conuly | So a while ago I read that Jeff Bezos can't think of anything better to do with his fortune

than throw it into ~~a pit~~ space.

I guess that's a little classier than gold-plated toilets, but not as much as he probably thinks.

Not that he doesn't donate to charity, but c'mon, the amounts I've seen quoted are chump change. His net worth is measured in twelve digits, not one of which is a decimal!

I didn't post about it at the time, but my brain's been at work on this ever since. Every morning I wake up with new ideas of better ways he can spend even one billion dollars, to say nothing of a hundred billion dollars and counting!

1. He could split it among food pantries in the USA.

2. He could singlehandedly eradicate polio.

3. He could fulfill every last request at DonorsChoose.

4. He could double the MTA's budget, let them catch up on their backlog.

5. He could build a subway system from scratch in the urban area of his choice.

6. He could double Amtrack's budget too!

7. He could give every homeless person in America $650 a week for a year and use the remaining $40 billion or so to raise wages at Amazon by the same amount, and he'd still have money left over.

8. He could repair my roof, my furnace, and my first floor bathroom, and then buy me a pizza.

9. Make that a billion pizzas.

10. That's a serious suggestion, by the way. Jeff, are you reading this?

11. He could neuter every single pet cat and dog in the country, and in Canada as well.

12. He could provide free college tuition, housing, and a small stipend for every individual 18 - 24 who has aged out of foster care and not finished college yet.

13. He could repair Puerto Rico.

14. He could provide free epipens for every public school in America.

15. He could provide half the cost, up to $10k, to put solar panels on every one or two family house in the the Southwest.

16. He could pay off the oil companies to give up on the Dakota Access Pipeline.

17. He could purchase and destroy all copies of the horror that is the remastered Star Wars Han shot first!

18. He could probably bribe everybody to forget that ever happened, actually.

19. He could pay for dozens of American and Canadian students to go on foreign exchange programs.

20. He could build more libraries and hospitals.

21. He could pay to improve the ads that come on my Kindle. FFS, Amazon practically knows more about my reading habits than I do, so why are they trying to sell me steamy romances, books I've already read (on that selfsame Kindle), and instructional manuals for oil rigs?

22. He could build dense, mixed-income housing in places that sorely need more of it.

23. He could definitely fix Flint's water issues.

24. He could provide money to help remove lead paint from the homes of lower income families.

25. Last but certainly not least, he could get surgery to remove his head from his ass.

All I'm saying is he needs to spend that money, or I'm going to lose it thinking of ways to spend it for him. It's like the worst earworm in the world.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

While the money isn't spent in space, the amounts involved without the commitment to matters like on this list, is enraging like the work on the Giant Buddha that then was detonated (politically motivated, by people doing no more for the people around the Giant Buddha)- it's the affront of visceral goods being rationed against when it is evident that the shortage isn't general.

I consider just what Flint could be doing if they weren't locked in the battle for water caused by penny pinching infrastructure wrecking shortsighted people without the science, ethics or economics to understand how evil they were being.

From:

elayna

He could pay his employees better wages so that he has fewer profits to cope with.

From:

wpadmirer

To paraphrase, "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to remove his head from his ass."

From:

alexseanchai

So many art grants. SO MANY.

From:

alexseanchai

TRUTH

From:

alexseanchai

So truth

From:

alexseanchai

The problem Flint is having at this point is less the one you describe and more the unwillingness to fix that thing driven largely by people who know how evil they're being and don't find this objectionable.

But yeah.

From:

shadowkat

LOL! Oh I can come up with even more ways he can spend it. The idiot should go talk to Bill Gates who quite Microsoft and has donated most of his fortune to various philanthropic causes. (Of the big techies, I only respect Bill Gates.)

Or remove those ads from the Kindle. Seriously, do they even need them?

He could build free housing for people who can't afford it. And provide rent controlled housing.

He could help clean up the environment, and fund the latest techniques for cleaning up the oceans and providing clean energy resources.

He could help fund Doctors Without Borders, FEMA, and various disaster relief organizations around the world

He could help Puerto Rico rebuild and defend itself against another Hurricane

He could help the Anti-Gun Lobby do away with guns and remove any and all items promoting the NRA or allowing the ease of purchase of guns, etc from Amazon.

Sigh.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

Yes, at this point it's Not Fixing the Mess which is totally about a disregard of responsibility, much as Puerto Rico and NOLA; that isn't ignorance that's criminal inaction. How the start of it happened, also criminal, possibly aided by people not knowing enough, certainly not caring enough.

When you think money is more important than anything else, crimes against people happen.

