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I agree with you and I find the other comments dismissing you to be completely mind blowing and heartless. We are making society increasingly more difficult to

I agree with you and I find the other comments dismissing you to be completely mind blowing and heartless. We are making society increasingly more difficult to navigate and creating more barriers that imped the movement of people. We are all hurt by these policies and I have not seen sufficient evidence that they do anything to curb the spread of covid now with high transmission rates all over the world. The time for travel restrictions for most of the world has long passed.

ghaff 5y ago
Without delving into COVID-related travel restrictions, the very first sentence was about dismissing middlemen in general. There are middlemen who add value and those who... don't. But the idea that I should, for example, be only able to buy a product directly from the manufacturer is not a great idea. Amazon retail and Alibaba and Walmart (among many many others) are middlemen.
- crisdux 5y ago
  I'm giving the commenter some grace and I do not truly believe they meant all middlemen are bad. I think your interpretation requires you to assume too much intent. And also that claim at face value is preposterous, which is why I don't think they are making that.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  You're right, I could have been more kind to middlemen. I agree there are middlemen who add value. I also think that when middlemen become essentials, it's a sign we are over-regulating society. I have a lot of respect for Amazon in the early days: they really changed the world of online shopping. In the last years, they didn't innovate their e-commerce offering and I attribute a lot of their growth to pure government regulation. The great european VATMOSS (together with GDPR, SCA, cookie banners) killed small independent e-commerces with and pushed the survivors on Amazon, just to avoid the complexity. Let all remember how VATMOSS was supposed to "tax big tech". COVID lockdowns are now killing physical small businesses and Amazon is benefiting from it.
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    All middlemen provide "some" value, or else they get eliminated by the market. Sure, some might stick around vestigially for momentum sake, but that gets worked out over the long run. The question is more one of a value judgement. Is that value "fair" at its price? At the vary least many middle-provide market making functions. Even with your more recent Amazon example, there was nothing stopping smaller e-commerce stores from complying with VATMOSS. If Amazon wasn't there, most of them probably would have been able to hire consultants or other firms to help them comply. They didn't because Amazon was cheaper/easier. Is the loss of control to Amazon worth it? For the vendor? For society? Unclear, but we are only in the position because of the value Amazon provided even it comes with a social cost.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      I'm arguing against regulation; before VATMOSS was there small businesses didn't need to comply. The question I'm hinting at is: is Amazon using the money they earned in their first phase by being a useful middleman to push the narrative in a certain direction (eg. lobbying, owning a newspaper, etc) and influence governmental bodies so that they introduce more regulation which Amazon benefit from? If the capital we're giving to Amazon gets reinvested to make everyone's life more complicated so that we need more Amazon and Amazon can grow more, then it's not something I want to spend my money on.

ghaff 5y ago

Without delving into COVID-related travel restrictions, the very first sentence was about dismissing middlemen in general. There are middlemen who add value and those who... don't. But the idea that I should, for example, be only able to buy a product directly from the manufacturer is not a great idea. Amazon retail and Alibaba and Walmart (among many many others) are middlemen.

crisdux 5y ago
I'm giving the commenter some grace and I do not truly believe they meant all middlemen are bad. I think your interpretation requires you to assume too much intent. And also that claim at face value is preposterous, which is why I don't think they are making that.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
You're right, I could have been more kind to middlemen. I agree there are middlemen who add value. I also think that when middlemen become essentials, it's a sign we are over-regulating society. I have a lot of respect for Amazon in the early days: they really changed the world of online shopping. In the last years, they didn't innovate their e-commerce offering and I attribute a lot of their growth to pure government regulation. The great european VATMOSS (together with GDPR, SCA, cookie banners) killed small independent e-commerces with and pushed the survivors on Amazon, just to avoid the complexity. Let all remember how VATMOSS was supposed to "tax big tech". COVID lockdowns are now killing physical small businesses and Amazon is benefiting from it.
- jacobr1 5y ago
  All middlemen provide "some" value, or else they get eliminated by the market. Sure, some might stick around vestigially for momentum sake, but that gets worked out over the long run. The question is more one of a value judgement. Is that value "fair" at its price? At the vary least many middle-provide market making functions. Even with your more recent Amazon example, there was nothing stopping smaller e-commerce stores from complying with VATMOSS. If Amazon wasn't there, most of them probably would have been able to hire consultants or other firms to help them comply. They didn't because Amazon was cheaper/easier. Is the loss of control to Amazon worth it? For the vendor? For society? Unclear, but we are only in the position because of the value Amazon provided even it comes with a social cost.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    I'm arguing against regulation; before VATMOSS was there small businesses didn't need to comply. The question I'm hinting at is: is Amazon using the money they earned in their first phase by being a useful middleman to push the narrative in a certain direction (eg. lobbying, owning a newspaper, etc) and influence governmental bodies so that they introduce more regulation which Amazon benefit from? If the capital we're giving to Amazon gets reinvested to make everyone's life more complicated so that we need more Amazon and Amazon can grow more, then it's not something I want to spend my money on.