WEBVTT - Part One: Jeff Bezos and the Birth of Amazon 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:06.280 Robert Evans. Here awake the earliest we have ever been 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:15.800 awake to record a podcast. I take you seriously exhausted. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:21.040 Just this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where one intrepid, 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:27.080 dogged journalist braves the difficulty of being up barely. What 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.720 is it five and a half hours after dawn? My god? Literally? 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.160 Now it is love and twenty three. Yeah. Well, our 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.400 guest today on this very special episode of Behind the 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:45.000 Bastards is the great Jake Hanrahan. How you doing, buddy, Yeah, 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.640 I'm good man, I'm good good, Yeah, feeling good man? Yeah? 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:51.440 Is it? Is it an ungodly early hour over there too? No, 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:55.000 it's like seven pm, seven pm. You know, I'm gonna 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:58.360 see that. That's that's a nice reasonable hour to be awake. 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.720 Mm hmm. Speaking of reasonable, Jake, how do you feel 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:10.320 about Amazon? Well, it's funny you ask, because I'm then 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:13.600 this new series called Mega cool. But what about really? Um? 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:17.960 Yeah yeah, yeah, um yeah. They're like I was saying 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:19.480 to you guys before we kind of went on, are 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:21.480 like the more research are doing this, it's just like 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.600 it's almost like comically villainous to a point, you know 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:26.280 what I mean? And I'm not really wanted to be 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:28.920 shrill like that, but it actually is like that. It's 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.880 mad like what they're getting up to, it's deeply unsettling, 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:34.840 and it's kind of weird when you actually realize how 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.640 recent like they became so dominant so quickly that people 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.640 don't think about like twos and fourteen, Amazon was not 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:44.959 the huge deal, Like it's just like it was not 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.760 a small company, but like, yeah, they were more than 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:50.880 books by that, but they weren't this like beheemoth that 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.520 was doing everything. And like it's it's weird how quickly 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.880 a lot of this stuff slotted into place, and you've 0:01:57.880 --> 0:01:59.880 got mega corps going on, which is great, and you're 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.640 kind of going through methodically the crimes of Amazon, and 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.280 the crimes of Amazon are are also one way or 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:10.880 the other, the crimes of the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:14.520 And so I wanted to do something a little bit 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:16.640 different this week. Normally on Behind the Bastards, when we 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:18.799 cover a guy like Bezos, and we've done, you know, 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:24.119 our episodes on Bill Gates, on Musk, on uh Zuckerberg, 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:27.240 we would do like an episode covering his early life, 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.160 and then we would do two or three episodes giving 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:32.800 the greatest hits of the crimes, but you're going through 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.000 all of the things that are fucked up about Amazon 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:37.360 bit by bit. So I felt like we would do 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:41.840 an episode on bastards that's kind of uh leading people 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:46.399 into Mega corp um. So this episode is more detailed 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.840 than a lot um and we're gonna go into the 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.200 early life of Jeffrey Bezos and we're gonna end a 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:53.519 little bit on on some specific actions of his that 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:55.600 I think are horrible. But really, more than anything, I 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.040 want to give people a sense of who this guy 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:00.120 is so that when they listen into all of the 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:03.760 you know to the the union busting in, the in 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:07.960 the worker uh running into the ground, and the hiring 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.120 of Nazis and that sort of thing, when they get 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:13.480 into that on your show, they can know who the 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:17.960 man is that that made it all possible. Absolutely, yeah, Yeah, 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:22.120 what do you know about Mr Bezos? Well, to be honest, 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.240 I've been more focused at the minute on like kind 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:29.040 of you know, the various different scandals that the company 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:32.480 has birthed. But what I do know is he's very 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:36.840 kind of unapologic. You know, there's a lot of stuff, 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:38.200 you know, I think even in one of the one 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:40.200 of the first two episodes that's already been out, just 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.040 like quotes where he's just like, no, this is not true. 