Bezos' current estimated net worth (143B, per Forbes) averaged over the entire 25-year history of Amazon still comes out to well over half a million an hour. Why quibble over a measly one or two orders of magnitude when the amount we're dealing with is so outsized?

Also, in what sense does Bezos still bear any financial risk for anything at all? All of Amazon could crash and burn tomorrow and he'd still have enough tucked away under his mattress to last the rest of his life. A few billion at the margins either way is completely meaningless to him.

Amazon is an "easy target" because it is incredibly powerful and pervasive. It's reasonable to hold powerful parties to a higher standard because they have more ability to enact both positive and negative change. And most labor activists want worker protections to be not just company policies, but laws, which would also affect all those under-the-radar companies.

>Why quibble over a measly one or two orders of magnitude when the amount we're dealing with is so outsized?

I am not quibbling over the exact figure. I am quibbling over the fact that he only "makes" that much by having most of his eggs in the Amazon basket, the basket that he founded and therefore owns the majority. If Amazon had failed and gone bankrupt, say, 10 years in, should all of his employees at that point have paid back their wages from over the years? It's only fair since Bezos lost everything, right? Tell me, if Bezos liquidated all but the minimum amount of equity required to remain CEO, would you still hate him just as much? Who would you hold at fault then? Or is he just your punching bag regardless?

>It's reasonable to hold powerful parties to a higher standard because they have more ability to enact both positive and negative change.

It's more reasonable to hold everyone to the same standard. If not, then where is the line when you go from "anything goes" to "we expect better from you"? It's only reasonable to go after the biggest one because it has the most cash to bleed. That's not noble, that's just greedy. If you actually cared about the cause of helping people that are treated the worst, you would go after much smaller and dirtier entities. And if you want them to be laws, then why the protests against Amazon specifically? Go to your congresspeople that are supposed to represent your views and make them change the laws. Amazon has zero obligation to you but your representatives do and yet Amazon is at fault here? Maybe you should start wondering why politicians you keep voting for keep getting bought out by big money.

For the record, I don't even like Bezos or Amazon.

Every hour that you work for $15/hour is a loss. It's an hour that you don't get back, in exchange for a pittance. It's only not a risk in the sense there was never any real chance of reward.

Bezos did take some meaningful risks, but at some point, any sense of risk is meaningless. $10 million is enough for anyone to live out a more financially comfortable life than a $15/hour worker without ever working again. Jeff Bezos has more than 10,000 times that. What exactly has Bezos risked since he made is first $10 million? A slightly less comfortable life, with a smaller number next to his name?

Maybe you think $10 million is too low a number, but whatever number you think is more money than anyone could reasonably make use of, I don't think you can honestly disagree that Bezos passed that long ago, and has not taken a meaningful risk since.

For me, this isn't about hating Bezos or Amazon. It's about loving normal people who have to struggle just to get by when there is so much excess available. I don't always succeed, but I try very hard to base my ideology in love.

There is no line, and there is no reason to choose between lobbying Amazon and lobbying politicians. People can do more than one thing!

We're focusing on Amazon right now because we're in an HN thread about Amazon. I'm not going into the Intel and Uber threads and telling folks they're wasting their energy because Bezos is so much more punchable.

> Please leave this type of intellectual dishonesty at the door. Hacker News is smarter than this. Jeff Bezos also loses $9,000,000/hour some months. He lost billions in minutes after the earnings report a few days ago. That's what happens when you have equity in something. He bore the risk when the company made nothing and was nothing and he continues to bear that risk and reap the rewards.

Haggling over the exact number Jeff Bezos makes hourly misses the point very intentionally, and that's certainly not honest. Can we agree that whatever Jeff Bezos' hourly income is, it's many, many orders of magnitude more than $15/hour?

> Amazon is attacked because it's an easy target.

Tell me another company that's mistreating their workers, in any industry, and I'll happily condemn their actions too.

We need to talk about specific companies and specific abuses, because if we don't, then there's no action that can be taken which addresses the specific problem.

And incidentally, it's not like people are pushing for laws that are going to be written to only apply to Amazon. Workers don't have realistic ability to use the bathroom at Amazon: so we should have a law that says workers (at any company) have a right to use the bathroom.

> Warehouses have abused workers long before Amazon and continue to do so while flying under the radar despite being significantly worse than Amazon. If someone is unemployed and another person is employed but wants to get a raise with a new job, you help the unemployed person first. Your argument amounts to "well, just because this person is employed doesn't mean they don't deserve a raise". Sure, you're technically correct, but the net result of your efforts is less than if you find a job for the second person first.

Ah yes, the "we're only allowed to talk about one thing so it shouldn't be this" argument. Why can't we talk about Amazon and the other companies?

What's the net result of your effort? You want to talk about the entire warehouse industry? Why stop there? Aren't there even more employers in other industries? Are you just picking on the warehouse industry? Is talking about the entire warehouse industry really going to result in a larger net improvement than talking about Amazon?

> It's why a lot of people not in the line of fire don't take these initiatives seriously. It's also why workers from other warehouses flock to Amazon by the 100,000s despite these alleged poor conditions.

Please leave this type of intellectual dishonesty at the door. Hacker News is smarter than this. Amazon also loses some workers some months.

Or that's what I would say if I were trying to sidestep your point. Instead, I'll say that there are other explanations for why people go to work at Amazon--namely, a lack of other employment options. If my options were become homeless or work at Amazon, I'd work at Amazon too. That doesn't suddenly mean Amazon gets a free pass for everything they do.

>Can we agree that whatever Jeff Bezos' hourly income is, it's many, many orders of magnitude more than $15/hour?

