AOC Knows Exactly What the Problem Is With Billionaires Like Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is donating billions of dollars through his new foundation. But as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argues, we need to redistribute his power, not just his wealth.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces the cofounding of The Climate Pledge at the National Press Club on September 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. Paul Morigi / Getty for Amazon
On Monday morning, Jeff Bezos announced the creation of a new $10 billion environmental foundation, the Bezos Earth Fund. This is on top of the $2 billion he already committed to the Bezos Family Foundation to build preschools and fight homelessness.
The combined sum might be a fraction of his net worth, and Bezos might have a history of standing in the way of political efforts to address some of the same problems he seeks to address with his charity. Even so, many would argue that his efforts are still praiseworthy.
In a Martin Luther King Jr Day discussion with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued for a very different perspective. If Jeff Bezos “wants to be a good person,” she said, he should “turn Amazon into a worker cooperative.” She argued that our primary message to billionaires shouldn’t be that we want to redistribute their money. Instead, it should be that “we want their power.”