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Does Amazon allegedly have some very bad practices toward workers and toward 3rd-party sellers? Yes, there are a lot of reports. The solution then is to fix th

Does Amazon allegedly have some very bad practices toward workers and toward 3rd-party sellers? Yes, there are a lot of reports. The solution then is to fix that problem through mandatory reporting and unions, not to break up the company. "Why on earth should an online retailer, a cloud computing company, a smart speaker company, an organic supermarket company, and a video production company all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?" Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you? Also because an economy of scale helps consumers. Amazon Prime gives access to music, books, delivery of home goods, delivery of groceries, and much more. Break it up and you will have Prime Music, Prime Books, Prime Home, Prime Market subscriptions, each for nearly the same price - one sub for each piece you break the company into. I agree something must be done - the stories of the workers read like Bram Stoker award-winning horror novels, but swinging the needle the other way and completely breaking the company apart is over-reaction. My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers.

quonn 6y ago
> Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you? So now monopoly power is not a concern anymore? How did we get to this point? Does anyone believe that the fact that a founder can only have, say 10 billion and not 100 prevent anyone from starting a startup? I don‘t think so.
- Communitivity 6y ago
  Monopoly is a concern, but so is trying to improve the situation through negative reinforcement, by breaking apart the company. Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. Also, 10 billion vs 100 is arbitrary and could easily vary from market to market, and is determined by who? Here we edge into the moral question of whether it is ok to be a billionaire, and the discussion taps into the current outrage against the 1%. I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately - something like a 50% flat income tax (no deductions, applies to all income including investment earnings/interest) if your net worth is over 1 billion.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately How is it even remotely your business how much money other people have given somebody? A billionare (assuming they didn't inherit it) has already given way more back to the community than the average person, because they brought into existance something that collectively brought billions of dollars of value to people.
  - ViViDboarder 6y ago
    > Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. With what goal? More gigantic conglomerates? Or after ten years, they get rolled up into an existing one? To me, this sounds like it would make the problem worse. What is your concern with negative reinforcement? Pretty much our entire legislation is based on the concept of fines and punishment.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  They're not a monopoly though. Like 40% market share in eCommerce and like 15% in retail overall isn't close to a monopoly. Yes they compete in other spaces, the onus is on their competitors not to suck.
  - cybwraith 6y ago
    40% in ecommerce would definitely be able to have monopoly power which would often be enough to trigger an anti-trust response, historically. What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Its extremely unbalanced and lets them really crush any rising opposition unless you trust they won't unfairly wield that power.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      >What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Are there any examples of them actually doing this?
      - ViViDboarder 6y ago
        Of them having 40% of the market place? The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers.
        logicchains 6y ago
        No, of them forcing anybody off their platform. >The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers. Antitrust law (at least in the US) is conducted on the basis of harm to consumers. If Amazon's negotiating power with suppliers results in better prices/outcomes for consumers, then there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. As a producer, nobody is obligated to buy what you're selling. http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastiat.pdf http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastia... is a nice argument why laws should try to benefit consumers, not producers.
killerpopiller 6y ago
the breakup happened to AT&T, is this considered an overreaction?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Communitivity 6y ago
  No, because Bell lost what was already geographically distinct - the regional baby Bells. Bell labs, Bell trademark, Western Electric, and AT&T Long Distance were all retained. This might be the equivalent of splitting AWS and the rest of Amazon into two companies.
  - ViViDboarder 6y ago
    Or Web Services, Commerce (Whole Foods, Amazon.com), Media (Alexa, Ring, Fire TV, Amazon Studios) Amazon has so many different components in their conglomerate that there are many ways to draw lines.
- scarface74 6y ago
  The government gave AT&T the monopoly.
Shivetya 6y ago
The complaint about how warehouse workers are treated, hired, and such, is not unique to Amazon. It is manual labor where as much intelligence if not language skills is eliminated as possible. Examples, from light walls where light is used to guide placement to pickup, indicator lights on bins for the same, to voice prompts in language of choice, all guided by computers because they know exactly where the gun/scan device the employee is holding. Still I find it disappointing people only concentrate on the warehouse worker while completely ignoring other low wage workers they are likely working around but tend to be invisible to you, from mail clerks, building maintenance, and even the security guard at the front desk. Look, not all jobs are equal nor should you assume offense on some other person's part. Believe me, I got the shock of my life working in IT while working for a "rent a cop" company. That some people earned and lived on what some of them made was both amazing and a little disappointing to me. Yet a few I would talk to thought it was fine as they had a job where they didn't have to put much effort into doing to get paid; plus in that line some were fond of being indoors and having a uniform. Basically what we find unacceptable other's will just blow off our opinion as being snotty or worse.
