8 ms·

I’d rather have thousands of small businesses continue to exist instead of Amazon hiring 400k people. Apparently that’s an uncommon position these days.

TulliusCicero 6y ago
It's common enough when people are speaking with their words, and less common when speaking with their wallets.
- tylermac1 6y ago
  Individual effort isn't going to break up a company Amazon's size.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Of course not. To consumers, Amazon provides an excellent service. (This is the point where everyone always kramers in with their personal beefs with Amazon) Like many others, I use Amazon because it's extremely useful, overall it's simply a better experience than shopping at other places. I have nothing against small businesses, but when I shop, I don't treat businesses like charities. If small businesses want my money, they have to actually present a better service. If they can't do that, it doesn't overly bother me that they go away.
    - hshshs2 6y ago
      How would a small business even begin to compete with amazon right now? it’s outright impossible on all fronts... service, price, etc
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      > To consumers, Amazon provides an excellent service. I'd rather say, like Starbucks, Amazon provides a consistent and adequate service. Small businesses might provide a better service or worse service, but consumers can't easily know which in advance - so large conglomerates present less risk and less cognitive load. Amazon is the obvious choice, more than it is the best choice. Presenting a better service is not enough, for a small business to survive against a monopolist. It's one of the monopoly advantages that Amazon has.
      - kmlx 6y ago
        amazon doesn’t seem to be a monopoly. walmart is bigger than amazon. amazon’s share of retail in the US is around just 5%. maybe i missed something...
        throwaway2245 6y ago
        you missed something, apart from giving intentionally misleading and old figures, and yet within that you're still able to identify Amazon's market share as a percentage of all retail as an industry? ok.
        kmlx 6y ago
        nothing misleading about my comment. it’s not all retail. it’s retail minus auto sales, travel etc etc basically anything that amazon doesn’t sell. they have 5% of that pie. offer a rebuttal if you can instead of attacking the commentator personally next time you leave a reply on this website. i was actually curios as to why you considered it a monopoly when in fact the numbers are against you.
        throwaway2245 6y ago
        Because your comment was so wrong it's hard to know where to start, it seemed like trolling. Here you go: 1. Monopoly (in law and in practice) is not just defined by what percentage of the pie they have; it's also about what power they have and what non-competitive behaviours they can and do engage in. Claiming that Amazon is not a monopoly based on the technicality that they don't have 100% of all retail is an irrelevant claim. 2. It's possible to estimate Amazon's "addressable retail" in 2019 as a whole number percentage - that is already huge. There are few companies with that percentage in much smaller sectors. 3. You put it in competition with Bricks and Mortar stores in order to get to this figure, which makes your figure artificially low. 4. I understood your figures were from a 2019 estimate, although they were unsourced. Amazon revenue has been growing exponentially. There's now a pandemic on. Year-on-year sales have increased something like 50%.
    - dunefox 6y ago
      That's exactly the point I bring up in discussions with friends. Amazon provides almost everything in one store - so I don't have to buy at half a dozen shops - combined with great customer service. I can even buy used books from many sellers via Amazon. That doesn't mean that I don't want to support regular shops but as a customer Amazon is just the most convenient option. Example: a local book chain sells me a book for 10% more money and takes 4 weeks to order it - Amazon sells it cheaper and it's delivered 2 days later.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      McMaster-Carr provides a better service than Amazon does for what they do. It’s not the cheapest, but the experience is insanely good, and they’re even faster than Amazon. 3000 employees vs over 1 million.
    - ArtDev 6y ago
      I started ordering from Amazon marketplace companies directly. It feels better and yet its the exact same company.
  - dddbbb 6y ago
    I would nominally agree with this logic, but surely the exact same applies when voting? Should people not bother voting because they are just one in a sea of many?
    - tylermac1 6y ago
