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Amazon has made my life better since I started using them in 2005. That's delivering value for over 17 years. Saved countless trips to stores. You don't become

Amazon has made my life better since I started using them in 2005. That's delivering value for over 17 years. Saved countless trips to stores. You don't become a billionaire without providing value to millions of people and improving their lives. I admire Bezos and his achievements, candor, leadership, and judgement. His yearly memos are profoundly thoughtful and he has changed the world forever, for the better. Obviously he is not perfect. Amazon employees have become millionaires and they are paid fair wages. I really don't understand billionaire hate.

jseban 4y ago
> I really don't understand billionaire hate. Same here, I really could not care less if some guy has 10 sports cars in a basement somewhere, so what? It seems so incredibly childish and petty to walk around and be angry about that. And when having a few billionaires comes with the benefit of more jobs, higher salaries and better economy for me and everyone else, then it seems great to me. How can people prefer an equal society where everyone's poor just to be relieved from their childish jealousy? It's not going ever be fixed anyway, because nature and life is always unfair.
- matsemann 4y ago
  No one is having "childish jealousy", they just want fair treatment and a chance at a good life. No one "prefers a society where everyone's poor", that's just childish and off-putting straw men by you. Please explain how having a few billionaires "comes with the benefit of more jobs" and stuff for everyone else. How is it better to share the crumbles, instead of the whole bread? Perplexing.
  - jseban 4y ago
    > they just want fair treatment There is no such thing as fair, it's impossible to even define what that would be, and that's the whole point of the free market, that it solves this problem. The more you use these outdated political catch phrases, the more impractical and meaningless things become. Life is unfair, nature is unfair. > No one "prefers a society where everyone's poor", that's just childish and off-putting straw men by you. This is demonstrably what happens as we have seen during 100 years of large scale experiments involving millions of people. If you keep pushing socialist politics from the 1970s I'm just going to suspect that the same bad things will happen, as happened then. When there is such a massive body of evidence, why should anyone suddenly start thinking "oh yeah, I bet it works this time, let's try that again"? > Please explain how having a few billionaires "comes with the benefit of more jobs" and stuff for everyone else. Because it's the only way to make people pull in the same direction, to create value in a positive bottom line. > How is it better to share the crumbles, instead of the whole bread? Perplexing. Because there will be no bread to begin with, if you share the whole bread, because nobody wants to bake a bread when they are forced to give away the whole thing.
    - matsemann 4y ago
      If you look at the state of the lower middle class and below today, and think capitalism has done wonders, you're delusional. Countries with fewer billionaires and more socialistic policies are much, much better to live in today I'd say. Just compare US with EU for instance. So not sure how you can assert that the opposite "demonstrately happens". Don't you think people would "pull harder" if they themselves actually saw the fruit of their labor? We're talking about people's livelihoods here, and you still talk about "bottom lines".. I'm not sure if you're trolling or actually hold these views?
      - jseban 4y ago
        Redistribution politics are always destructive and temporary in nature. The EU has not discovered some way to invent free stuff out of thin air. If you push redistribution politics you will cause stagnation and lower productivity. You can think that's "chill" but sooner or later the outside world will run away from you and you will be outcompeted. Just look at what happened now to the german car industry, they are so proud of their strong unions, but they get outcompeted by tesla instead who is now building car factories in germany. It almost got killed by the unions in the same way detroit was in the US when the japanese caught up. Nice sweet union deals with lifetime guarantees of great benefits, mean nothing when the whole company disappears, and the country goes into a recession. It's just putting your head in the sand for a while and pretending that you have found the perfect position where opportunity will last forever.
tchalla 4y ago
You CAN become a billionaire with providing value to millions while contributing / actively worsening conditions for another section of the society. You can understand the hate, it’s your choice not to because the outcome is a net positive to you.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  What has Amazon done to the society that's worsening? If you ask a Bay Area software engineer, they'd give some feel good answer about how they love overpriced mom & pop shops and Amazon is to blame for their demise. But, to overwhelmingly large portion of customers of Amazon, the middle class, it has provided an unthinkable amount of value. If it didn't, they'd stop using it. It is doing even more in developing countries. And we're just talking about Amazon store.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    They are providing horrible working conditions for a good chunk of their workers - tight schedules that force some to wear diapers, lack of air conditioning, discouraging human interaction etc. As they expand their warehouses and needs, this keeps deteriorating, and affecting more and more workers, who often don't have an alternative. You consistently want to look at the impact Amazon had on consumers, which may well be positive, while ignoring that they can only achieve this by exploiting their workers.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      Let me be clear, I'd want good labor conditions and healthy work environments and condemn Amazon for failing in certain regards, but even that is blown out of proportion to support Unionization. We should pass laws that provide safe working conditions. OHSA is the body that governs that.
