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Pretty much the richest dude in history, I rate Bezos to be about 50% asshole. His employees at Amazon endure nasty work conditions while his corporation pays no taxes (due to federal regs), but he did submit to political pressure and raise pay to $15/hour. Bezos doesn't like the homeless, but he wants to remake health care, hopefully for the best. And he appears to be leaving The Washington Post alone to be an independent newspaper. And, under pressure, Amazon Prime removed Anti-Vax videos.
Zuckerberg (and Priscilla Chan) are committed to The Giving Pledge and giving away half their billions. But he got those billions by being creepy at Harvard, lying about Facebook selling its user information, enabling the spread of hate and fake news, and continuing to be stupid about the bots and trolls on Facebook and his continuing broken promises of privacy. He's made new promises.
The brothers are more of those Libertarian types. Sound familiar? Read The Koch Brothers’ Covert Operations (The New Yorker): "There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation."
The family is worth roughly $163 billion, while Walmart is widely condemned for not paying a living wage to their 1.4 million US employees (1% of the U.S. working population) such that many qualify for food stamps. The Walmart charity did donate around $530 million in 2017. And yes, the Walton family earns more in a minute than an average Walmart worker does in a year (The Washington Post).
Made his money with worldwide gambling, gave $25 million to Trump's presidential campaign and $100 million to the GOP during the last few elections, threw $150 million against Obama's reelection, throws millions at those opposing criticism of the Jewish state, and bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal to assure positive coverage and promote his political agenda.
Carl is really nothing more than a greedy asshole: "Carl is a man who thinks that business should be unfettered and that government should not be involved in the free-market economy." From Carl Icahn’s Failed Raid on Washington (The New Yorker).
The Blackstone (private equity firm) Group's co-founder Stephen Schwarzman has said that "it might be good to raise income taxes on the poor so they had 'skin in the game,' and that proposals to repeal the carried-interest tax loophole—from which he personally benefits—were akin to the German invasion of Poland" (The New Yorker).
Let's see, what was wrong (and maybe still is) with Uber and Kalanick: sexual harassment, breaking local laws, legal noncompliance, IP theft, dysfunction, and a CEO who personally berates Uber drivers and worships Ayn Rand. Check out The Fall of Travis Kalanick Was a Lot Weirder and Darker Than You Thought (Bloomberg).
Maybe Jack is not so much an asshole as simply a bumbling idiot who stumbled into money-making ideas and now is someone who has lots of money and all the chicks and toys and mansions he wants but in the end "Has No Clue What He Wants" (HuffPost), except that he wants to keep his money while ignoring Twitter's bot and hate problems.
Another Libertarian type who eschews governments and regulations while not acknowledging they are one reason he's rich. Also, he's an Ayn Rand worshipper and Trump syncopate. Thiel is famous for being outed by Gawker and then paying for the lawsuit that put Gawker out of business. And known (I assume) for paying people to keep quiet about him.
How despicable can one be? Mercer has said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a major mistake, he supports Breitbart News, and appears as a director of eight Bermuda companies in the Paradise Papers, some of which appear to have been used to legally avoid US taxes. And, he's in with the Koch brothers in their funding of conservative politics.
John is a recent addition to the asshole hall of fame since he's been charged in a prostitution ring. He's a major Republican donor: $1 million to Mitt Romney's campaign; $1.1 million to the Club for Growth; and donations to the campaigns of Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan.
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