      In the United States I would say it depends where you live. I'm a Democrat in a forever-red state. My vote for President will never matter as long as the Electoral College is there. I still vote for state-wide and local matters and that is where my vote really does count.
    - Schiendelman 6y ago
      Millions of people don’t vote for exactly that reason.
  - rch 6y ago
    I'd argue that modern megacorporations have become sufficiently adept at morphing around state interventions, that coordinated grassroots movements might be the only means of mitigating their influence.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Customers (like competitors) are the victims of monopolies, not the perpetrator. The only perpetrator is the monopolistic company itself, and the only solution is government action.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Amazon didn’t get how they are today without the help of consumers. It’s not like they started out as a monopoly
    - throwaway284534 6y ago
      That's absolutely true. It's just also a very narrow lense to look at the situation. I've worked retail and it honestly sucks for everyone involved. The customers can't make informed choices or even get an unbiased direction from sales people. It's a market designed to work with as little information or agency as possible. People have a limited appetite for friction when they shop too. An ideal store with a better return policy and selection seems to look a lot like Amazon. I'm not saying that it's good for us to invest all of our shopping into one business. It's just what unregulated capitalism breeds over time.
    - anonuser123456 6y ago
      Name a single product or service that Amazon has a monopoly on.
      - sp332 6y ago
        https://www.geekwire.com/2020/hearing-documents-reveal-amazons-aggressive-strategy-beat-diapers-com/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/hearing-documents-reveal-amazo...
        anonuser123456 6y ago
        Walmart.com, Target.com So not a monopoly. Edit: Walgreens.com, Costco.com, Honest.com All 5 of those popped up on Google/DuckDuck before anything from Amazon.
- Technically 6y ago
  The problem is political. Expecting people to spend and then blaming bad things on the same people is not going to have any good effects.
- jeffrallen 6y ago
  My wallet buys beef, goat cheese, and vegetables from my neighbors. I am blessed to live where this is possible.
cm2012 6y ago
50% of Amazon sales come from 3rd party merchants, most of whom are small and medium businesses. I worked for two family businesses with 10+ employees where Amazon selling was a lifesaver. That's not to say Amazon is a saint by any means.
- petra 6y ago
  I wouldn't count on that over the long-term. Currently Amazon has better ways to use their money to grow. When that's over, a lot of the 3rd party sellers will be at risk.
  - dunefox 6y ago
    They're at risk now without Amazon.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    I wouldn't count on that over the mid-term. I've worked with a lot of Amazon merchants where they would put up a item with a decent margin and good sales only to be reliably be cut out from that exact item by Amazon offering it themselves after 1-2 months. The core of their business on Amazon was to continuously hustle and identify new products that would fill that niche, as that made up for the biggest chunk of their profit. So there are many 3rd party merchants at risk _now_ on Amazon. Apart from that there are also numerous brands from Amazon themselves already. Most obviously "Amazon Basics" and "Amazon Essentials", but also many with a non-obvious name[0]. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17602470011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17602470011
    - petra 6y ago
      >> The core of their business on Amazon was to continuously hustle and identify new products that would fill that niche, as that made up for the biggest chunk of their profit. That sounds like a very risky business. How do they manage/lower that risk ?
      - 6y ago
CPLX 6y ago
Exactly. In ecological systems we don't get confused when a single species or type of cell replicates out of control and crowds out everything else. It's instantly, and intuitively, understandable as a pathology. A lesson that seems to suddenly get forgotten when we see it happening in an economic ecosystem.
- comboy 6y ago
  Right? We would have never had humans in the first place without a government intervention when these replications were getting out of control!
- Kaveren 6y ago
