And I say all this even not being a fan of the way Bezos has sometimes falsely claimed credit for “firsts” that were not really firsts, like when they landed a rocket (propulsive landing) while pretending that SpaceX had not done so in a much more challenging way already.
> I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
maybe it's the fact that a small school's population of people own 60% of all wealth on earth that gives these vanity shows of wealth a bad taste in their mouths.
To rephrase: I felt that the entire flight was a bit underwhelming, and that it felt more like an amusement park ride (with a very expensive ticket price) than an actual spaceflight with astronauts, even though it was communicated that way.
He could hire the smartest people in the world to work on breakthrough propulsion, SETI, blue sky physics, and computing research. The money would barely be a rounding error in his wealth.
He could fund the greatest space observatories in history, fund game changing contributions to cancer research, genomics, and other experimental medicine, and set up international STEM education programs.
Instead he builds a toy rocket that looks like a penis and goes on a 2 minute joyride to the edge of space. And something something space hotels, maybe.
It's debatable if it's evil. But it's certainly lacking ambition and boring.
He's the richest man on earth - who started one of the biggest and most successful companies on the planet, I'd say he had plenty of ambition. Excuse him for having a little fun. "He could do this, that and the other thing." Well thank you for telling him what he should/could do with his money. You know what, why don't you go start a company with a 1.8T market cap, and you can do all these noble things. All you need is some ambition to do something less boring, right?
This has rapidly become my least favorite neologism.
As for Bezos, he also started the $10 billion Earth Fund to support climate change solutions. He could do a lot more, but he can't do it all at once; most of his wealth is in Amazon stock, and if he sold it all at once then it wouldn't be worth $200B anymore.
I assume his future rockets can launch space telescopes, although they have spent 7 years not getting their engines to work.
Its not; the ambition is commercial ambition (which given Bezos shouldn't be surprising), but its certainly present.
Why?
Is it ok if I deride people who molest their own kids? I mean, it's how they choose to spend their time, who am I to judge right?
The way society works is by deciding collectively what's ok, and that's decided based on people's tastes.
My tastes are that no small group of people should have power over large groups of people without their ongoing consent. Any system that isn't like that is garbage and anyone interested in power over other people is human garbage.
Today's society is wage slavery in developed countries, colonialism and barbarism everywhere else - it is garbage and anyone with a modicum of power doing anything but attempting to change the status quo is clueless or human garbage.
Why would wage slaves not resent their masters, or people colonized, not resent colonialists? Anything but deep resentment and derision is surprising, frankly.
I disagree that we should deride rich people for spending money the way they want. I splurge on things sometimes as well. Unlike a lot of modern social media, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about being wealthy.
If someone has an argument about what these specific people did that was specifically immoral to achieve their wealth, then they should call that out specifically and suggest a systemic change.
I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.