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Jeff Bezos would have probably owned slaves

Through the Bezosian world view, the ultimate goal is progress, one tracked by internal KPIs

Posted: 2026-03-16

Suppose Jeff Bezos had been born in Virginia in 1800, instead of New Mexico in 1964. From what we know about Jeffrey, would the guy have owned slaves? Or would he have abstained? Is Jeff Bezos evil? Is he a lizard?

In some online spaces it is common to label Bezos and other tech overlords as "evil", a tag I'm not entirely comfortable with, since I don't really know what is meant by it. Is someone evil one who causes harm intentionally? Or is it fit for one who thinks they are doing good but irreparably damaging society?

Take manosphere influencers (Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Fresh and Fit, Sneako, etc.) for example. They broadcast to the wide reaches of the internet and prescribe what young men's lives should look like — whether it be in dating, their career, or their politics. In return, young men send constant, at times instantaneous, positive feedback to manosphere influencers that undoubtedly both reinforces their broadcasted opinions and reinvigorates their sense of purpose, thereby encouraging them to keep going.

Take Jordan Peterson. His book, 12 Rules for Life, has sold over 10 million copies since its release in 2018. His books, online presence, and controversies have netted JP immense popularity. His success is in part due to the unique place he occupied of being an experienced lecturer, a professional psychologist, the willingness to speak to disaffected young men (incels, or other young men feeling lost in this confusing age), and the willingness to speak out, for better or worse, against the political status quo in the North American post-secondary education system.

To see if his work is helping, the feedback he primarily looks for (likely among other quantitative metrics) seems to be from positive comments, messages, and interactions from individuals. Here's JP describing some of the impact he has on his fans in an interview [link].

"I have people tell me constantly wherever I go, it's so delightful that [I can help], you know, they were in a pretty dark place. [...] And they decided, well maybe they were gonna develop a bit of a vision, and take a bit more responsibility, and start telling the truth, and putting some effort into something, and they come up and they say, 'well you can't believe how much better things are! It's like, I got three promotions!' I had one guy tell me, this was a lovely story, you know [...] He came up after a talk, he said, 'two years ago I got out of jail. I was homeless. [Now] I own my own house, I have a six-figure income, I got married and I have a daughter. Thank you.'"

With stories like that, it is incredibly difficult to a) not see the fan's story as true, and b) not to see your work as an absolute good. This seems to be a common pitfall for the influencer type. This positive feedback is likely flawed, yet an influencer may desperately want it to be true... this is the sweetest sound to anybody giving life advice on the internet (you mean me and my ideas were able to help someone??). But yes, the feedback can be, and likely is, flawed. The fan may have had their life improved dramatically by his own metrics, over a short period of time (usually expressed at a point of intense gratitude towards the influencer that began this process): his physique, lifestyle, cleanliness, dating prospects, etc. What the fan does not see, and may not see until later, that certain ideologies that are promoted by manosphere influencers can be incredibly short-sighted and often lead to a toxic outlook of life, and hinder a lot of personal development. To quote the manosphere's favourite philosopher-king, "[be] Straight, not straightened"^[1].

On Piers Morgan's interview with JP, Piers asks him if he believes he's a net force for good (for disaffected young men), which JP says, "Net? Yes. In all the details? Probably not. \[...] People make their mistakes as they stumble uphill" [link]. I interpret this as a sign of striving for greater, towards an ultimate good, towards helping people, and therefore benefitting humankind. I can imagine him thinking, "Look at how many people I am helping, so how could this not be for a greater good? How could this not be the truth?".

Of course, disaffected young men deserve to be helped. The way in which they are helped is crucial though — is it long-term help that will adjust them to civil society? Or is it short-term help, radicalizing them and pushing them toward a smaller, insular group of people (usually online), that "understands"?

If JP has measurably damaged society through his actions, is he an evil person? I feel he is probably not. He is genuinely sympathetic to the plight of lonely and directionless young men, and believes his way is the best way to help.

The motivations of these influencers is to help people, to do good, which is reinforced by the very people they influence (their community), and influencers can frame harmful actions as mere mistakes as they "stumble uphill", i.e., necessary evils. All the while, they become increasingly accustomed to the value they personally get from it (purpose, monetary). And, outsiders from the cult or community, can be viewed as ignorant and disregarded, as they have not experienced the 'truth'.

This can be extended to other powerful people as well, although the feedback and metrics they look at for reinforcement is different.

Bringing it back to big Jeff, his metrics for doing good are more quantitative. KPIs and mission statements are the guiding truths of the corporate world. The logic is thus: if the KPIs are progressing, we as an organization are progressing, and therefore society is progressing, and therefore, I am justly rewarded materially (monetarily) because of this public good that I am uniquely contributing to. Stellar customer satisfaction, growth, and stock prices are the indicators Bezos uses judge whether he is doing good, and are his 'truth' he looks to, just as Jordan Peterson looks to stories from people about how their life changed for the better.