  something being popular and eliminating other options is not inherently bad. there is nothing wrong with one company acquiring a monopoly through superior service. you can attack amazon's behavior as anticompetitive, but that's not what you're doing here.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Sorry, but that's bad ecology. You're overlaying moral human values on an environment. Scientifically, it's simply evolutionary survival of the fittest. It's adaptation. By your argument, every sudden game-changing evolutionary leap was a pathology, which is obviously false. Plus, there is absolutely nothing "out of control" about Amazon either. Amazon's a private enterprise competing in the marketplace like any other. It's just doing a better job at it.
  - CPLX 6y ago
    > You're overlaying moral human values on an environment. Indeed. > By your argument, every sudden game-changing evolutionary leap was a pathology, which is obviously false. The definition of pathology is always context-driven. Worth noting that a massive bacterial infection is a fantastic success from the perspective of the bacteria.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
raister 6y ago
I needed to buy a set of bolts, I checked my local hardware store and 12 was sold by £2.99. I thought: 'this is expensive, let me check online'. Went to amazon, found the same for £1.99 with free shipping (prime). Now, which one should I buy? The one where I have to go somewhere and then pay more, or the other where I click a few buttons and the next day the product is with me? Should I 'invest' in my local hardware?
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Bolts for a car? I would not dare buy bolts on Amazon due to the risk of counterfeits with lower grade than advertized.
- otachack 6y ago
  A margin of a dollar? I believe you should support your local store as long as you can afford it. It's more work, money, and time off your day but it's likely you waste the extra time Amazon convenience gives you with browsing HN, or the like, anyways. Local business also most likely have picked up curbside for convenience. It's in Amazon's best interest to shutter all locals aside from what they own (Whole Foods, Amazon Grocery, etc). Their ultimate goal is automating everything they can to remove the human element and maximize revenue. You can see other businesses like Starbucks taking over as well in different fields. In my opinion it's a matter of time until Amazon starts their own attempt at local cafes. We had presidential candidates in the US like Andrew Yang that recognize this effort and want to get ahead of it with UBI but I'm sure you know how that turned out. If the government isn't going to support local businesses in dire times, who will? And who wants to live in a boring world where there are no local shops?
  - newen 6y ago
    Fighting systemic changes by making individual decisions is quixotic, to put it nicely.
  - hmate9 6y ago
    Sure. If it was only a single dollar. But do it for every purchase and it adds up. In a way if you are relying on the "community" to help your business stay alive, then your business is clearly not creating enough value and shouldn't exist.
bzb6 6y ago
Brick and mortar stores and especially small stores fucking suck. Amazon is not perfect but it sucks less.
MattGaiser 6y ago
The problem is are you willing to deal with 5000 different return policies, 5000 different merchant policies, 5000 different shipping times, etc? Amazon eliminates all that friction. I can one click buy something and know when it will arrive, what the shipping will be, and the rules on returning it.
- shiftpgdn 6y ago
  Yes?
eltados 6y ago
I think that's the main reason I try to limit my shopping on Amazon. Shopping on Amazon means limited circular economy because all the large profit centers are concentrated on few large metropolis ( probably must of then in the US ) and by large shareholders. Lower amount of tax is collected from that purchase that in a local shop because of fiscal optimization. Overall at the scale of the city it seems to me ( I don't have any numbers for that ) that consuming on Amazon is not a great deal long term.
disown 6y ago
Exactly. It's great that so many people are getting jobs, but it just means that many small businesses closed. And as amazon gets bigger, it'll put even more pressure on smaller businesses. With amazon getting into the pharmacy business, I wonder what impact it will have on pharmacy chains which themselves put small independent pharmacy stores out of business.
Reedx 6y ago
This gets tricky. Consider another version of this: Should we have saved the 9,024 Blockbuster stores?
actuator 6y ago
> Apparently that’s an uncommon position these days. Is this recent though? US made Walmart the behemoth it is. Also, chains like Target, Best Buy etc are also not your friendly small neighborhood stores.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

