Conversely, or maybe tangentially (?), increased labor cost is how Amazon wins in the long run. It's the same logic they use for undercutting prices of consumer electronics, but in reverse.

Today you can get an $x/hour at Amazon or Target, but if Amazon does it right and keeps driving costs down and prices up, coupled with continuous explosion in online shopping, in 10 years Target loses its edge and you can only get a job at Amazon.

It's not to say that short term gains aren't worth it for employees, but long term, those gains might already be baked into Amazon's logic.

Today, they employ 1M people, but in 10 years, when there's no longer a Target or a Wallmart, they overnight add 10M robots and there's no one to say no at that point.

They are notorious for playing very long games, and they don't seem to do anything that doesn't eventually benefit them.

Being in tech I find the tactics very interesting, but it's getting progressively harder to tell if the world is becoming net positive as a result.