Classic strawman argument. OP didn't accredit all success to Bezos.
And yes, Amazon is frighteningly large.
And yes, Amazon is frighteningly large.
Wal-Mart was already leading that charge. And it shocks me to no end how many people I still encounter complaining about Wal-Mart for destroying their diverse local retail centers and eliminating jobs, while simultaneously receiving notifications on their smartphone from the Ring doorbell alerting Amazon packages being delivered on their front step.
Amazon is basically Wal-Mart 2.0, now with even more consolidation, counterfeit goods, and fewer local jobs.
Bezos isn't coming for the mom and pop shops, he's coming for Wal-Mart. Maybe Home Depot and Lowes are next?
That replacement also drove costs down, and unlocked tremendous amounts of time spent “doing” retail shopping and as a society it’s our job to put that time and those savings to use. It’s also our job , in a moral sense, to make sure displaced industries/people like “retail” also find a new way of being productive.
Let’s not forget the investors that have reaped tons of benefit from this. They too have allocated those funds back to the market either via spend, investment, or tax. Even if the capital is idle, the bank has it which is also giving someone a job.
I'll just say that as we have fewer major players the more those players will lower wages and generally exploit workers. Most people won't enjoy living in that world.
I do believe in capitalism so maybe we disagree on a few things but I’d be curious how you see innovation without some value transfer proportional to that innovation. Amazon and I guess the “problem” is obvious but how do you get one without the other. Genuinely interested in your views.
Shopkeepers have been around for a long time, genociding them may not be wise.
Strictly as an ecological approach, no value judgement. Sparrow killing backfired on paradise builders.
They weren’t always knowledgeable staff with a smile that remembered you and your family. I wish it was the case but I’m afraid it wasn’t.
So, not all shops are gone. How do we reconcile that? Is it that the ones that could not be replaced and/or provided more value than amazon have remained?
... it was "a river of one million books".
That was the slogan when it came out to steamroll books.com (the first mover), an outfit from Ohio that sold books on the Internet and shipped without plastic packaging in 1991.
Jeff Bezos (and Sam Walton) did more to materially improve the lives of poor people than any politician or “advocate”.