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The Amazon tax

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Re: The Amazon tax

#311

Post by jambalaya8 »

abixb wrote: post #29

I've slowly shifted all my consumer purchases from Amazon to local shops and other online platforms, including Etsy. I'm now seriously contemplating deleting my Amazon account of 15 years in one whole swoop. The quality degradation is painfully apparent, and the value add of Amazon in my life has been steadily declining for a while. I've also had terrible experiences with AWS, but that's a different story. Amazon's o…

Alot of things are just fine, or more than fine, on Amazon (behemoth or not). If I know what brand I want, or I want a cheap version of something and the more or less guarantee if they screw up, it will be replaced or refunded, I absolutely would use Amazon. Some of the Amazon Essentials are a godsend if you cannot stand shopping. It is looking for new things, being unable to find exactly what I need without being overwhelmed, or not being sure of what of something to get, that gets me anxious.

Amused so many people here seem to be pushing etsy. I saw the same supposedly hand-made mugs on sale by hundreds of people on etsy a few years ago.

Re: The Amazon tax

#312

Post by shimman »

retired wrote: post #203
sleepyguy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live in Europe, where everything is harder, and when it comes to shopping, you have maybe one-fifth of the choices Americans have. I spend a good four months every year in Poland and Austria, and there’s really nowhere in the world except China that offers consumers as much choice and availability as the U.S. does.

It really baffles me when an American can just walk into a store and buy car parts for their fairly niche model from the 1990s. Meanwhile in Europe I spend many evening on internet forums and Facebook groups doing research trying to find a part that will work with my car, then finding someone willing to sell it and finally using Google Translate getting someone to ship it to my foreign (to them) country. I even had t…

Weird, I rather have more government mandated vacation, public healthcare, and a pension system that doesn't mean I have to work in my 60s but I understand people have different priorities in life. Hopefully you move beyond the consumerist phase as it's probably the lowest rung of the human experience.

Re: The Amazon tax

#314

Post by saulpw »

ryandvm wrote: post #226
amluto wrote: post #208

> The highest-yielding ad my publisher has tested so far is the search “Seth Godin The Knot“ I think it would be interesting to see legal action here. I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like there should be at least three ways to go after this: 1. Trademark infringement. If Amazon is using someone’s search that is clearly searching for a specific product, possibly trademarked, it seems inappropriate for them to serve up an…

Burnt myself on this in Google Maps just this week. I had an appointment in my calendar with the location set to "Dr Firstname Lastname, 123 Main St, 12345". I clicked through it into Google Maps and since it had the full address specified I just trusted it. Well, it turned out that the first result was actually an ad for a competing doctor 20 minutes in the wrong direction. To Google's credit, they did drop the "Don…

"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Re: The Amazon tax

#315

Post by metalsiliconYT »

Insinuating that there is one "best product" that Amazon magically knows is the best is quite an assumption. The best product might be completely different for different people and different depending on the time for the same person. Plus there are always new products being introduced and products being discontinued. I think we are mis assuming ill intent a little. Second issue is the assumption that there is always a fixed pie of demand for a product, when a new great product comes out more people will purchase from a category, its never fixed completely. This sounds like cope for book sales being lower than expected if we are being honest.

Re: The Amazon tax

#316

Post by zf00002 »

snarf21 wrote: post #40
abixb wrote: post #29

I've slowly shifted all my consumer purchases from Amazon to local shops and other online platforms, including Etsy. I'm now seriously contemplating deleting my Amazon account of 15 years in one whole swoop. The quality degradation is painfully apparent, and the value add of Amazon in my life has been steadily declining for a while. I've also had terrible experiences with AWS, but that's a different story. Amazon's o…

Generally curious but a lot of the stuff I find on Etsy is the same crap from Alibaba/Amazon .. What are you buying from Etsy that isn't this?

Etsy is even worse for sponsored ads, way worse.

Re: The Amazon tax

#317

Post by laurencerowe »

mutinyy wrote: post #306
delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

Yesterday I tried to buy a light bulb for my kitchen hood on Amazon. I searched for 130V 40W light bulb. I ended up buying a 120V one because I gave up trying to find the one I wanted. I think I'll run over to the hardware store next time.

Is there a difference between a 120V bulb and a 130V bulb?

I thought we basically had 110-130V North American voltage and 220-240V Euro and others voltage as the actual voltage you get from the grid varies within a range.

Re: The Amazon tax

#318

Post by aeturnum »

its_ethan wrote: post #253
aeturnum wrote: post #198

Amazon is a net-negative overall but I don't think this understanding is correct: > The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place). The ads make the search worse. This is only true in extremely simply scenarios. In reality, most of the time individual consumers may prefer something other…

You raise a very good counter to what feels like the main thrust of the guys article. It put to words something that felt "off" to me while reading it, that there was an assumption made that was never stated and was also incorrect - so thanks for putting that to words. He seems to assume that there is 1 air fryer that everyone on Earth should be getting, and all others are strictly inferior. There are probably no pro…

I think the idea is true if you reverse it: there are a lot of cheap air fryers that are not worth buying over a one or more "good value" alternatives.

This also lines up a lot better with other complaints with amazon: their inability to get rid of counterfeit sellers, the degree to which their reviews (and listings) are gamed, etc. Arguably the reason people buy garbage on Amazon has more to do with their lack of interest in policing misbehavior than ads (though perhaps the ads are the financial incentive to keep being lazy).

You can see this with the knockoff[1] plugin that flags "no-name" brands on amazon. Sometimes this takes out the listings you want and you need to consider it, but I think it's a pretty effective counter to the kinds of scammy ads this poster is frustrated with.

[1] https://knockoff.co/

Re: The Amazon tax

#319

Post by etothepii »

penguin_booze wrote: post #286

The income tax in UK has this quirk: once you fall near the top tax bracket, you retrospectively lose all tax-free allowances you could have availed, had you not fallen in the top tax bracket. Likewise, once corporations blow past a revenue cap, they shouldn't be eligible for lower rate of corporate tax. If the US is any cautionary tale (it always is), it's a moral imperative not to let corporations get too big. Lett…

In reality though it isn't implemented as you described. In reality it is merely that there is a 62% marginal rate from 100k to 100k + 2x the personal allowance.

They do this with sole traders who face a £14k (~$20k) slab tax bill (VAT) if they go from £85k to £85,001 (~$100k). The outcome has been near total depletion of skill tradesman "mate" apprenticeships. Since such people (not being totally stupid) take 3 months off per year or work 4 days per week and turn down jobs.

Re: The Amazon tax

#320

Post by dasil003 »

its_ethan wrote: post #253
aeturnum wrote: post #198

Amazon is a net-negative overall but I don't think this understanding is correct: > The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place). The ads make the search worse. This is only true in extremely simply scenarios. In reality, most of the time individual consumers may prefer something other…

You raise a very good counter to what feels like the main thrust of the guys article. It put to words something that felt "off" to me while reading it, that there was an assumption made that was never stated and was also incorrect - so thanks for putting that to words. He seems to assume that there is 1 air fryer that everyone on Earth should be getting, and all others are strictly inferior. There are probably no pro…

I don't think that nuance changes the big picture which is that Amazon has a conflict of interest between showing you the best product that you want, and showing you the product that the seller is most willing to pay to advertise. Quibbling over nuance just gives air cover to this fundamentally extractive rent seeking behavior. We really need stronger anti-trust action in the tech era given the extremely low friction and winner-takes-all dynamics of modern tech economy.
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