第一次听说亚马逊公司（Amazon）创始人杰夫•贝佐斯是自由意志论者时，我不由得放声大笑起来，因为我觉得这简直是个笑话。毕竟，贝佐斯的公司是在互联网的基础上创立的，而互联网是在冷战期间由联邦政府的研发机构——高级研究计划局建立的。换言之，没有阿帕网（ARPANET，互联网的前身），就没有互联网。没有互联网，就没有亚马逊，更谈不上杰夫•贝佐斯250亿美元的个人财富了。

    为什么我现在要写贝佐斯呢？你可能心里有答案了，没错，原因跟你想的完全一样：此时正值贝佐斯收购《华盛顿邮报》期间。你可以说我幼稚，这无所谓。但是我觉得，如果你打算收购一家优质的新闻企业，尤其是像《华盛顿邮报》这种以叩问权势人物为职责的大报，你得先做好自己被叩问的准备。

    但是叩问贝佐斯需要运气。

    我把这期专栏的主题透露给亚马逊时，亚马逊连一点回音都没有，更别提给我安排采访了。

    我的同事、《财富》记者彼得•艾尔金德花了几个月的时间写了一篇值得一读的封面故事，发表在6月期的《财富》上，标题为《亚马逊税务大战：一场不那么隐秘的战斗》（Amazon’s (not so secret) war on Taxes】。撰稿期间，他试图向贝佐斯询问他的商业哲学和个人哲学，但是对方含糊其辞。当然，这件事情发生在贝佐斯收购《华盛顿邮报》的消息浮出水面之前。

    你要是去找找与贝佐斯相关的文章——这样的文章有一大把，包括《财富》的“2012年度商业人物”——或者看一看他做过的访谈，你就会发现，每次遇到和自由意志论相关的问题，他都会含糊其辞。不过听听这样一则轶闻还是挺有用的，这还得多亏了亚马逊前首席技术官谢尔顿•卡芬提供的信息。卡芬是贝佐斯雇佣的第一个亚马逊员工。

    据卡芬回忆，他曾听贝佐斯说：“就算政府当初没有发明互联网，私营企业也会发明互联网。”没错，私营企业还能打败前苏联呢。

    这么说吧，只要贝佐斯老老实实经营亚马逊，不干别的，那就没什么理由关心他的政治理念。我当然也对此毫无兴趣。但是如果你想收购像《华盛顿邮报》这样一份日薄西山、却依然影响重大的报纸，进而一跃成为华盛顿政治生活的一个重要势力，那就不一样了。

    不管贝佐斯现在怎么说，一旦他收购《华盛顿邮报》的交易按照计划于今年秋季顺利达成，几乎可以肯定的是，他会在报纸上推行自己的标准和理念，至少观点专栏会成为他的舆论阵地。

    因为不管是好还是坏，这就是报社老板做的事情——但是我想至少听贝佐斯谈谈他的理念，听听他怎么解释自己相互矛盾的立场和行为：一方面他是自由意志论者，另一方面它的公司赖以建立的基础——互联网的研发离不开纳税人的血汗钱。自由意志论者的一个中心理念是，他们的观点会在自由市场大受欢迎。而且如果大家懂市场，就会明白，要想实现市场的公平与高效，关键在于，要让尽可能多的参与者知道尽可能多的信息。

    最后想说的是，我忘不了鲁伯特•默多克1976年从自由主义者多萝西•希夫手里收购《纽约邮报》（New York Post）之后发生的事。默多克当时向报社员工保证，《纽约邮报》作为严肃大报的本质特征会得到保留。但是后来的结果怎样，我们都知道。

    信息披露：笔者是《华盛顿邮报》的退休员工和股票持有者，贝佐斯的《华盛顿邮报》要是想转载我的文章，请跟《财富》谈去吧。（财富中文网）

    译者：Nasca  

    When I first heard that Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, was a Libertarian, I laughed out loud, because I thought it was a joke. Bezos's company, after all, is based on the Internet, which was created during the Cold War by a military research-and-development arm of the federal government, the Advanced Research Project Agency. No ARPANET, no Internet. No Internet, no Amazon, no $25 billion personal fortune for Jeff Bezos.

    Why am I writing about Bezos now? For exactly the reason you might suspect: because of his pending purchase of the Washington Post. Call me naïve, if you like, but I think that if you're going to own a high-class journalistic enterprise like the Post, whose job is to call powerful forces to account, you should expect to be called to account yourself.

    But good luck trying to get that done when it comes to Bezos.

    When I exposed the thesis of this column to Amazon, I couldn't even get a response, much less an interview.

    When my Fortune colleague Peter Elkind, who spent months working on a must-read cover story in June called "Amazon's (not so secret) War on Taxes," tried to talk to Bezos about his business and personal philosophies, he was stonewalled. That, of course, was before Bezos's deal to buy the Post surfaced.

    If you check the numerous articles about Bezos -- including Fortune's 2012 Businessperson of the Year and the interviews that he's done -- you see that he ducks and weaves when he's asked about Libertarianism. But consider this anecdote, courtesy of Sheldon Kaphan, formerly Amazon's chief technology officer, and Bezos's first hire at the firm.

    Kaphan says he once heard Bezos say: "If the government hadn't invented the Internet, private enterprise would have done it." Yeah, right, and defeated the Soviet Union, too.

    Look. As long as Bezos was doing nothing but running Amazon (AMZN), there wasn't much reason for people to care about his politics. I certainly didn't care about them. But when you're about to become a major force in the political life of Washington by buying a diminished but still immensely powerful outlet like the Post, that's a different story.

    No matter what Bezos says now, once his purchase of the Post closes, scheduled for the fall, he's almost certain to begin imposing his standards and beliefs on the Post, or at least on its opinion pages.

    For better or worse, that's what newspaper owners do -- but I'd at least like to hear from Bezos what his beliefs are, and to have him reconcile the question of his being a Libertarian who's benefited immensely from taxpayers' R&D money. A core belief of Libertarianism is that their ideas will prevail in a free market place. And if you know about markets, you know the key to making them efficient and fair is for as many players to have as much information as possible.

    Finally, I can't forget what happened after Rupert Murdoch bought then-upscale New York Post from its liberal owner, Dorothy Schiff, in 1976. Murdoch assured the paper's staff that he'd retain the Post's essential character as a serious newspaper. And we all know how that turned out.

    Disclosure: I am a retiree of and own stock in the Washington Post Co. (WPO), and the Post pays Fortune for the right to run my work.