is pursuing space and as we might expect from a man talking about himself he is declaring what the future should be like and he wants that future for his future generations. It is all about Jeff Bezos folks while back here on Earth the old news about poverty, crumbling infrastructure, right-wing oppression of minorities, etc. struggling to survive go begging for attention. We have lots to address here at home without chasing some egomaniacs dream about the future.
...and his statement at the end is a slap in the face of his workers and his customers that aren't rich, and the many people in this country can barely afford to keep food on the table and a roof over the family's heads.
Agreed 100%!
Stay tuned for the next episode of Amazon's new series "Oligarchs In Space" !