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.960 I've read several things where there's just irrefutable proof of 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.440 like horrific injuries happening, like you know, you're eight percent 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.160 more likely to get wounded in an Amazon warehouse than 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.839 any other warehouse in their industry. And then when when 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:58.920 he was speaking about this, he was just like, yeah, 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.080 the media is lying. It's it's just like crazy, Like 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.440 he's just like it's kind of he's the kind of 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:06.880 post the way I guess for business when it comes 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.440 to the kind of post scandalierra where he's like, yeah, no, 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:11.760 it's not real, and it's like, well it is. But 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.240 he just he just very much embraces that thing of 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.760 like tough luck. You know. Yeah, there's this u there's 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:21.040 this term people used for Steve Jobs, the reality distortion field, 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:23.200 And usually when they were talking about it, it it was 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:26.200 his ability to like kind of make get people hyped 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.040 up about products, his ability to like get his workers 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:31.680 to work unreasonably in order to like meet deadlines, and 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:33.719 his ability to make people believe that he was doing 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:37.120 something magic with these products he was making, and Bezos 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:42.920 seems to have that for the impact of his I don't. 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.160 I don't know. It's weird, like it's there's this degree 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:50.360 to which like everything seems to slide off him at 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:52.840 this point. And I don't know that it's much that 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:57.160 he's distorted reality. Is like he's made Amazon foundational to 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.839 daily reality for so many people that like, yeah, I 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.000 mean that's messed up, but what are we going to do? Uh? Right? 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.120 And it's so big, so much money. Is he's kind 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.520 of a point where he doesn't, he doesn't really have 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.480 to pay attention, you know, to these bad things. I mean, 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.080 if you had a soul and a heart, you would. 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.120 But you know, I think from from some of the 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:20.400 things I've read and the way that he allows it 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:22.920 to happen on Amazon, um, you know, I think he's 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:25.440 quite happy to just be like, yeah, tough luck. Yeah. 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:27.640 And we'll get into that. But it is interesting I 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.279 think that. Um. I think one thing for people to 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:32.279 consider at the start of this, because I've been thinking 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.960 about this myself, is how true is the statement my 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:40.080 life as I live it right now doesn't work without Amazon? 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.040 Um in terms of like how you get your groceeries. 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.120 How you get stuff for your job if you like work, 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:48.520 you know remotely, how you get things that you know 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:50.920 your employees need to you. If you run a business, 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:53.479 how you get or how you sell like things in 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.800 that business. Um Like, for my part, I've got a 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.599 huge amount of my workload is on Kindle, just because 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:01.720 the ease eiest way to get research off of a 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:03.760 book is to highlight it in any book and then 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:05.520 like you can kind of copy and paste the text 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.760 and do a research doc. It's much easier than just 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.919 like going through a paperback book. Um, which is I 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:12.720 guess a small example of it. But like I know, 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:15.120 I have a couple of friends who run small businesses. 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.240 I have a friend who's a teacher, Like they are everybody. 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.360 Everybody knows how fun up Amazon is, and everybody's also like, 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.359 well what else am I gotta do? And that is 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:27.280 wh you know we are? You know, you're right, It's 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.560 like I use Amazon still my book is on sale 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.240 through Amazone, you know what I mean. But it's like 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:34.480 I said, in like you know, episode kind of the 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.360 zero of the kind of prologue to Mega Corp. I'm 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:40.240 not telling people like don't use them. You're bad if 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.240 you use them, you know, be an activist, boycott them. 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:45.160 I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, if you are 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.680 using them, I think you the very least you should 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:49.480 know what they're doing to workers, you know what I mean. 