thatcat 6y ago
>they built it They built part of a logistics chain and acquired the rest. >skys the limit Why should those being exploited be limited by amazon? The sky should the limit for every individual not just Bezos. >Prime books If you broke up prime you would have nothing. The reason people subscribe is the overlap with multiple markets which is what makes it a monopolistic strategy. It uses loss leaders from one market to destroy competition in other markets with the intent to later raise prices.
ikeboy 6y ago
Amazon shouldn't compete with third party sellers, as it creates a conflict of interest that has been documented to lead to abuses. WSJ has a series of articles on such abuses. See e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its... Amazon claims it's against their internal policies. But it's widespread and there's no indication those policies serve as anything more than plausible deniability - i.e. managers can tell employees to increase sales, give them access to the seller's data, and just have them agree on paper that they won't use the data but never enforce it.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  Fun fact: Amazon has argued in litigation that it would take over 5,000 hours to collect sales information on a couple of thousand products. When they want to restrict data from their own teams, they can easily. Anyone who's ever dealt with a database understands that this kind of query wouldn't take more than a couple of hours if you had access to the database. Amazon clearly built a system to limit the amount of access their legal team has, presumably to avoid having to give out significant amounts of data. If the retail team needed this data to improve their algorithms or something there's no question they'd have been able to get it without putting 5,000 man-hours into it. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726.927.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726... >As a result, I estimate that producing responsive information to Plaintiffs’ request for sales data for 5,376 ASINs from October 1, 2011 to the present will take between 5,376 and 8,064 hours of Amazon paralegal time. Assuming a 40 hour work week, based on these estimates it would take one paralegal working full time 2.5 to 3.8 years to collect just the sales data Plaintiffs are seeking from Amazon. I calculated this based on my estimate of 60-90 minutes per ASIN for 5,376 ASINs.
spydum 6y ago
Isn't the government kind of already a union, and you are a member electing leadership and funding it with your dues (taxes)? Why the need for a seperate org? How is it different than a government?
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Because the government and specific worker unions have different, though not necessarily competing, objectives.
streblo 6y ago
> My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers. I was with you up until this point. So now instead of having one institution that I'm beholden to for my livelihood, I have two. Unions are just another form of institution that can succumb to the same kinds of corruption and bad practices as the company I work for. Why not start with a higher minimum wage, or incentivizing companies to pay a living wage across all roles, or UBI, or cheaper/universal health care - something so that workers at shitty companies can say "screw this" and leave.
tobr 6y ago
> "Why on earth should [..] all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?" > Because they built it. This is an entirely fictional idea. Consider who this language serves. Bezos started the company, but how does it make sense to say he “built” all of the businesses mentioned? They were built by many thousands of people, but they barely own what they created. Bezos has abused his position as founder to capitalize on their work. If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions. If they had the opportunity to build things in better conditions, why aren't they already doing that? Look at it this way, if nobody did what Bezos did, nobody quit their job to try starting a business (bearing in mind something like over 90% of businesses fail, so it's a significant risk), then there wouldn't be any jobs. We'd all still be subsistence farmers. And this is essentially the condition that the world was in before we had a government/legal system that allowed people to create and grow businesses free from molestation. If not for Bezos, Amazon wouldn't exist, and all the beneft people gained from the superior convenience, prices and delivery speed it offered compared to competitors would have been lost.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Nonsense. That's the 'great man' theory. Its clear from history that when the time has come, the business appears. There were many online retail operations when Bezos came on the scene. If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. Heck, Amazon isn't even Amazon any more. Its a two- or three-removed reinvention of what Amazon started out to be.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      >If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. It would have happened later, so everybody's standard of living would have been a little lower. The more you discourage people from starting businesses, the fewer people try to start businesses, so successful new business are created more slowly, and the economy grows slower. It's also more likely the company will appear first in another country more friendly to business, and then the original country will lose out on the revenue, jobs and soft power it might have gained from that country operating there.

