7 ms·

This strikes me as very similar to an abusive, narcissistic person miraculously having a change of heart and wanting to mend the path of destruction behind the

by warent 6y ago

This strikes me as very similar to an abusive, narcissistic person miraculously having a change of heart and wanting to mend the path of destruction behind them after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Here we see Bezos hurriedly trying to patch up his horrendous legacy with an empty letter. Too little too late. Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short to forget that he's been nothing but the encyclopedic example of greed.

the-dude 6y ago
The people only care about convenience.
gruez 6y ago
>Too little too late. Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short to forget that he's been nothing but the encyclopedic example of greed. uhh... bill gates?
- debacle 6y ago
  Plenty of people are aware of Gates' overwhelming greed. I would ignore all of it just to hear him talk for ten minutes about the overwhelming privilege he was born into and how that brought about his success.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  Interesting - I definitely consider Bill Gates a less harmful example of a billionaire. Mostly because I think of the people employed by microsoft during his tenure as well paid tech workers. That's somewhat different from the exploited amazon warehouse workers and sweatshop workers making the stuff they sell. I've not forgotten the FUD, the anti-linux and anti-apple maneuvering, etc. - but I don't have a strong example of the human cost of Bill Gates' billions - is there one I'm missing?
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824485
  - pc86 6y ago
    There are quite a few well-paid tech workers at Amazon, too. And proportionally, probably much better paid than the tech workers at Microsoft during Gates' tenure. Does the fact that Microsoft didn't employ warehouses make it better? Amazon could exist - perhaps not quite to its current scale - without owning its warehouses. It would pay more, but the workers would not earn more. That profit would just be spread across different fulfillment companies and shipping enterprises. It's not as if with Amazon these workers are getting $10/hr but without Amazon they'd be making $25/hr. They'd still make $10/hr just with a different name on the paycheck.
    - kennywinker 6y ago
      I'm looking at this from a labour and compensation perspective. If everyone you hire, and all the subcontractors you employ are making livable wages, you're less exploitative than if you directly or indirectly pay people non-livable wages. You are correct, Amazon without warehouses only pushes the problem one step out to their fulfillment / shipping companies. The only way to rehabilitate Amazon (from evil to not evil... still far from good) would be for them to pay their employees (ALL of them - not just the tech workers) a livable wage, and for them to only sell things that have been made with non-exploitative labour practices. The way I'm seeing it - the more you control the situation, the more guilty you are of the exploitation. Amazon controls who they work with pretty fully - but when I look at gates-era microsoft, I work my way out from their direct employees to the companies they work with, and I can't find the exploitative labour until I hit the PC manufacturers that were buying windows to put on their PCs. Maybe I'm missing something, but that feels pretty far out of their control - I'd place my blame at the feet of Dell or Compaq, not MSFT at that point.
      - slt2021 6y ago
        another example is Apple. Their workers are paid well, but iPhones are assembled by Foxconn and if you ever bought iPhone/Mac, there is a chance that worker who assembled your iPhone has killed himself[1] due to low wages, stress, and exploitative labor conditions. Simply because Apple needs to maintain high margins and squeezes margins out of suppliers trying to maximize profits. That's why I dont buy apple products. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
zepto 6y ago
> Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short to forget that he's been nothing but the encyclopedic example of greed... ...without whom access to goods during the pandemic would have been vastly more difficult and costly. I am completely in agreement that Amazon is more destructive than it is good now, particular when it comes to the way it treats workers, but it doesn’t help to deny that it provides value.
- shawnz 6y ago
  It's also helpful for those with limited mobility even when there's no pandemic.
me_me_me 6y ago
But he is really sorry, and didn't realised the seriousness of the situation. So he is a good guy now, ok? /s I have no sympathy for him. If he really wanted to make up for his decisions (or at least for not addressing issues), he would have stayed as CEO and fix it all. It really looks like a childlish attempt to... I dunno what exactly are Bezos' intentions. Is it a get out of jail free card? 'I wanted to change and improve workers situation, but my successor totally ignored it'.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  He is still a shareholder. Let us see him put his vote where his mouth is. Will he push for amazon workers to be paid, to be given sick days and humane working conditions, or will he continue to care only about returns to fellow shareholders?
  - munk-a 6y ago
