Jeff Bezos can afford to splash some cash, and I’m sure those who will benefit from his $2 billion (R30 billion) charitable donation will be pretty stoked with his efforts.

Last week, Bezos announced that he would give away part of his vast fortune “to finance a network of preschools and tackle homelessness in America”.

Sounds like good news, but it’s already being picked apart by critics, many of whom have made some pretty valid points.

This below via the BBC:

James Bloodworth, a writer who went undercover to expose working conditions at the company’s fulfilment centres, said there was “something slightly ironic” about Mr Bezos’s plan.

“There have been credible reports of Amazon warehouse workers sleeping outside in tents because they can’t afford to rent homes on the wages paid to them by the company,” he told the BBC.

“Jeff Bezos can tout himself as a great philanthropist, yet it will not absolve him of responsibility if Amazon workers continue to be afraid to take toilet breaks and days off sick because they fear disciplinary action at work.”

It’s true, and it’s also true that thousands of Amazon employees receive food stamps in order to try and make ends meet.

Critics have also pointed to Amazon’s persistent efforts to reduce their tax bill in the US, where the tax money itself could have been used to tackle the exact issues that Bezos raised.

He laid out his plan in this tweet, with some of the statement below:

“We’ll use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon,” he said in the statement announcing his fund.

“Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession.

“The child will be the customer.”

Sounds a little creepy, doesn’t it?

Another person who laid into Bezos was Anand Giridharadas, whose book Winners Take All deals with the so-called “charade” of modern philanthropy:

While Mr Bezos’s donation is admirable, he says, it does not tackle the “deep and complex root causes” of homelessness and poverty in the US – which include Amazon itself, as the firm has been a beneficiary of the new world of precarious employment.

A good motto for the likes of Mr Bezos, he suggests, would be: “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you have already done to your country.”

I wonder what Trump’s most famous quote will be in generations to come? Grab ’em by the pussy, probably.

Back to Bezos:

The approaches taken by the super rich, says Mr Giridharadas, are less bold than the companies they helped create.

“If you want to wade into public policy, you have a moral responsibility not to put a Band-Aid on cancer,” he says, adding that Mr Bezos could work to influence policy instead.

There are two sides to every coin, so we should mention one of the voices that came out in defence of Bezos. Here’s Matt Kilcoyne, of the free market think-tank the Adam Smith Institute:

“Quite frankly Bezos’s greatest act of philanthropy is Amazon itself,” he argues.

“Lower prices, more choice and competition have delivered billions for Bezos and billions worth for the hundreds of millions of customers he serves.”

What’s more, Mr Kilcoyne dismisses any talk of the super rich’s moral responsibility to give in a certain way.

“Jeff Bezos has a right to spend his own money as he pleases.

“Armchair commentators might like to say that they know better than Bezos what he should spend his money on, but they’d do better to try and convince him of their philanthropic cause than chastise him for his choice.”

Sure was a selfless act founding the world’s second trillion-dollar company, on the way to becoming the world’s wealthiest man.

Still, he’s done far more than I have, so perhaps I will reserve judgment for now.

[source:bbc]