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Right, Bezos didn't set out to bankrupt as many small businesses as he could. He started with providing a wider range of books to people over the internet. For

Right, Bezos didn't set out to bankrupt as many small businesses as he could. He started with providing a wider range of books to people over the internet. For the person who wanted a specific book and was only able to get it on Amazon this is a "good" thing. For the local bookstore who is now bankrupt that is a "bad" thing. I've come to the conclusion that to be a CEO you have to wear these blinders and have faith that overall your company is a positive good for the world. That means that when you have a low performing employee you have to fire him even though you know that it may cause terrible consequences for him and his family.

SQueeeeeL 6y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
- specialist 6y ago
  Yes, and: Everyone's the hero of their own story.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Small businesses are dying because of small business refusal to use technology. They would rather grumble about how "millennials won't pick up the phone anymore" to order things. In the case of small bookstores, they think it is enough to toss books on the shelf and wait for people to come browsing. Well, I can now browse from bed.
- jariel 6y ago
  " dying because of small business refusal to use technology" This is a little glib. There's nothing most of these small business can do.
  - ghufran_syed 6y ago
    Really? That sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the only thing they do is provide book ordering services, but amazon does it better, should amazon really feel bad about that? When you successfully pass an interview and get a job offer, do you feel bad enough for those who didn’t do as well that you turn down the job offer? EDIT: forgot to add, I suspect there are many things small bookstores could do in terms of building a local community (in-person and online) of people who love books, improving discovery options for new books from that community, that kind of thing. So maybe they should be doing that i.e. “do things that don’t scale” to try and delight their users more than amazon does, in a way where their lack of scale is an advantage?
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    They haven't tried anything. Every business being beaten by Amazon seems to have just decided to lie down and die. Even big businesses facing Amazon have done very little to compete.
    - jariel 6y ago
      ""They haven't tried anything. Every business being beaten by Amazon"" This again, is glib. To suggest that you somehow know all these vendors have 'not tried anything'. How about lobbying government to subsidize their business like the US Government subsidizes delivery? Or the VAT tax breaks that Amazon gets? Or the fact that Amazon is dumping merchandise on the US by selling for negative margins, paid for by profits out of AWS? A local bookstore has 6 staff. They have no power.
      - ghufran_syed 6y ago
        Amazon started off with 21 employees - do you think that’s a meaningfully different number? Amazon at that didn’t didn’t get any of the advantages you list. So do think it might be worth considering what they did differently at the beginning, when they were the tiny business, going up against huge and powerful companies like Barnes and Nobles? https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-history-facts-2017-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-history-fa...
- detaro 6y ago
  That's very simplified, many small book stores take online or email orders. That doesn't magically put them in the same position as Amazon & co.
  - ghufran_syed 6y ago
    Would you also argue that these small bookstores “delight their users”? If so, why aren’t they making money? If not, do you think that maybe that might be the problem?
    - jstummbillig 6y ago
      The way that amazon has delighted their users, for a long time, was to heavily grow by reinvesting all their money into both expansion and subsidizing their infrastructure. That is simply not a path a small shop can take because they don't have investors. Nor do they it want to. Nor should they have to.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        > Nor do they it want to. Nor should they have to. Then they need to do something that cannot be scaled. Being a general bookseller can easily be scaled.
    - detaro 6y ago
      No, I don't think that's the problem, at least not for all. From the limited insight into the publishing industry I have it seems fairly obvious that the fact that Amazon can demand massively lower prices from the publishing houses, while at the same time being able to have more optimized logistics, access to better shipping conditions, ... thanks to scale, plays a large role.
      - ghufran_syed 6y ago
        Was that also the case when Amazon started? How did they get to scale? And are we arguing that Barnes and Noble didn’t have scale when Amazon started competing with them. If “scale = success”, how is it that the former incumbents failed and the initially small startup succeeded?
thorough 6y ago
I’m working at my job doing just fine. My employer is pretty happy and so am I. Then a new guy comes along and says, “I can do thorough’s job better than he can.” My boss hires him and she agrees. At length, she decides to keep the new guy and fire me because he’s meeting her needs better than I am. She doesn’t need to pay me anymore. There are two happy people in this story and one unhappy one. But the fact that there is an unhappy one doesn’t seem like nearly enough to me to decide it shouldn’t have played out like it did. Does it seem like enough to you? If not, what other common element would this story have to have to decide it shouldn’t have happened?
- bambax 6y ago
  If the new guy doesn't follow regulations or doesn't pay taxes like you do (Airbnb, Uber) or if he somehow provides drugs to the boss and as a result she needs him day in and day out (Facebook), then this shouldn't have happened.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- bob33212 6y ago
  Exactly, you have to tell yourself that it is a net positive situation and move on.
staunch 6y ago
Amazon didn't kill small businesses. We killed them by using Amazon. And I'm glad to have participated. I much prefer Amazon passing the savings of time and money to me rather than some small business owner. The small businesses I was forced to use previously were inefficient, slow, overcharging, had terrible customer service, exploited employees, etc. As an example: we killed tons of movie rental businesses by switching to Netflix. Life is much better now for everyone who isn't a movie rental store owner, which is almost everyone. Small business doesn't mean good business and big business doesn't mean bad business. What matters to me is the net effect, and in most cases with Amazon, the net effect is very positive. The same is true for Google, Uber, and Facebook and most big tech successes. The ratio of bad:good is just worse for some of them than for others, making it harder to judge.
- dzonga 6y ago
  this is mistaken: you need multiple small businesses because competition trumps everything. competition results in lower prices, better customer service. to amazon, though they've excellent customer support or used - you're just another customer. The small businesses you say were exploitative is because they were the only shot in town. i.e in a monopolistic position. multiple small businesses result in a robust economy. if one goes bust there's plenty to keep providing a similar service. MSB's enable other auxiliary business look at Japan | German's economy for an example - mutliple suppliers etc. more employment. Guess the jobs the masses work at amazon - drivers, warehouse workers. What amazon, provides could've been easily provided by a standardized api connecting different small merchants. some industries already do this - a flower shop needs roses, it can easily contact another flower shop to get roses to it's customers. everyone wins. netflix yeah was a net positive. it's content so end of day, it was going to be aggregated in Ben Thompson's terms. Uber is good for me as a consumer. But is it good for the driver, for the environment. if the US had robust public transportation, Uber wouldn't be necessary.
- season2episode3 6y ago
  Small businesses are important for a whole host of intangible reasons. They provide dignified employment (as opposed to invisible work in a warehouse), they encourage entrepreneurship, they increase the tax base of a locality (by ensuring money stays within a local economy), and they contribute to local culture, community and character. Amazon killing small businesses has sucked even more of the life force out of small towns, and that’s sad because said towns were already shellacked by the death of manufacturing. It’s hard to argue with Amazon’s excellent customer experience, but the externalities involved are nontrivial and IMO outweigh the benefits.
foobarian 6y ago
I feel that what happened with tech is that there were two things occurring simultaneously: one, there were many new useful ideas possible to build with IT that were not possible before and that delivered genuine value. With companies like Amazon or Airbnb or Google you had genuinely motivated "builder" founders who were first to scale, kind of like when a dam breaks and the water rushes out. But, the second, more negative thing is that a lot of the inefficiencies removed by these companies were in the form of livelihoods for many people, or adherence to various regulations and laws that was a lot easier to omit with IT in the middle. Examples would be the Mom-and-Pop retail stores going out of business or Uber breaking taxi regulations. Like you said, Bezos didn't set out to bankrupt Mom&Pop, it was just an unfortunate side-effect of using IT. The thing that I think pg is missing is that projects where this happens are exploitative to a degree, and is why they get rightfully criticized.