    - radu_floricica 4y ago
      TBH, I don't really know with certainty how conditions are in an Amazon warehouse. I do have Outside View, which tells me that they have no problem finding employment, and I haven't heard of major reasons why Amazon in particular would trap employees (like company towns of old, with company stores and other predatory practices). So I think it's pretty fair to say that the burden of proof is on you that Amazon is worse than industry average, since people are voting with their feet to work for them. I will tell you one thing in advance: if you touch systemic issues (such as unemployment in general), then you're advocating for a freer market with less unions, because that's how you create jobs.
tsimionescu 4y ago
Plantation owners in the South also improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by providing cheap cotton that made the switch to modern clothing possible. They forever changed the world as well, and made gigantic fortunes because of it. Of course, just like Bezos, it wasn't the plantation owners providing the cheap cotton, it was the work of their slaves doing so - they only provided some direction and made some managerial decisions. Of course, Bezos doesn't treat his workers as badly as the plantation owners treated their slaves - I'm not trying to say that Amazon workers are treated as badly as the disgusting inhumanity of the slave trade. The general idea is that the entirety of Amazon's success is to be attributed to its workers, not to its owners. Bezos of course has an important contribution, probably higher than any other individual worker - but in his capacity as worker, not owner. As he is no longer a CEO, his contribution to Amazon's new successes is 0 or close to it, even if he remains a major shareholder. Of Amazon's millions of employees though, only a small handful became rich, and only one became a billionaire. This is the issue here: Bezos is an important part of Amazon, but his profits from its growth are completely, mind-boggling disproportionate compared to all other workers for Amazon. The designers of AWS, the people who negotiated the network of distribution contracts, the marketing and sales people etc - all of them are only getting scraps of the value they have created. The warehouse workers of course are not even getting scraps.
- radu_floricica 4y ago
  Bezos's share is not deserved due to the profits of the company. It's deserved because of how much better his company is, compared to others doing the same thing. There are millions of ecommerce sites. Tens of thousands of hosting companies. And he wasn't the first in either domain, but now he's the best or close to it. That's his contribution as an owner, as opposed to a worker. And the comparison with plantation slaves is hilarious. There are even now jobs and activities that are literally harsher than slave work. People do a lot of them for fun and hobby. The difference is choice. And a small thing, which is just a bit grating to me: plantations weren't that efficient, actually. It was a social self-perpetuating system that kept them going. Using employees and later machines was more effective for pretty much the whole human history.
  - 4y ago
matsemann 4y ago
Did Bezos personally package your goods? Did he personally deliver at your door? No? Then why is he the one getting all the benefits of "creating value"? Why shouldn't the people doing those jobs get a fair share? That's why the "billionaire hate", and support for the unionization efforts.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  I thought it was obvious. Every employee at Amazon is working at will. We're not living in the era of slavery. They are getting paid a fair wage to the point where they accept the job voluntarily as responsible adults. Their salary / equity is proportional to the value they create for Amazon. An Amazon warehouse employee creates very little value. They absolutely do not deserve millions in compensation for picking items from shelves. Amazon is putting food on the table and enabling a million employees to raise families. Pay rents. Pay bills. The entire equation whether you look from the employee side or customer side, has made the world better, the scale of which is difficult to imagine. Bezos's wealth was not stolen from anyone or sitting in cash in his house. The entire pie got larger. His wealth is in the company that provided value to millions and they paid for the service voluntarily. It is important to note that there was no coercion involved. Companies like Amazon make the world a better place. Otherwise we'd still be living in 1/1000th of the GDP of pre-industrial era with 90% people living in poverty. Every person that works, whether owns or a business or has a job, creates value, thereby increasing the size of the pie and lifting people out of poverty.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    > The entire equation whether you look from the employee side or customer side, has made the world better, the scale of which is difficult to imagine. If I bring you the ingredients for a pie (say, worth 10 dollars), then pay you 10 dollars to bake it, then turn around and sell that pie for $1000, would you be happy with this arrangement? Would you say that you got a fair deal? After all, the pie is now larger, and I put food on the table for you, and I contributed to the $1000 directly, as you wouldn't have had the connections necessary to sell it for that amount yourself.

