Comments

1

Amazon bears some responsibility for homelessness, but the exponential growth of people living on the streets and in parks in Seattle over the last 5 years is primarily a result of the opioid crisis, denial of the opioid crisis as the main driver of homelessness, and the City council’s misguided policies such as Sawant’s proposal to gut the navigation team or Herbold opposition to legislation to stop RV ranching that continue to grow the problem. Vote them out. We need new leadership.

2

haha "entrepenurial dynamism" forsooth.

I'm sure Lockheed Martin will be only too happy to take Jeff Bezos's money.

3

Evelyn Waugh's 'A Handful of Dust'

5

Seattle does not have a king: not literally and not figuratively. Jeff Bezos arguably wields too much power. If you don't like his influence, don't shop via Amazon, and vote for candidates who share your views. And no Amazon-sponsored ad can force anyone to vote a certain way. Be a thinking citizen, and vote however you want, and may the best candidate win.

6

@5

Please, tell me you're not that naive.

8

Three men emblematic of everything that's wrong with the US today - Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

9

CHOAM.

10

Bezos is just another asshole infected with narcissism. This country needs to do some serious exterminating of these personalities. They are destroy the United States. Literally burning it to the ground. Get rid of them, by any means necessary.

11

The article is good, but that headline is just fuckin' great. Spot on.

12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4

13

@12: Beat me to it

14

Ah, another whine for the EHT: “...a tax in Seattle that can really help alleviate homelessness,”

As pointed out @1, homelessness in Seattle has little to do with locals being made homeless, and a lot to do with drug addicts moving here. More funds from the EHT would have gone into the pockets of our local Homeless-Industrial Complex than into addiction recovery. Hence our swift rejection of it.

“None of this kind of excessive maintenance exists on earth.”

Water doesn’t degrade or rot anything.

I think we can begin to see the real reason for this post:

“One can go months without dusting a room.”

Use that line a lot at home, do you?

15

“ This country needs to do some serious exterminating of these personalities. ”

So that’s twice Xina has called for murder of either Amazon workers and now Bezos. Why hasn’t SHE been banned.

16

@10: You should learn how be more of a creative writer. The volume of your sinister venting doesn't elevate the argument you're trying to make nor does it make it any more comprehensible.

17

@15

Illogical. Inductive reasoning. Murder is inefficient. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

I will regenerate.

18

Good Evening Charles,
Read your entire piece. I largely agree with you. Right now, I believe manned space travel to the moon and elsewhere is an exercise in vanity. Bezos, Musk et al have plenty of cash and access to space science professionals and well, want to "indulge in their fantasies".

I can't prevent that. Sure, I would like to judge them and say "Wouldn't that money be better spent here on this planet addressing problem________?" But that is a visceral reaction. I don't really know what their genuine motivation is. It could be altruistic. Dunno.

Politics get in the way too. I don't agree with "a tax in Seattle that can really help alleviate homelessness". Actually, another tax won't do that. No, it won't. Homelessness in this city like San Francisco is too pervasive and complicated.

19

Everyone's rent was jacked up when Airbnb arrived in America's cities.

20

@3 A short story that was later extended into a novel, and it shows. I get the way some people love it for being so resolutely bleak, but to me it seems a bit of a gimmick.

I'd rate Scoop, Brideshead, Pinfold, Black Mischief, The Sword of Honor, The Loved One, and even Put Out More Flags above it.

@13 We should be collectively ashamed that it took 12 comments.

21

A billion spent on space exploration and colonization would be so much better spent than on handouts or programs for the homeless, if we are really going to be honest with ourselves.

22

I’d really love to know at what price point the tweakers and junkies, who have set up shop throughout our city, can afford a sweet Ballard studio apartment?

23

@21,

Yes, but of course the point here is that Bezos could do both with ease. He could spend a billion each exploring the space around every planet in the solar system AND spend a billion each on homeless in every capital city in the country and STILL have more money than he and his entire family and his entire extended family could ever need or want for the rest of their lives. But he fights tooth and nail against giving up even the smallest trickle of the smallest drop of his vast oceans of wealth.