SQueeeeeL 6y ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

specialist 6y ago
Yes, and: Everyone's the hero of their own story.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Small businesses are dying because of small business refusal to use technology. They would rather grumble about how "millennials won't pick up the phone anymore" to order things. In the case of small bookstores, they think it is enough to toss books on the shelf and wait for people to come browsing. Well, I can now browse from bed.

jariel 6y ago
" dying because of small business refusal to use technology" This is a little glib. There's nothing most of these small business can do.
- ghufran_syed 6y ago
  Really? That sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the only thing they do is provide book ordering services, but amazon does it better, should amazon really feel bad about that? When you successfully pass an interview and get a job offer, do you feel bad enough for those who didn’t do as well that you turn down the job offer? EDIT: forgot to add, I suspect there are many things small bookstores could do in terms of building a local community (in-person and online) of people who love books, improving discovery options for new books from that community, that kind of thing. So maybe they should be doing that i.e. “do things that don’t scale” to try and delight their users more than amazon does, in a way where their lack of scale is an advantage?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  They haven't tried anything. Every business being beaten by Amazon seems to have just decided to lie down and die. Even big businesses facing Amazon have done very little to compete.
  - jariel 6y ago
    ""They haven't tried anything. Every business being beaten by Amazon"" This again, is glib. To suggest that you somehow know all these vendors have 'not tried anything'. How about lobbying government to subsidize their business like the US Government subsidizes delivery? Or the VAT tax breaks that Amazon gets? Or the fact that Amazon is dumping merchandise on the US by selling for negative margins, paid for by profits out of AWS? A local bookstore has 6 staff. They have no power.
    - ghufran_syed 6y ago
      Amazon started off with 21 employees - do you think that’s a meaningfully different number? Amazon at that didn’t didn’t get any of the advantages you list. So do think it might be worth considering what they did differently at the beginning, when they were the tiny business, going up against huge and powerful companies like Barnes and Nobles? https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-history-facts-2017-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-history-fa...
detaro 6y ago
That's very simplified, many small book stores take online or email orders. That doesn't magically put them in the same position as Amazon & co.
- ghufran_syed 6y ago
  Would you also argue that these small bookstores “delight their users”? If so, why aren’t they making money? If not, do you think that maybe that might be the problem?
  - jstummbillig 6y ago
    The way that amazon has delighted their users, for a long time, was to heavily grow by reinvesting all their money into both expansion and subsidizing their infrastructure. That is simply not a path a small shop can take because they don't have investors. Nor do they it want to. Nor should they have to.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      > Nor do they it want to. Nor should they have to. Then they need to do something that cannot be scaled. Being a general bookseller can easily be scaled.
  - detaro 6y ago
    No, I don't think that's the problem, at least not for all. From the limited insight into the publishing industry I have it seems fairly obvious that the fact that Amazon can demand massively lower prices from the publishing houses, while at the same time being able to have more optimized logistics, access to better shipping conditions, ... thanks to scale, plays a large role.
    - ghufran_syed 6y ago
      Was that also the case when Amazon started? How did they get to scale? And are we arguing that Barnes and Noble didn’t have scale when Amazon started competing with them. If “scale = success”, how is it that the former incumbents failed and the initially small startup succeeded?