quonn 6y ago

> Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you? So now monopoly power is not a concern anymore? How did we get to this point? Does anyone believe that the fact that a founder can only have, say 10 billion and not 100 prevent anyone from starting a startup? I don‘t think so.

Communitivity 6y ago
Monopoly is a concern, but so is trying to improve the situation through negative reinforcement, by breaking apart the company. Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. Also, 10 billion vs 100 is arbitrary and could easily vary from market to market, and is determined by who? Here we edge into the moral question of whether it is ok to be a billionaire, and the discussion taps into the current outrage against the 1%. I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately - something like a 50% flat income tax (no deductions, applies to all income including investment earnings/interest) if your net worth is over 1 billion.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately How is it even remotely your business how much money other people have given somebody? A billionare (assuming they didn't inherit it) has already given way more back to the community than the average person, because they brought into existance something that collectively brought billions of dollars of value to people.
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  > Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. With what goal? More gigantic conglomerates? Or after ten years, they get rolled up into an existing one? To me, this sounds like it would make the problem worse. What is your concern with negative reinforcement? Pretty much our entire legislation is based on the concept of fines and punishment.
Grimm1 6y ago
They're not a monopoly though. Like 40% market share in eCommerce and like 15% in retail overall isn't close to a monopoly. Yes they compete in other spaces, the onus is on their competitors not to suck.
- cybwraith 6y ago
  40% in ecommerce would definitely be able to have monopoly power which would often be enough to trigger an anti-trust response, historically. What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Its extremely unbalanced and lets them really crush any rising opposition unless you trust they won't unfairly wield that power.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Are there any examples of them actually doing this?
    - ViViDboarder 6y ago
      Of them having 40% of the market place? The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers.
      - logicchains 6y ago
        No, of them forcing anybody off their platform. >The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers. Antitrust law (at least in the US) is conducted on the basis of harm to consumers. If Amazon's negotiating power with suppliers results in better prices/outcomes for consumers, then there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. As a producer, nobody is obligated to buy what you're selling. http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastiat.pdf http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastia... is a nice argument why laws should try to benefit consumers, not producers.

killerpopiller 6y ago

the breakup happened to AT&T, is this considered an overreaction?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Communitivity 6y ago
No, because Bell lost what was already geographically distinct - the regional baby Bells. Bell labs, Bell trademark, Western Electric, and AT&T Long Distance were all retained. This might be the equivalent of splitting AWS and the rest of Amazon into two companies.
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  Or Web Services, Commerce (Whole Foods, Amazon.com), Media (Alexa, Ring, Fire TV, Amazon Studios) Amazon has so many different components in their conglomerate that there are many ways to draw lines.
scarface74 6y ago
The government gave AT&T the monopoly.

Shivetya 6y ago

The complaint about how warehouse workers are treated, hired, and such, is not unique to Amazon. It is manual labor where as much intelligence if not language skills is eliminated as possible. Examples, from light walls where light is used to guide placement to pickup, indicator lights on bins for the same, to voice prompts in language of choice, all guided by computers because they know exactly where the gun/scan device the employee is holding. Still I find it disappointing people only concentrate on the warehouse worker while completely ignoring other low wage workers they are likely working around but tend to be invisible to you, from mail clerks, building maintenance, and even the security guard at the front desk. Look, not all jobs are equal nor should you assume offense on some other person's part. Believe me, I got the shock of my life working in IT while working for a "rent a cop" company. That some people earned and lived on what some of them made was both amazing and a little disappointing to me. Yet a few I would talk to thought it was fine as they had a job where they didn't have to put much effort into doing to get paid; plus in that line some were fond of being indoors and having a uniform. Basically what we find unacceptable other's will just blow off our opinion as being snotty or worse.

