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First I clicked on this hoping it was some interesting thing to learn, and then I saw it quickly devolved into another Bezos rant. Second what weird quibbling
by Grimm1 5y ago
First I clicked on this hoping it was some interesting thing to learn, and then I saw it quickly devolved into another Bezos rant.
Second what weird quibbling over standard language. I read this and feel like I'd prefer to have my time back. "I'm not endorsing an ideology" no instead you'll make it painfully obvious which one you don't.
"I’m just meeting the claims on their own terms in the pursuit of that which I truly value, which is quibbling about math."
And then proceeded to basically do nothing on the math, but argue about value creation or consumption.
I'm not stating if I agree or not, don't take this as that, I just feel the author was basically misrepresenting their goals in the post.
- ct0 5y agoThe title of the piece includes "Jeff", As in Jeff Bozos. I read your comment and would like my time back too.
- Grimm1 5y agoIt's a bad piece of writing. That offered no value. Every business uses the language Bezos used, and it also is very much up to interpretation on their view of value creation and consumption.
- enragedcacti 5y agoIf me and my two friends buy paintings from each other for 1 Billion dollars in a circle, did we create 3 Billion dollars in value? No, we created 3 mediocre paintings. Bezos (and every other business, as you mentioned) plays the same game by double and triple counting and changing the definition of value to suit each case. You are right that what value means is up to debate; but Bezos here uses many different definitions at once to reach his number which isn't adhering to any particular ideology other than "Amazon good". I think the most obvious example of this is with the workers: >The most egregious misrepresentation of value creation in the letter is the $91 billion figure that Amazon has paid out in compensation to employees. This is patently ridiculous. Every single dollar of compensation paid out is done transactionally: it is used to purchase labor. > And it estimates the time saved by consumers who shopped at Amazon instead of brick-and-mortar stores, and— in a particularly bold move, considering that just a few paragraphs ago it ascribed no value whatsoever to the time of its own employees— attaches a dollar value to those hours and throws that on the pile as well. This is a shell game where amazon gets to take credit for paying its employees for their hours and also take credit for those hours as value.
- onionisafruit 5y agoIt didn't occur to me that the Jeff in the title was Jeff Bezos until after I clicked. I probably wouldn't have read the article if I realized. That would have been my loss. I enjoyed the article.
- lucasmullens 5y agoNo matter how bad an article is, "I read this and feel like I'd prefer to have my time back" is sort of just a mean thing to say and doesn't contribute to the conversation.
- ezrast 5y agoFor what it's worth, I find this feedback useful, despite the downvotes it garnered. I think it's important not to misrepresent my biases when I write, and doing that even-handedly can be difficult, so if it's not landing with people I like to know.
- Grimm1 5y agoYeah sorry I may have been too harsh in my initial reply, and really nothing against you in particular, but I did get through it feeling a bit angry over it. FWIW, I agree with some of your points for sure and disagree with others I just felt misled and I think that's why in part I responded so harshly.