Sure he could raise all amazon staff salary but that doesn't alter the fact he is charitable.
The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
41–50 of 146 posts
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. That old industry got killed is natural when progress happens.
I'm not sure I'd allow the delivery times and customer support to be attributed as a real thing to Amazon. Both were meant as audience capturing tactics and were basically unattainable by most all other competitors due to costs -- Amazon only avoided it riding on a large wave of money and eating costs for years until it was the only game in town. Now you can't have a thread about Amazon without constant complaints ab…
It's not only about costs. It's really about hard work to deliver the best for customers.
Many online retailers simply do not make efforts to deliver, quite apart from any cost consideration, and then they moan about Amazon.
In addition, it's also about creating trust. Buying something online requires more trust than buying from a store so convincing people that it's safe and that there won't be any issues with returns and refunds is a big part of getting people to place and order and to come back.
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
So we should put a gap on wealth and redistribute it beyond that in a fair way?
Yes. And we do exactly that through taxation. A portion of Jeff Bezos' fortune is derived from Amazon's ability to increase it's profits by (legal, and arguably justifiable) tax avoidance. That's part of global business these days, but it's not unreasonable for people in regions where Amazon minimizes it's tax costs to say Bezos is doing something bad for them .
> arguably justifiable
Very curious about these justification arguments. How on earth is tax-avoidance defensible in a thread about philanthropy?
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Way more people benefited from Amazon. It's cheaper. It set a new standard in delivery times and customer support. Its existence improved life of millions of people by significant margin. That old industry got killed is natural when progress happens.
Amazon also set new lows for how to pay and treat employees, and how little it is possible to care about selling counterfeit products.
I never understand why people say things like this. It's not even remotely true. For instance we can quantify the salary comment. A quick search for fulfillment center work showed salaries starting at $12-$14/hour. The median pay for retail work, by contrast, is $11.24 [1], which means 50% of workers earn less than that.
It's not possible to similarly conveniently quantify concern about counterfeit, but if you think they genuinely do not care about it then I don't even know what to say. Even from a purely greed centered point of view, counterfeits hurt mid to longterm revenue.
[1] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#45Unrestricted capitalism will never be a force for good. Left running without any regulation, the gap between rich and poor will increase adinfinitum.
This kind of philanthropy acts as a last ditch attempt to correct the negative affects the system produces .. but in my opinion, it's not an effective or elegant way of doing so. It's main purpose is an exercise in smoke and mirrors .. by trying to influence our perception and shape the conversation surrounding whether these excess profits are acceptable in modern society.
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#46It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. It's not a great way of encouraging charity. If it is not doing harm and making some lives better, the correct response is 'thank you for making the world a better place'. Even if you think it is self serving, we should encourage such self serving behavior.
> It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. "Extreme taking and extreme giving" is what kings, emperors and other tyrants did (and still do). A billionaire can give away 99.9% of his/her earnings every month but s/he is acquiring extreme power in exchange. Being able to control the money tap is power. > It's not a great way of encouraging charity…
I think you'll find that many famous tyrants were funded by taxes.
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#47I see these 'philanthropic' efforts as distractions from what is essentially a new Gilded Age and its robber barons.
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly." Which is an interesting assumption, but certainly not a correct one. They have lost a lot of my business in recent years due to frequent poor quality control and customer service issues.
Perhaps not a universally correct one, but most probably a sufficiently accurate one, given Amazon's continued revenue growth. This is similar to the chronological vs. algorithmic timeline debates in social media: it's annoying to many users, but the overall result must be positive, otherwise they probably wouldn't be doing it, in face of the backlash.
If the trends continue over a period of several years, that may prove to be true.
Anecdotally, I am far from alone among my friends and family in perceiving that Amazon's quality, reliability and customer service have degraded sharply in recent years. It's not just the counterfeits issue. Their basic product organisation is terrible these days, and it's often difficult to figure out if I'm ordering the correct edition of something. They've also failed to deliver Christmas shopping by the guaranteed dates. They've sent many items out that were packaged in obviously absurd ways and arrived predictably damaged, and then had basic problems with their returns procedures causing customers a lot of hassle.
Perhaps more dangerous for Amazon, though, is that they are not always competitive on pricing with my local book and general stores any more. I can buy a new movie from Amazon and have it arrive tomorrow with perhaps a 5-10% chance that it's a bad copy and won't play. If I can buy the same movie for the same or less from my local store when I do my grocery shopping, and be guaranteed a proper UK product that I can see looks undamaged when I pick it off the shelf, which I can then enjoy watching this evening, what am I going to do? It's a similar story for buying books from a good local bookshop, and rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon also set new lows for how to pay and treat employees, and how little it is possible to care about selling counterfeit products.
Clearly they have been better than the alternatives for customers - otherwise, they would not be successful. Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
> Clearly they have been better than the alternatives for customers - otherwise, they would not be successful.
Plenty of shitty companies are successful. They just need to. be more convenient than their competitors.
> Employees also have a choice - Amazon is not a monopoly.
Not yet.
Re: The Bezos backlash: Is 'big philanthropy' a charade?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems you can't be charitable without someone telling you you should have given more or given to someone else. Spending money on good causes is great. That's to be definitely something to be encouraged. Putting all of the decision making about which causes are 'good' in the hands of one individual, or a small group of very similar individuals, is very, very bad. That's how entire segments of society get ignored.
US federal budget for 2018 is ~4 trillion. Bezos has just donated 2 million. If that’s really your concern then you should try to keep things in perspective.
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