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Bezos cheerleaders and their ilk never seem to be willing to acknowledge that creating wealth is much harder than extracting it, and either out of bad faith or

Bezos cheerleaders and their ilk never seem to be willing to acknowledge that creating wealth is much harder than extracting it, and either out of bad faith or naivety will misidentify ventures that specialize in the latter as being exemplars of the former. In this case, we have the incalculable loss of so many person-years of experience in a deep topic, literature, that’s being shrugged away as a case of the market moving on in a post facto justification of the actions of some corporate raiders that never even considered alternatives beyond stripping a company of its assets for their own sake. I just wish we could be honest about what actual competition, what actual wealth creation, looks like, because this isn’t it.

comicjk 9y ago
What experience in literature are you referring to? Do many people ask Barnes and Noble employees for book recommendations?
- mrbrowning 9y ago
  Well, that’s the point of the article, isn’t it? The long-time employees that were laid off were almost certainly there out of love of their wares, and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact. But beyond that, they had institutional knowledge, both of how the business works and what their customers want. I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve any amount of skill or knowledge, but this is no doubt a loss of value.
  - tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
    > and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact The fact that you can easily make vague pontifications about what else they might have done doesn't mean that any of those things are actually viable for the business. > I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve any amount of skill or knowledge, but this is no doubt a loss of value. But probably not enough value to be worth keeping them on staff, unless they did the layoffs on whim, like you seem to think. It is possible that they examined a lot of scenarios and are privy to a fair amount of relevant details to which the public isn't.
    - ascorbic 9y ago
      It seems to have worked to Waterstone's in the UK, which was similarly on the point of death, and recently managed to return to profit with that sort of strategy. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/balancing-the-books-how-waterstones-returned-to-profit https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/balancing-the-...
ryanwaggoner 9y ago
I'll bite: what's an example of wealth creation that's fundamentally different from what Amazon is doing?
- mrbrowning 9y ago
  Sweetheart, if you want me to serve as your surrogate imagination, it’s gonna cost you. Rest assured though that wealth would be created in the transaction.
lmm 9y ago
Bezos has created a lot of wealth, made a lot of lives better. I've got a lot of joy out of reading the kind of books that would probably never be published on paper, and certainly never recommended by those with "person-years of experience in a deep topic, literature", because Amazon opens it all up so that virtually anyone can publish and their books sink or swim on their merits, and their algorithms can recommend things to those of us with weirder tastes just as easily as it can recommend the literary establishment line.
losvedir 9y ago
> Bezos cheerleaders and their ilk never seem to be willing to acknowledge that creating wealth is much harder than extracting it I am utterly confused by this statement. Are you implying that Bezos isn't one of the largest creators of wealth in the history of the world? When I think of all the time and money hundreds of millions of people have saved by the revolution in online shopping and shipping, not to mention AWS, my mind boggles. As you say, you can also generate wealth my extracting it (e.g., mining) but Amazon has not done that at all. The entirety of the wealth they've generated comes from increasing efficiency and productivity. That is, to go from trees and dyes to a book in my hand used to cost $Y and now costs $X. $Y - $X is the wealth created by the efficiency gains in those processes.

comicjk 9y ago

What experience in literature are you referring to? Do many people ask Barnes and Noble employees for book recommendations?

mrbrowning 9y ago
Well, that’s the point of the article, isn’t it? The long-time employees that were laid off were almost certainly there out of love of their wares, and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact. But beyond that, they had institutional knowledge, both of how the business works and what their customers want. I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve any amount of skill or knowledge, but this is no doubt a loss of value.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
  > and the parent business could have put the work into making value out of that distinguishing fact The fact that you can easily make vague pontifications about what else they might have done doesn't mean that any of those things are actually viable for the business. > I know it’s hard to imagine that retail work could involve any amount of skill or knowledge, but this is no doubt a loss of value. But probably not enough value to be worth keeping them on staff, unless they did the layoffs on whim, like you seem to think. It is possible that they examined a lot of scenarios and are privy to a fair amount of relevant details to which the public isn't.
  - ascorbic 9y ago
    It seems to have worked to Waterstone's in the UK, which was similarly on the point of death, and recently managed to return to profit with that sort of strategy. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/balancing-the-books-how-waterstones-returned-to-profit https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/balancing-the-...

ryanwaggoner 9y ago

I'll bite: what's an example of wealth creation that's fundamentally different from what Amazon is doing?

mrbrowning 9y ago
Sweetheart, if you want me to serve as your surrogate imagination, it’s gonna cost you. Rest assured though that wealth would be created in the transaction.

lmm 9y ago

Bezos has created a lot of wealth, made a lot of lives better. I've got a lot of joy out of reading the kind of books that would probably never be published on paper, and certainly never recommended by those with "person-years of experience in a deep topic, literature", because Amazon opens it all up so that virtually anyone can publish and their books sink or swim on their merits, and their algorithms can recommend things to those of us with weirder tastes just as easily as it can recommend the literary establishment line.

losvedir 9y ago

> Bezos cheerleaders and their ilk never seem to be willing to acknowledge that creating wealth is much harder than extracting it I am utterly confused by this statement. Are you implying that Bezos isn't one of the largest creators of wealth in the history of the world? When I think of all the time and money hundreds of millions of people have saved by the revolution in online shopping and shipping, not to mention AWS, my mind boggles. As you say, you can also generate wealth my extracting it (e.g., mining) but Amazon has not done that at all. The entirety of the wealth they've generated comes from increasing efficiency and productivity. That is, to go from trees and dyes to a book in my hand used to cost $Y and now costs $X. $Y - $X is the wealth created by the efficiency gains in those processes.