Some time ago, during a visit to Seattle, the different appreciation between two great businessmen whose headquarters were in that city in the state of Washington became clear. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and then the richest man in the world, was quoted with admiration for his generosity, while the emerging Jeff Bezos, already very rich thanks to Amazon, the online supermarket, was seen as greedy for his stinginess. when making donations. He did not give away a penny, said those who knew him.
Jeff Bezos has changed over time. This is a more than obvious conclusion, knowing that past, which is extracted when knowing that he has assumed the commitment, as other billionaires have done, to donate most of his fortune in life.
According to the Bloomberg list, the owner of Amazon and other companies, such as the Blue Origin aeronautics or The Washington Post, is the fourth richest person in the world, with a capital of 124,000 million dollars, after having divided his fortune with his ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott, an example of generosity since the breakup.
In an interview on CNN with his current partner, Lauren Sanchez, Bezos made that commitment public for the first time. She assured that she plans to dedicate most of his wealth to combat the climate emergency and to support those who work to reduce the social gap and unify humanity.
He argued that the most complex part of donating money is “figuring out how to do it properly.” The couple, the Amazon founder added, is “building the capacity to make that donation of money.”
“There are a lot of ways that I think can be ineffective,” he remarked. “So you have to think very carefully and do it in a way that you have brilliant people on your team,” she added.
In line with the acquaintances of Seattle, Bezos was heavily criticized because unlike other mega-rich, such as Gates or Warren Buffett, he had refused to sign the agreement to donate the fortune in life that Michael Bloomberg promoted, among others, when he was mayor of New York.