thorough 6y ago

I’m working at my job doing just fine. My employer is pretty happy and so am I. Then a new guy comes along and says, “I can do thorough’s job better than he can.” My boss hires him and she agrees. At length, she decides to keep the new guy and fire me because he’s meeting her needs better than I am. She doesn’t need to pay me anymore. There are two happy people in this story and one unhappy one. But the fact that there is an unhappy one doesn’t seem like nearly enough to me to decide it shouldn’t have played out like it did. Does it seem like enough to you? If not, what other common element would this story have to have to decide it shouldn’t have happened?

bambax 6y ago
If the new guy doesn't follow regulations or doesn't pay taxes like you do (Airbnb, Uber) or if he somehow provides drugs to the boss and as a result she needs him day in and day out (Facebook), then this shouldn't have happened.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bob33212 6y ago
Exactly, you have to tell yourself that it is a net positive situation and move on.

staunch 6y ago

Amazon didn't kill small businesses. We killed them by using Amazon. And I'm glad to have participated. I much prefer Amazon passing the savings of time and money to me rather than some small business owner. The small businesses I was forced to use previously were inefficient, slow, overcharging, had terrible customer service, exploited employees, etc. As an example: we killed tons of movie rental businesses by switching to Netflix. Life is much better now for everyone who isn't a movie rental store owner, which is almost everyone. Small business doesn't mean good business and big business doesn't mean bad business. What matters to me is the net effect, and in most cases with Amazon, the net effect is very positive. The same is true for Google, Uber, and Facebook and most big tech successes. The ratio of bad:good is just worse for some of them than for others, making it harder to judge.

dzonga 6y ago
this is mistaken: you need multiple small businesses because competition trumps everything. competition results in lower prices, better customer service. to amazon, though they've excellent customer support or used - you're just another customer. The small businesses you say were exploitative is because they were the only shot in town. i.e in a monopolistic position. multiple small businesses result in a robust economy. if one goes bust there's plenty to keep providing a similar service. MSB's enable other auxiliary business look at Japan | German's economy for an example - mutliple suppliers etc. more employment. Guess the jobs the masses work at amazon - drivers, warehouse workers. What amazon, provides could've been easily provided by a standardized api connecting different small merchants. some industries already do this - a flower shop needs roses, it can easily contact another flower shop to get roses to it's customers. everyone wins. netflix yeah was a net positive. it's content so end of day, it was going to be aggregated in Ben Thompson's terms. Uber is good for me as a consumer. But is it good for the driver, for the environment. if the US had robust public transportation, Uber wouldn't be necessary.
season2episode3 6y ago
Small businesses are important for a whole host of intangible reasons. They provide dignified employment (as opposed to invisible work in a warehouse), they encourage entrepreneurship, they increase the tax base of a locality (by ensuring money stays within a local economy), and they contribute to local culture, community and character. Amazon killing small businesses has sucked even more of the life force out of small towns, and that’s sad because said towns were already shellacked by the death of manufacturing. It’s hard to argue with Amazon’s excellent customer experience, but the externalities involved are nontrivial and IMO outweigh the benefits.

foobarian 6y ago

I feel that what happened with tech is that there were two things occurring simultaneously: one, there were many new useful ideas possible to build with IT that were not possible before and that delivered genuine value. With companies like Amazon or Airbnb or Google you had genuinely motivated "builder" founders who were first to scale, kind of like when a dam breaks and the water rushes out. But, the second, more negative thing is that a lot of the inefficiencies removed by these companies were in the form of livelihoods for many people, or adherence to various regulations and laws that was a lot easier to omit with IT in the middle. Examples would be the Mom-and-Pop retail stores going out of business or Uber breaking taxi regulations. Like you said, Bezos didn't set out to bankrupt Mom&Pop, it was just an unfortunate side-effect of using IT. The thing that I think pg is missing is that projects where this happens are exploitative to a degree, and is why they get rightfully criticized.