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Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

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Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#91

Post by paulie_a »

cookingrobot wrote: post #61
rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

Some of that seems right, but I don’t agree with the Uber example. Ride sharing has been a much more convenient and reliable service than taxis, and with less fraud (broken meters or credit card machines) and less discrimination (actually willing to drive me to the neighborhood I want). And with Uber I have a record of who drove me where. This seems pretty different from being picked up by a random person on the stre…

Personally I love Uber and avoid taxis as much as possible. The worst Uber ride was still far better than the best taxi I've taken. A driver might be chatty and you have a great conversation, or they just stay quiet. Either ways a much better experience than the angry cab driver.

I was a little shocked when Uber sent me my stats for last year 1000+ rides.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#92

Post by tapatio »

rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

I think Fiverr came before Uber if I'm not mistaken.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#93

Post by plankers »

roymurdock wrote: post #81
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game I'd say "socializing losses, privatizing gains" is the name of the game. Those popular disruptive startups dump plenty of externalities on everyone around them. Don't think for a moment that anyone there is increasing efficiency for the sake of increasing efficiency globally; it's just disrupting the society and hoping money pours through the cracks.

nah i wouldn't go that far, banking employees and shareholders of recapitalized companies in 2007/2008 privatized gains and socialized losses when they were mostly bailed out with taxpayer money/federal reserve credibility instead of going under, but uber/airbnb/aws are pure efficiency plays. they increase the utilization of (what used to be) private cars, real estate, and servers respectively. there are trade offs b…

If uber/lyft are pure efficiency plays, then why do they have their own programs to finance the purchase of new cars just so people can drive for uber/lyft?

By the same token, but much harder to substantiate, why are people buying property just to rent it out with airbnb?

The negative externalities are there. You just have to know where to look.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#94

Post by cmrdporcupine »

mrec wrote: post #80
decebalus1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "socializing losses, privatizing gains" Never seen this formulated as such but I really like it. I was reading a book which tangentially dealt with that [0]. It changed my perspective on how new businesses are increasingly externalizing their costs to the consumers. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Work-Unpaid-Unseen-Jobs/dp/161...

I'm surprised you've never seen it before, it's been pretty common for a long, long time. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_socialism

It's not any kind of socialism. I know in American parlance "socialism" somehow means anything to do with government, but this is not how the rest of the world thinks of the word, and the word "socialism" has its correct interpretation right in it.

If it's a private entity capturing the state's revenues, that's anything but social. It's the opposite. It should be called what it is: lemon corporatism.

And it's sadly nothing new.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#95

Post by reaperducer »

trevyn wrote: post #77
rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

Uber/Fiverr/Upwork automate the trust aspect, so I can be assured decent service or I’ll get a refund and the provider’s reputation will be dinged. Outright scams are hard to pull off in this environment. Amazon... I can only speculate what’s going on there. Maybe the resulting price pressure turns the screws on suppliers? And honestly I’ve never gotten a branded product from them that I thought was fake. This could…

Amazon... I can only speculate what’s going on there. Maybe the resulting price pressure turns the screws on suppliers?

Scammers looking for places to scam, which Amazon provides by relying on customer ratings to police its suppliers, which clearly doesn't work.

Most of the recent SV business models only work in a hypothetical place where everyone is good and altruistic.

Look at self-driving cars. There are thousands of words written about how self-driving cars will create a transportation utopia with clean, efficient transportation for all.

None of the startups address what happens when someone refuses to get out of a self-driving car. Or when a self-driving car arrives at my door and it's full of barf. Or some homeless guy decides to set up camp in there. Or it gets all graffiti tagged.

Think about how people treat current modes of public transportation. Now imagine how miscreants will treat them with more privacy, and no chance of human intervention.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#96

Post by 95014_refugee »

seiferteric wrote: post #86
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cost savings/increased efficiency is the name of the game I'd say "socializing losses, privatizing gains" is the name of the game. Those popular disruptive startups dump plenty of externalities on everyone around them. Don't think for a moment that anyone there is increasing efficiency for the sake of increasing efficiency globally; it's just disrupting the society and hoping money pours through the cracks.

