Amazon Has Too Much Power
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
But I don't like the argument in the article. It lays the responsibility of government to fix something that the public can have a bigger influence on. It's something I do. Don't buy from Amazon. I don't approve of their warehouse policies. Thus, I choose not to buy from them. It's not like they are the only shop on the web. The convenience argument is rather petty too. At a certain point, you have to put adult pants on. You are just funding them in doing what you don't like if you wait for someone else to "fix" the problem.
Unions started at a time when they could be crushed, workers fired, and even blackballed legally. Yet they, the organized workers, did what the government couldn't.
The power of unionization hinges on the workers themselves, they need to stand up, fully organize, and bring Amazon to the table. Amazon has too much money, too many "friends" and too much power for the government to take the lead. The attempts to protest earlier, or unionize, at amazon showed a half effort, not driven by the entire workforce, will fail.
Unlike the days of the past, workers are protected by many laws. Companies cannot hire mercenaries (in the US and other "first world" countries, at least) to brutalize workers. But they control more, across a larger area, making unionization difficult, despite the laws protecting unions. If Amazon wishes, they can easily cut off a single warehouse, if all those workers organized only in a single location, in the grand scheme.
But similar fears also exist among workers. If only a fraction of workers strike, they'll lose their jobs, deincentivizing the others. If you work in a warehouse, in the US, you're expendable. And especially in these times, people will be more likely to say "any job is a good job". And refuse to strike unless an effort appears that they see protects them, i.e. most of the workforce strikes, preventing Amazon from firing them all, or cracking down on unionization.
In my opinion, in lieu of 3/4th of all Amazon workers in a region unionization and striking together, the tech workers must unionize first, and lead any charge for change. Otherwise, again, a small minority of workers in other roles who strike will be ousted, painted as malcontents and policy violators hiding behind a fake claim of mistreatment, and fail to enact changes and possibly not be hired by other companies.
That's my two cents, as long and rambling as it may be.
People generally dont want to see themselves as being accessories to this mess and just say, "the gov isn't doing enough to stop Amazon from abusing workers... I totally need to buy that new widget, good thing I have Prime shipping."
And how is that justification? If people buy cheap stuff made from prison or child labour does that justify the practise? It just tells us that people by and large are indifferent to the conditions under which their goods are produced, it's not a justification for it.
That people don't care about Amazon labour conditions doesn't tell us that Amazon is doing the 'right thing', it tells us that people don't care about worker rights.
That's what laws and governments exist for. People also never cared that their palm oil consumption endangers biodiversity and destroys the rainforest, because they don't suffer from it.
Someone is perfectly capable about caring about workers rights and ordering from Amazon at the same time. What if you forgot to get a birthday present and need next day delivery? Amazon's kind of the only game in town, and that's an understandable compromise lots of people might make.
I think it's more about the lack of alternatives to Amazon (they are both great at customer service and at snuffing out competition) and the collective action problem than anything else. And I agree that's part of why laws and governments exist : ).
But that's my point. We're flawed. Which isn't an excuse. It's like, when the experts talk about how to change habits, they say the best way to do it is to change your environment. Because of the powerful influence our environment has upon us.
And most models of change for behaviors like smoking or weight loss (and it's becoming increasing clear that computers/screens/apps/the internet share the addictive qualities of those behaviors) incorporate relapse as one step of a change process.
It's an old book and a simple one, but as far as I know their research on how people successfully change behavior still holds up: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46680.Changing_for_Good
Most studies show, I think, that positive motivation is a better tool than shaming/blaming/judging, in most situations.
Yes laws exist for a reason, but I dont need a law to tell me stealing and murder is bad. While that's an extreme example, it's to prove that people need to own up to their own decision making if they want to complain. You shouldn't need your mommy around to tell you to do the right thing or who to associate with. Be an adult and be proactive.
What? Those two concerns are practically the reason laws were invented. Government is absolutely about coordinated action derived from the will of people on behalf of the people. Your can't solve everything with boycotts. "Complaining" as you put it is literally the voice of people: advocacy for both government action and rallying people's concerns.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with not "being and adult".
Also (and forgive me if this is a a result of misunderstanding your comment) in a small-d democratic system the government is a representative of the public. IMHO the government is our "adult pants" because it is our system of managing law, albeit an imperfect one.