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:51.880 And I think that's important. And I've had a lot 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.279 of workers and like people just message me already just 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:57.279 being like absolutely, like thanks for saying. You know. They're 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.360 not like let's burn Amazon. They're just like, we just 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.000 want fairer working conditions, you know what I mean. And 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:06.240 it's like it's really not. It's not that difficult, you know, 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.240 it's really not. But they still don't provide it for them. No, 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:10.880 And it is that thing that like, yeah, in a 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.960 world as connected as ours, with things that rely on 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.080 on technology as ours, and with a plague racing through 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:21.840 where our ability to go places to get things is disrupted, Yeah, 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:26.680 I mean, something like Amazon is going to be necessary. Um, 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.000 you know, and we can also talk about like consumption 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.680 patterns and whatnot, but like our in our current society, 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:37.080 something like it is necessary. Um, but is the suffering 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:39.239 is like all of the fucking ship that comes along 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:44.200 with it? Um? I would argue hopefully not. And I 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:48.120 think the reason that there's so much suffering associated with 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.480 it that like it's that the company has as many 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:55.080 horrible stories as you've been finding on a daily basis 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:57.600 is because of the guy who founded it. Because Amazon 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:01.320 is very much made in the image of its creator, 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:10.760 Jeffrey Preston Jourgensen. That's right, Jenson, Um not Bezos. He 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.600 was not born Jeffrey Bezos. He was, however, born on 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:17.920 January twelfth, nineteen sixty four, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:20.960 did not expect him to be an Albuquerque baby. Um, 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:23.240 but he's he's real. He's he's spent most of his 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.920 upbringing in like the south and Southwest, um, kind of 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.880 similar area that I did. His dad, Theodore Jorgenson, was 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:34.520 nineteen and his mother, Jacqueline Geese, was seventeen. UM. So 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:38.760 this is a little bit of like a ah uh, 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.120 a problematic union. You know. Um, Theodore is out of 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:47.400 high school. His his Jeffrey's mom is still in high school. 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:49.480 There's a two year age difference, which isn't huge, but 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:51.760 the fact that he's graduated she's in high school is 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:53.880 a little bit of especially for like the families kind 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.440 of like this, like type deal um and she struggles 0:08:57.480 --> 0:08:59.960 to finish her high school degree while Jeff is growing 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.960 inside of her. Um. Theodore Jorgensen was not very good 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.280 at actually providing for the family. He was a high 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:10.160 wire unicyclist and a circus performer, and he was obsessed 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.680 with his dreams of unicycle greatness. At one point he 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:14.400 tried to get on the Ed Sullivan Show. This was 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.120 like the most important thing to him, and he neglected 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:24.960 his family for the unicycle. It's a dream. It's one 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:29.160 of those things. It's one of those things, like of 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.679 of the things I did not call and Jeff bezos backstory. 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.079 Dad abandoned them for the unicycle would not have been 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.520 um and and by the way, I should know we'll 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:43.200 talk a little bit more about this. But Jeff grows 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.240 up knowing none of this. He knows nothing. He doesn't 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.480 know his dad's name um as a as for decades. 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.120 So Theodore tries briefly to do like the family thing 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.200 with Jacqueline and Jeff. They move in together. They have 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:56.160 their kind of Brenda in any moment, but it turns 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:58.719 out it's hard to make a living as a unicyclist. 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:01.360 So Theodore is forced to make ends meet at an 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.720 apartment store. This makes him miserable because again his dream 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:08.719 is the open unicycle road. UM. So he takes to 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.800 drinking more and more. UM. I don't believe he's like abusive. 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.040 He's just like kind of not there. He's just like, 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:18.080 is incapable of really engaging as a father. UM. His 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.280 father in law, Jeff's father in law. UM, so his 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:25.640 his his his mom's dad tried to get him a job, 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:28.440 Theodore a job with the state police, but Theodore couldn't 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.600 be arsked to do that. Eventually, Jackie gave up on 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:34.880 him and took baby jeff aged seventeen months, and moved 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.800 back in with her parents. She filed for divorce and 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:40.360 got it. Theo continued to visit his kid on and 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:42.720 off for a little while, but he missed every child 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:45.200 support payment that he ever had to make because he 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:49.280 had absolutely no money. Now, this is not the best 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:51.800 case scenario for a new child coming into the world. 