Jeff Bezos Says He Liquidates a $1 Billion of Amazon Stock Every Year To Pay For His Rocket Company Blue Origin (businessinsider.com)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spends a tiny fraction of his net worth to fund Blue Origin, the aerospace company he started in 2000. From a report: For a man worth $127 billion, that tiny fraction amounts to $1 billion a year, which he gets by liquidating Amazon stock, Bezos said at an Axel Springer awards event in Berlin, Germany, hosted by Business Insider's US editor-in-chief, Alyson Shontell. "The only way I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel," he said in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner. "Blue Origin is expensive enough to be able to use that fortune." Bezos said he planned to continue funding the company through that annual tradition long into the future. Bezos famously has numerous projects. He runs Amazon, owns The Washington Post, and is working on turning a mansion in Washington, DC, into a single-family home, to name a few. None of these, he said, are as relevant or as worthy of his money as Blue Origin, which he called "the most important work I'm doing."

Comments

Well, he'll make that (and more) tomorrow.

[olsmeister]

After the earnings beat announced after market close today, their stock should be flying high tomorrow.

Re:Well, he'll make that (and more) tomorrow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look man, I worked at amazon for 6 years. That's NOT the amazon way. He should lock the bathrooms and install vending machines to SELL piss bottles.

Meanwhile

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Meanwhile, Amazon employees in warehouses are scraping together money to buy their kids a model rocket kit for Christmas.

Man, I wish I could afford just one of his toys from the summary.

Re:Meanwhile

[alvinrod]

The problem is that Amazon would have no problem replacing any of those employees, so why should they pay any more than they currently do? People who purchase any good or service purchase at the least expensive price available to them when all else is equal or they don't possess sufficient information to discriminate otherwise, so is it any great leap to assume Amazon would behave otherwise?

If you think that's some morally repugnant statement or line of reasoning, ask yourself how you feel about illegal immigration. It generally turns out that same people who complain about poor wages for low skill workers are often the same ones that have no problem with illegal immigration. What do they expect to happen to price of unskilled labor when the available supply is increased?

Re:Meanwhile

[Cajun Hell]

When I buy stuff, I tend to usually go with the cheapest supplier. If Newegg has something for $10 less than Amazon, then I'm more likely to order from Newegg. If Amazon is cheaper, then I'm more likely to order from Amazon. (Batching issues (e.g. shipping cost) complicate things a little, of course, but it basically works like that.)

I tend to treat local stores like that too. If one grocery store is cheaper than another (for the exact same items -- the catch is that not everything is quite the same), it'll get more attention. (But distance from home or daily commute is a factor.)

As a shopper, I will definitely replace shops, and though I don't put lots of effort into competitive research (depending on what we're talking about, of course), I will use whatever info comes to my attention. If you raise or lower your prices, I'll probably notice. If I'm at a competing store and I see they're better at something, they might replace my current store.

Gosh, I wonder. Maybe everybody does that. Even .. Amazon does it? And my local grocery stores, and Costco and Wal-Mart too?

Everything involves paying somebody. But I guess there's one special type of paying somebody, where you're not supposed to shop around -- where being a cheapskate changes from a virtue to a vice.

Or maybe shopping around is just a vice in the eyes of some people. I bet those people wouldn't ever buy a disk from Newegg instead of Amazon (or vice versa, depending on which company they're supposed to be "loyal" to) just to save $10, abstaining from shopping-by-price on general principles. Now those people are rich! Probably even richer than Bezos.

Re:Meanwhile

[phantomfive]

Newegg is dead to me. They refuse to collect sales tax and turn over sales info to the state on purchases.

Uh, of all things, that bothers you?

Re:Meanwhile

[o_ferguson]

No what's repugnant is that Amazon "owns" the ability to single-click purchase things "on the internet." Nobody should be allowed to own that. He is a dipshit terrorist who is using our own legal fictions against us.

Re:Meanwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

If we really believe that as a society, then we should have stronger labor laws. Realistically, Amazon's workers would not be treated remotely as badly if they were allowed to form a union, for example. If you're against unions, we can talk about worker protection laws instead for things like requiring breaks and forbidding employers from penalizing employees from taking them.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't also shame employers for doing less than the socially acceptable minimum even if it's above the legal minimum. Otherwise how would such laws ever be proposed?

