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rayineryesterday at 9:08 PM2 repliesview on HN

Is compounding interest why Jeff Bezos is rich? Or is it because you get three Amazon deliveries a day?


Replies

jacquesmtoday at 1:13 AM

No, he's rich because (1) he had first mover advantage (credit to him) (2) he has a good sense of how to run a business (3) he exploits a large number of people to his own benefit.

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kgyesterday at 9:17 PM

This reply has very strong "the average human does not eat 10 spiders a day; the average was thrown off by Spiders Georg who eats 10000 spiders a day" energy.

Amazon does not have an exceedingly high profit margin, and my understanding is that a lot of it comes from stuff like AWS, not Amazon deliveries - correct me if I'm wrong here. So I'm not sure that "three amazon deliveries a day" - if this is even common - is why that man is personally rich. Even if it were a big source of revenue, that would go into Amazon's coffers, not necessarily his directly.

Another way to look at this: Even if Amazon is wildly successful, does that mean Jeff Bezos specifically should become filthy rich as a result, instead of all its employees and investors? How should the gains from successful entrepreneurship be distributed?

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