Billionaires Show Their True Selves In Space Pursuit

I wish I had a dol­lar for every occa­sion that some­one (usu­al­ly African-American or a Jamaican woman) looks at an elec­tron­ic device in my store, then tells me they bought theirs on Amazon. I guess buy­ing on Amazon is a new kind of sta­tus sym­bol, a state­ment that says, “I have arrived,” much the same way some of us pop­u­lar­ized the sil­ly idea that “I paid more for mine.” Imagine brag­ging that you paid more instead of less.
I use to get real mad at the lev­els of stu­pid­i­ty; I don’t get mad anymore.
Separate and apart from the fact that Amazon and the mega-com­pa­nies attached to its site can make their own prod­ucts in China, there is the lit­tle fact that in my busi­ness as in oth­ers, mer­chan­dize is priced by brand, stor­age capac­i­ty, Price paid for them, and a whole range of oth­er variables.
For exam­ple, a 32 GB Samsung Galaxy A02 smart­phone would retail for a much low­er price than a 128 GB Samsung Galaxy A02 or the AO2s smart­phone. A 32GB Samsung Galaxy S10 would retail for expo­nen­tial­ly less than the same device with 128GB of storage.
Even if we set aside those vari­ables with­in each piece of elec­tron­ics, there is still the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they end up pay­ing more to Amazon if they are not [prime mem­bers]. Of course, ship­ping has to be tak­en into account and the lit­tle fact that Amazon is actu­al­ly a vil­lage of stores as opposed to one mon­ster store.
Many years ago, an African-American lady came to my store to pur­chase a cell­phone priced at $100; she refused to buy the device but came back lat­er to show me that she had got­ten the same device for less. I am still unsure why she thought it was nec­es­sary to bring her receipt back to my store to show me that she got the device for $99.99 and had trav­eled 45 min­utes to get it in anoth­er city? Don’t laugh.….…

This morn­ing I read a short post from a bril­liant Jamaican who went to get his tires fixed in his state, but the black-owned tire shop oper­a­tors were not there. Needless to say, I share his exas­per­a­tion. I recent­ly called one Jamaican who was rec­om­mend­ed to me by a friend as an expert on BMWs. I actu­al­ly knew the dude, but I did not know that he was that stupid.
I grew tired from the con­ver­sa­tion and told him to fuck off; he could not work for me even if he were pay­ing me.
So I do share the pain of deal­ing with some black peo­ple who can fix stuff; how­ev­er, there is a dif­fer­ence between peo­ple who can fix bro­ken things and real busi­ness peo­ple who are black.
The fore­gone, how­ev­er, is not the focus of this short piece; I mere­ly want­ed to point to the con­tin­ued fal­la­cy, (yes as a black busi­ness­man who still oper­ates a brick and mor­tar small busi­ness with a young online presence)of spend­ing their mon­ey with com­pa­nies that have zero inter­est in their welfare.

Recently Richard Bronson, the bil­lion­aire, blast­ed off to the edge of space, and sev­er­al days lat­er, Jeff Bezos did the same.
Bronson, a British bil­lion­aire, came from hum­ble begin­nings. He start­ed sev­er­al busi­ness­es before he man­aged some suc­cess. He is the brains behind Virgin Records, Virgin Mobile, the cell car­ri­er, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, and oth­er ven­tures. Richard Bronson is worth an esti­mat­ed 4.7 bil­lion USD.
Jeff Bezos, the mega-bil­lion­aire best know for his Amazon brand, is worth an esti­mat­ed .….drum roll please .….…..205 bil­lion USD.
Let that sink in, please.
Amidst the great chal­lenges fac­ing the Earth on which we live, unprece­dent­ed drought, for­est fires, record floods, record heat­waves, pover­ty, pan­dem­ic, and the resul­tant deaths as so many nations can­not afford to pur­chase the vac­cines to give their pop­u­la­tions a fight­ing chance, these two bil­lion­aires decid­ed now is a good time to jet off to the out­er reach­es of space.
I am con­vinced now more than ever of the truth of the old cliché, “mon­ey does­n’t change peo­ple; it expos­es who they real­ly are.”
Whether Bronson and Bezos give to the poor is imma­te­r­i­al at this point. The larg­er issue is that as the very plan­et on which we all live is threat­ened exis­ten­tial­ly, the rich and the mega-rich are des­per­ate­ly look­ing to find some­place else where they believe they will be safe and from which they can exploit the resources (grant­ed there are any), for-profit…
In the first place, their greed and the steps they took cre­at­ed the con­di­tions that have placed our plan­et in per­il. And what are they try­ing to do? They are try­ing to find a way out!

Despite their greed and lack of char­i­ty, the greater trav­es­ty is the peo­ple who act like sheep and con­tin­ue to pour every pen­ny they have or can bor­row into the cof­fers of these greedy cor­po­rate oligarchs.
In many cas­es, the poor end up buy­ing things they do not need, things they can­not afford, and could have sourced else­where in their com­mu­ni­ties, some­times for less.
In our des­per­ate bid to show off that we are suc­cess­ful on social media, many of us run up bills on cred­it cards we can­not pay off, effec­tive­ly mak­ing us slaves to our debtors (the cred­it card com­pa­nies) or, in oth­er words„ the large Wall Street banks.
We spend our last dol­lar on Amazon, with Walmart and big-box com­pa­nies. These com­pa­nies are worth tens of bil­lions of dol­lars, com­pa­nies that have no inter­est in our com­mu­ni­ties (speak­ing of the black community).
Because of the tax breaks and loop­holes giv­en them by Republicans, those com­pa­nies invest heav­i­ly in Republican can­di­dates; those can­di­dates then use their office when they acquire them to foment and advance white supremacy.
Guess which racial group spends more mon­ey per capi­ta with these mega-com­pa­nies that fund those Republican candidates?
No one should fault any­one for try­ing to stay ahead of the game in busi­ness. Just imag­ine how many poor peo­ple could be helped with the mon­ey Bezos and Bronson are spend­ing on these flights of fancy?
We are in the mid­dle of a world­wide pan­dem­ic with new vari­ants killing a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple dai­ly. Across the globe, nations can­not find the resources to pur­chase the vac­cines they need to innoc­u­late their pop­u­la­tions from the rav­ages of COVID.
Is this the best use of those resources at this time?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.