Re:Meanwhile

[Woldscum]

Yes. An unneeded pain in the ass for income taxes. I will not buy from ANYONE who does not collect sales tax. Newegg just reports a single Gross purchase amount for the calendar year. I then need all invoices to go back and itemize and figure the percentage. Large enough and the state wants quarterly estimated prepayments. Newegg is committing suicide. This is killing the small business guy. Just buy from Amazon and taxes are collected.

Re:Meanwhile

[rtb61]

I tend to buy stuff from a reliable store closest to where I live. So if there are any problems, one phone call and an irate visit is enough to get the problem fixed within the hour. That is worth between 10% to 20% more to me. Cheap is rarely best and in fact more often than not it is the worst. I would buy from Amazon mainly because it was the only readily accessible supplier. So I might use it to look for products and then see if I could buy it locally and pick it up and whether the higher price is worth it, depending upon how much higher it is, taking into account delivery. Bought a bunch of portable hard drives to give away at Xmas, not empty of course, had a bad one and got it replaced within the hour, it was worth the extra money.

I hate that drawn out wait, to find out, whether or not it will be delivered, whether or not it gets delivered broken, whether or not it is defective and then all the hassles of trying to replace it, with the built in delays and claims I broke it et al.

The more expensive, the far more likely I am to buy it locally, reduce hassles is well worth the greater expense and I know exactly who I am dealing with, I have seen them, I have spoken to them, they are real people, not an empty computer program.

Re: Meanwhile

[slashdice]

Actually, yes. I know of one state (not naming names but it's small and liberal, just like my cock). Their neighbor state has no sales tax. The state tax dept gets ahold of sales reciepts from big ticket stores just across the border and sends out nasty letters. I don't know the full details (subpoenas? addresses from credit cards?) because I don't live there. But it does happen.

Re:Meanwhile

[Type44Q]

You're a shill. You know it, I know it; now fuck off.

Spendy

[afidel]

Wow, that's a LOT, SpaceX has said that the total cost for Falcon Heavy development was $500M, he's spending 2x that every year with zero ROI at this point. How can ULA hope to compete with a competitor taking most of the commercial launch market on one hand, and a rocket company with a sugar daddy with that deep of pockets on the other?

Re:Spendy

[TechyImmigrant]

Wow, that's a LOT, SpaceX has said that the total cost for Falcon Heavy development was $500M, he's spending 2x that every year with zero ROI at this point. How can ULA hope to compete with a competitor taking most of the commercial launch market on one hand, and a rocket company with a sugar daddy with that deep of pockets on the other?

ULA has a much bigger sugar daddy in the form of the federal government.

Puff Piece

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezos famously has numerous projects. He runs Amazon, owns The Washington Post, and is working on turning a mansion in Washington, DC, into a single-family home, to name a few.

"Owning" a business that you do not actually manage is called an investment. In this case, it's an investment into protecting Amazon when the federal government finally decides to separate Amazon and Amazon Web Services (or some other carving of Amazon). Bezos runs Amazon quite well, although clearly by making some pretty one-sided deals while the company also seemingly legally cheats on its taxes.

And turning a mansion into a single-family home for a billionaire is not exactly a project versus something that his assistants likely ping him about from time to time while someone paid to make it the best place based on his input does the work.

Finally, $1 billion is an unimaginable amount of money to most of us, but it's a drop in the bucket for a company that is looking to build rockets that launch reusable spacecraft into space, built by top engineers based in the US with US citizenship and just outside of Seattle, Washington. To put this into perspective:

• SpaceX was able to develop the Falcon Heavy for around $500M, which they were only able to do because they had a ton of experience from launching the non-heavy variant for years. They also make money from many other rocket devices and they do not have a spaceship that can travel around space, outside of Earth's orbit (like the SpaceX Dragon), then return.
• Uber, a taxi service, has $15 billion in venture capital funding.

To be fair, $1 billion is still almost 1% of his wealth every year (not that he feels it) and for a few years it was actually a little more than 1%. It is a lot of money, but I would love to see a lot more of that wealth shared within his company rather than shitting on everyone beneath himself as he leapt toward becoming the richest person in the world. Amazon is known for its terrible work environment (in the software groups as well) and it's also known for not giving great raises once you are able to become a part of the company. Yet it has single-handedly propelled him to become the richest person alive.

Maybe instead of spreading this puff piece around, we can perhaps try to influence him to use his wealth for Blue Origin and his existing companies. He could use Amazon to do amazing things for the world, including his employees, rather than drowning out competitors while paying no taxes.

Re:is competition bad or good?

[mrclevesque]

If that means the best service at cost, then yes.