I just read Jeff Bezos' article on Medium about how the ones at American Media are threatening him of leaking his private pictures.

As I was reading it, I felt, "Man, how low has journalism come to these days. Here is a guy who's worked so hard to build one of the world's biggest companies, and here are the ones at the National Enquirer trying to bring this man down."

To be honest, who gave them the right to indulge in a person's private life? Why do they have to say, "A nude selfie with his wedding ring on?" Maybe, he sent that image to his wife. This makes me wonder, "Is this the way we treat humans?"

Why are we concerned about what a man does in his personal life? What impact does taking down a man in public bring?

Thoughts, please!

It is a way to sell papers/clicks via ads. The joke about data goes “if you don’t pay for the site you are the product”, the news is data and to a journalist everyone is the product.

Normally I’d probably agree, but when you have collected more wealth than 99% of the citizens in your country I suddenly have no fucking sympathy for people like that.

From what I've heard, I wouldn't call the National Enquirer journalism.
And blackmail isn't something new, criminals did that since ever.

"these days"?

"Is this the way we treat humans" should also be asked about the workers at amazon's warehouses.

@devios1 Why do you hate success?
If I was rich, would you hate me too?

@Root Hate is a strong word. I just find it disreputable. And why do you assume lots of money is success?

@devios1 Building something that earns lots of money is disreputable? Why?

It sounds like you hate the idea of money.

Jeff Bezos has done some awful things; hate those, not his successes.

@Root Again, why do you see money as success? To me it is just a tool; a necessary evil to achieve things and that people do terrible things for. Why should we consider obtaining power over our fellow person the goal of life to the point where we consider that “success”? I’m richer than you; mission accomplished.

@devios1 Money is not evil; it is just a tool like any other. You should have no feelings towards it. People, however, are indeed quite evil.

The accumulation of money is not the accumulation of power over others. It is the accumulation of value from your efforts, nothing more. Power over others must either be given willingly -- by trading value for their efforts -- or taken through force. The former is moral, the latter is not. Paying someone $100/day to perform a job is not immoral. Forcing someone under threat of pain or violence is. And to be clear, I also include legal coercion in the latter: laws that demand things or actions from you under pain of fines, incarceration, and death.

Money is a reward given by others for your efforts, used for mutually beneficial trades for their efforts. That is the very opposite of evil.

@Root Money is not a reward if it is required for survival. Let’s implement some form of universal basic income and then we can talk about rewards. Right now we are each of us forced to work to survive. Just think about that for a minute. Back when this was roughly equivalent to the work you’d perform to survive anyway that would have been a fair trade. But now people work entire full-time jobs for someone else and still have barely enough to survive on, while fat cat execs sit on their incomprehensible loads of cash and watch us fight over breadcrumbs. Don’t tell me you think them sitting up on their mountain is completely fair just because they were “successful” and the rest of us weren’t.

@devios1 Bad managers being paid more when all they do is yell and write poorly-worded emails is indeed atrocious. So are execs that do little but bully employees and vote for their own bonuses. I am not defending corruption in the least -- it is actually very damaging to the economy and progress.

However, wealthy people are not all corrupt, nor does wealth make people so.

In order to become wealthy, you need to understand how money works, how to grow it, and how to respect it. If you don't know these three, no amount of hard work will ever earn you a fortune.

@devios1 "Money is not a reward if it is required for survival..."? Really? At least money is something that can be used to survive. Back then you'd have had to literally fight for your life and at that time no one would have thought of a spear as an evil entity. After all, it depends on how you use it, right? The same goes for money, which is not the greatest nor the worst thing in the world.
There are just better and worse people.
Regarding your fighting-over-breadcrumbs problem, I'm certain some of the people living on low budgets are happy that way, just like there are unhappy people despite having more money than the average.
Is it fair? Probably not, but that's not going to change. Life's never been fair even before money existed and I'm pretty sure even when(if) it ceases to exist, life would still be unfair in some way.