I'm perplexed by some reactions to Bezos' $2b fund. TLDR:
Bezos, the top capital allocator of our time, shouldn't decide how his $2b is allocated. The government, which is demonstrably bad at spending, should handle this.
Sincerely,
Random person trying to allocate the $

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Replying to @lpolovets
Par for the course & a sign of our times. And why we are here in 2018
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Replying to @semil @lpolovets
+1. Perplexed is a v charitable reaction. These people are idiots. There’s one logical reaction to a guy giving away 2 billion of his money: gratitude.
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> Perplexed is a v charitable reaction. Some might say more charitable than the original donation!
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Kim-Mai Cutler Retweeted CNN Business
I’m perplexed by your reactions. Even Bezos himself understands that when you exercise power (either as a large private institution or actor, or as a public elected official) you just have to put on your Big Boy Pants and be OK with scrutiny and questionshttps://twitter.com/cnnmoney/status/1040600302938779654?s=21 …
Kim-Mai Cutler added,
1:30CNN BusinessVerified account @CNNBusinessAmazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who typically tries to stay out of the political fray, mounted a vigorous defense of press freedom on Thursday evening, saying President Trump should be glad to face media scrutiny https://cnnmon.ie/2QuXaCz pic.twitter.com/0GC7pyXb221 reply 0 retweets 14 likes -
the scrutiny/questions are fine, it's the logic behind them that's odd & telling
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I mean, if the federal govt forgoes $42B a year in charitable tax deductions, which is more than 7X the amount it spends on homelessness (which btw is also less than homeowners subsidies), should we consider benchmarking how effectively that is spent?http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-break-down-charitable-deduction …
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i'm all for transparency of how govt and/or nonprofits spend. here, i think his choices of where to focus seem more than reasonable.
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He was doing space travel before he more or less got externally pressured into homelessness....
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not sure that's fair - Bezos Expedition fund alone has some very cool things. Amazon culture is to measure everything & innovate along the way, so I see no issue w/ trying this out. He has a lot to lose so high incentive to be open & share w/ this.
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Given that his company just deliberately fought off an effort to raise revenue for homelessness in Seattle and that he likely gets a federal tax write-off for this, it’s also entirely fair that the public asks all of these questions around accountability, transparency.
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sure, no issue w/ that - but informed citizens can disagree on how best to deal w/ those issues & what gets allocated where. it's not clear current efforts work.
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They might not work bc they’re underfunded actually. SF has 1,100 shelter beds for 7,000 people. The shelter waitlist is 100 days long. Wages have stagnated since the 1970s while US residential real estate has appreciated by roughly 6%/year since 1980. https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp2017-25.pdf …
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