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Your phraseology of “extract” suffers from the same problem as AOC’s. You’re conflating value creation with value extraction. The problem with AOC’s argument i

• lkjdsklf 5mo ago
  You’ve entirely misunderstood her point. Her point isn’t that Amazon is bad because it’s a trillion dollar company Her point is that Bezos is bad because he and Amazon could have paid that driver 10x what they make and still had more money than they could spend in 100 lifetimes The distribution of the gains is absurdly weighted towards the top
  • rayiner 5mo ago
    > still had more money than they could spend in 100 lifetimes How is that relevant to anything? There are intelligent criticisms of Amazon. But this is just a non-sequitur.
    • lkjdsklf 5mo ago
      It’s absolutely not a non-sequitur. The point is that his wealth is from exploiting labor out of greed. He could take a smaller share and still be plenty rich and many more people would be much better off than they are today. But he doesn’t. The disparity is so vast that it is arguably immoral or unethical. That’s AOCs point
      • rayiner 5mo ago
        If you want to make a point about exploitive labor practices, that’s totally valid. Explain how Amazon’s labor practices are exploitive. But Bezos having more money than he can spend in a lifetime is totally irrelevant to that. It’s not relevant to anything.
        • lkjdsklf 5mo ago
          It's entirely relevant. The entire point is that the riches borne of the success of amazon could have been shared more equally while not actually making a different in Bezos' or his families life. The only difference would have been that his score on the billionaire leader board would have been slightly lower. That fact is not only relevant, it's a central pillar of the point.
          • rayiner 5mo ago
            > The entire point is that the riches borne of the success of amazon could have been shared more equally while not actually making a different in Bezos' or his families life. Why does that matter? What is the universal principle that’s at play here? Does this principle apply to everyone? Does it apply to you? People in my dad’s village in Bangladesh survive on $5/day. Under your principle, why do you get to spend 1,000x that on a vacation? Can you also explain your math? You said above that Amazon could pay its workers 10x as much as they do now. Bezos’s share of Amazon’s net profit last year was about $6.9 billion. Amazon has 1.1 million delivery drivers and warehouse workers. So if Bezos’s share was nothing, those workers could earn about $6,300 more. That’s like 10-15% more, not 10 times more as you incorrectly said.
            • lkjdsklf 5mo ago
              > Bezos’s share of Amazon’s net profit last year was about $6.9 billion We're not talking about Bezos's profit share for one year. We're talking about giving the workers a bigger share of the profit. Ideally, there would have been a workers union that owned a significant number of amazon shares or some other similar structure. Then all workers benefit from the compounding growth pg is talking about in the article. However that didn't happen, because Bezos didn't want it to happen.
              • rayiner 5mo ago
                > We're not talking about Bezos's profit share for one year. We're talking about giving the workers a bigger share of the profit. Those are the same thing, because you can only take Bezos's 9% of Amazon once. If you took all of Bezos's Amazon stock and put it in a trust for the workers, the profits from that would have amounted to $6,300 per worker last year. That's a nice bonus, but it's not 10x like you said.
  • hollerith 5mo ago
    And I suppose these jobs that pays 10x would go to people that AOC approves of, i.e., preferably no Republicans?
    • ryan_n 5mo ago
      Why do you suppose that? Did she say that?
    • lkjdsklf 5mo ago
      What in the world are you talking about It very obviously goes to the people working at Amazon. Political party has nothing to do with anything