Evil Jeff Bezos?

Stefan Molyneux

A listener on X asks if we should respect Jeff Bezos...  0:00:00 Bezos and Practical Virtue  0:06:45 Business Values vs Morality  0:14:01 Can Bezos Be Morally Admired?  0:15:36 The Costs of Defying DEI  0:20:40 Navigating a Corrupt System  0:23:42 Call Out Woke Supporters   GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/FREEDOMAIN2026

Transcript

00:00Okay, questions from X, from the fine listeners on X.

00:04Numero uno, should we respect Jeff Bezos for, quote, earning his wealth if he purchased

00:09the Washington Post and implemented DEI at Amazon out of his hate for young white men?

00:14It's not as if someone else wouldn't have thought of same-day delivery.

00:16What value did he bring to the world?

00:18It's a very interesting question, and as always, I do really appreciate people for bringing

00:26this stuff up.

00:28And let's get into it.

00:30So, there are the practical values, and then there are the moral values, right?

00:37So, the practical values are, you should keep your word in business because that way it's

00:48cheaper for people to do business with you, right?

00:50That's not a moral value, it's a practical value, in that you could do that if you were

00:54a hitman, right?

00:55If you were just a killer for hire and so on, right?

00:58Then you could be that guy, right?

01:02So, the practical values are necessary for the moral values to exist.

01:09So, for instance, I don't agree that the government should be running the roads or education, or

01:18anything for that matter.

01:20So, that's a fact.

01:21Now, do I use government roads?

01:24Yes, I do.

01:25Do I refuse to do any business with anyone who's ever been in a government school?

01:32I don't do that.

01:33I don't check that.

01:34I don't vet that.

01:35I mean, it'd be nice if I could.

01:37If I had a choice, I would go with somebody who was homeschooled or even unschooled as

01:43opposed to government schools, but I don't put a lot of time, effort, and energy into

01:48figuring that stuff out.

01:50And, of course, here in Canada, the whole homeschool population is very low.

01:55So, I drive the roads.

01:56I do business with people who go to government education.

02:00I get my teeth cleaned by a dentist who's been educated by government licensing and is

02:08part of a government cartel, as is the case with health, my doctor, and so on, right?

02:14So, the practical values are things that you do in order to achieve an end that is amoral.

02:22And it doesn't mean immoral.

02:24It could be moral.

02:25But the template could be moral or immoral.

02:28So, if I tell the truth for practical reasons, then that's not specifically moral.

02:36And then, I will only tell the truth as long as it is practical.

02:42If it becomes impractical to tell the truth, I won't tell the truth.

02:47So, for instance, if we talk about IQ, ethnicity, gender, blah, blah, blah, well, that's, it is

02:56an important truth.

02:57I wish it wasn't, but it is.

02:58It is an important truth.

03:00And the entire purpose of things like cancel culture and so on is to get you and me and

03:07others to say, I will not talk about an important truth because it's impractical.

03:14So, these are practical values.

03:19And someone says, I won't steal because I don't want to go to jail.

03:25I don't want to get arrested, blah, blah, blah.

03:27Now, that, of course, that standard is not UPB.

03:33It's not internally generated.

03:34It's certainly not any kind of absolute.

03:36It's conditional.

03:37It's contingent.

03:38And, of course, we can see on occasions when there are looting, there's looting or there's

03:45riots or the police are disabled or on strike or something like that, that people just go

03:50wild, right?

03:51They go, they rampage, they steal and so on, right?

03:55And they do that because the consequences of immorality have been taken away.

04:03Makes sense, right?

04:05People who would not steal will take something if they're sure they can get away with it.

04:14It's sadly kind of common.

04:18Someone says, well, I'm not going to cheat on my wife because it's impractical, right?

04:25However, let's say he's alone on a business trip in Thailand and, you know, he's interested

04:33or he goes to the red light district in Holland or something like that, right?

04:39Then he could go and cheat on his wife and, I mean, odds are he'll never be found out and

04:48so on.

04:49And so he might.

04:51He might.

