[David_Axelrod]

AWS is the backbone of the internet, amazon warehouses are some of the most efficient in the world, lowering costs for everyone. People subscribe to prime in droves because of the value they get from it. Even if you zoom in to smaller assets, amazon has huge impact. Twitch brings a lot of people joy, same with kindle and even Alexa a few years ago.

"Selling stuff using the internet" probably makes you feel smart/superior but it infantilizes the company's contributions to the rest of us.

[jdmn73]

But Bezos didn't invent any of that stuff. As the other commenter said, he executed best on 'put a store on the internet' and made a bunch of money doing that. He then used that money to either acquire other businesses, like Twitch, or hire other people to invent more things, like AWS. That's the whole point of what OP's comment. Bezos took something completely reasonable for a single person to do, 'put a store on the internet' better than anyone else in the mid-90s, and used that as an entry point to reaping benefits from the ideas and the labor of hundreds of thousands of other people over decades.

[nickpp]

Yeah, if it was so easy why didn't anybody else do it?

Better yet, pick an "easy" idea from right now and go ahead and execute it. Then come back and report how "easy" it really is.

[Draiken]

Give me his parents initial investment and put me back in the days he started Amazon and I would.

Wait, I take it back. I wouldn't be able to exploit people as much as he did because I have a conscience. But I'd still be wealthy enough to live a comfortable life.

Stop glorifying luck as hard work. He was lucky. Wealthy parents and lived in a time where shopping online was not big yet.

This hard work myth is so annoying.

[nickpp]

Plenty of people willing to invest in you right now if you can manage to come up with an idea and are willing to work at it as Jeff Bezos did.

Offering people jobs which they can freely accept, reject or negociate is not exploitation.

You can glorify luck as much as you want, but hard work is the best way to maximise your "luck surface area". I've known plenty of people with countless wasted opportunities because they weren't willing to do the (hard) work.

[Draiken]

A few, sure. But plenty?

Even inside the US, that's a very small niche that's present mostly in a few places like in SV, Seattle and NY (I'm sure there are a few more, but you get my point).

The startup world is more about connections than hard work or competence. How many ridiculous startups get money because they have connections with VCs? How many very good ideas never get funding because they aren't in that circle? How many startup founders are 2, 3, 4 startups in and keep failing up? And those who can't bring those ideas to life because they work 2 jobs to sustain their families?

There's more than an order of magnitude of hard working people that will never even get a chance of becoming billionaires compared to the lucky few that were in the right place, at the right time, with access to resources and sometimes were even hard workers (this one is not required, despite the myth).

Meanwhile I've met many incompetent people that hardly work and are still successful business owners and millionaires because... they were already rich.

It's how the world works today. Maybe it'll always be like this, but I like to think we can change it.

> Offering people jobs which they can freely accept, reject or negociate is not exploitation.

Yes, it is if you're the only shop in town. If you can't leave the poverty treadmill because you can barely afford rent after working these ridiculously low salaries. I could go on.

I find it appalling how so many assume that people working in the Amazon warehouses are full of opportunities everywhere and they choose to work there, so they can't complain. I know we're mostly software engineers that are well paid but we could make an effort and put ourselves in their shoes for a second, couldn't we?

No, it's not black and white like your comment is claiming it is, and it never will be.

There's a big difference between choosing to pay the lowest amount possible without having people literally starve to death and a decent living wage. There's still a ton of exploitation that turns into profit for the few at the top, but they could at the very least treat people like... people.

If Bezos (or any other billionaire) chose to reduce their profits a few percent points, they'd already be able to provide a much better life for all of their employees. In my book, even putting the profit debate aside (exploitation of labor), that's exploitation in the moral sense too.

[nickpp]

> SV, Seattle and NY

I live in a small town in Eastern Europe and I get contacted weekly by individual investors, firms and funds. In my turn, I mentor entrepreneurs and invest (angel, seed or later rounds) in ideas that could make a difference locally.

Throw away your scarcity mindset. It's outdated.

> the only shop in town

Feel free to open your own "shop in town" to offer employees another choice. Till then, 1 is much, much better than 0.

[David_Axelrod]

You do realize you're on hackernews, a platform built by YCombinator right? You can apply with your startup just like anyone else and, if you're good enough, they'll invest half a million dollars.

I can't wait to see what you build.

[felurx]

Yeah, you're right, he was massively lucky too. But even with that, does he deserve this much wealth for this? Would he deserve this much money if executing that idea was incredibly hard?

[thunky]

Does someone deserve to make a small fortune every year pushing keys without breaking a sweat, while someone that scrubs his toilet is living check-to-check?

Unlike luck, hard work has nothing to do with it.