jseban 4y ago

> I really don't understand billionaire hate. Same here, I really could not care less if some guy has 10 sports cars in a basement somewhere, so what? It seems so incredibly childish and petty to walk around and be angry about that. And when having a few billionaires comes with the benefit of more jobs, higher salaries and better economy for me and everyone else, then it seems great to me. How can people prefer an equal society where everyone's poor just to be relieved from their childish jealousy? It's not going ever be fixed anyway, because nature and life is always unfair.

matsemann 4y ago
No one is having "childish jealousy", they just want fair treatment and a chance at a good life. No one "prefers a society where everyone's poor", that's just childish and off-putting straw men by you. Please explain how having a few billionaires "comes with the benefit of more jobs" and stuff for everyone else. How is it better to share the crumbles, instead of the whole bread? Perplexing.
- jseban 4y ago
  > they just want fair treatment There is no such thing as fair, it's impossible to even define what that would be, and that's the whole point of the free market, that it solves this problem. The more you use these outdated political catch phrases, the more impractical and meaningless things become. Life is unfair, nature is unfair. > No one "prefers a society where everyone's poor", that's just childish and off-putting straw men by you. This is demonstrably what happens as we have seen during 100 years of large scale experiments involving millions of people. If you keep pushing socialist politics from the 1970s I'm just going to suspect that the same bad things will happen, as happened then. When there is such a massive body of evidence, why should anyone suddenly start thinking "oh yeah, I bet it works this time, let's try that again"? > Please explain how having a few billionaires "comes with the benefit of more jobs" and stuff for everyone else. Because it's the only way to make people pull in the same direction, to create value in a positive bottom line. > How is it better to share the crumbles, instead of the whole bread? Perplexing. Because there will be no bread to begin with, if you share the whole bread, because nobody wants to bake a bread when they are forced to give away the whole thing.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    If you look at the state of the lower middle class and below today, and think capitalism has done wonders, you're delusional. Countries with fewer billionaires and more socialistic policies are much, much better to live in today I'd say. Just compare US with EU for instance. So not sure how you can assert that the opposite "demonstrately happens". Don't you think people would "pull harder" if they themselves actually saw the fruit of their labor? We're talking about people's livelihoods here, and you still talk about "bottom lines".. I'm not sure if you're trolling or actually hold these views?
    - jseban 4y ago
      Redistribution politics are always destructive and temporary in nature. The EU has not discovered some way to invent free stuff out of thin air. If you push redistribution politics you will cause stagnation and lower productivity. You can think that's "chill" but sooner or later the outside world will run away from you and you will be outcompeted. Just look at what happened now to the german car industry, they are so proud of their strong unions, but they get outcompeted by tesla instead who is now building car factories in germany. It almost got killed by the unions in the same way detroit was in the US when the japanese caught up. Nice sweet union deals with lifetime guarantees of great benefits, mean nothing when the whole company disappears, and the country goes into a recession. It's just putting your head in the sand for a while and pretending that you have found the perfect position where opportunity will last forever.

tchalla 4y ago

You CAN become a billionaire with providing value to millions while contributing / actively worsening conditions for another section of the society. You can understand the hate, it’s your choice not to because the outcome is a net positive to you.

systemvoltage 4y ago
What has Amazon done to the society that's worsening? If you ask a Bay Area software engineer, they'd give some feel good answer about how they love overpriced mom & pop shops and Amazon is to blame for their demise. But, to overwhelmingly large portion of customers of Amazon, the middle class, it has provided an unthinkable amount of value. If it didn't, they'd stop using it. It is doing even more in developing countries. And we're just talking about Amazon store.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  They are providing horrible working conditions for a good chunk of their workers - tight schedules that force some to wear diapers, lack of air conditioning, discouraging human interaction etc. As they expand their warehouses and needs, this keeps deteriorating, and affecting more and more workers, who often don't have an alternative. You consistently want to look at the impact Amazon had on consumers, which may well be positive, while ignoring that they can only achieve this by exploiting their workers.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Let me be clear, I'd want good labor conditions and healthy work environments and condemn Amazon for failing in certain regards, but even that is blown out of proportion to support Unionization. We should pass laws that provide safe working conditions. OHSA is the body that governs that.
  - radu_floricica 4y ago
    TBH, I don't really know with certainty how conditions are in an Amazon warehouse. I do have Outside View, which tells me that they have no problem finding employment, and I haven't heard of major reasons why Amazon in particular would trap employees (like company towns of old, with company stores and other predatory practices). So I think it's pretty fair to say that the burden of proof is on you that Amazon is worse than industry average, since people are voting with their feet to work for them. I will tell you one thing in advance: if you touch systemic issues (such as unemployment in general), then you're advocating for a freer market with less unions, because that's how you create jobs.