04:53Now, somebody who is committed to telling the truth for moral reasons, it doesn't mean that

05:00he's going to tell the truth regardless of consequences, right?

05:03This is the Aristotelian mean.

05:05We want to tell, as I talked about on the Sam Hyde show, which you should look for on YouTube.

05:10It's actually really good.

05:11Sorry, I shouldn't sound surprised.

05:14But somebody who will tell the truth is going to have practical limits to telling the truth.

05:22If there's a big, ugly, mean-looking, face-tattooed, fat guy who comes into the restaurant and you look up

05:33and the thought is, wow, that's a really big, fat, ugly, mean-looking, fat guy, would it be true to

05:38say it?

05:39Yep.

05:40Will you say it?

05:42Nope.

05:43You will not.

05:45So most people, and in fact, just about everyone, maybe some autists or whatever, just tell the truth

05:52no matter what, but most people have a limit of practical, of consequentiality, let's say,

06:00when it comes to telling the truth.

06:03I know I do.

06:04I would say that I tend a little bit more on the over-courageous side, which is not a virtue,

06:10by the way.

06:10Oh, I'm so brave.

06:11No, no, it's not.

06:13It's not a virtue.

06:13It is a dash of foolishness.

06:15And in many ways, it comes from being forced to lie as a child and not wanting to repeat

06:20that as an adult.

06:22And I was forced to lie as a child by my mother or by others.

06:26And so I have a reaction formation to lying, which is I really want to tell the truth.

06:34And if somebody makes me lie or threatens me to lie, then I get a little too punchy.

06:46So the reason I'm talking about all of this is there is an admiration that we can have

06:53for practical values.

06:56So, for instance, a businessman like Jeff Bezos, for his business to last, for his business to work, he can't

07:04be lying all the time.

07:06He can't be cheating people.

07:07He can't be exploiting people and so on.

07:11He's going to want to make sure there is a win-win situation with people as a whole.

07:19And if he was to lie, cheat and steal, his business certainly wouldn't last as long.

07:25It certainly wouldn't be worth as much.

07:28Everyone thinks, of course, that business people lie, cheat and steal to get their money.

07:34It's not really a very practical way of making money in the long run.

07:39It's a pretty bad way of making money in the long run, in fact, because the costs of business just

07:45keep going up and up.

07:46And the best way to work with people is to keep working with people you've worked with for a while.

07:51And you know them and you know their habits and you know their strengths and weaknesses and so on.

07:55You see this with a lot of filmmakers will go back to the same actress.

08:01And so Scorsese, De Niro and so on.

08:03They'll go back to the same actress because they just know the actress.

08:07They work well with the actress.

08:09They know the actor's strengths and weaknesses.

08:11And they have a good working relationship and so on.

08:14And so because of that, it's very productive for them to work together.

08:19You can see this with the Alan Parsons project.

08:23Eric Wolfson worked with Alan Parsons and they work well together.

08:27Eric Wolfson, I think, died young.

08:28I think related to alcoholism or something like that.

08:31He was originally an accountant and was a terrible accountant.

08:33And his boss said, if you can do anything other than be an accountant, that's what you should be doing.

08:38And so he ended up writing music with Alan Parsons, who was one of the producers, I thought,

08:43maybe the producer for Dark Side of the Moon, obviously a very talented guy.

08:46And they did some great albums.

08:49And they worked together, right, for their whole lives.

08:54Or at least the whole productive lives, I think.

08:57So if you have a good working relationship with people, it has to be win-win.

09:01Both people have to contribute.

09:03So the only way you can have a win-lose relationship that lasts is if one person's a masochist.

09:07But all masochists have sadistic tendencies and all sadists have masochistic tendencies.

09:12And so it's hard to have any kind of productive working long-term relationship with people who

09:21have very asymmetrical mental illnesses like sadism or masochism.

09:27So Jeff Bezos has to have practical values in business.

09:33There's nothing wrong with having practical values in business.

09:35It's actually very important.

09:37I mean, the car I drive, the phone I have, the computers I use, the cameras and all that,

09:45they're all built by people with a strong commitment to practical values.

