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1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

businessinsider.com

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Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#421

Post by bobsmooth »

8note wrote: post #347
morelandjs wrote: post #160

I’m not sure why everyone continually romanticizes brick and mortar retail. Its terribly inefficient, and wasteful of time, energy, space etc. Think of all the Walmart, Dicks, Big Lots parking lots and strip malls that could be converted into better space. Think of how much waste there is when you have to pack, unpack, stage and repack merchandise. Amazon’s distribution is a superior business model which is why it is…

Brick and mortar retail is an advertising scam from the last century. It's built to waste people's time by making them walk by different products to get to the things they want.

The problem with algorithms is that they rarely show you something new. I like walking past rows of things to see what catches my eye.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#422

Post by _delirium »

glial wrote: post #166
echelon wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Book stores (which were pretty awesome, actually) - Open source - Concentration of compute resources - American cinema (well, I suppose Disney has a hand in this too)

- family-owned retail businesses - distribution of ownership of the 'means of retail production' - worker rights (looking at you, gig economy and Amazon delivery drivers) - brand reliability (so much on Amazon is brand-free)

Isn't a lot of that older than Amazon? Walmart was already hard to compete against for family-owned retail businesses. Three Walton heirs are in the top 15 richest Americans, if you want to talk about distribution of wealth. To me Amazon seems like just the natural next generation of the Walmart model.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#423

Post by rebuilder »

kortilla wrote: post #378
heavyset_go wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One solution can be for a union, government, Amazon etc, is to put aside money for a fund that will invest in training these employees so they could one day not depend on these kind of low-leverage jobs. Unions have negotiated with companies that outsource or automate its members' jobs to secure compensation for the workers who were affected. However, I think this is a problem that requires a larger solution. There…

> We're heading towards a world where most work is done by machines, and only a handful of people will own, control and profit from them People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago. A lot of jobs have been replaced but new jobs have been created and society has absorbed the increased productivity (cheaper goods, foods, and much more complex high end goods (iPhone, airplanes, etc).

Employment rates aren't the issue IMO, wealth concentration is. And that's increasing.

It's important because wealth is essentially power, so concentration of wealth inevitably changes the balance of power in society. And that in turn creates a feedback loop where the wealth and powerful can undermine thelaws and regulations intended to keep the distribution of wealth and power from becoming too lopsided.

This is why I view the current everything-as-a-service model that takes things people used to own and turns them into things people rent pretty skeptically.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#424

Post by [deleted] »

KoftaBob wrote: post #39

So 0.65%? Not insignificant, but using “1 out of every 153” seems intentionally worded to sound more outsized and draw eyes. I wish HN posters would stop encouraging this lowbrow form of journalism. For an educated community, people sure do love their cheap clickbait headlines here.

[deleted]

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#425

Post by WalterBright »

kortilla wrote: post #411
rejectedandsad wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to quickly emphasize that they are data driven enough to understand that lots of people buy those books because about 51-54% of the country doesn’t and never did like him.

But who are those books for? I don’t buy books about politicians I don’t like.

I do. "Don't like" is not the same as "not interesting".

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#426

Post by fzil »

Rd6n6 wrote: post #175
tjr wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frequently shopped at Barnes & Noble ~20 years ago. But they slowly carried less and less that I was interested in, seemingly shifting from a "store for people who like books" to a "store for people to buy gifts for people who like books". At first I placed online orders with them, but once moving to online shopping at all, it was clear that Amazon had even better selection, prices, shipping, etc. But I still enjoy…

Chapters/indigo in Canada is like that. Half the stores are gift shops for socks and blankets etc. They removed all the tables and chairs they had 20 years ago for you to read at. At least they still exist though, all 4 used bookstores (plus one chapters) near where I live have closed down

> Half the stores are gift shops for socks and blankets etc.

Yeah this annoyed me to no end, however after a few shops I realized the only reason these are even open right now is because of the high margin gift section. Check the prices on their plushies when you are there. $35 for a small rabbit! and people buy them.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#427

Post by WalterBright »

bobsmooth wrote: post #420
WalterBright wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice to see a fellow techer here! The fastest tech revolution I ever saw was in the fall of '75, when I was a frosh. At the beginning of the semester, the Caltech bookstore had slide rules for $125. By December, they were on closeout for $5. Never saw them again. The calculators had arrived!

What was that like, going from log tables to instant calculations?

Like riding your bike to school instead of walking.

(Showing my age again. Kids today don't ride bikes to school. All you gotta do is look at the lonely single bike rack at elementary schools. In my day there were lots of racks festooned with bikes. These days when I pass a school, there's a long line of moms in SUVs with the motor running talking on their phones.)

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#428

Post by WalterBright »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #368
WalterBright wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then they were one of Amazon’s first casualties! They're still in business. I browsed one last month. I was amused that one entire rack, 6 shelves, was filled with "Trump is Evil" books. Somebody at that store doesn't like Trump :-)

I want to quickly emphasize that they are data driven enough to understand that lots of people buy those books because about 51-54% of the country doesn’t and never did like him.

I read a couple months ago that publishers were being pressured not to publish books by Trump insiders.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#430

Post by shakezula »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #359
e12e wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

Long ago, there were 2 companies - one welcomed unions and the other stopped unions. The one which welcomed unions lost it's profit margin and the other "predatory" company kept it's profit margins and grew more aggressively and put the "good" company out of business. After that entrepreneurs learned that you need to be ruthless to win in capitalism. Don't get me wrong, I support fair wages for all employees, no matt…

If you truly supported fair wages then you’d support collective bargaining.
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