Originally published at: CEO of homeless shelter remarks on billionaires joyriding in space | Boing Boing
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For some reason, watching that clip of them inside of the capsule on their joyride made me far more disgusted with the whole Blue Origin enterprise than just seeing the schlong lift off from a distance. Jeff Bezos may be one of the most self-centered, worthless billionaires to not hold the office of the 45th President of the United States.
Maybe now that Jeff has shot his wad, he will be sated enough to solve homelessness or somehow give back to society?
Hah! Just kidding. Of course he won’t.
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Eat the rich.
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Not to excuse his tone deafness or narcissicm, but…
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Meh.
My problem is with billionaires who aren’t putting that money towards lobbying for tax reform or other policy changes for the global good than I care what they do with the rest of their money. There’s nothing wrong with inspiring the explorers, engineers and artists of the future with proof that someday maybe they can explore the stars, and this gets us there.
IMHO focusing on space tourism is missing the point - US Billionaires can unilaterally solve som eof societies’ ills by themselves with their wealth, and can definitely spend the money needed to change policy to make society better.
That has nothing to do with wasting some small pittance of their money on this stuff, and instead is a damning condemnation of why they aren’t doing those other things, and lets them instead “justify why exploration and dreams are valid” and hide the real problem - why are you doing this and not also making the world a better place with the remaining 99.9% of your wealth?
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Just going to say this for anyone that didn’t get the memo. Don’t burn up any brain cells thinking about this, Billionaires don’t give a f@ck about anyone but themselves & their money.
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I don’t necessarily think that progress towards commercializing space flight is a bad thing but the way how this has been presented to the public really puts their efforts into question. Should we make it easier and safer for humans to be able to go to space? Yeah absolutely. That shouldn’t mean that it has to come at the expense of other people and issues. These companies should be putting just as much efforts into social issues too, its not as flashy as SPAAAACE but its every bit important.
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I think donations should be stated in percentage of the individuals overall wealth.
200 million out of 202 billion.
So, about 0.1% of his wealth.
He could make that level of donations every day for almost the next three years before he runs out (assuming he makes no money).
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Are those AI-generated captions? I thought he said, “a novel idea” rather than “an adorable idea”.
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That’s what I heard too: novel. Either way Mr. Vaughn makes his point with grace.
As much as I’m a space buff, were I a billionaire, I think I would get so much more joy out of building holistic communities for the homeless than I would riding a giant peepee into the stratosphere.
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As others in this thread have noted, these two $100 million donations to charities is a drop in the bucket for him. You can also be guaranteed that this will be applied as charitable donations to keep his tax rate at zero. Altruism, my ass!
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Good thing that it was such a short trip, and they didn’t have to pee in bottles.
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Tax the rich.
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And then eat them…
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You think that’s what the billionaires are interested in doing, eh? Dispensers of inspiration?
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People were inspired by the moon landings regardless of whether or not they were a political stunt, a way to fund corporations, or a genuine attempt to do science (I’m sure they were, in fact, all three).
People are inspired by the new strides being taken in space and space science. The inspiration is the side effect of exploration and discovery, it does not “generate” from any one person. They facilitate for their own reasons. And all of it has zero to do with what those billionaires are doing with the rest of their money when we focus on the shiny little thing instead of the boring big thing in the room - the fact that there’s more than enough money left over to help society, and we should be demanding that larger steps be taken at the regulatory and moral levels to make that happen.
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Someone’s got to explain me the “astronaut” wings ceremony.
They are not astronauts! They are passengers.
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