Jeff Bezos is mentioned across four episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in each case as an illustration rather than as the subject of an episode. The treatments range from praise of him as a visionary, to an argument that his minimum-wage advocacy was self-interested, to a personal anecdote, to a case study in the concentration of wealth.
CEO pay and corporate governance
In an episode on Janus v. AFSCME, Bob Zadek digresses into corporate governance, which he calls sick and which he says is a structural issue distinct from free-market questions. He argues that shareholders do not really get to vote and that senior management compensation is profoundly wrong. He allows that among his circle of friends almost anybody other than visionaries like Gates or Jeff Bezos—or Steve Jobs—there are many visionaries, but that many people who reach the top are empty suits paid infinitely more than they are worth The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
Guest Jonathan Tasini agrees about CEOs and adds that such people appoint their friends to boards of directors, who then award them tens of millions of dollars, with the real money in retirement and pension benefits. Tasini argues that this elite circle of CEOs perverts the marketplace, and that this is connected to his claim that there is no such thing as a free market The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018). Bezos enters the exchange only as one of Zadek’s named exceptions to his general indictment.
Minimum wage and regulatory capture
In an episode with Stephen Moore, Bezos figures in an argument about the minimum wage and regulatory capture. Moore recounts that Amazon, with 250,000 workers across the country and described as one of the biggest employers in the nation, raised its starting wage rate to $15 an hour, and that Walmart with a million workers raised its wage rate to $11 an hour, with Target, restaurant chains and Disney also raising wages. Moore attributes this to competitive pressure in a tight labor market rather than to mandate Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
Zadek characterizes this as a marketplace-enforced minimum wage, healthier for the economy than a government mandate. Moore then punctuates the point: no sooner had Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, announced the raise to $15 an hour than he said he would go to Washington and require every business to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Moore notes Amazon’s valuation at a trillion dollars and argues that Bezos, now paying $15, wants smaller competitors—companies with $10,000 in the bank—to face the same requirement, calling it big business and big government trying to drive the little guy out of the equation Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018).
Zadek adds that Walmart was a strong supporter of Obamacare because it was already paying that and was at a competitive disadvantage, and Moore offers Dodd-Frank as another example, saying big banks favored it because they could absorb the costs while community banks could not, with the number of banks falling from 14,000 to 8,500 Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018). Moore’s conclusion is that anyone who said Bezos called for a $15 minimum wage because he cares about middle-class workers is wrong; the excerpt breaks off at that point.
Seasteading
In an episode on floating communities, guest Joe Quirk of the Seasteading Institute describes Ocean Builders, which has set up the largest 3D printer in Latin America in Panama and sells a single-family seastead called the SeaPod, modeled after the iPod, at a price cheaper than the average American home. He describes underwater rooms, resistance to waves as high as five meters, and plans for a special maritime zone, a cruise ship and a cargo ship, and eventually a seasteading flag and flagging registry Vote to Float (2020).
Asked by Zadek whether Domino’s delivers, Quirk answers with drone delivery and then recounts meeting Jeff Bezos, a conversation he says he has never told anyone about. Quirk says he was dressed as a pirate, that Bezos’s bodyguards surrounded him and got down in a football three-point stance ready to tackle him, that he shook Bezos’s hand and thanked him for radically enriching his life, and that Bezos looked surprised and did not know what to say. Quirk says he identified himself as Joe the seasteader, at which point Bezos’s face lit up and he said he would be happy to deliver whatever they need out there. Quirk adds that Ocean Builders are already planning drone delivery, with an opening in the top of the SeaPods for drones, and that they have many times mentioned Domino’s Pizza as an example Vote to Float (2020).
Wealth, inheritance and big tech
In an episode with John Judis on socialism, Zadek poses Bezos as his core question. He says Bezos started with not much more than anybody else and that his bio and early life are pretty ordinary, and that he found a way to give people cheap stuff almost instantaneously, improving the lives of a great many people, including workers who voluntarily work for him. Zadek asks what is inherently unfair about Bezos becoming the second or third or fourth wealthiest person simply by figuring out a way to satisfy the needs of the planet Is Socialism Still a Dirty Word? (2021).
Judis answers that even during the so-called Robber Baron era of the late 19th century with the Rockefellers and Carnegies, there was not the disparity between great wealth and the average person that exists now, and that some of it is the winner-take-all character of high tech, which seems built into it. He grants that Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are useful innovations and says he is not in the business of criticizing Bezos, contrasting him with people who are very rich and do not use their money for good purposes. Judis says he does not know what to do about those industries, because it is not just how much money someone like Bezos makes but the enormous power they wield over our lives, and he calls it the Facebook, Google, Amazon conundrum Is Socialism Still a Dirty Word? (2021).
Asked whether that power is political or economic, Judis answers both. Zadek asks whether the fault lies with the provider of funds or the acceptor, since without an acceptor there would be no political power from money. Judis raises regulatory capture, where industries are powerful enough to capture the agencies meant to protect the public, and campaign finance, saying he is not a believer in Buckley v. Valeo and would prefer a European-style system with limits on candidate spending and individual contributions. He cites the Koch brothers network as important in state and local elections Is Socialism Still a Dirty Word? (2021).
Earlier in the same episode, Zadek and Judis debate inheritance. Zadek notes that the consultant Frank Luntz developed the term death taxes for the inheritance tax, and Judis says the transmission of great wealth is something government can act on, calling it a point at which equality becomes a moral issue Is Socialism Still a Dirty Word? (2021).
Across episodes: no development
The four episodes do not argue a single question about Bezos across time; each uses him for a different point, and the excerpts show no development from one treatment to the next. The 2018 Janus episode names him as a visionary exception to a critique of CEO pay; the 2018 Moore episode makes his $15 wage announcement the centerpiece of a regulatory-capture argument; the 2020 seasteading episode contains only Quirk’s anecdote; and the 2021 Judis episode treats his wealth as a case study in winner-take-all high tech and concentrated power.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe Bezos’s biography beyond Zadek’s remark that his early life was pretty ordinary, nor Amazon’s founding, ownership or business beyond its worker count, wage rate and trillion-dollar valuation. They do not state what became of the federal minimum-wage proposal Moore attributes to Bezos, nor any outcome of the Panama negotiations. They do not give Bezos’s title beyond Moore’s identification of him as the CEO of Amazon, and they do not cover his ownership of other enterprises.