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.360 I think we can agree, but we widow Jeffy had 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.520 a few things in his corner to offset the fact 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.320 that his bio dad was sort of a deadbeat. For 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.760 one thing, both his maternal and paternal grandparents had a 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.600 lot of resources. So his his dad's dad, um was 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:09.440 a purchase agent for Sanda Military Base, which was the 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.160 largest nuclear weapons installation in the United States. UM, and 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:15.960 that's an important gig, right, He's handling all supply purchases 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.160 for the biggest nuke base in the US. Jacqueline. His 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:21.080 mom's dad, on the other hand, was a guy named 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:25.080 Lawrence Preston Geese and he ran the local US Atomic 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:29.440 Energy Commission office. UM. And he's running the Atomic Energy 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:33.440 Commission Office in like New Mexico, which is the big one, right, 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:35.680 that's where we figured it all out, right, that's gonna 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:38.240 be like your and he's a new he's a new 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.600 he's a rocket scientist, you know, he's like a nuclear 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.920 missile expert um and was very prominent in the field. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.360 And that obviously you can make a good amount of 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.679 money doing that. So while THEO was not a great dad, 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:53.160 Jeff young Jeff had support from a family with a 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.440 lot of means. The earliest story I found that shows 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.720 any kind of personality from Jeffrey Jorgensen at this point 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.680 is for when he was three. His his mom was 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:05.120 really paranoid about his health, and she had him sleeping 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:06.880 in a crib long after the point of which he 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:09.440 should have stopped sleeping in a crib. And he kept 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:11.160 arguing with her that it was time for him to 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.360 get a real bed, and she would say no because 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:15.040 she was worried he was going to fall out, so 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.160 she refused him repeatedly, and one day Jeff got ahold 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:20.719 of a screwdriver and took the crib apart himself so 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.120 that it was just a bed um. And that's when 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.200 his mom decided to let him, like, okay, you can 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.079 have a yeah. And it's so we have some early 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.920 stories from him, um, and you hear that one a lot. 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.880 Most of them are like from him after he got 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:37.120 rich and famous. So as with any story like that, 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:39.880 a little bit of salt, you know. Yeah, I also 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.520 like being three years old, Like if someone gave me 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.160 a screwdriver, I would just like stop myself by accident, 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:47.559 you know what I mean. I don't know about that one. 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:49.520 It's a little bit, but you know, maybe he did, 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.560 if so, maybe, Yeah, it's yeah, I think you're right, 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:55.120 A little bit of salt with that one, little bit. Yeah. 0:12:55.360 --> 0:13:00.640 So in nineteen his mom remarried to Miguel Angel Bezo Perez. 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.840 Miguel was Cuban and had fled the country on the 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.720 insistence of his mother after he was caught painting anti 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.480 castro graffiti. Um, he does get to take like a 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:10.960 plane out of there. He's not one of the people 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:13.280 who has to like hide on a smuggle himself out 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:16.280 on a raft. Um. But yeah, he gets out of 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.760 he has to leave his family behind in Cuba because 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:21.960 he's you know, to uh, too too much of a 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.920 little can't can't you know not rebel against the system. 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.800 I guess. Um, he's sixteen years old when he entered 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.960 the enters the country, and he speaks almost no English. Um. 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.200 Miguel eventually wound up doing his undergrad at the University 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:39.920 of Albuquerque, which offered free scholarships to Cuban refugees. He 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:41.719 worked as a clerk at a bank, and he met 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.600 Jacqueline while he was working there. He and Jackie married, 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:46.480 and most of what you really need to know about 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.000 Miguel is that he was enough of a father figure 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:52.120 to Jeff that Jacqueline reached out to Theodore before she 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.000 married Miguel and told him that their son was going 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:58.800 to be taking her new husband's last name. Um so 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.120 hard hit for Theodore, you know what I mean. Yeah, 