09:52And this is why companies that have been around a long time

09:55tend to be worth more and tend to be more trusted.

09:59I mean, can you imagine if McDonald's had been around for, I don't know, however, 60, 70 years

10:06it's been around, and it was all a big scam for 60, 70, 80 years, just so that one day

10:15they could give you the wrong food or an empty box in the drive-thru, right?

10:22And companies that have been around for a long time have, I mean, I think an accountant term

10:28is called goodwill or whatever it is, like they have a reputation that people know they're

10:34not going to go to short-term gains in order to get or fix that reputation.

10:40They're not going to go and wreck that reputation for the sake of short-term profit, like some

10:45company that's been around for like a hundred years, right?

10:48They're not going to just toast their reputation for the sake of short-term profit.

10:54So Jeff Bezos, and of course, people like Elon Musk and so on, they are very good at practical

11:04virtues.

11:06Now, a practical virtue is not the same as morality.

11:10It is a consistency based upon practicality.

11:16So somebody who's a woodworker, a carpenter, could have a practical value called accuracy

11:25and reliability, right?

11:27So if you ask him to make a cabinet, he's going to make a really good cabinet for a really

11:31good

11:31price and so on, right?

11:33So he's got practical virtues.

11:37He measures well.

11:38He uses good materials.

11:40He measures three times and cuts once, as the saying goes, in woodworking and so on.

11:45And he's very skilled and he delivers on time and on budget and so on.

11:52So these are all things that are practical values.

11:57And they're good.

11:58They're necessary.

11:58They're important.

12:00Somebody could be a wife beater and a great engineer.

12:05I mean, a typical example would be the famous actor, or least famous to my generation or generations

12:12before, Marlon Brando, who was a very talented actor and a pretty terrible human being.

12:25And that's pretty common.

12:26I mean, you see people like Robert De Niro.

12:30I used to think he was a better actor in the past, but, you know, it's basically just

12:33a one note cliche these days or has been for many, many years.

12:37But, you know, he'll do the generic anti-Trump, blah, blah, blah.

12:41And, you know, tow the party line.

12:45And, you know, that's the Springsteen thing.

12:48Like, that's just what they have to do, right?

12:49In order to have a career in the arts, for the most part, you have to be anti-Trump.

12:55And that's just the deal.

12:56And so, you know, they're just kind of...

12:59Or John C. Reilly was just talking about, you know, why don't people on the right care

13:02about human rights?

13:03I mean, they're human beings, too.

13:04Where's their empathy?

13:05These idiots, right?

13:07And it's like, okay, so empathy, these idiots, you know, they don't even see the contradiction

13:11and they don't have to.

13:14Actors are mostly idiot mimics, right?

13:16They're good at mimicking.

13:18They don't think.

13:19You have to be a kind of empty person in order to be filled with other characters.

13:27So those are...

13:28You can be very good at being a plumber.

13:31You can be very good at being an accountant.

13:34And you can be a terrible human being.

13:37You can be an immoral, corrupt human being.

13:40Now, you can't be corrupt and be good.

13:42Like, you can't be a corrupt accountant and be good at being an accountant.

13:46Because, you know, if you steal, then you're going to get caught or you're not going to

13:52have a long, good business career because people will, hey, where's my money?

13:59And all that, right?

14:00So, Jeff Bezos, should we have admiration for his practical virtues?

14:08Sure.

14:09I mean, obviously, a very skilled businessman and skilled at creating, maintaining, and

14:17providing mutual value, right?

14:19So he's made a lot of money, which is great.

14:22And he's provided a lot of value, which is great.

14:25He's also been pretty good for the environment, right?

14:27Because in general, it's cheaper to have one truck deliver 10 things than 10 people go to

14:32a store.

14:33So, yeah.

14:34I mean, should we admire him morally?

14:39I don't know about that one, chief, right?

14:42I'm not saying that this listener says we should, but I don't know that we would admire

14:46him morally.

14:49And, indeed, he cannot be successful in business.

14:53And I've got a whole book about this called The God of Atheists that I wrote back in 2000.

14:59A great book.

15:00You should check it out, freedomain.com slash books.

