Well the guy he’s giving it to is always clamoring for higher taxes on everybody else, so obviously he thinks that’s the best place for the money. We’ll see what he does with it.
Is anyone ever allowed to have money they give away? Or should all money which would be given away instead have been taken by the government as taxes? Even if Bezos paid $200M more in taxes, it isn't clear that he wouldn't have given this $200M away.
It's a classic conservative strategy. Take over a government program, run it into the ground, use it as evidence that governments don't work, and then run for office on a platform of dismantling the broken government.
The essential problem with the idea of government is that it requires people to cooperate in good faith. People who say government doesn't work are essentially arguing that people cannot cooperate with each other.
Given our level of social and technological progress, you'd think people would give up on this idea but it persists. In a hunter gather society, yes, like one of the ten guys in the tribe could provide way more meat than the other nine combined. In a global society of billions, it requires cooperation, coordination and institutions. A single person is an angstrom of humanity.
Our personal vanity tempts us to ignore the hundreds if not tens of thousands of people that make great companies possible not even counting the public institutions and services. We like to believe a single person can be so important because that makes us feel like we can be important.
In reality, no person is important. Bezos isn't important, Musk isn't important neither you or I are important. How the billions of people work together is important. We should be focusing our efforts on improving how we work together.
Our systems of cooperation (aka governments, companies, communities) are the only important thing.
So all DMVs suck and CA actually has one of the top 5 customer satisfaction ratings in the USA (1). If you're wondering why DMVs suck in general, it's most likely due to the chronic understaffing & number of people that use the service (2). If you live in CA, you can actually do most things DMV online and quickly. There is that super annoying Real ID law though and you have to visit a DMV for that. That law was passed under a Republican administration (congress & presidential) (3) in 2005, is creating a massive burden for the DMV, and has few if any benefits for national security.
I'd suggest thinking about ways we can improve the service or reduce the reliance on it. California is the most diverse state in the USA (4) and accommodation for many languages for an in-person service is really difficult. California certainly has significant unique issues but you picked an astounding poor example with little research or thought.
A bigger problem we should look at is why liberals fund this whole country and conservatives are so dependent on welfare (5 - look in particular at the state dependency map based on political leaning). Democratic congressional districts represent 70% of GDP (6) despite representing 50% of the US senate. Isn't that crazy?
“At scale”. Name an example of a failed alternative, and i’ll show you a country where the CIA plotted coupes and waged economic warfare against them. We’re like an abused spouse - we keep hearing “i’m the only one who’ll love you” from our abuser while they cut us off from our friends and family.
I sometimes think we deserve capitalism. Capitalism is the best solution when you assume people are selfish, immoral, and all-around kind of evil. It's a system to incentive people to work together despite our awful nature.
I certainly don't think it's the best system imaginable given different assumptions or conditions. I hope as the basic needs of more and more people are met, we will be able to come together. I think most evils in the world can be explained by desperation caused by scarcity but some certainly can't.
I'm not sure if we deserve a better system, at least not yet.
The collective generational trauma of about two centuries of industrialized capitalism means we don’t actually know what people are like in a system that doesn’t beat the kindness out of us every chance it gets. I suspect, a lot nicer - but not right away, it’d probably take a few generations to shake off the damage being done right now. I don’t think it makes sense to ask if “we” deserve it. If it can be better, then it should be better.
Well this is what has left me most confused by this decision. Are Van Jones and an incredibly successful celebrity chef really the best he could come up with? If I were Bezos I'd at least give the money to a person or organization that would help improve my PR.
edit:
And by this I meant things like paying for poor kids college tuition etc. I guarantee no one in the media will be talking about this story, and where Van Jones puts the money, beyond this press conference.