Irrelevant, as they don't perform the same duty nor did they share the same risk. They're free to start their own companies if they think it's such a surefire way to guaranteed wealth.

>Tell me another company that's mistreating their workers, in any industry, and I'll happily condemn their actions too.

You're assuming that I think Amazon is mistreating their workers as a rule. I believe it happens. I also believe anything can happen when you have almost 800,000 employees.

>And incidentally, it's not like people are pushing for laws that are going to be written to only apply to Amazon. Workers don't have realistic ability to use the bathroom at Amazon: so we should have a law that says workers (at any company) have a right to use the bathroom.

I'm all for this. I don't agree that the bathroom situation is anywhere close to what has been reported but it doesn't matter because we are in agreement on the laws governing all companies part.

>Ah yes, the "we're only allowed to talk about one thing so it shouldn't be this" argument. Why can't we talk about Amazon and the other companies?

I didn't say this, in fact, I said exactly what you said. I'm seeing talk that is 99% Amazon and 1%... everyone else. And that's being generous. I can't remember the last time I saw a headline that talked about these issues elsewhere even though the comments always bring up plenty of alternative examples. How come we're okay with people that stock grocery stores to make $8? Is their job any less hard than boxing things up in an Amazon warehouse? There are way more grocery stores across the country than Amazon warehouses.

>What's the net result of your effort?

Stop right there. I don't pat myself on the back for how noble I am. If it were up to me, I would be directing all this effort to getting Congress to actually pass laws that force these companies to act right rather than begging Bezos to hand out a couple more biscuits. You know, that one tiny thing that representatives are supposed to do for their constituents: pass laws.

>Amazon also loses some workers some months.

Swing and a miss.

>Instead, I'll say that there are other explanations for why people go to work at Amazon--namely, a lack of other employment options. If my options were become homeless or work at Amazon, I'd work at Amazon too.

There you go. The alternative is living on the street. Thank you, Amazon, for lifting people out of homelessness. For that noble deed, we're going to target you for not doing enough while everyone else gets a pass for not doing anything.

> > Can we agree that whatever Jeff Bezos' hourly income is, it's many, many orders of magnitude more than $15/hour?

> Irrelevant, as they don't perform the same duty nor did they share the same risk. They're free to start their own companies if they think it's such a surefire way to guaranteed wealth.

Let's address this one part at a time:

1. No duty is worth what Bezos makes.

2. A surefire way to guaranteed wealth is to start with so much wealth that even if you lose all your investments, you're still wealthy and will continue to be for the rest of your life even if you never make money again. That's where Bezos was decades ago.

3. And while we're at it, yeah, let's empower poor people to start their own businesses. I.e. give people a standard of living where they might have money to risk to begin with. I.e. not $15/hour.

> I didn't say this, in fact, I said exactly what you said. I'm seeing talk that is 99% Amazon and 1%... everyone else. And that's being generous. I can't remember the last time I saw a headline that talked about these issues elsewhere even though the comments always bring up plenty of alternative examples. How come we're okay with people that stock grocery stores to make $8? Is their job any less hard than boxing things up in an Amazon warehouse? There are way more grocery stores across the country than Amazon warehouses.

So basically, you agree with me except that you had to jump in to defend a poor defenseless multibillion dollar international company?

> If it were up to me, I would be directing all this effort to getting Congress to actually pass laws that force these companies to act right rather than begging Bezos to hand out a couple more biscuits. You know, that one tiny thing that representatives are supposed to do for their constituents: pass laws.

Great: why don't you do that instead of derailing any effort by jumping in to defend Amazon?

> There you go. The alternative is living on the street. Thank you, Amazon, for lifting people out of homelessness. For that noble deed, we're going to target you for not doing enough while everyone else gets a pass for not doing anything.

Dude, you're so set on diverting focus away from Amazon's wrong doing if Amazon literally stabbed someone you'd comment how it alleviated their high blood pressure.

Slave wage jobs are arguably better than homelessness, but you know what's even better than that? A society with an income distribution that makes a vague pretense of being proportionally meritocratic, and where are alternatives are better than homelessness and working for what pittances the rich deign to give us.

>1. No duty is worth what Bezos makes.

Says who? You? You know how I know it's worth that much? Because he already has that much. The free market has decided.

>That's where Bezos was decades ago.

Nope.

>So basically, you agree with me except that you had to jump in to defend a poor defenseless multibillion dollar international company?

My principles don't discriminate by dollar figure or other arbitrary measures. That's what makes them principles.

>Great: why don't you do that instead of derailing any effort by jumping in to defend Amazon?

I can do both? Isn't that what you were preaching before?

>Dude, you're so set on diverting focus away from Amazon's wrong doing if Amazon literally stabbed someone you'd comment how it alleviated their high blood pressure.

Great strawman. We're done here.

> Says who? You? You know how I know it's worth that much? Because he already has that much. The free market has decided.

Which only goes to show that the free market is absolutely terrible at deciding things.

> > That's where Bezos was decades ago.

> Nope.

Well, actually, Bezos did surpass the $10 million in wealth mark at least two decades ago, so I'm really not sure what you're on about.

> My principles don't discriminate by dollar figure or other arbitrary measures. That's what makes them principles.

What principle are you applying here exactly?

> I can do both? Isn't that what you were preaching before?

But you aren't doing both. You're just defending Amazon. You claim to care about worker's rights and not like Amazon and Bezos, but all I see you doing here is saying Amazon and Bezos deserve what they get and the workers deserve what they get, including subsistence-level wages and unsafe working conditions. If this is how you treat people you like and people you're defending, I hope to always stay on your bad side!