Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

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Amazon is good for some consumers (people who value convenient shopping and fast shipping) and bad for others (people who really like independent shops). It’s also good for some employees (people who couldn’t have found a better job elsewhere) and bad for others (people who could have found a better job at a business that got outcompeted by Amazon).

Whether it’s a net positive or negative force is basically too complex a question to answer without resorting to an overarching unfalsifiable ideology like neoliberalism or socialism.

However, rule of law, predictability, and stability are unambiguously good for everyone. Attacking businesses or people on pretexts unrelated to the underlying reason a politician wants to hurt them is a hallmark of corrupt countries.

If we decide as a society to legislate stronger union protections then sure, enforce them against Amazon (and everyone else), but it seems bad for that to motivate selectively enforcing unrelated antitrust laws.

> good for some consumers (people who value convenient shopping and fast shipping) and bad for others (people who really like independent shops).

It's bad for them too once the monopoly is strong enough that Amazon can stop caring about those things.

Preventing monopolies isn't done because it satisifies some abstract sense of justice, it's done because they genuinely hurt consumers in the long term, even if the monopoly became a monopoly because they were really good for consumers to begin with.

I never argued against going after monopolies.

Amazon is a two-sided market. I don’t think “monopoly” is a good description of a company that’s also a monopsony.

There’s more of an argument that it’s a monopoly employer, but they’ve been raising wages.

The problem is that this two sided market is being regulated by a company.

Everything you describe is fair game for the FTC to consider.

Amazon’s stance on or relationship to unions is not a reason for the FTC to adjust its stance.

Independent shops can still exist… just not the useless ones. Amazon is known for more generic commodity items, but if you want premium brands you often still have to go direct to manufacturer. In fact the “independent” shop niche is probably why Shopify even has a market.

> Amazon is good for some consumers (people who value convenient shopping and fast shipping)

Amazon is awful for people who value fast shipping. They used to let you specify your shipping speed! Now the only option they offer is "it'll get there when it gets there". They also feel free to deliver things well after they claimed they would, once they're willing to give you a delivery date at all.

I actually canceled my Prime subscription this year specifically because Amazon's approach to shipping is so abusive.

It seems very tonedeaf to describe the welfare of Amazon employees in terms of the health of the job market. Have you considered the employees who can't find a better job elsewhere, but also feel insufficiently compensated for their time? I believe it likely that you'll find more in that group than either of the two that you described.

Why go after Amazon specifically, with a profit margin ~2%, instead of other companies like Apple, for example, with a profit margin of ~30%? It seems like the latter would have much more room to raise employee salaries.

I think that's a very easy question to answer, but I'm going to do so with another question: who do you think employs more stateside? Apple's profit margins obviously come from their use of overseas manufacturing - certainly an ethical problem too, but not the same problem. I'm concerned with the people building their phones as well, but Amazon employees are in my immediate vicinity.

I really can't think of a more apples-to-oranges comparison (pun not intended). The only thing Apple and Amazon have in common is that they're the A's in FAANG.

Presumably because Amazon is such a notorious neat grinder in how it treats its "boots on the ground". They don't exactly have the goodwill necessary to shake it off since mkst people's relationship with them is out of convenience rather than fanaticism. Also unlike some brands with the ability to conveniently ignore where or how their unsafe/underpaid sausage is made (in China) they also get shit for squeezing the hell out of their workers domestically where they can still complain about the mistreatment publicly.

> Have you considered the employees who can't find a better job elsewhere, but also feel insufficiently compensated for their time?

How would the FTC going after Amazon help these people?

Those are the people most in need of unions.

I never argued against the idea that Amazon should be forced to stop union-busting. I think you need to re-read my original comment.

> insufficiently compensated for their time

You've just described the job market. If this employee cannot find better paying employment (assuming that the job market is operating efficiently) then it is either a skill issue (This hypothetical employee is not sufficiently skilled to demand a higher salary) or a demand issue (There is insufficient demand for your skills in the market).

We can have a fruitful discussion around job market efficiency (e.g. is Amazon a monopsony employer in some local markets), but objecting to the tone of the comment feels very out of place when this is the language that we use to describe the economy.

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