    Shareholders have power - sure, but very little of it and very little power to actually affect change outside of board actions. He already gave his answer by surrendering the power he could have used to change things. If it comes out that he was pushed out for trying to actually change things then more power to him, but I find that extremely unlikely.
    - pc86 6y ago
      I don't know his exact ownership percentage, and how that correlates to voting power, but from what I've read and what I've heard from Amazon employees I would have a hard time believing that he couldn't have basically done whatever he wanted with the company at any point.
      - sandworm101 6y ago
        Until recently he owned about 40% of the stock. Lately he has sold most of that and only owns 10%. Either way, he was and is a major shareholder with more than enough power to shift any discussion re worker treatment.
culot 6y ago
This made-for-TV change of heart might indicate he'll be joining the league of superwealthy philanthropists like Bill Gates and George Soros who leave their lengthy, extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil behind to become a power for good. I mean, surely that is exactly what this means. >Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short Who has time for thinking when Marvel Megahero Show #34 has 3000 new episodes to binge? Besides, he's donating to or even directing all the Right Causes now! He's like a real life superhero.
- ryanlol 6y ago
  > Bill Gates and George Soros who leave their lengthy, extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil behind Can you tell us more about the extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil of those two? Do you really think that’s a reasonable way to describe Gates’s tenure at Microsoft? Some anticompetitive behaviour hardly seems unforgivably evil. Do you subscribe to some weird right wing conspiracy theory about Soros?
  - artursapek 6y ago
    None of the Soros stuff is a theory. It's all out in the open.
    - ryanlol 6y ago
      I guess, if you subscribe to the weird belief that shorting is evil. Or are you referring to something else entirely?
    - webkike 6y ago
      This isn’t an especially helpful comment considering some people believe he’s trying to use the vaccine to microchip all of us or something like that
    - scrollbar 6y ago
      Just finished reading Soros' The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, and also listened to a Vox podcast episode on him https://podcasts.apple.com/al/podcast/who-is-the-real-george-soros/id1081584611?i=1000515311182 https://podcasts.apple.com/al/podcast/who-is-the-real-george... He seems like a pretty reasonable and interesting guy. The Vox episode sounded like a balanced take on his legacy: mixed but generally positive impact. The biggest argument against him that resonates with me is the same that applies to all the mega-wealthy: a handful of rich individuals should not have ultimate power to craft policy decisions, rather the world would benefit from a more balanced democratic process.
resoluteteeth 6y ago
> This strikes me as very similar to an abusive, narcissistic person miraculously having a change of heart and wanting to mend the path of destruction behind them after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Even calling it a change of heart seems to give him to much credit by implying this letter actually represents his real feelings as of right now.
nickysielicki 6y ago
Amazon has made my life better with cheap and convenient products. Amazon has given a lot of relatively high paying jobs to people without a postsecondary education -- they've provided a living wage to middle America. I "get" that there's a big mound of hipster cred available if you pretend to be ashamed or disgusted by this, but I have no interest in that. Maybe it's because I'm from middle America and have friends in those sorts of jobs. The problem with this sort of rant is that no amount of equity would ever be enough to satisfy you, and you don't care about the cost to their customers. America and American psuedocapitalism has still made countless lives across the world better in spite of that. If this opinion hurts your feelings, you should probably spend less time on what is principally a venture capitalism forum. I think Bezos will have an excellent legacy.
- slt2021 6y ago
  cheap products and tech jobs at cost of USPS's losses and backbreaking and piss-keeping warehouse workers. It is important to know where the created value comes from
  - pc86 6y ago
    Amazon generated $1.6 billion in profit for the USPS. https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/17/21443933/amazon-post-office-revenue-delivery-trump https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/17/21443933/amazon-post-offi...
- _greim_ 6y ago
  Amazon has committed the sin of success, so they're the ones made an example of. Criticizing the myriad businesses that lumber along in Amazon's shadow—whose business practices are worse on average—would be pointless, because they're not the ones who so brilliantly and visibly succeeded. Based on that, I don't discount criticisms of Amazon, but rather take them as criticism of the incentive structures in which all businesses operate. The cult of criticism around Bezos is silly, but ignorable. People need something easy to fixate on, and it's hard to do that for something so abstract and complicated as an economic incentive structures.
- 6y ago

by warent 6y ago

the-dude 6y ago

The people only care about convenience.