thatcat 6y ago

>they built it They built part of a logistics chain and acquired the rest. >skys the limit Why should those being exploited be limited by amazon? The sky should the limit for every individual not just Bezos. >Prime books If you broke up prime you would have nothing. The reason people subscribe is the overlap with multiple markets which is what makes it a monopolistic strategy. It uses loss leaders from one market to destroy competition in other markets with the intent to later raise prices.

ikeboy 6y ago

Amazon shouldn't compete with third party sellers, as it creates a conflict of interest that has been documented to lead to abuses. WSJ has a series of articles on such abuses. See e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its... Amazon claims it's against their internal policies. But it's widespread and there's no indication those policies serve as anything more than plausible deniability - i.e. managers can tell employees to increase sales, give them access to the seller's data, and just have them agree on paper that they won't use the data but never enforce it.

ikeboy 6y ago
Fun fact: Amazon has argued in litigation that it would take over 5,000 hours to collect sales information on a couple of thousand products. When they want to restrict data from their own teams, they can easily. Anyone who's ever dealt with a database understands that this kind of query wouldn't take more than a couple of hours if you had access to the database. Amazon clearly built a system to limit the amount of access their legal team has, presumably to avoid having to give out significant amounts of data. If the retail team needed this data to improve their algorithms or something there's no question they'd have been able to get it without putting 5,000 man-hours into it. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726.927.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726... >As a result, I estimate that producing responsive information to Plaintiffs’ request for sales data for 5,376 ASINs from October 1, 2011 to the present will take between 5,376 and 8,064 hours of Amazon paralegal time. Assuming a 40 hour work week, based on these estimates it would take one paralegal working full time 2.5 to 3.8 years to collect just the sales data Plaintiffs are seeking from Amazon. I calculated this based on my estimate of 60-90 minutes per ASIN for 5,376 ASINs.

spydum 6y ago

Isn't the government kind of already a union, and you are a member electing leadership and funding it with your dues (taxes)? Why the need for a seperate org? How is it different than a government?

Jtsummers 6y ago
Because the government and specific worker unions have different, though not necessarily competing, objectives.

streblo 6y ago

> My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers. I was with you up until this point. So now instead of having one institution that I'm beholden to for my livelihood, I have two. Unions are just another form of institution that can succumb to the same kinds of corruption and bad practices as the company I work for. Why not start with a higher minimum wage, or incentivizing companies to pay a living wage across all roles, or UBI, or cheaper/universal health care - something so that workers at shitty companies can say "screw this" and leave.

tobr 6y ago

> "Why on earth should [..] all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?" > Because they built it. This is an entirely fictional idea. Consider who this language serves. Bezos started the company, but how does it make sense to say he “built” all of the businesses mentioned? They were built by many thousands of people, but they barely own what they created. Bezos has abused his position as founder to capitalize on their work. If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions.

logicchains 6y ago
>If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions. If they had the opportunity to build things in better conditions, why aren't they already doing that? Look at it this way, if nobody did what Bezos did, nobody quit their job to try starting a business (bearing in mind something like over 90% of businesses fail, so it's a significant risk), then there wouldn't be any jobs. We'd all still be subsistence farmers. And this is essentially the condition that the world was in before we had a government/legal system that allowed people to create and grow businesses free from molestation. If not for Bezos, Amazon wouldn't exist, and all the beneft people gained from the superior convenience, prices and delivery speed it offered compared to competitors would have been lost.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Nonsense. That's the 'great man' theory. Its clear from history that when the time has come, the business appears. There were many online retail operations when Bezos came on the scene. If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. Heck, Amazon isn't even Amazon any more. Its a two- or three-removed reinvention of what Amazon started out to be.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. It would have happened later, so everybody's standard of living would have been a little lower. The more you discourage people from starting businesses, the fewer people try to start businesses, so successful new business are created more slowly, and the economy grows slower. It's also more likely the company will appear first in another country more friendly to business, and then the original country will lose out on the revenue, jobs and soft power it might have gained from that country operating there.