From:

wendelah1

He seems pretty typical of the people of his wealth class. It's a very entitled group of individuals and they're getting more so all of the time. They really do think they're better than the rest of us.

From:

konsectatrix

You should actually email him with this, since he apparently does read it.

From:

monanotlisa

8. - 10. made me laugh.

But yes. This is why this country will crumble and fall. Jeff Bezos himself is not the reason, of course, but the fact we let him hoard this insane kind of wealth in the first place.

From:

thewayne

Meanwhile, Amazon is unhappy that Seattle is adding a tax to help the homeless.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/05/15/amazon-very-unhappy-with-seattle-new-tax-what-might-that-mean-for-boston/XvOFqJju9YEeLqx5XylMUK/story.html

He should spend some time with Bill Gates.

From:

monanotlisa

I would probably go with the homeless solution, if I had to choose.

...25. is also not half-bad.

From:

akycha

I love this game! Only I also kind of hate it, too -- it's so frustrating.

- He could create a foundation to politically, structurally, and pedagogically do a complete overhaul of the American school system.

- He could give every student who has applied for financial aid a complete scholarship.

- Hell, he could blue the student loan debts of every single person in North America.

- He could found a named chair in every single department (INCLUDING WGS, Queer Studies, Critical Race Studies, and African American Studies) in every major university, in a futile attempt to make more tenure-track jobs available.

- He could build ten homeless shelters in every major American city.

- He could donate enough money to Planned Parenthood that they could actually build more clinics and expand needed health services to underfunded counties all over the US, increasing access to birth control, cancer screening, HPV vaccines, and abortions.

- He could renovate old Victorians in danger of demolition throughout Detroit, and re-open them as women's centers, youth clubs, low-income housing, and co-ops.

- He could single-handedly make sure that the people in Amazon's warehouses work under decent conditions and for a livable wage.

From:

sovay

He could pay his employees better wages so that he has fewer profits to cope with.

+1.

From:

conuly

I actually looked up the numbers and did the math on that one.

From:

conuly

If I do that, I better get a new roof out of it.

From:

conuly

Meanwhile, Amazon is unhappy that Seattle is adding a tax to help the homeless.

Oh, boo-hoo-hoo.

From:

conuly

Seriously! Even one billion is far more than any of us could reasonably spend in a lifetime. The difference between one billion and 100 billion is pretty much nil, anyway. Your basic needs only cost so much.

From:

conuly

He could help Puerto Rico rebuild and defend itself against another Hurricane

He could finance all the rebuilding himself, as a grant, not a loan.

From:

conuly

Ugh.

From:

conuly

YES.

From:

conuly

*snrk*

From:

conuly

Yes, if all this money is causing him this much existential angst, I'm sure they can use it better.

From:

alexseanchai

Granny Weatherwax has words about that

From:

alexseanchai

SO frustrate

These are grand thoughts

From:

mommy

I'd love to see #15. Solar panels could also result in income for families that sell any surplus electricity they might collect, which would be incredibly useful in certain poorer areas in New Mexico that I remember from my childhood.

From:

conuly

- He could single-handedly make sure that the people in Amazon's warehouses work under decent conditions and for a livable wage.

No shit.

From:

conuly

California is now making it a requirement for new single family homes.

From:

mommy

That's excellent news. I hope other states in the region are also looking into similar requirements.

From:

naye

Enraging to think about what that hopeless man is doing with his money, but hey - if you had his funds good things would happen.

From:

conuly

To be fair, I'd definitely sock away some of that cash for the future. And I'd pay off the mortgage and do all necessary home repairs.

But I've crunched the numbers every way I can, and at max, assuming we buy a ton of books and games and houses, my family can't possibly use more than 50mil* over the next 75 years.

So that's a lot of charity to get through.

* I'm not that altruistic, okay?

Edited Date: 2018-05-20 07:38 pm (UTC)

From:

magnetic_pole

Seriously! M.

From:

archangelbeth

He could do all that and probably give me enough to get a license from CBS to do that awesome Star Trek idea that I have... *grump*

From:

wolby

THIS IS GOOD; THANKS.

From:

conuly

And replace my busted monitor.

From:

archangelbeth

AMEN!

From:

ksol1460.livejournal.com

People like Bezos remind me of the industrialist robber barons of the olden days like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and so on who used their billions to fund libraries, hospitals, schools, etc. How to appeal to their better natures? A new "gospel of wealth" for the 21st century.

Bluejay Young

From:

jesse_the_k

Is that reference material shelved in the appendix?

From:

silveradept

There's a terrible lot of his things he could do, if he feels that there's just excess wealth around with no idea on what to do about it. We could start at livable wages due the employees and possibly expand all the way out to a basic income grant for people.