gruez 6y ago

>Too little too late. Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short to forget that he's been nothing but the encyclopedic example of greed. uhh... bill gates?

debacle 6y ago
Plenty of people are aware of Gates' overwhelming greed. I would ignore all of it just to hear him talk for ten minutes about the overwhelming privilege he was born into and how that brought about his success.
kennywinker 6y ago
Interesting - I definitely consider Bill Gates a less harmful example of a billionaire. Mostly because I think of the people employed by microsoft during his tenure as well paid tech workers. That's somewhat different from the exploited amazon warehouse workers and sweatshop workers making the stuff they sell. I've not forgotten the FUD, the anti-linux and anti-apple maneuvering, etc. - but I don't have a strong example of the human cost of Bill Gates' billions - is there one I'm missing?
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824485
- pc86 6y ago
  There are quite a few well-paid tech workers at Amazon, too. And proportionally, probably much better paid than the tech workers at Microsoft during Gates' tenure. Does the fact that Microsoft didn't employ warehouses make it better? Amazon could exist - perhaps not quite to its current scale - without owning its warehouses. It would pay more, but the workers would not earn more. That profit would just be spread across different fulfillment companies and shipping enterprises. It's not as if with Amazon these workers are getting $10/hr but without Amazon they'd be making $25/hr. They'd still make $10/hr just with a different name on the paycheck.
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    I'm looking at this from a labour and compensation perspective. If everyone you hire, and all the subcontractors you employ are making livable wages, you're less exploitative than if you directly or indirectly pay people non-livable wages. You are correct, Amazon without warehouses only pushes the problem one step out to their fulfillment / shipping companies. The only way to rehabilitate Amazon (from evil to not evil... still far from good) would be for them to pay their employees (ALL of them - not just the tech workers) a livable wage, and for them to only sell things that have been made with non-exploitative labour practices. The way I'm seeing it - the more you control the situation, the more guilty you are of the exploitation. Amazon controls who they work with pretty fully - but when I look at gates-era microsoft, I work my way out from their direct employees to the companies they work with, and I can't find the exploitative labour until I hit the PC manufacturers that were buying windows to put on their PCs. Maybe I'm missing something, but that feels pretty far out of their control - I'd place my blame at the feet of Dell or Compaq, not MSFT at that point.
    - slt2021 6y ago
      another example is Apple. Their workers are paid well, but iPhones are assembled by Foxconn and if you ever bought iPhone/Mac, there is a chance that worker who assembled your iPhone has killed himself[1] due to low wages, stress, and exploitative labor conditions. Simply because Apple needs to maintain high margins and squeezes margins out of suppliers trying to maximize profits. That's why I dont buy apple products. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

zepto 6y ago

> Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short to forget that he's been nothing but the encyclopedic example of greed... ...without whom access to goods during the pandemic would have been vastly more difficult and costly. I am completely in agreement that Amazon is more destructive than it is good now, particular when it comes to the way it treats workers, but it doesn’t help to deny that it provides value.

shawnz 6y ago
It's also helpful for those with limited mobility even when there's no pandemic.

me_me_me 6y ago

But he is really sorry, and didn't realised the seriousness of the situation. So he is a good guy now, ok? /s I have no sympathy for him. If he really wanted to make up for his decisions (or at least for not addressing issues), he would have stayed as CEO and fix it all. It really looks like a childlish attempt to... I dunno what exactly are Bezos' intentions. Is it a get out of jail free card? 'I wanted to change and improve workers situation, but my successor totally ignored it'.

