So when do we think Bezos will go on the typical billionaire philanthropy track? Actually, a better question is probably will he even? At Bezos' age, Gates was already in a backseat role with most of his non-philanthropic ventures. Though he shares some similarities with Gates, he shows no signs of stopping. He seems actually content with Amazon eating the world, and I don't think it will be a net positive for humanity.
> He seems actually content with Amazon eating the world, and I don't think it will be a net positive for humanity.
You mean Bezos? Well of course, he's CEO of Amazon and I don't think the board or shareholders would tolerate him saying "this is such a good idea that would make us tonnes of money, but we'd better give the opportunity to someone else"
I'm actually kind of amazed that Amazon has managed to plow so much money into their business without shareholders throwing a fit. The usual modus operandi of activist shareholders now is to get the company to pay out as much money as possible to shareholders while investing as little as possible into R&D. They've even managed to squeeze Apple into stock buy backs! Amazon seems to have avoided this and is thus able to invest lots of money into their business units, and look at how it's paid off for them (amazingly well).
Regarding Amazon eating the world, I'm not that concerned about it honestly. If Amazon starts acting like a monopoly, regulators will step in and force them to divest from certain business segments. If Amazon gets lazy and starts charging people higher prices or offering a more limited selection, then people will vote with their wallets and order from somewhere else.
So on the whole I still see Amazon as a net positive. They're pushing the rest of industry to innovate in ways we haven't seen before (logistics, online shopping, cloud services, assistants) and this is a win for consumers.
Sure, there's been some high profile bankruptcies/fire sales from competitors who haven't been able to adapt (e.g. Sears in 6 months), but I have to ask: do you really want to prop up companies that cannot compete in the market? That doesn't make sense from a consumer or economic perspective.
No investor pushes for more money back when the company can get a better ROI than the investor. Apple buybacks are a result of not having any better ideas on what to do with their cash stockpile.
I keep an unofficial[0] representative "Death By Amazon" google portfolio. current companies tracked, against AMZN:
KSS M DDS ZUMZ SSI JCP JWN ASNA BKS TUES BGFV FRAN BKE KIRK SMRT GCO FIVE SHLD BURL BBBY SPLS APRN
1yr (excluding dividends):
amzn + 42.90% (even excluding today still +39%)
deathByAmzn - 25% (today also up... hmmm).
For what its worth, AMZN isn't the whole story of retail. There's a PE story there too [1].
[0]: There's an official one out there if you google, but I disagree with some of it. I exclude Walmart because its a big enough competitor to survive, as an example. Also i don't have a desire to track 54 stocks for this purpose.
As far as I understand, at best you can subtract your donations from your income, so you won't have to pay income taxes on those donations. Even if you can subtract the donation directly from your taxes, you still lose the same amount of money.
Either way the philanthropist loses at least as much money as the taxes he would've paid without the donations.
