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The title of the piece includes "Jeff", As in Jeff Bozos. I read your comment and would like my time back too.

by ct0 5y ago

Grimm1 5y ago
It'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 ago
  If 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 ago
It 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.

The title of the piece includes "Jeff", As in Jeff Bozos. I read your comment and would like my time back too.

by ct0 5y ago

The title of the piece includes "Jeff", As in Jeff Bozos. I read your comment and would like my time back too.

It'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 ago
If 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 ago

It 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.