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I am saying that they could use some of their approximately $10^10 yearly profits to pay people better. How would that cause them to lose money?

• tptacek 7y ago
  They could indeed use their other businesses to fund running their retail/fulfillment business at a loss. But at that point it would be just as rational to jettison those businesses (by spinning them off into another company), and now we're a step behind square one: they lose whatever economies they get from being a single company, their cost basis gets worse, and they're in an even poorer position to pay more. These are descriptive, not normative, observations.
  • mikeash 7y ago
    It's also a descriptive observation that they can afford to pay more without destroying the company. Whether they should is a separate question I haven't even attempted to address.
    • tptacek 7y ago
      I'm not saying they shouldn't, only that it doesn't follow from the economics of their retail/fulfillment business (to which those employees belong) that they rationally can.