Let’s not get anything twisted here: Generosity is generosity, and when it comes to assisting on-going recovery efforts for bushfire ravaged regions, every little bit counts. But for a guy who could end world poverty tomorrow by himself if he felt like it, you would’ve thought the pockets might have been a smidge deeper this time around.
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Over the weekend Jeff Bezos, Amazon head honcho and the current richest person on the planet, announced a contribution from his company to the tune of AUD$1 million in “provisions and needed services.” That’s a figure that represents around 0.00059% of Bezos’ total net worth.
The announcement came on Instagram over the weekend, accompanied by a much broader explanation of Amazon initiatives, most of which are consumer-lead via a “BlazeAid” donation push which asks customers to purchase items to be donated to fire efforts.
Again, nothing to be sneezed at here by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a lovely gesture from a corporate megalith. However there’s a couple of statistical curiosities about the whole thing that are probably worth pointing out.
The first is that Bezos was very explicit in asserting that it was AUD$1 million, which equates to a shade over USD$690,000.
The second is that, while that’s an impressive sounding number on paper, much of the donation is tied up in “provisions and services,” a large portion of which involves technical support for Australian Government bodies via their own Amazon Web Services.
The third is that this isn’t a donation directly from Bezos himself, rather from Amazon the company as a whole.
And the fourth is that even if it were, the equivalent donation for an ordinary Australian based on average individual net worth is around $5.90.
Still, that said: Thanks Jeff. Appreciate it cobber.