The first of Amazon's mission statements (which guide KPIs) is to be "Earth's most customer-centric company" [link], which has undoubtedly contributed massively to their success. Customer satisfaction, as a KPI, involves the customer perceiving low shipping costs, fast deliveries, and inexpensive prices, as these are among the top reasons why people shop on Amazon [link]. However, the focus is clearly on making the customer perceive Amazon as excelling in these criteria, and often less so on the reality^[2].

We see this perception-reality dissonance with the following mission statements, as Amazon aims to be "Earth's best employer, and Earth's safest place to work", yet the company times workers' bathroom breaks [link] and overworks their delivery drivers [link]. They may provide competitive pay and benefits, but that's obviously not all there is to a good employer.

In my opinion, Amazon (and Bezos) appear to maximize two primary metrics: 1) customer satisfaction (their 'special sauce' behind their success), and 2) financial KPIs (profit, shareholder value; as with any other publicly traded company).

What's particularly scary, is that the perception-reality dissonance implies the absence of a moral compass behind decisions being made from the Amazon leadership; that is, decision-making processes are guided more by metrics than moral considerations. Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and foreign governments have repeatedly kept Amazon in check as it has pushed for clearly immoral, and demonstrably illegal activities. Some include:

• FTC: A $2.5 billion settlement for a lawsuit accusing Amazon of enrolling customers in Prime memberships without consent, and making it difficult to cancel [link]
• FTC: Sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power [link]
• British Columbia: Class action lawsuit against Amazon's Alexa products and services, as they collected more personal information about users than was disclosed, and retained that information indefinitely [link]

From a KPI-optimizing lens, these would be read as "mistakes as they stumble uphill" towards the highest peak of customer satisfaction and financial KPIs. Necessary evils!

So, with a moral compass clearly replaced by one looking to optimize customer satisfaction and financial growth, it is obvious that Bezos would absolutely have done whatever it takes to increase these (arguably arbitrary) metrics, to increase the good he knows how to contribute to the world. This is a dangerous; when these metrics are seen as ultimate goods, in and of themselves, there is no doubt sacrifices being made to support the conquest for optimization.

Funnily enough (maybe sickeningly enough), this is the same sort of thinking that slave owners in the southern U.S. employed to optimize for their metrics, only bound (sometimes) by legality and not morals. Arbitrary metrics, like productivity and profit, are seen as ultimate goods, to which slaves were seen as machines to be optimized. Some examples of slave owners 'tinkering' with productivity include [this reference]:

• Holding contests with small cash prizes for those who picked the most cotton, and then requiring the winners to pick that much cotton from there on out
• Using data to calculate punishment, meting out whippings according to how many pounds each picker fell short

The reduction of people to human capital to be optimized is certainly nothing new to Bezos, and Amazon's unfair work environments often seem detached from valuing the humanity of workers. From that same article [link], there are actually many other modern management strategies that mirror those employed by slave owners, and Caitlin Rosenthal has written extensively about this in Accounting for Slavery (now on my to read list... here — [Buy it on Amazon]!)

To make the understatement of the century, these slavers clearly had a defunct moral compass. Interestingly, it was not always that way; it began as a 'necessary evil' for the founding fathers, a regrettable inheritance from the British Empire. However, slavers started to see it as a positive good, convincing themselves that both them and their slaves are better off with the system of slavery [link].

I think there must be some elements of vengeance and malevolence, some awareness that one is acting evilly to be truly 'evil' person. I do not honestly think that Bezos could have gotten this far in entrepreneurship if he thought it was for unjust reasons (in his worldview). But, a slave owner must be evil, right? To willingly participate in a system that benefits yourself at the expense of others, who must work involuntarily or else risk torture or death? Just because you convinced yourself it is just? Therefore, is Bezos only not evil because of what the ethical norms of his time permit? What if these norms change? Will he justify human rights abuses as the slave owner did, for the pursuit of economic growth?

Of course, Jeff Bezos did not have the same moral failure of actually being a slave owner, but I am simply saying that Bezos is the archetype that is most vulnerable to this sort of moral failure, and would likely fall victim to it without the guardrails of the status quo. Or has he already fallen victim to moral failure by way of the dehumanizing and illegal activities Amazon undertakes to keep its chokehold on the industry?

When looking to our tech CEO overlords to guide us through the uncertain moral and ethical dilemmas that the onset of AI integration brings, I think it is incredibly important to understand their motivations, and carefully consider which hill they are stumbling up, and whether we want to be dragged along with them. Above all, we ought to consider Bezos and most, if not all, other tech-CEO-billionaires with this thought in mind: if it were legal and normal to own and use slaves, and doing so advanced their KPIs, they probably would.

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