I bought it anyway, mostly out of guilt. But I have had POD's like this one for half the price via amazon when shipping is accounted for.
He funded it with equity (or probably debt against his equity). His equity is valued at 34 times the Amazon profits annualized.
The workers did make Amazon valuable but it wasn’t profits.
Its not even technically correct as the original sentence was "...generate profit so great their boss was able to finance his own private space program." They didn't say he funded his space project with amazon profits, they are saying that as a result of the profits bezos was able to fund a space program. Which is undoubtedly true as the amazon equity wouldn't be worth much if amazon wasn't making any money .
There is no point nitpicking someone because they used one term instead of the other: Bezos’ fortune is derived from Amazon’s activity, and the rest of us has no interest in changing our vocabulary to abide by some obscure tax code rule.
Having fears in the front of your mind makes sense for an animal that can primarily shape their future by avoiding danger. But humans are very much in power of our own destiny. So if all we can imagine is dystopia that's what we get.
That's why we need not only fiction that shows effective resistance to dystopian tendencies, which is important, but (realistic) fiction that depicts stories where we are clearly on our way from something bad towards something much better. Such stories are important because they give us hope and we dearly need hope in those dark hours, to encourage us to act. And to make it more clear to everyone involved what 'act' should mean. I find those types of stories kind of rare. Suggestions are appreciated. C Doctorow and U Le Guin comes to mind.
When I was learning to drive, I was afraid of hitting the curb. It made me a bad driver. My driver's ed guy told me the common sense advice of 'don't pay attention to the curb - watch the road'. When I internalized that, I drove much better.
It was so simple.
We cannot even conceive of a good future today. We have no vision of what the better future looks like. We need positive fiction to help paint the picture.
Paying attention to the negative just gives you more negative.
The hard question is why it is so hard to imagine a good future. Maybe because we no longer understand our own core problems deeply.
The world waits for the new story.
Look where you want to go.
I don't know where I'm supposed to look right now.
I always thought that should have been named "hazard fixation," though.
I suppose it's a lizard brain thing. Our ancestors that didn't fixate on the lion got got!
Just knowing we do have the ability to slow things down, but actively choose not to in the name of profits and comfort is incredibly depressing and demotivating. The future looks bleak because it will be.
Yes, so let us try to envision the end of capitalism; in a myriad different stories. That's one thing I want sci fi writers to do.
A very broad brush view might be that it took 60 years for automations in the workplace to finally match pace with demand, but increasing automation in knowledge work vs the potential for aggregate demand to fall means we'll have to come to terms with the "required" level of productivity, rather than assuming more growth is the objective.
If we can get this right, we might see the globe get more equal, more leisure time, and a shrinking of the investment sector since the pursuit of growth might get more nuanced. All of that would take a long time, though.
Is it? Or have people just convinced themselves that everything except their personal utopia is capitalism?
Its always weird to me when people use U Le Guin as an example of "optimistic" sci fi. Some of her writing is extremely bleak. Of course she is pretty prolific and has written a lot of different types of things.
Fundamentally i think the issue is that novels usually have to be about conflict. If everything is peachy you dont have a novel. I think it takes much more skill to write an interesting optimistic near future sci fi novel that is actually about the technical change instead of just using it as a setting.
Most of the optimistic technology novels i can think of that i liked were far future - Iain banks. Maybe greg egan although optimistic isnt exactly the right word. They show an interesting world, but its clearly not our world. Is it really an optimistic take on the future of technology if the technology in question is hundreds of years in the future?
Perhaps you'd like something like "Song for a new day" by Sarah Pinsker.
I dont really know if it fits as "optimism", but i'd like to mention "The Fortunate Fall" as a really interesting novel about technology.
I've tried to get into Ian Banks. One feeling I get is that there's two kinds of optimist sci fi. Technology magically solves our problems - or technology can be both force for good and bad, let's use it for good. I have a feeling that Ian M Banks writes the former but I'm probably wrong here?
There can still be interesting conflict even if the bigger problems have been solved. Dispossessed is one good example I think. The conflict is partially about flaws inherent in the "better" society that they created.
And in Star Trek and to some degree in "The long way to a small angry planet" the conflict is between the larger society and the hold outs.
It remindsme a bit of how internet communities work.
I think it takes its premise much more seriously than star trek does. E.g. Star trek has free replicators for everyone and yet everyone is spending tons of money at Quark's for some reason. Which is fine, star trek has a lot of other good qualities, but i don't think it does a great job of exploring the implication of its technologies.
Some of it is, yeah. But I think part of what made her novels interesting was how she was (often) able to resolve conflict without violence. I think that's where the optimism comes from.
I was watching the recent tv adaptation of asimov's foundation series, and one of the most striking things was how much characters (including the good guys) resorted to violence. Where in the books the entire theme was that brain beat brawn and the main characters almost never solved their problems with violence.
Optimism is powerful, but it usually comes with impatience. We've shown an ability to decrease the prevalence of war globally, but the fact that improvements have taken longer than a generation and have not been monotonic or absolute makes it very hard to maintain a belief in the possibility of future improvements. The pace of change in the world can't keep up with the emotional rhythm of human optimism, disappointment, and disillusionment.
Also, many well-meaning people fight to tear down optimism because they identify it with complacency. Other well-meaning people fight to tear down optimism because they want people to focus on a different problem, so they want them to believe that there can be no progress on X without progress on Y.
As a result it is fashionable to deny that anything done in centuries of human struggle has made any positive difference in the world. How that is supposed to motivate anybody to add their own efforts to the struggle is left as an exercise for the reader I guess.
That said, Ursula K. LeGuin did author such a book, _Always Coming Home_, which is far more interesting and engaging than it has any right to be.
That said, my go-to reading for when I'm really depressed is her _The Lathe of Heaven_....
It rather reminds me of a recent Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) interview where he lamented what seems to be an emerging excess focus on villains, not "good guys" - and making them way too glamorous:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/vince-gilligan-...
If our fiction is only ever showing us dystopias and villains - it's not hard to see how that could be problematic for the wider collective psyche...
Humankind by Rutger Bergman
He's also written Utopia for Realists, which is on my to read list.
DanAtC•11h ago
apfsx•11h ago
rsynnott•5h ago
(Also I'm fairly sure that the Amazon Dash is an un-product, so that's thoughtcrime for a start.)
ryandrake•3m ago
deadbabe•9h ago
bryanrasmussen•8h ago
DonHopkins•6h ago
NOT the Amazon Basics Wed Wun! Don't EVER push the Amazon Basics Wed Wun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_IE_0-Xlis&t=181s
flir•4h ago