The point is about wealth disparity, not the virtues of space exploration vs. social programs

24

@23: Oh, I am fully aware. I will never understand the purpose of simply amassing a pile of wealth, and find such a compulsion odd. This example of wealth disparity/priorities is an old nut though, people have been making this argument since the 60's.

I am more responding to the commenters who seem to be thinking that space exploration (or any expensive endeavor I guess) should be put on hold until government solves every person's personal and financial issues.

Scientific research is something that can be improved by simply pouring money in. Homelessness has been shown not to function this way, as Seattle has roundly proven.

25

Everyone knows the moon is an artificial creation put into place- VERY CAREFULLY, A LONG LONG TIME AGO by ALIENS to monitor the dangerous idiots on planet Earth. Honestly, doesn't Bezos watch "Ancient Aliens"?

27

@26,

Jesus dude, it's only Thursday and you're already phoning it in? Your trolling is usually a lot stronger than that.

28

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/why-are-people-in-seattle-homeless/

29

Also the moon colony thing may be connected to space mining and controlling those mineral rights. Always follow the money.
Charles, I thought you'd be all over space mining by now as it has the potential to upend the global economy.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/space-mining-the-new-goldrush/

30

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/international-laws-are-not-ready-for-space-mining

31

One last thing, has anyone noticed that the "plans" of all these tech oligarchs sound more and more like something that an old Bond villain would come up with? Their political activities mirror this as well. These guys are Hugo Drax, not Tony Stark.

32

M-O-O-N. That spells King.

34

"
In Accessory to War, astrophysicist and popular director of New York's Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson, indefatigable promoter of science to the general public, joins forces with his long-term editor Avis Lang to deliver a powerful report of this deadly alliance, focusing on its history, science, and the impact it has had on the American century-long worldwide dominance. . .

The book's message rings like a wake-up call, even if an uncomfortable one for the pacifists out there. War makes the world go 'round. It heats up the economy, as governments flood private military industries with lucrative contracts. It heats up scientific research, as governmental agencies flood research universities with cash. Jobs follow in many sectors, personnel get trained, with a resulting upsurge of technicians, engineers, and science PhDs. Knowledge flows both ways — from the university laboratory to the military and back. Everyone benefits from the unspoken alliance. To a large extent, American science jumped to world dominance because of the success of the Manhattan Project, which was responsible for building the atomic bomb.

Tyson and Lang make it abundantly clear that America's dominance both as a science powerhouse and as the main player in space exploration is floundering. Despite America's still lavish investment in defense, it can no longer claim dominance over space technology. Russia, and more importantly, China and India, are rising fast. The picture is quickly changing.

Tyson and Lang do end the book on a somewhat positive note, arguing that with future space exploration the situation is different. There are, of course, huge economic interests up there, from space tourism to asteroid mining — and these are the main drivers for a new player in the game, private corporations like Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin. If the skies were seen by the military as an inevitable battlefield, and by physical scientists as their research ground, they are now also seen as money-making markets.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/17/648697495/accessory-to-war-an-uncomfortable-wake-up-call-for-some

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ55q9K9TVE

35

But can a cat truly sit before a King, or must we return to the streets of Paris and storm the Bastille, with Madame Guillotine giving swift moon dreams to those Royals?

Take the sabots off your feet, mes copains, La Marseillaise sounds it's siren song!

36

@34 So, let's see here. (1) War, in essence, is simply deregulated competition. (2) Outer space, by current international treaty, is almost completely unregulated-- there aren't even property rights in space. (3) The world's wealthiest men -- those who control the greatest share of its resources -- are currently competing with one another to do outer space stuff.

Those dots are pretty easy to connect, aren't they?

A good chunk of humanity's surplus resources will be expended to fight the first and possibly only Space War.

Pity these guys didn't compete to reduce carbon emissions here on boring old Earth before getting all excited about who's got the biggest rocket.

37

Fuck it, let’s just round up all the Silicon Valley billionaire space cadets and stick them on a rocket to the moon. Bezos, Musk, Kalanick, Holmes, Branson, just put em all on the same spaceship. I don’t care if it’s a luxury starliner, give them a years worth of champagne if that’s what it takes to lure them onboard. Just don’t tell them it’s a one way ticket and there’s not much good or oxygen for after they land,


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