But I dont believe its genuine for someone to complain about what Amazon is doing, then fund the company to continue their shady practices. It's like someone in Greenpeace crying for more laws to protect animals while they club a seal to death for their fur. You dont "need" laws for you to do the moral and correct thing in your personal life. It's more meant to protect you from others doing bad onto you. Unless you're a whiny child with no sense of responsibility... anyways, stand up for what you believe. Dont wait around. Thats the adult pants comment. Sure, you now have to click a few extra times to buy the same item elsewhere... what a painful sacrifice... Go ahead and buy from Amazon but dont get on a high horse, saying workers have rights, but fund a company for violating those rights.
By the way, when someone says to "put your adult pants on", that means you do things for yourself, by yourself, no matter how difficult or painful. Not have someone else do it for you.
In spirit I agree with you but think it's not as black-and-white as you described. For example: I forget to get a book as a birthday present. The party is in two days. If I decide to order the book on Amazon, because it's the only fast and reliable shipper of books whom I know will have the book I want, I don't see that the same as clubbing a baby seal, so to speak.
The issue being of course, whether Amazon qualifies as a monoply in the "Ma Bell" sense or not, there's not an obvious peer competitor, so, human behavior being what it is, people default to Amazon because, well, people are people. We're all babies sometimes.
That said I did just recently order a book from https://www.betterworldbooks.com/ so there ya go. : )
With that, I'm more afraid that because people want the gov to interfere rashly, they're just going to pull a Standard Oil break up. Rockefeller became far richer after the monopoly breakup. Can you imagine the same gaffe happening to Bezos? Amazon gets broken up and in 10 years he'll look back to 2020 and say, "Ah yes, the year I went from being poor to rich."
Or, everyone goes, "yes, i believe in workers rights and refuse to aid a company taking advantage of its employees." Then Amazon must change something when their profits take a hit.
And dont get me wrong, lots of companies are shitheads. Hell, it's part of the world economy that you buy something from abused labor somewhere down the chain. Pretty much all food, clothing, batteries, rare earth minerals... the world is generally a mess and a half. But something like Amazon is far easier to give up than eating food... unless you have a victory garden.
Now, if we can get gov to help break localized telecommunications monopoly control... that'd be great.
Amazon makes it so easy for me to buy, I don't have to think.
Have you tried the others ?? No
1. I have to be told or take the time to discover the non-Amazon option exists. And (though I haven't tested it) my guess is these days it takes a while to use Google (the default search tool for folks) to find an alternative.
2. I have to assess if I trust this new alternative.
3. I have to figure out how this new alternative works. For non-technical folks, depending on their background and how good or bad the UX for a site is, this could be a blocker.
4. I have to search on the new site for what I want.
5. I have to check how long the new site will take to deliver the item.
6. I have to enter payment information which again raises the question of trust.
All of these small (or not so small) frictions add up, IMHO, and it's not anyone's fault. It's just human behavior.
Amazon has a great customer experience when it comes to the items I listed. The problem as we know isn't that - it's how they stifle competition and help create the conditions in which they are the only company with this level of customer service. Oh yeah, and Amazon's abusive labor practices when it comes to the people it hires to work in it's warehouses.
Making it just as easy for third party sellers is a no brainier, and will only increase their influence and grasp.
Especially if they can cut small business overhead significantly. Today, why would anyone want the overhead of building and maintaining an ecommerce site when their business is too small to do it without lots of money and additional overhead.
My only wish is that they would pick up their boxes and reuse/recycle them when they drop off the new ones.
They used to do an amazing job at putting customers first.
Then once they got traction, they pivoted to putting themselves first by commingling inventory with random resellers who can insert counterfeit or bad product into their inventory. They even went so far as to remove the option to filter for products only shipped and sold by Amazon.com.
They did this because retail margins suck and they would rather collect 15% for being a platform rather than a few percent accept and they get to shed all the inventory risk as a retailer. So now they’re just a more expensive Aliexpress, as far as I can tell.
I've had > 99% good experience buying from Aliexpress but you have read carefully and make sure you know what your ordering. Only bad experience I had was ordering a dozen i2c multiplexers and receiving a child's leather minidress instead, seller would only speak to me in nonsense sentence fragments regardless if I contacted them in English or Mandarin, and it took three weeks to get a refund. But on the bright side the exact same nail files that CVS sells for $10 each I can get 5 for $1 if I'm willing to wait 2-3 weeks.
I do agree with you about the positive things they've done; I just think we also have to look at the negative ones too.
Plus, IMHO something is wrong when the head of a company like Amazon is a multi-billionaire (and the world's richest person) runs a company where the folks working in his warehouses get punished for pee breaks.
At least they are recyclable and I hope everyone is recycling them!
This would disrupt the current model, both online and offline.