sandworm101 6y ago
He is still a shareholder. Let us see him put his vote where his mouth is. Will he push for amazon workers to be paid, to be given sick days and humane working conditions, or will he continue to care only about returns to fellow shareholders?
- munk-a 6y ago
  Shareholders have power - sure, but very little of it and very little power to actually affect change outside of board actions. He already gave his answer by surrendering the power he could have used to change things. If it comes out that he was pushed out for trying to actually change things then more power to him, but I find that extremely unlikely.
  - pc86 6y ago
    I don't know his exact ownership percentage, and how that correlates to voting power, but from what I've read and what I've heard from Amazon employees I would have a hard time believing that he couldn't have basically done whatever he wanted with the company at any point.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Until recently he owned about 40% of the stock. Lately he has sold most of that and only owns 10%. Either way, he was and is a major shareholder with more than enough power to shift any discussion re worker treatment.

culot 6y ago

This made-for-TV change of heart might indicate he'll be joining the league of superwealthy philanthropists like Bill Gates and George Soros who leave their lengthy, extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil behind to become a power for good. I mean, surely that is exactly what this means. >Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short Who has time for thinking when Marvel Megahero Show #34 has 3000 new episodes to binge? Besides, he's donating to or even directing all the Right Causes now! He's like a real life superhero.

ryanlol 6y ago
> Bill Gates and George Soros who leave their lengthy, extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil behind Can you tell us more about the extraordinarily and unforgivably damaging lives of evil of those two? Do you really think that’s a reasonable way to describe Gates’s tenure at Microsoft? Some anticompetitive behaviour hardly seems unforgivably evil. Do you subscribe to some weird right wing conspiracy theory about Soros?
- artursapek 6y ago
  None of the Soros stuff is a theory. It's all out in the open.
  - ryanlol 6y ago
    I guess, if you subscribe to the weird belief that shorting is evil. Or are you referring to something else entirely?
  - webkike 6y ago
    This isn’t an especially helpful comment considering some people believe he’s trying to use the vaccine to microchip all of us or something like that
  - scrollbar 6y ago
    Just finished reading Soros' The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, and also listened to a Vox podcast episode on him https://podcasts.apple.com/al/podcast/who-is-the-real-george-soros/id1081584611?i=1000515311182 https://podcasts.apple.com/al/podcast/who-is-the-real-george... He seems like a pretty reasonable and interesting guy. The Vox episode sounded like a balanced take on his legacy: mixed but generally positive impact. The biggest argument against him that resonates with me is the same that applies to all the mega-wealthy: a handful of rich individuals should not have ultimate power to craft policy decisions, rather the world would benefit from a more balanced democratic process.

resoluteteeth 6y ago

> This strikes me as very similar to an abusive, narcissistic person miraculously having a change of heart and wanting to mend the path of destruction behind them after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Even calling it a change of heart seems to give him to much credit by implying this letter actually represents his real feelings as of right now.

nickysielicki 6y ago

Amazon has made my life better with cheap and convenient products. Amazon has given a lot of relatively high paying jobs to people without a postsecondary education -- they've provided a living wage to middle America. I "get" that there's a big mound of hipster cred available if you pretend to be ashamed or disgusted by this, but I have no interest in that. Maybe it's because I'm from middle America and have friends in those sorts of jobs. The problem with this sort of rant is that no amount of equity would ever be enough to satisfy you, and you don't care about the cost to their customers. America and American psuedocapitalism has still made countless lives across the world better in spite of that. If this opinion hurts your feelings, you should probably spend less time on what is principally a venture capitalism forum. I think Bezos will have an excellent legacy.

slt2021 6y ago
cheap products and tech jobs at cost of USPS's losses and backbreaking and piss-keeping warehouse workers. It is important to know where the created value comes from
- pc86 6y ago
  Amazon generated $1.6 billion in profit for the USPS. https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/17/21443933/amazon-post-office-revenue-delivery-trump https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/17/21443933/amazon-post-offi...
_greim_ 6y ago
Amazon has committed the sin of success, so they're the ones made an example of. Criticizing the myriad businesses that lumber along in Amazon's shadow—whose business practices are worse on average—would be pointless, because they're not the ones who so brilliantly and visibly succeeded. Based on that, I don't discount criticisms of Amazon, but rather take them as criticism of the incentive structures in which all businesses operate. The cult of criticism around Bezos is silly, but ignorable. People need something easy to fixate on, and it's hard to do that for something so abstract and complicated as an economic incentive structures.
6y ago