The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?

Isn't everything you describe rather demonstrating the point though?

A business that is large enough to generally not care any more. To not care about the fakes, the deliberately poor search that promotes crap every single time, the increasingly hostile policies, the increasingly hostile way things are offered. The promotion of horrible ideas like "global store" that will hold some indeterminate amount in anticipation of customs fees and intl delivery, but not let you exclude it from all search and choose local products only.

No business that felt customer reactions actually mattered would do the things you describe intentionally with the possible exception of pricing (and Amazon should be able to be cheapest most of the time).

These are all styles of doing business prior to a major readjustment. Tesco before the recession and before they lost a chunk of customers to Lidl and Aldi - half of whom will never go back as they discovered that Aldi are better than Tesco as well as cheaper.

Personally I already reached a point where Amazon are way down the list of choices to shop from.

Amazon's time will come, but right now they, or perhaps just Bezos - who knows, don't believe it will.

> I'm curious, did any company ever contributed overall to a society in your opinion?

Yes. The issues I'm raising are largely to do with some extremely large companies.

> Where should Amazon magically create this money from? It can only come at the expense of customers.

Are you saying that no company pays their employees enough? Or that employees in general shouldn't be paid a living wage? Or even that Amazon, a company headed by the actual richest person in the world, really makes zero profit and must absolutely hurt customers in order to make ends meet?

> That's a net positive. Less work, the same job done.

Less jobs is a positive* only if those without jobs have a living income. UBI is a proposed solution: it hasn't been introduced anywhere as far as I'm aware.

> Making more work is easy, just let people throw rocks from one pile to the other and back again.

And who pays these rock throwers? Do their wages come from the taxes Bezos doesn't pay?

* EDIT: To be clear, on the less jobs question, I am generally not in favour of having a less efficient system just to create jobs (it may sound that way above). I'm just a realist, acknowledging that we have a system that requires job-creation as a means to supply members of society with the means to sustain themselves. If we did not require job-creation to do that, I would completely agree that "less work, the same job done" would be a positive thing.

You can't expect companies to fight for greater good and sacrifice their interests for the overall good. In fact it's against the law for them to do that. Amazon hires a lot of people and in many countries pay reasonably well. With taxes it does what the law allows.

If you want to change those things start with changing the law, ending policies hurting the working class (limiting low skill migration would be the first step) and getting rid of ridiculous taxes like corporate income tax you claim Amazon dodged (while in fact it pays what the law requires it to pay).

Blaming the player for playing the game well while taking care of what they are legally obliged to do (shareholder value) is neither smart nor constructive.

> Are you saying that no company pays their employees enough?

Companies pay enough to get the quality and quantity of employees that they need. Those who are coming up short on either side are the companies who are (presumably) not paying their employees enough.

> Or that employees in general shouldn't be paid a living wage?

In general, my answer is "null" here, as the definition of living wage is continually (and it seems to me, intentionally) slippery/non-specific. Make some definitions that are stable over a long period of time and that labor advocates agree to, and only then can we have a conversation.

> Or even that Amazon, a company headed by the actual richest person in the world, really makes zero profit and must absolutely hurt customers in order to make ends meet?

Amazon does not hurt customers overall. I suspect you either meant to say employees, or perhaps have introduced a new argument that I'm not following.

With respect to profit, Amazon is now profitable on a GAAP, EBITDA, and cash flow from operations basis. I believe that was always the plan and it's coming together now.

Whether or not a company is profitable and whether or not the founder is the richest man in the world does not feedback into an employee pay issue in my opinion. A profitable company can afford to pay its employees for longer, but has no obligation (legally or ethically) to pay them more, IMO.

From the Carnegie quote:

> "The man of wealth thus becoming the sole agent and trustee for his poorer brethren," he wrote, "bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer - doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves."

How does wisdom about running a business translate into wisdom how other people should live their life?