All those things are always discussed tirelessly in HN every time there’s something about Amazon. We get it. And it’s ok to bring them up here. But how about adding something useful to the discussion, instead of just making that statement and posting a bunch of links?
Thanks for being super creepy, and digging through my profile. Unfortunately you couldn’t even get that right. And by the way, even if I still worked there I can’t see how that discredits my opinion.
But since you seem to going down that route, I can say confidently that I don’t like Amazon as an employer and many times I don’t like it when I interact with it as a customer. Mind blowing, right? Someone who can be critical and still tries to seek objective opinions.
no problem, next time there's a potential conflict of interest then state it in your post
> Unfortunately you couldn’t even get that right.
it's hardly my fault if your resume on your website is out of date
Eh. Speak for yourself.
Either the vast market that they exploit is ignorant to their abuse of the world, or the vast market is knowingly participating in fairly a-moral behavior knowingly.
I prefer to think that people are generally good (moral) & naive, so i'll continue parroting the point everytime Amazon comes up, just on the off chance that i'll elucidate to someone Amazon's true nature that they may otherwise be unaware of.
Speaking of topics that are spoken of ceaselessly on HN : Amazon's success and profit. Where's your issue with that topic?
> What’s the point of this comment besides being inflammatory?
I think that's an absolutely atrocious response to anything human-rights related.
Capitalism is a nasty, amoral system by nature. Saying some companies are good and others are bad is just scapegoating.
If everybody boycotts amazon tomorrow, they'll be replaced by a company that does the same stuff - because amazon have proved that it works, and that it is profitable. Nothing but legistlation can stop that. Talking about how bad amazon is obcures this.
Actually, this isn't the case. Not too long ago, orphan drugs were actually reasonably priced. Cuprimine went up from 500 USD to 24000 USD for a 30-day supply when Valeant bought the original manufacturer, and Daraprim went up from 13.50 USD/dose to 750 USD/dose thanks to Shkreli: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-senate-drug-price-stu...
Something changed, but I'm not sure what.
And they can do it since competition won’t bother to jump through FDA hoops.
Not that again. Bioequivalence is important so that a patient can take Levothyroxin 75 μg from Ranbaxy one month and Levothyroxin 75 μg from Teva next month and notice no difference. Unfortunately, the market for orphan drugs is so small that it's impossible to recover the outlays.
But yes, these markets where formally cheap drugs get 100x price increases are tiny markets where the outlay to get FDA approval is more than they’d make on it.
If everyone rewards companies for being nasty because that's somehow "smart" or "successful", then the nasty companies will be among the most successful ones.
If everyone boycotts companies that do unethical things, then those companies will be punished financially and ethical behavior will be economically incentivized.
Choose the world in which you want to live.
I don't see how that could ever work. So, in my eyes, it's not choosing the world you want to live. It's engaging in some magical thinking to feel good about yourself. If you want to change the world, vote. Better still, organize. Take the time you would have spent researching the ethical status of one company or another and look into the history of campaigns to improve working conditions. Some campaigns have worked - but I have never heard of, and cannot imagine there are any, that were consumer boycotts.
2. If you reward companies for being bad, then they will be bad. If you reward companies for selling blue items, they will sell more blue items. Your own logic about amorality dictates this. Why is it so hard to understand?
This was widely publicized. According to your theory, such an extreme 'bad' act would have led to disaster for the company. In reality, it didn't even lead to rebranding. They were bought by Dow Chemicals - but that was because they had massive debts. I think they cannot have been related to the Bhopal disaster, since their compensation paid was very small.
One salient fact here is that moral hazard is not contagious. Many products are for other businesses, who aren't likely to pay a premium for ethical considerations. Another fact here is that even in the most famous and awful cases of bad companies, you're relying on the company's own branding to tell informed customers to stay away. Which is obviously extremely fragile - the company can rebrand, even if the customers are reliably informed (how many people on the street know about Bhopal? Is it present when they buy shrink wrap? Is it even possible to know that your shrink wrap was made using ethylene from union carbide?
All seems a bit absurd to me. Even before you get into the inherent asymetries of the idea (is Bill Gate's ethical opinion worth more than a billion poor people? As an ethical consumer, it is.)
How do you figure those laws are created, if not by public pressure? And how would publish pressure be created if not by talking about the amoral behavior of companies?
If you target specific techniques and practices (for instance, child labour, historically) then the supporters and lobbyists have to actually justify the problematic stuff - they can't just hide behind the nebulous vagueness of all the things big companies do.