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Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

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Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#141

Post by grosjona »

untog wrote: post #71
tmpz22 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

Small local police departments are also staffed by the 90%, though. I find it difficult to imagine an uprising against the 1% in America any time soon, but if it did happen I can absolutely imagine the police siding against the 1%.

From my experience, police officers generally don't like rich people. Also, I don't think that members of the police force or the military are as obedient or loyal as they used to be in the past.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#142

Post by CM30 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #109
tmpz22 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

> Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams. Successful uprisings by the masses against the elites almost always involve substantial fractions of the military, police, and other security services defecting, either abandoning their gear or taking it with them and turning it against the elites. Until we get robots replacing guys with guns, that's going to be a recurring failure mode…

When you get robots replacing guys with guns, then you've got a whole second set of problems to deal with them. Namely, cybersecurity goes from being annoying to being potentially lethal.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#143

Post by sidlls »

aphextron wrote: post #49
Endama wrote: post #15

I feel that America is in the midst of a new gilded age; instead of Standard Oil, we have Amazon. Like the late 1920s, we saw losses in purchasing power of the average American, the collection of wealth among the top 1%, and disruption of our civic spaces as a result. I think the thing that many Americans aren't aware of was just how violent that time in US history was[1]. The US economy isn't just about how comforta…

Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.

"About to?" It already is brutal for the bottom half. And the 90th percentile is too low: people in that range are paupers by comparison even to the top 5. I think the 95th to the 99th percentile is the region to look at. There are some seriously deluded individuals in that group who think they won't be on the outside with the rest of us when the top pull the gates closed behind them.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#144

Post by dragonwriter »

dghughes wrote: post #118
tmpz22 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

Anytime US police are shown on TV it's staggering to see how many are of them are obese. How can these police officers function in their jobs being so large? There must be yearly fitness tests to weed out people like that. Surely someone 6 feet tall 300 or 400 pounds can barely walk let alone run after someone.

US Police on TV look more obese (and in a top-heavy way) than they are because department policy very often includes wearing a bulletproof vest under their uniform shirt.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#145

Post by gnarcoregrizz »

olfactory wrote: post #99
ryanmercer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was like "wait, that doesn't sound right". Nope. Nope it's right, it would average out to $226.49 a second if an even 21 years heh.

That's misleading though, because he's had great risk of ruin and lots of smart people have tried (Jet, Azure, etc.) to compete with him but have fallen short. Compare Amazon to something done by government like the highways. When I order something on Amazon it nearly always arrives exactly on time as expected. Highways are always in a state of disrepair and congestion, and get worse every day. This is not an example…

Amazon wouldn't even EXIST without those highways which are "in a constant state of disrepair and congestion." It's fair to say that their delivery vehicles are making it worse. Maybe some of his wealth should be used to improve or expand them?

As far as amazon being that great, a lot of the time their stuff is in fact late, and people on their marketplace sell counterfeit items. They also treat a lot of their workers like garbage.

I agree with you on your other points, he's effectively beaten the competition and Amazon is great in many ways, partly because they are so, so convenient, but I wouldn't paint him as some saint of good capitalism

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#146

Post by jorblumesea »

FussyZeus wrote: post #60
aphextron wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.

Or the 1%. Something Rich people tend to forget is that the system of law and order we have now prevents armed uprising of the lower classes, which has a history of cropping up during very hard economic times. Not advocating, and I doubt I'd be one of them holding a pitchfork, but it is something to keep in mind.

This is part of the reason why the country is so divided. It's a great tactic to prevent the masses from organized. Give the left and the right something to hate (each other) and steal the economic gains for yourself.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#147

Post by detaro »

TheLoneAdmin wrote: post #115
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think with all that cash Bezos could afford to pay his minions a humane rate. But he just doesn't care.

$12/hour is inhumane?

If its combined with inhumane conditions as a requirement to stay employed, yes.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#148

Post by dragonwriter »

CM30 wrote: post #142
dragonwriter wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams. Successful uprisings by the masses against the elites almost always involve substantial fractions of the military, police, and other security services defecting, either abandoning their gear or taking it with them and turning it against the elites. Until we get robots replacing guys with guns, that's going to be a recurring failure mode…

When you get robots replacing guys with guns, then you've got a whole second set of problems to deal with them. Namely, cybersecurity goes from being annoying to being potentially lethal.

Which, if you think about it, is a slight recasting of the same failure mode: formal control of the instruments of force can become detached from actual control.

Re: Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man in Modern History, Topping $150B

#150

Post by cmjqol »

twodave wrote: post #128

In my opinion, the biggest risk to Bezos' wealth is the same thing that drew me into the service to begin with. In the mid-to-late 2000s it was easy to go to Amazon, search for "thing I want" and blindly purchase the 4.5-5 star item with enough reviews to appear legitimate. I could do this and expect to get a great product _every_ time. Now, I find myself spending an hour screwing with the filters and reading reviews…

>reading reviews to figure out which listings are noise with fake reviews and which ones are for real

I thought I was the only guy looking for patterns in Reviews and grammatical style to eliminate fake reviews.

Amazon has an insane amount of traffic making it the ideal choice for Chinese electronics makers who have lived or studied to america. They understand western marketing and psychology and it's fairly easy for them to manufacture clones of something that works really well in those countries at lower cost. The products are often flooded with 5 stars rating , mostly incoherent.

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