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:04.679 you get the feeling. I mean, I think he from 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:06.920 what i've from what I can I've heard, he regrets 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:08.480 it now. I think in the time, it was like 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:10.440 you don't have to pay child support that you're not 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:14.679 paying already anymore, Like yeah, yeah, I mean life, life 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:17.360 is hard. Things can be hard and it's sad. Yeah, 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:19.800 but yeah, I get it. Yeah, And it's one of 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:22.040 those things like I can't say, like she's obviously not 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:24.120 in the wrong for that. It's like this your bio 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.160 dad won't do it. This guy comes in out of 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:30.720 nowhere and adopts your kid, like yeah, yeah, um anyway, 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.520 that's why he's Jeff Bezos and not Jeff Jorgensen. Um So, 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.920 Miguel eventually finished college and got a job working as 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:42.360 a petroleum engineer for x On. Um so his Jeff 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.120 as as a kid. Jeff's family is like either into 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.200 nuclear weapons or the oil and gas industry, which is 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.960 quite an upbreaking Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, man Like, yeah, 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:57.680 it's a very it's very like American industry as well. Yeah, 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:01.080 nukes and oil, nukes, and gas. Yeah, yeah, like the 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.520 favorite things. Yeah. And so he's you know, his family 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.480 is not They're not like even Bill Gates family rich, 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:09.840 I don't think, but they are well off. They're very 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.720 very like they're most people would consider them rich. I 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.120 don't think they're like multi millionaires. I'm sure by the 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:17.000 time they retired they had they had, you know, a 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:20.040 million or two in the bank. But they're very very comfortable, 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:25.360 you know. Um, So the family travels a bunch as 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:29.120 Miguel like gets all these different transfers across the world. 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.560 Um and along the way, you know, as their you know, 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:36.160 Miguel is starting his career and you know, Jeffrey's growing up. Um. 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:40.160 Miguel and Jacqueline have a daughter, Christina, and another son Mark. 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:42.720 We kind of know jeff was, I don't think happy 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.120 to have his dad tracked down. Um and his dad 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:46.720 like hadn't heard of him. I think it was two 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:48.440 thousand fifteen when he get tracked down. He was like, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:53.480 who's jeff Bezos And it was like that your son, 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:58.120 and he's like a broke failed circus performer. It's it's 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.880 quite a thing. Um. So we don't really have a 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:05.600 whole lot of detail on how you know, uh, getting 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.760 abandoned by his biological dad may have influenced Jeff Bezos, 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:10.280 it may not have had much of an influence at all, 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:12.720 because again, he was four when Miguel comes into the picture, 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:16.000 so nearly all, if not all, of his early memories 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:17.720 are going to involve Miguel, who seems to have been 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.080 a pretty good dad. Um. And so when it comes 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:24.280 to how Miguel influenced his son's development, we have more meat, um, 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.120 and it's you know, he's a he's a Cuban refugee 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.400 into the United States. So obviously coming at it from 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:36.440 like kind of a very conservative, pro capitalist standpoint, not amunists, 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:40.280 not very surprising. But I'm going to read a passage 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:42.080 from the Everything Store that gives a little bit of 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.880 context for that. Jeff and his siblings grew up observing 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:48.800 their father's tireless work ethic and his frequent expressions of 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.600 love for America and its opportunities and freedoms. Miguel Bezos, 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.320 who later began going by the name Mike, acknowledges that 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.000 he may have also passed on a libertarian aversion to 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:02.000 government intrusion into the private live and enterprises of citizens. 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.680 Certainly it was something that permeated our home life, he says, 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.600 while noting that dinner time conversations were a political and 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.600 revolved around the kids. I cannot stand any kind of 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.120 totalitarian form of government from the right or the left 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:15.840 or anything in between. And maybe that had some impact. 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:18.560 Which is interesting because as we're going to talk about, 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.199 Jeff certainly like benefits from the lax kind of corporate 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:25.439 law in the United States, but he imposes something of 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:28.000 a dictatorship on the people who work for him. That's 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:31.640 his whole It's very totalitarian. Yeah, it's like the Stasi. 