15:03But it is impossible to be really good at business and also really moral.

15:15It just is.

15:16I mean, do I really?

15:18I don't really need to explain it, right?

15:20So, I mean, DEI is sexism and racism, right?

15:23Sexism against males, racism against whites and East Asians for reasons we all know.

15:28So, it is immoral to have hiring quotas and to have racist, sexist policies like DEI.

15:36That's immoral.

15:37Now, if you are a large corporation, then what are you going to do?

15:41Are you going to fight it?

15:44If you are running a large corporation and you take on a political battle, and I remember

15:52a DEC, Digital Equipment Corporation.

15:54It was a company that was around and very big back in the day.

15:57And they were being pressured to do something pretty negative by the government.

16:06And I worked there, and not in any consequential position, to put it mildly.

16:12And I put forward the proposition that they should withhold a very powerful computer chip

16:20from the military if the government forced them to do this wrong thing.

16:24And I was promptly fired.

16:27Now, if you are a business leader and you are subject to diversity requirements, if you

16:36do not fulfill on the diversity requirements, then you will be harming the company because

16:42you will be subject to all kinds of sanctions and fines, or even worse, from the government.

16:47So, what will happen is the board will have a review.

16:53Like, if I was in charge of some big corporation and I said, nope, this DEI stuff is racist and

16:59sexist, and we're not going to implement it, then, of course, immediately what will happen

17:04is you're called sexist and racist, and people will quit.

17:08There'll be a boycott campaign.

17:10The government will start assessing, investigating you and assessing levies and fines.

17:16And what will happen is you will be fired, and you may, in fact, be sued, because for people

17:26very high up in business, and this isn't true everywhere, and this is not legal advice.

17:29This is just my, obviously, amateur understanding of it.

17:32But you have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the value of the company, and particularly,

17:38of course, if it's a public company, right?

17:40Because people buy shares on the reasonable expectation, or own a portion of the company

17:46on the reasonable expectation that you're going to, you know, comply with the law and

17:49do the right thing and not take obvious moves that are going to harm the value of the shares,

17:57of reasonable levels of compliance with the rules that are.

18:01So, if you are in charge of the corporation, and you decide to say, I'm not doing any DEI,

18:08then all kinds of leftist, unholy, hysterical fire will rain down upon the corporation, and

18:14share prices will crash, and people's life savings will be wiped out, and pension funds

18:20will lose their resources and assets, and you will get fired, and you will get sued for acting

18:28in a way that harms the value of the company, knowing that it's going to harm the value of

18:34the company with no particular upside.

18:37Like, if you say, well, I'm going to take 20% and invest in some big old new business,

18:41if that business doesn't work out, that's not necessarily a betrayal of fiduciary responsibility,

18:47because you took a gamble that was reasonably well-researched, and it didn't work out.

18:53So, that's not necessarily the cratering of the fiduciary responsibility.

19:00But, if you were to say, well, we're not going to implement DEI, we're going to get rid of

19:05all the quotas, we're going to go to a raw meritocracy, or things like that, or, you know,

19:09we're just going to use an IQ test to find the smartest people, and we don't even care

19:13if they've gone to college, then your company's toast, man.

19:18Like, sorry, this is just a reality.

19:19Like, you can get mad at it if you want, and I think it's terrible, but it is what is.

19:24I mean, if you take over a trucking company and you say, well, we're not going to drive

19:28on government roads anymore, then your trucking company's going to go out of business.

19:31So, as far as Jeff Bezos go, look, the system is not set up by idiots.

19:38The system is set up by very intelligent, though I would argue very corrupt people, but they know

19:45what they're doing, they know what they're doing, and if you look at someone like Jeff

19:50Bezos, if he were to say, I'm not implementing DEI because it's racist and sexist, which of

19:56course it is, then he's continuing to be in charge of Amazon for about another nine milliseconds,

20:03and then he's going to get sued into oblivion, and what has he achieved?