It's common enough when people are speaking with their words, and less common when speaking with their wallets.

tylermac1 6y ago
Individual effort isn't going to break up a company Amazon's size.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Of course not. To consumers, Amazon provides an excellent service. (This is the point where everyone always kramers in with their personal beefs with Amazon) Like many others, I use Amazon because it's extremely useful, overall it's simply a better experience than shopping at other places. I have nothing against small businesses, but when I shop, I don't treat businesses like charities. If small businesses want my money, they have to actually present a better service. If they can't do that, it doesn't overly bother me that they go away.
  - hshshs2 6y ago
    How would a small business even begin to compete with amazon right now? it’s outright impossible on all fronts... service, price, etc
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    > To consumers, Amazon provides an excellent service. I'd rather say, like Starbucks, Amazon provides a consistent and adequate service. Small businesses might provide a better service or worse service, but consumers can't easily know which in advance - so large conglomerates present less risk and less cognitive load. Amazon is the obvious choice, more than it is the best choice. Presenting a better service is not enough, for a small business to survive against a monopolist. It's one of the monopoly advantages that Amazon has.
    - kmlx 6y ago
      amazon doesn’t seem to be a monopoly. walmart is bigger than amazon. amazon’s share of retail in the US is around just 5%. maybe i missed something...
      - throwaway2245 6y ago
        you missed something, apart from giving intentionally misleading and old figures, and yet within that you're still able to identify Amazon's market share as a percentage of all retail as an industry? ok.
        kmlx 6y ago
        nothing misleading about my comment. it’s not all retail. it’s retail minus auto sales, travel etc etc basically anything that amazon doesn’t sell. they have 5% of that pie. offer a rebuttal if you can instead of attacking the commentator personally next time you leave a reply on this website. i was actually curios as to why you considered it a monopoly when in fact the numbers are against you.
        throwaway2245 6y ago
        Because your comment was so wrong it's hard to know where to start, it seemed like trolling. Here you go: 1. Monopoly (in law and in practice) is not just defined by what percentage of the pie they have; it's also about what power they have and what non-competitive behaviours they can and do engage in. Claiming that Amazon is not a monopoly based on the technicality that they don't have 100% of all retail is an irrelevant claim. 2. It's possible to estimate Amazon's "addressable retail" in 2019 as a whole number percentage - that is already huge. There are few companies with that percentage in much smaller sectors. 3. You put it in competition with Bricks and Mortar stores in order to get to this figure, which makes your figure artificially low. 4. I understood your figures were from a 2019 estimate, although they were unsourced. Amazon revenue has been growing exponentially. There's now a pandemic on. Year-on-year sales have increased something like 50%.
  - dunefox 6y ago
    That's exactly the point I bring up in discussions with friends. Amazon provides almost everything in one store - so I don't have to buy at half a dozen shops - combined with great customer service. I can even buy used books from many sellers via Amazon. That doesn't mean that I don't want to support regular shops but as a customer Amazon is just the most convenient option. Example: a local book chain sells me a book for 10% more money and takes 4 weeks to order it - Amazon sells it cheaper and it's delivered 2 days later.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    McMaster-Carr provides a better service than Amazon does for what they do. It’s not the cheapest, but the experience is insanely good, and they’re even faster than Amazon. 3000 employees vs over 1 million.
  - ArtDev 6y ago
    I started ordering from Amazon marketplace companies directly. It feels better and yet its the exact same company.
- dddbbb 6y ago
  I would nominally agree with this logic, but surely the exact same applies when voting? Should people not bother voting because they are just one in a sea of many?
  - tylermac1 6y ago
    In the United States I would say it depends where you live. I'm a Democrat in a forever-red state. My vote for President will never matter as long as the Electoral College is there. I still vote for state-wide and local matters and that is where my vote really does count.
  - Schiendelman 6y ago
    Millions of people don’t vote for exactly that reason.
- rch 6y ago
  I'd argue that modern megacorporations have become sufficiently adept at morphing around state interventions, that coordinated grassroots movements might be the only means of mitigating their influence.
CydeWeys 6y ago
Customers (like competitors) are the victims of monopolies, not the perpetrator. The only perpetrator is the monopolistic company itself, and the only solution is government action.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Amazon didn’t get how they are today without the help of consumers. It’s not like they started out as a monopoly
  - throwaway284534 6y ago
    That's absolutely true. It's just also a very narrow lense to look at the situation. I've worked retail and it honestly sucks for everyone involved. The customers can't make informed choices or even get an unbiased direction from sales people. It's a market designed to work with as little information or agency as possible. People have a limited appetite for friction when they shop too. An ideal store with a better return policy and selection seems to look a lot like Amazon. I'm not saying that it's good for us to invest all of our shopping into one business. It's just what unregulated capitalism breeds over time.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    Name a single product or service that Amazon has a monopoly on.
    - sp332 6y ago
      https://www.geekwire.com/2020/hearing-documents-reveal-amazons-aggressive-strategy-beat-diapers-com/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/hearing-documents-reveal-amazo...
      - anonuser123456 6y ago
        Walmart.com, Target.com So not a monopoly. Edit: Walgreens.com, Costco.com, Honest.com All 5 of those popped up on Google/DuckDuck before anything from Amazon.
Technically 6y ago
The problem is political. Expecting people to spend and then blaming bad things on the same people is not going to have any good effects.
jeffrallen 6y ago
My wallet buys beef, goat cheese, and vegetables from my neighbors. I am blessed to live where this is possible.

cm2012 6y ago

50% of Amazon sales come from 3rd party merchants, most of whom are small and medium businesses. I worked for two family businesses with 10+ employees where Amazon selling was a lifesaver. That's not to say Amazon is a saint by any means.

petra 6y ago
I wouldn't count on that over the long-term. Currently Amazon has better ways to use their money to grow. When that's over, a lot of the 3rd party sellers will be at risk.
- dunefox 6y ago
  They're at risk now without Amazon.
- hobofan 6y ago
  I wouldn't count on that over the mid-term. I've worked with a lot of Amazon merchants where they would put up a item with a decent margin and good sales only to be reliably be cut out from that exact item by Amazon offering it themselves after 1-2 months. The core of their business on Amazon was to continuously hustle and identify new products that would fill that niche, as that made up for the biggest chunk of their profit. So there are many 3rd party merchants at risk _now_ on Amazon. Apart from that there are also numerous brands from Amazon themselves already. Most obviously "Amazon Basics" and "Amazon Essentials", but also many with a non-obvious name[0]. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17602470011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17602470011
  - petra 6y ago
    >> The core of their business on Amazon was to continuously hustle and identify new products that would fill that niche, as that made up for the biggest chunk of their profit. That sounds like a very risky business. How do they manage/lower that risk ?
    - 6y ago