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:33.560 You know, you get searched every time you go in 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:36.919 and out just for lunch or to the toilet, constant monitoring, 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.320 Like yeah, no, it's it's you know, we like we 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:42.840 heard in the last episode ID for Megacourt, the the 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:48.240 internal training video was encouraging managers to spy on, you know, 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:51.879 quote the behavior of their workers to see if maybe 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:55.119 they're organizing the union. Like yeah, it's it's ridiculous to Okay, 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.199 maybe he thinks that, but then you know, as all dictators, 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:02.280 you know, he imposes his his Yeah, and it's it's 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.959 interesting to me I mean, this is something we've come 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:06.879 across a few times with some of these billionaires. But 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.000 like the things that as as well discuss, the things 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.200 that like make Jeff Bezos into the person who is 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:14.040 able to be as successful as he is, are all 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.719 things that he absolutely doesn't want other people to have. 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.920 He has a very permissive, open environment. He's he's very 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:24.159 well funded schools. You know, Amazon avoids paying taxes to 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:27.199 support the schools. A lot of his early jobs give 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:29.400 him a lot of freedom. And like, yeah, it's it's 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:33.040 this whole Yeah, you benefited from a system that you 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:36.159 have no desire in maintaining anyway. Well, that's that's what 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:38.640 we're getting too. So another thing that made an impact 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:41.720 on young Jeff was money. When he was four, he 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:45.960 first visited his maternal grandfather's cattle ranch in Texas. The 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:49.520 family ranch, the Lazy g was more than twenty five 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:53.199 tho acres um, which is a big ranch. Um. And 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:57.080 it's you he comes from old Texas money, um. His family. 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.000 The ranch has been in his family's hand since the 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:02.520 early teen hundreds. Um. And he had an ancestor who 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:06.040 took part in the early colonization of Texas by white people. Um, 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:10.080 which is I have a good friend who comes from 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:12.600 not nearly they don't have nearly as much land anymore, 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:14.640 but they used to have family land that was that big, 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:16.120 and then the family kind of fell on hard times. 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.520 But they were like one of the families that was 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:21.520 part of the Texas Revolution and the establishment of Texas 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:25.040 as Estate. And like on her old family land there 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:27.520 is like a slave graveyard. Like that's all of them, right, 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.800 Like that's founded like that, that's the white people who 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:33.760 found in Texas. Um. So again that's kind of where 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:36.840 that that's the kind of old money that he's got 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:42.440 on that side. Huh yeah, Texas and Tea. Yeah yeah, 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:46.400 my family didn't own any land, but we didn't get 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:50.080 here from Italy until like the twenties. So uh yeah 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:54.000 when uh Jeff Bezos is like Grandpa Lawrence, Like even 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.159 though they have this family land, his grandfather was a 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:58.760 rocket scientist most of his career and when he retires, 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:00.760 he goes back to the family the ranch to be 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.439 like a hobby rancher, you know. Um, like I'm retired, 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:06.720 I don't have to do a grind anymore. I'm gonna 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.159 keep this ranch going just because it seems fun. The 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:13.320 Lazy G was a large, fully functional ranch, and Jeff 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.000 starts spending his summers there. So for about twelve straight years, 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:19.120 he spends every summer at the Lazy G doing ranch work, 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:24.000 cleaning stalls, gelding livestock, doing basic handyman stuff, and the 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:26.560 experience gave him a crash course and the kind of 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.040 practical engineering you have to do if you're going to 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:33.200 keep a ranch operational. One of his other biographers, Richard Brandt, 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.120 notes one particular event as an example of the formative 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:39.040 impact this had on Jeff. One day, his grandpa towed 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:42.040 in a busted old bulldozer with a stripped transmission. He 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:43.680 and Jeff set to work on it and had to 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:46.160 figure out a way to remove a five pound gear 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.560 from the engine. Grandpa Lawrence, built a crane to lift it, 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.719