tsimionescu 4y ago

Plantation owners in the South also improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by providing cheap cotton that made the switch to modern clothing possible. They forever changed the world as well, and made gigantic fortunes because of it. Of course, just like Bezos, it wasn't the plantation owners providing the cheap cotton, it was the work of their slaves doing so - they only provided some direction and made some managerial decisions. Of course, Bezos doesn't treat his workers as badly as the plantation owners treated their slaves - I'm not trying to say that Amazon workers are treated as badly as the disgusting inhumanity of the slave trade. The general idea is that the entirety of Amazon's success is to be attributed to its workers, not to its owners. Bezos of course has an important contribution, probably higher than any other individual worker - but in his capacity as worker, not owner. As he is no longer a CEO, his contribution to Amazon's new successes is 0 or close to it, even if he remains a major shareholder. Of Amazon's millions of employees though, only a small handful became rich, and only one became a billionaire. This is the issue here: Bezos is an important part of Amazon, but his profits from its growth are completely, mind-boggling disproportionate compared to all other workers for Amazon. The designers of AWS, the people who negotiated the network of distribution contracts, the marketing and sales people etc - all of them are only getting scraps of the value they have created. The warehouse workers of course are not even getting scraps.

radu_floricica 4y ago
Bezos's share is not deserved due to the profits of the company. It's deserved because of how much better his company is, compared to others doing the same thing. There are millions of ecommerce sites. Tens of thousands of hosting companies. And he wasn't the first in either domain, but now he's the best or close to it. That's his contribution as an owner, as opposed to a worker. And the comparison with plantation slaves is hilarious. There are even now jobs and activities that are literally harsher than slave work. People do a lot of them for fun and hobby. The difference is choice. And a small thing, which is just a bit grating to me: plantations weren't that efficient, actually. It was a social self-perpetuating system that kept them going. Using employees and later machines was more effective for pretty much the whole human history.
- 4y ago

matsemann 4y ago

Did Bezos personally package your goods? Did he personally deliver at your door? No? Then why is he the one getting all the benefits of "creating value"? Why shouldn't the people doing those jobs get a fair share? That's why the "billionaire hate", and support for the unionization efforts.

systemvoltage 4y ago
I thought it was obvious. Every employee at Amazon is working at will. We're not living in the era of slavery. They are getting paid a fair wage to the point where they accept the job voluntarily as responsible adults. Their salary / equity is proportional to the value they create for Amazon. An Amazon warehouse employee creates very little value. They absolutely do not deserve millions in compensation for picking items from shelves. Amazon is putting food on the table and enabling a million employees to raise families. Pay rents. Pay bills. The entire equation whether you look from the employee side or customer side, has made the world better, the scale of which is difficult to imagine. Bezos's wealth was not stolen from anyone or sitting in cash in his house. The entire pie got larger. His wealth is in the company that provided value to millions and they paid for the service voluntarily. It is important to note that there was no coercion involved. Companies like Amazon make the world a better place. Otherwise we'd still be living in 1/1000th of the GDP of pre-industrial era with 90% people living in poverty. Every person that works, whether owns or a business or has a job, creates value, thereby increasing the size of the pie and lifting people out of poverty.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  > The entire equation whether you look from the employee side or customer side, has made the world better, the scale of which is difficult to imagine. If I bring you the ingredients for a pie (say, worth 10 dollars), then pay you 10 dollars to bake it, then turn around and sell that pie for $1000, would you be happy with this arrangement? Would you say that you got a fair deal? After all, the pie is now larger, and I put food on the table for you, and I contributed to the $1000 directly, as you wouldn't have had the connections necessary to sell it for that amount yourself.