What Is Amazon? (2019) | Hacker News Reader

What Is Amazon? (2019)

zackkanter.com

45 pointsgstipi36 comments

> It is the most successful social welfare system ever implemented, saving billions and billions of dollars for everyday Americans without costing taxpayers a dime. It is a testament to the power of compounding interest, to the power of a focused plan executed violently for decades.

A social welfare plan? Are you for real?

Both Walmart and Amazon are pioneers of modern union busting practices. They screw workers over as much as they can get away with to squeeze out the maximum amount of labour. Instead of writing this you could as well spit in the face of working class people.

The premise of this article so willfully ignorant of material reality, that it is impossible to take this serious.

I was once a happy employee of Sam's Club, which is owned by Walmart. They paid more than other jobs available to me, I was provided a 15 minute break every two hours, good times.

I didn't feel like anyone was spitting in my face when I read the article.

FWIW, Starbucks copied its profit sharing (and other ideas) from Sam Walton. Walton's bio pop biz book was widely read (early 90s). Starbucks was considered very progressive for the time (by us "carpet walkers", what the blue collar workers called us office workers). Lot's of happy worker bees.

But at some point, Walmart took a hard turn to the right.

And to my own shame, I didn't understand how anti-labor Starbucks was at the time. There was always grumblings and heresay. It was easy to dismiss as sour grapes and cranks. Then Schultz became a candidate for President and all the knives came out.

Moving forward, I just want what's fair. I don't understand how it's okay for the top of the heap to become billionaires while the minions are making starvation wages. It doesn't have to be 50/50 even split of the spoils. But upgrading from 1/99 to 10/90 or even 20/80 would materially improve the lives of millions of people.

The median wealth in the US is $70k. The ratio is more like 1/100,000 for your average billionare, and 1/10,000,000 for zuckerberg, gates, and bezos. In this scheme 1/99 would be downright communistic.

They could have afforded to pay you more, but they chose not to. You may or may not have been an outlier in the distribution of wages, but overall wages have not increased with productivity.

This is literally true for anyone who has savings above subsistence. We could all afford to pay people more or we would have no surplus in our bank account.

Can I have all your money that is above subsistence?

I mean, you can spin it the way the author does. But those maximised supply chains are also really good at killing small business, and historically, small business has been a lot more important to free western societies than major companies with perfect supply chains.

So you could also spin it as corporate slavery for all the people living paycheck to paycheck that are unable to ever break that cycle because it’s impossible to build something that would compete with Amazon.

You can really spin the Amazon story whichever way you want. Over all, monopolies tend to be a net negative for society though.

I think he is referring to some studies that suggested Walmart's presence lowered the living costs of low income families by $1k-$2k due to the availability of lower priced food and goods compared to the smaller shops available prior to Walmart's rise.

I don't think he is referring to the workers, and I agree calling it a welfare system is a bit silly and an overreach, but he is trying to say that it had an impact on household expenditure.

> Walmart's presence lowered the living costs of low income families by $1k-$2k

These studies are useless in isolation. If the super-optimisation of production and supply chains (less factory workers, drivers, other lower skilled labour) and moving production to lower cost economies (far, far less factory jobs) also reduced the average income, then the benefits are far less clear, and may disappear altogether.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. If the people who are supposedly benefiting from these low prices are the same people who lost their jobs to the MNCs in the first place, I doubt they're feeling all that grateful.

But the people negatively affected are few compared to those positively affected.

note: I don't actually buy into this idea that these so called positives are worth the cost. I believe we would be better off and happier if we still had the small businesses that were displaced.

But are they? How many main street retail jobs has walmart killed? A million? Ten?

Look, you might be right. Maybe the pain is indeed worth the gain. My point is - it's not even being considered.

without costing taxpayers a dime

That's not quite true. In 2018 Amazon paid an effective tax rate of -1% ... they claimed a $129m rebate on profits of $11.2bn.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/15/amazon-ta...

Not to mention extra wear and tear to roads from their delivery trucks, the air traffic controllers handling their planes, etc.

They pay the appropriate fees and taxes for road and airport use.

While this is true, it makes the claim that Amazon doesn't cost tax payers anything false.

Don’t forget when the workers at Walmart need to go on Medicaid and other government programs we’re subsidizing their profits.

> saving billions and billions of dollars for everyday Americans without costing taxpayers a dime

I have a feeling that these savings mostly benefit middle-class Americans.

of course as the middle-class is vanishing the correspondence is perhaps not as valid as before, but everyday Americans would once have been understood as a reference to middle-class Americans.

