Jeff Bezos , boss of online retailer and data storage giant Amazon, is now the world’s richest man with a $150 billion fortune. This former investment banker walked away from a secure Wall Street job to set up a second-hand book dealership, which traded exclusively over the Internet. That was 24 years ago. This week Amazon joined Apple to become the world’s second trillion-dollar company.

A year ago Bezos used social media to “crowd-source” ideas on how he should direct part of his fortune toward philanthropic works. The suggestions clearly poured in, perhaps some not as polite as the multibillionaire might have hoped. Nevertheless, Bezos published his thanks to all who had responded and this week announced two initiatives. The first will fund a US network of preschools and the other is designed the tackle homelessness across America.

No doubt gallingly for him, the reaction to his move has been largely negative. Part of the problem lies in the fact that he is “only” giving $2 billion of his fortune. While there can be no doubting that two thousand million dollars is actually a huge sum, that little figure “2” looks measly when measured against his immense total wealth. And Bezos did little to head off potential critics by setting out a wider charitable agenda.

Indeed, the world’s richest man may currently be reflecting that it might have been better if he had never embarked upon any sort of philanthropy in first place. The backlash to his announcement has been damaging. Amazon had actually helped defeat a local tax in Seattle where it is headquartered, which would have raised millions of dollars, specifically to deal with the city’s very numerous homeless. Whether Bezos was directly behind the legal moves that wrecked this proposed tax is irrelevant. It was his company that organized the block. This has even given rise to the suspicion that Bezos didn’t want the city fathers of Seattle stealing the thunder of his own charitable plans for the homeless.

But the greater outcry has come over the tough management style that Bezos has always used to build his extraordinary business empire. Most of his employees are driven hard for low pay in vast warehouses that have been compared to beehives, staffed by both robotic and human drones. While Amazon is well on the way to destroying the traditional Main Street retailing model, it is also squeezing all its suppliers on price.

Moreover, it uses every available offshore device to mitigate the taxes that, at first sight, it ought to be paying to governments in countries around the world where it operates. And the homeless trope has returned here in terms of the way Amazon underpays its employees. It is being alleged that some of them are actually spending their time off sleeping in the warehouses or, the ultimate irony, living as homeless people in tents near where they work.

Western countries, where there is no religious nor moral obligation for charitable giving, tend to envy their super rich. Past owners of great wealth, such as the fabled US “robber baron” Andrew Carnegie, gave away almost all of their wealth. Bezos’ fellow Seattle billionaire Microsoft’s Bill Gates is following this example. The Amazon chief, however, is suffering from apparently doing philanthropy like he does business — on a shoestring.