20:09Now, of course, I understand that you could say, ah, yes, well, maybe he should throw

20:13his resources behind Trump and the Trump administration, who've done a fair amount to

20:18challenge DEI and have had it overturned in some manners, although the degree to which

20:24that's going to take in the long run still remains somewhat undecided, and of course it

20:29could just be slammed back in by the next leftist administration, which is, of course, going

20:34to come along, ah, well, sooner or later, sooner or later, so if you want to get mad at Jeff

20:43Bezos and say he shouldn't have implemented these mandated policies, okay, well, then what?

20:52So then he gets fired, he gets sued, he loses all of his fortune, no one will ever hire him

20:59again, and the Amazon board simply replaces Jeff Bezos with someone who's going to implement DEI.

21:07Like, do you understand how this stuff works, right? This is not, there's no going out in a

21:11blaze of glory and getting your will done. Now, again, I understand he bought the Washington Post,

21:16the very left and so on, and I don't know what his particular political beliefs are, but if you want

21:21to get ahead in the American business landscape, it's kind of tough to not be on the left, because

21:29everybody makes mistakes when it comes to the law, and leftists get a giant stack of get-out-of-jail

21:36-free

21:36cards. I'm not saying that Jeff Bezos has done anything that would land him in jail, but you get

21:42crazy scrutiny if you're on the right, and you get endless free passes if you're on the left.

21:51So from a business standpoint, does it make sense? Like, Trump has been audited for his taxes, like,

21:59just about every year, forever and ever, and, you know, he's been investigated, and 94 felonies,

22:05and all of that, they leaked his tax returns, and so on, right? So there's some people who will take

22:15that on. There are. But does it make a lot of sense for the average businessman to be very pro

22:26-conservative,

22:27or very pro-right-wing, or something like that? Does it make much sense? If the inevitable consequence

22:33of that is, you don't get government contracts, you get investigated, you get audited, and so on,

22:41and people don't want to come and work for you because you're some crazy right-wing fascist,

22:45blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He enjoys business, he enjoys providing value, he enjoys

22:51building a big company, and he is incredibly skilled at it. You know, it comes down to you,

22:58do you blame the player, or do you blame the game? He is attempting to navigate and has

23:03done so with great success. He is navigating a system that he did not design, that you did not

23:09design, that I did not design, that was designed by very intelligent people to have constant traps

23:15to honesty and integrity, right? It's a well-set-up system. I mean, if it wasn't, it wouldn't keep doing

23:23all of this corrupt stuff. So, he has incredible practical values, or virtues, and they are deeply

23:32at odds with objective moral virtues. But, of course, if everyone pursued the objective moral virtues,

23:40we wouldn't have this kind of system. And we do have this kind of system, and people just have to

23:45find a way to navigate within it. So, you can get mad at Jeff Bezos, which is, honestly, if I

23:52say,

23:53getting mad at Jeff Bezos is cowardly. What you need to do, if you want to be honorable, is if

23:59there

23:59are people in your life who support all of this woke, sexist, racist garbage, especially the anti-white,

24:07anti-male garbage, you need to call them out. See, you can't do anything about the laws,

24:13really. You can't do anything about Jeff Bezos, but you can do some things about the people in

24:20your life who are dedicated to these kinds of horrific corruptions. You can do something about

24:25them, which is, you can call them out, you can call them wrong, and if they persist in their wretched

24:31views, you can ostracize them. I don't have people in my life who support this kind of garbage. I would

24:38consider it shameful and dishonorable to have people in my life who support this kind of garbage. I think

24:42it's wretched and horrible. And if you really want to strike a blow against racism and sexism,

24:50then ask the people in your life if they support racism and sexism. And if they do,

24:55you know, make the case, make the recent arguments and so on. And if they persist, well, they can fuck

25:00right off. They can take a long walk off a short pier, they can feel their boots, they can do

25:05whatever.

25:06But they certainly can't stick around me. And if you don't want to get rid of sexist racist woke tarts

25:16in

25:16your life, if you don't want to get rid of them, that's fine. Then don't blame Jeff Bezos, because

25:22you're not doing it either. All right, I hope that makes sense. Freedomman.com slash donate to help out the

25:26show. Thank you so much, my friends. Bye!

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