When you have a random variable with log-normal distribution, such as income or wealth, unless the fundamental mechanism is changed to be additive (normal) instead of multiplicative (log-normal), you'll end up with the bulk of people at the low end of that curve. The existence of a large middle class was an anomaly.

Agreed 100% -> Both Walmart and Amazon are pioneers of modern union busting practices. They screw workers over as much as they can get away with to squeeze out the maximum amount of labour. Instead of writing this you could as well spit in the face of working class people.

History of taking advantage of people and the country

A) not paying sales tax

B) USPS subsidy

C) union busting and exploiting their workers

It’s completely naive and overwrought, however I think it’s quite arguable that Walmart and Amazon have done a lot for society in terms of passing down cost savings and customer satisfaction. This is why they have been successful. This is at the price of how they treat their labor, which is a political failure of the USA.

This isn’t too different from much of modern capitalism: globalized cheap labor with poor conditions and limited collective bargaining power makes your phone, textiles, and appliances.

I see corporatism as passing down costs and not savings.

What costs have gone down over time? The highest expenditures I think for most people are housing, healthcare, education? What percentages have they been driven down by our system? Food? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for food were 769.75% higher in 2020 versus 1962 (founding of Walmart).

Here's a good debate on whether Walmart is net positive or negative for America's working class: https://www.independent.org/events/transcript.asp?id=125

I use Amazon a lot and I have Amazon Prime but I've started to do big purchases elsewhere.

Because, frankly, the difference between having 25 relevant SKU's in a smaller store versus 1000's on Amazon doesn't matter to me when I only want to buy one of them. The right one.

I don't want to have to try and work out if it's real or counterfeit, or how reputable the brand is, or whether the listed specs are accurate - I'm happy to pay a bit extra for a store's merchandisers to do that for me.

So yeah, I'd buy a USB Stick from Amazon, but a television, not so much. I'm not even sure how they can solve these problems (how can you police/accurately rank a huge inventory?) but at the very least they could get rid of co-mingled inventory etc. that are making it even worse.

Costco is a pretty good alternative for durable goods, and after many years of digital media, I'm shopping at thriftbooks.com and buying CD's again. Amazon has lost the trust battle - it makes me anxious to shop for things on amazon now, unless it's something I've bought before.

For big buys, i generally consult something like the wirecutter(it's supposed to be trust worthy product review site), get a decent recommendation, and go buy it on Amazon - from the manufacturer's store.

Sure beats getting recommendations from a store salesman.

I checked out wirecutter today and it seems really decent.

Thanks for the recommendation!

what are some good alternatives to amazon? this year I've started minimizing my use of google and amazon services. I built a PC with parts from microcenter where possible, and bought hard drives from best buy when they were price matching on prime day. I've also started buying books through a local bookstore, which has been my favorite change as I know the money goes to my community rather than 'huge but not as huge as amazon' business like best buy.

I live in Spain, so now I get all of my components and electronics from PCComponentes.

I had to return a broken monitor and the service was amazing too, although to Amazon's credit, I've never had an issue with Amazon's returns service either.

Although realistically, that USB stick is far more likely to be counterfeit than the TV is.

You lost me at "It is the most successful social welfare system ever implemented, saving billions and billions of dollars for everyday Americans without costing taxpayers a dime. "

A good portion of Walmart employees are on food stamps because Walmart doesn't pay living wages. If anything Walmart exists on the tax payers dime.

Here's a good debate on whether Walmart is net positive or negative for America's working class: https://www.independent.org/events/transcript.asp?id=125

I've always thought of Amazon as an Operating System, not in the typical way we see an OS (as something that resides on a small personal computer or server), but a large abstraction that deals with higher level concepts, yet at the same time able to handle minute details and work with lower-level concepts (Think SKUs, receipts, billing etc) and higher level concepts like AWS, which Amazon runs on due to self dogfooding.

If there ever was an article where tl;dr applies, this would be it.

Ultimately it’s a fairytale version of the history of Walmart and Amazon viewed through the lens of each company being an algorithm.

I’m not sure this carries much insight other than the importance and power of focus on customer satisfaction (which may seem obvious but in my experience bears repeating).

good points

would also add

A) Whenever possible use Government subsides to subsidize your expenses, especially worker wages

B) Whenever possible screw over everyone you work with and exploit your vendors and business partners

C) Buy as much Government influence as possible. Even better, buy a newspaper in Washington so you can do overt (lobbying) and covert (who knows what dirt WSJ gathers on politicians) influence on the Government

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