131–140 of 549 posts
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Wasn't basically everyone an employee of one "company" in communist countries?
No, most “communist” countries (and I use the term loosely because really they were just state capitalist) owned many different companies, rather than being part of one mega government corporation.
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> likely more powerful than the vast majority of US cities, the vast majority of small countries Indeed there are not a lot of countries/cities that are wealthy/powerful enough to send people in space
Blue Origin isn't that expensive, at least by nation state standards. Its just if there's no political will for a space program then there will be no space program. Space is a money blackhole for the most part so there's no big incentive to start one especially when governments are busy, ideally, fighting poverty, enforcing law, regulating capitalism, and protecting workers. The USA didn't have its own human rated la…
NDT says that people do big expensive projects for 3 reasons: 1.) War (people will do anything not to die like build a great wall or an atom bomb), 2.) For religious reasons or to satisfy a monarchy(pyramids, Notre Dame cathedral), or 3.) For economics.
We spent $$$$ on the space program as it was a key part of showing off our might in the cold war (#1). NDT speculates that Mars will not happen unless there is a military or economic reason to go there since #2 isn't big anymore.
I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…
Amazon is Amazon because they didn't let size dull their edge. Unfortunately, that cuts both ways. There are a lot of ways to be exploitive, to your and your customers' benefits, when you're a $113 B revenue/quarter company, that simply aren't available when you're a startup. Hell, Walmart pioneered the "How'd you like to sell in our stores?" + "You need to reduce prices, or it'd be a shame if we, your biggest custom…
Amazon has only recently pioneered last mile logistics. It still isnt that great. I’m in a large metro area and 25-50% of my packages do not meet the prime delivery dates. I’d argue Walmart is still the king of logistics, for now.
In the spirit of the FSF's "Right to Read"[1] dystopia story, I present "Fully Automated Amazon Communism" : 1. Everyone works at Amazon 2. Amazon has vertically integrated into every conceivable industry. 3. Everyone gets paid in Amazon gift cards. 4. Amazon automatically delivers to your home everything you need to live your life without you having to ask. It knows what to order based on an AI model of everything y…
you're being downvoter and I don't understand why. Here are a few more things for your list: 7. Amazon monitors everything you do online and offline (they do provide the backbone and all of ISP services). Corrective action is taken if needed 8. Amazon decides who get to live and who gets to die based on your predicted future value. Also, Amazon decides who gets to reproduce.
Probably because Amazon historically hasn't done vertical integration. Amazon Basics items aren't manufactured in Amazon factories. Heck, half the time they're not even branded. I bought an AB air conditioner last month and there wasn't a single Amazon logo on the box.
A maximal Amazon would eat all retail, but I don't seem them running hotels or hospitals. They could still cause plenty of problem if 1 in 4 people worked there, though.
Neal Stephenson had the delivery part right.
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>"So aside from just stop buying from Amazon, what can we do?" Lower the barriers to entry for business. It is not easy to comply with regulations and reporting. A scrappy startup can replace Amazon if they can focus on things that are not burdensome and arbitrary, like rent + insurance + tax reporting + legal.
You expect a scrappy startup which has few or no regulations to comply with to treat their employees better than Amazon, which only treats their employees as well as they do because regulations force them to?
I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…
It's very convenient to buy from Amazon, but it's hardly a hardship to not do so.
I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…
Aren’t size 14 shoes on the long side of the tail? Amazon will always be better at that than a brick and mortar retailer.
14 and 15 are sometimes available.
Anything larger is a specialty store... except New Balance will always have up to 18 in some styles.
Now, width is another matter entirely.
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Is this level of concentration a totally new phenomenon? In the 1970s GM employed almost 700k people, and the US population like 30% lower. Is it just different companies every generation?
Oh boy, the new quote: "What's good for Amazon, is good for America." When GM was "good for America", we pretty much lost public transportation, so what are we losing now?
- Open source
- Concentration of compute resources
- American cinema (well, I suppose Disney has a hand in this too)
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Why do you accuse them of suppressing wages when they lead the way to $15/hr, and when they literally spend money lobbying congress to raise the federal minimum wage? https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobby...
That’s a fair point. I see them as suppressing wages because they open warehouses in small towns, pay $15/hr and then work the person to death so they become dependent on that job. Amazon can totally dominate an area’s workforce and use that to drive wages and benefits down.
What I'm getting at is, small towns and the like tend to be dominated by petty landlords and what have you. Or someone wealthier elsewhere that can fund endeavors there because they can't where they live. The unfortunate aspect is like the events George Orwell stated. Lots of rundown or lesser paying places.
The notion that consolidation of markets is somehow bad because it drives down people's autonomy has been around for ages and all we've seen time and time again that it actually benefits people more often than it doesn't. You don't have to worry about crop yields, you worry about a boring office job. You don't have to worry about house maintenance, just who to call to fix these complex things. It allows for people to specialize in fields instead of making a population of "Jack of All Trades." The latter make for a better system when you're predominantly agrarian. The former is better when you've got a system so complex that you need people to hyper specialize in something specific so they don't have to worry about other minutia work.