CPLX 6y ago

Exactly. In ecological systems we don't get confused when a single species or type of cell replicates out of control and crowds out everything else. It's instantly, and intuitively, understandable as a pathology. A lesson that seems to suddenly get forgotten when we see it happening in an economic ecosystem.

comboy 6y ago
Right? We would have never had humans in the first place without a government intervention when these replications were getting out of control!
Kaveren 6y ago
something being popular and eliminating other options is not inherently bad. there is nothing wrong with one company acquiring a monopoly through superior service. you can attack amazon's behavior as anticompetitive, but that's not what you're doing here.
crazygringo 6y ago
Sorry, but that's bad ecology. You're overlaying moral human values on an environment. Scientifically, it's simply evolutionary survival of the fittest. It's adaptation. By your argument, every sudden game-changing evolutionary leap was a pathology, which is obviously false. Plus, there is absolutely nothing "out of control" about Amazon either. Amazon's a private enterprise competing in the marketplace like any other. It's just doing a better job at it.
- CPLX 6y ago
  > You're overlaying moral human values on an environment. Indeed. > By your argument, every sudden game-changing evolutionary leap was a pathology, which is obviously false. The definition of pathology is always context-driven. Worth noting that a massive bacterial infection is a fantastic success from the perspective of the bacteria.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

raister 6y ago

I needed to buy a set of bolts, I checked my local hardware store and 12 was sold by £2.99. I thought: 'this is expensive, let me check online'. Went to amazon, found the same for £1.99 with free shipping (prime). Now, which one should I buy? The one where I have to go somewhere and then pay more, or the other where I click a few buttons and the next day the product is with me? Should I 'invest' in my local hardware?

rightbyte 6y ago
Bolts for a car? I would not dare buy bolts on Amazon due to the risk of counterfeits with lower grade than advertized.
otachack 6y ago
A margin of a dollar? I believe you should support your local store as long as you can afford it. It's more work, money, and time off your day but it's likely you waste the extra time Amazon convenience gives you with browsing HN, or the like, anyways. Local business also most likely have picked up curbside for convenience. It's in Amazon's best interest to shutter all locals aside from what they own (Whole Foods, Amazon Grocery, etc). Their ultimate goal is automating everything they can to remove the human element and maximize revenue. You can see other businesses like Starbucks taking over as well in different fields. In my opinion it's a matter of time until Amazon starts their own attempt at local cafes. We had presidential candidates in the US like Andrew Yang that recognize this effort and want to get ahead of it with UBI but I'm sure you know how that turned out. If the government isn't going to support local businesses in dire times, who will? And who wants to live in a boring world where there are no local shops?
- newen 6y ago
  Fighting systemic changes by making individual decisions is quixotic, to put it nicely.
- hmate9 6y ago
  Sure. If it was only a single dollar. But do it for every purchase and it adds up. In a way if you are relying on the "community" to help your business stay alive, then your business is clearly not creating enough value and shouldn't exist.

bzb6 6y ago

Brick and mortar stores and especially small stores fucking suck. Amazon is not perfect but it sucks less.

MattGaiser 6y ago

The problem is are you willing to deal with 5000 different return policies, 5000 different merchant policies, 5000 different shipping times, etc? Amazon eliminates all that friction. I can one click buy something and know when it will arrive, what the shipping will be, and the rules on returning it.

shiftpgdn 6y ago
Yes?

eltados 6y ago

I think that's the main reason I try to limit my shopping on Amazon. Shopping on Amazon means limited circular economy because all the large profit centers are concentrated on few large metropolis ( probably must of then in the US ) and by large shareholders. Lower amount of tax is collected from that purchase that in a local shop because of fiscal optimization. Overall at the scale of the city it seems to me ( I don't have any numbers for that ) that consuming on Amazon is not a great deal long term.

disown 6y ago

Exactly. It's great that so many people are getting jobs, but it just means that many small businesses closed. And as amazon gets bigger, it'll put even more pressure on smaller businesses. With amazon getting into the pharmacy business, I wonder what impact it will have on pharmacy chains which themselves put small independent pharmacy stores out of business.

Reedx 6y ago

This gets tricky. Consider another version of this: Should we have saved the 9,024 Blockbuster stores?

actuator 6y ago

> Apparently that’s an uncommon position these days. Is this recent though? US made Walmart the behemoth it is. Also, chains like Target, Best Buy etc are also not your friendly small neighborhood stores.