That phrase always made sense to me in the context of banks for example who basically expected to be bailed out if they fail a la 2008, but how does it apply here? How is uber socializing losses?

It might help to use "costs" rather than "losses"?

For one, consider that we attempt to constrain the price of labor upward to cover the cost of living. By having a large workforce that is not necessarily subject to these constraints (minimum wage, employer health plan, payroll taxes, etc.) Uber fails to meet the CoL for a large slice of its workforce, which then has to lean on society to make up the balance.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#97

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

Most people are greedy.

They only want more for less.

The overlap between people who:

* pretend to be upset about ever-shrinking middle class, and

* sort by lowest price and buy an obvious knockoff from an online marketplace third-party seller that takes three weeks to arrive from Shenzhen in order to save 52¢ on an item...

...is almost 100%.

They don't realize that their own cheapassedness caused the shrinking.

You aren't in the twilight zone, 3rd-world business models are creeping into the rest of the world because they worked so well in the 3rd-world.

Except in the 3rd-world the models maximized profit for businesses while consumers had no choice due to pre-existing poverty and in what is left of the non-3rd-world they are maximizing profit for businesses while appealing to rabid cheapassed consumers.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#98

Post by infogulch »

gizmo686 wrote: post #69
decebalus1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "socializing losses, privatizing gains" Never seen this formulated as such but I really like it. I was reading a book which tangentially dealt with that [0]. It changed my perspective on how new businesses are increasingly externalizing their costs to the consumers. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Work-Unpaid-Unseen-Jobs/dp/161...

I don't think "externalizing their costs to the consumers" really makes sense. In an idealized market, costs should be passed onto the consumer. From what I can tell, the book you reference is just complaining that this cost changed from money to labor. It is also worth noting that, in many cases, this results in a net win for the consumer. Eg, whwn I buy from a full service gas station, I am paying someone to pump m…

An idealized market requires full awareness of all of the costs. A key factor in "externalizing" costs is hiding those external costs from the consumer.

E.g. a perfect market would notice the increased quality variance of goods and services and would require the price to go down proportionally so the total cost is the same. But consumers don't all see it at the same time, so every company has a chance to hoodwink every consumer by pushing additional costs onto them without their initial knowledge.

The key innovation of money is the ability to accurately evaluate the value of goods and services; by pushing all of these extra external costs onto the consumer we're basically going back to bartering.

Every additional variable that the consumer is required to consider during a purchase decision is additional cognitive load. That's why people pay so much for free/fixed shipping costs: it reduces the number of variables you have to keep in your head by 1. It's also why I think that adding tax after the listed price (like the US does it) is terrible: it puts more cognitive load on the consumer. Consumers today are attacked with dozens of potential hidden external costs around every corner, it's like a DOS attack on the consumer's brain and inhibits their decision making ability.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#99

Post by plankers »

nindalf wrote: post #78
decebalus1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "socializing losses, privatizing gains" Never seen this formulated as such but I really like it. I was reading a book which tangentially dealt with that [0]. It changed my perspective on how new businesses are increasingly externalizing their costs to the consumers. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Work-Unpaid-Unseen-Jobs/dp/161...

I'm not sure why it isn't more common to see that on HN. On reddit, it's reliably one of the top comments in such threads.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

--Upton Sinclair

Welcome to The Jungle, baby.

Re: Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak

#100

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

rchaud wrote: post #24

One of the first things I remember about moving to a rich country was the absence of knockoff products sold in retail stores. It seemed amazing to me that companies would deal only with authorized distributors. These days, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone where 'wealth creation' is happening by putting a fresh face on 3rd-world country business models. First it was Uber with the "hire a random guy off the street to…

"There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat. Well, I don't cheat. And although I like to think we have some pretty smart people here in this room, it sure is a hell of lot easier to just be first." -Margin Call

First and smarter are getting more and more taken.

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