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> Nobody called Zuckerberg or Bezos exploitative when they were coding in dorm rooms and folding boxes on Ikea tables Actually lots of us called them exploitiv
by anon9001 6y ago
> Nobody called Zuckerberg or Bezos exploitative when they were coding in dorm rooms and folding boxes on Ikea tables
Actually lots of us called them exploitive. It might not change anything, but it's worth noting that a lot of us knew that facebook would grow into the great evil that it is today. It was also obvious that Amazon would eat all retail stores, and it pretty much has.
- jessaustin 6y agoI thought Amazon was sort of magic in a scary way twenty years ago, but as you say, lots of people had a similar impression. What's interesting are the people who don't see the threat even today.
- seibelj 6y agoWhat is the threat? No one makes me use any of their services or buy any of their products. But I have and will continue to do so because Amazon is so obviously superior to the competition. Recently I have begun ordering from Walmart. Why? They have upped their ecommerce game. Just as Sears was once dominant and even sold houses via catalog, and no one in 1930 could have imagined Sears going bust, no one in 2020 can imagine Amazon losing its dominance. But Sears collapses, IBM fades, and the world moves on. In 2020 I’m happy Amazon exists, proud America allowed it to grow, and don’t feel ill-will towards people who voluntarily agree to work for them.
- pvorb 6y agoSo not only Bezoz is exploiting people. You are, too.
- 0xy 6y agoAmazon's margins: 0-5% Retail margins: 20-80% Amazon is directly helping poor people by cutting out the greedy middlemen between them and essentials.
- pvorb 6y agoHaven't checked those numbers, but if that 20-80% paid worker's wages, that was a good thing. Also, Amazon reduces the number of players in the market and reduces the number of jobs virtually everywhere for some hotspots. A free market cannot combat this sort of monopoly.
- anon9001 6y ago> if that 20-80% paid worker's wages, that was a good thing That's actually not a good thing. Something is seriously wrong if we don't value efficiency. Having many separate retail shops creates massive inefficiencies, especially for commodity products. Amazon can get most products to my house at near lowest market rates in a day or two. Sometimes the same day. The problem isn't Amazon, it's our reaction to this newfound efficiency. We're eventually going to end up in a place where having humans doing most work is objectively worse than having robots do it. What we're doing now can't sustain, but going back to a pre-Amazon model of retail is not a viable path forward. Also, working retail sucks. We should be glad when it dies entirely.
- pvorb 6y agoDid it suck before Walmart and Amazon? Probably not as much as it does today.
- quest88 6y agoWow you knew that then? You must be rich off the stock you bought knowing how big they would get!
- anon9001 6y agoNo, I didn't have money to buy stock then.
- cjohnson318 6y agoFor real. Watching MySpace fizzle in the early 2000's, it wasn't obvious that Facebook would stick around, much less become a publicly traded company, or cultural phenomenon. Similarly, it wasn't obvious that Amazon would ever grow to become what it has. Even if I had $1000 laying around in 2002 or 2012, I would not have bet on an okay internet bookstore, or another social media site.