221–230 of 549 posts
It's bizarre. I'm not even american but Amazon is such a big part of my day to day life. - At work we use AWS - Amazon uses my company software - My wife is a retailer and now sells on Amazon - During work I use Twitch.TV as background noise (Amazon bought Twitch.TV) - Last week, after work I was playing the new Amazon MMO game. - After dinner I was watching The Office on Amazon Prime
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…
No one wants to be the bad guy in their own story. That's why excuses exist.
Good luck. I understand where you're coming from.
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…
That is the heart of “Aggregation Theory” from the stratechary blog. That these companies amass their market power by making their product so easy to use, they aggregate demand and are able to squeeze suppliers. They hold monopolistic power, but it is hard to argue that they “harm consumers”. Unlike old school monopolies, consumers go to aggregators because they want to, not because they are forced to.
The notion of a baseline of satisfaction required for consentual opting-in to monopolies seems to have produced this perpetual equilibrium where even if people don't like a service they still throw up their hands and use it because everyone else happens to use it since it is the one and only place that this one crucial discussion about X or Y is taking place in the entire world, and the subject matter has nothing to do with the platform itself, but that platform was the one that happened to win out, because it was superior.
It's caused me to think that just because you are fixing bugs or legitimately making improvements to a product, or have big dreams and an idea that actually does change the world, it doesn't mean that you are necessarily mean that you are doing the world a favor overall. The people in control or the incentives could rule what actually happens.
And the scariest thing is, people don't want to outlaw or regulate innovation or growth. People are fine with Amazon improving its marketplace to the point where there are no other marketplaces left offering a comparable set of products. A lot of people seem to be fine with letting social media grow to dominate our lives if it's reframed as "making it easier to keep in touch with your distant relatives."
Now it really is easier to keep in touch with your relatives than ever. And now, social media is also starting to dominate our lives.
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…
Cigarettes are terrible addicting too and people quit them all the time.
As far as I can see, the low cost of the American lifestyle is largely subsidized by shifting the price onto others. Whether that's Amazon keeping prices low by exploiting labor in the west or Chinese manufacturers keeping prices low by exploiting labor in China or meat manufacturers keeping prices low by running factory farms, at the end of the day, the ethical choice is always going to have a higher price attached because you're eating the cost so others don't have to. The only solution is to put your money where your mouth is.
Others say legislation, but that's a transient solution at best. If the lobbyists don't get to twist the legislation in the first place, they'll just keep lobbying until they get their way. They have the money and organization to make it happen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument sounds entirely theoretical. Do you have an example of even one small town where average or median wages or benefits were decreased as a result of Amazon? I frequently encounter armchair economists on the Internet making sweeping claims about various, but it is frustrating. It takes basically no effort to think up something plausible. But to take even the first step towards empirically verifying a given…
> Do you have an example of even one small town where average or median wages or benefits were decreased as a result of Amazon? A couple of quotes from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-w... In making the case against a union at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., Amazon has touted its compensation package. The company notes that base pay at the facility, around $15.50 an hour for most rank-and-…
For example, it is not surprising that amazon warehouse workers, an unskilled job with minimal required training, make less than a median wage. For example, the average salary of a warehouse worker in Los Angeles (where I live) is $38k/year. The average salary of a paralegal is $45k/year. This is unsurprising. I am not saying that warehouse work is easier than paralegal work, but I am saying that this phenomenon has nothing to do with Amazon.
Further, it is worth noting that Amazon Warehouse jobs are unlike most many other warehouse jobs. Being able to use a pallet jack or forklift is a skill and that workers with those skills can command higher wages than workers without those skills is again unsurprising.
I think it is hard to objectively analyze the situation by taking talking points from a union in a confrontation with Amazon. $18-$21 with what kind of benefits? For what kind of labor?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just a few, Amazon has more workers than any of the 10 smallest states and more revenue than the GDP of the smallest 30 (individually, not summed).
I meant entire states, not just state employees. Some states have fewer residents than Walmart and Amazon have employees.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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…
Amazon is putting in a new warehouse near where I live. They bought up farm land and are converting into a crazy large building that spans the distance between to major roads. Its going to impact traffic on both of those roads, construction already has. We'll probably need a bigger bridge on one of those roads too. It will also have a huge parking lot for the people that will work there. This building is bigger than…
That makes Amazon #3, after the federal government and Walmart: Entity US Employees 1. US Government 2.7M 2. Walmart 1.6M 3. Amazon 1.0M If Amazon continues to grow at current rates, it will surpass Walmart's figure within 2 years. Looking at these figures, it's evident that these three entities are far larger, wealthier, more connected, and likely more powerful than the vast majority of US cities, the vast majority…
"Across the U.S., nearly 24 million people—a little over 15% of the workforce—are involved in military, public, and national service at the local, state and federal levels. Of this number, approximately 16 million are employed in state and local governments. The federal government numbers include active duty military personnel and U.S. Postal Service workers. The U.S. military has about 1.4 million active duty servic…
I think states and cities have legitimately shrunk budgets in proportion to regional economic output since the downsizing efforts of the 80s, but the federal government has not. Tax revenue as a proportion of GDP has dropped, and presumably discretionary budget has, but debt-financed mandatory budget has skyrocketed. The chart from the Fed seems to show outlays in proportion to GDP steadily growing for over a century, but pretty slowly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
Obviously, the ginormous spikes for WWII and Covid are outliers.