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I don't think your view is unpopular. Plenty of people here would agree with you but it's an overly romantic view of the world. The problem isn't that Amazon i

I don't think your view is unpopular. Plenty of people here would agree with you but it's an overly romantic view of the world. The problem isn't that Amazon is doing this and that this will drive out those mom&pop shops. The problem is that people will choose to go to Amazon and willingly destroy the mom&pop shops. The consumers are more culpable for the destruction of those mom&pop shops than Amazon. By placing the blame entirely on Amazon you are taking agency away from people which in my opinion sounds more wrong than a nice neighborhood losing its charm because of Amazon Go. What people don't realize is that economic forces are completely within their control and it's their daily choices that add up to neighborhoods maintaining their charm or turning into Starbucks and Amazon Go automation factories. There is a sustainable way to drive innovation and it requires people to be cognizant of those daily choices. I don't think you can make people come to that realization by stopping or delaying progress.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
No, economic forces are not completely in our control, not in any meaningful sense of control. The whole human agency thing is IMO mostly bullshit; faced with a modern economy, we have very little agency. Free will is a cool concept, but drop the prices in your store by 10% and everyone will come to you instead of your competitor - that's how trivial people as a group are to control. And companies are all about exploiting this. So yeah, technically if you, and me, and everyone else agreed not to use Amazon Go and stick to our regular grocery routine, mom&pop shops would survive. But that doesn't take into account the fact that coordination is a super hard problem. One that's essentially impossible to solve for a group larger than a dozen people without creating some strong external incentive structures[0]. On the other hand, a company like Amazon is in a position to unilaterally change the incentive landscape. There's no consumer agency to talk about here, anymore than we talk about agency of sheep being herded. -- [0] - that's also why every society, as it grows, invents structured forms of governance.
- politician 10y ago
  Advertising is amazing to behold. You slap together some low quality ad unit, dial in your target audience on Facebook, throw a couple hundred K into the coffers... and then watch the machine crank out LPVs and conversions. The upfront effort needed to steer consumer behavior is shockingly minimal.
- davidivadavid 10y ago
  Except for the fact dropping your prices by 10% isn't trivial at all. Your claims are also empirically false. People routinely buy name brand products that are more expensive than alternatives. All you're saying is "If your offer is far more attractive than anything else on the market, people will flock to your store and buy. What a bunch of fools acting like lemmings, Lol." How are people supposed to react when faced with more interesting alternatives? NOT choose them to demonstrate their free will? That doesn't make much sense.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

No, economic forces are not completely in our control, not in any meaningful sense of control. The whole human agency thing is IMO mostly bullshit; faced with a modern economy, we have very little agency. Free will is a cool concept, but drop the prices in your store by 10% and everyone will come to you instead of your competitor - that's how trivial people as a group are to control. And companies are all about exploiting this. So yeah, technically if you, and me, and everyone else agreed not to use Amazon Go and stick to our regular grocery routine, mom&pop shops would survive. But that doesn't take into account the fact that coordination is a super hard problem. One that's essentially impossible to solve for a group larger than a dozen people without creating some strong external incentive structures[0]. On the other hand, a company like Amazon is in a position to unilaterally change the incentive landscape. There's no consumer agency to talk about here, anymore than we talk about agency of sheep being herded. -- [0] - that's also why every society, as it grows, invents structured forms of governance.

politician 10y ago
Advertising is amazing to behold. You slap together some low quality ad unit, dial in your target audience on Facebook, throw a couple hundred K into the coffers... and then watch the machine crank out LPVs and conversions. The upfront effort needed to steer consumer behavior is shockingly minimal.
davidivadavid 10y ago
Except for the fact dropping your prices by 10% isn't trivial at all. Your claims are also empirically false. People routinely buy name brand products that are more expensive than alternatives. All you're saying is "If your offer is far more attractive than anything else on the market, people will flock to your store and buy. What a bunch of fools acting like lemmings, Lol." How are people supposed to react when faced with more interesting alternatives? NOT choose them to demonstrate their free will? That doesn't make much sense.