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But what is stopping someone from opening competing operations to Amazon, compete with Amazon in the marketplace, provide more choice to workers, thus driving t

But what is stopping someone from opening competing operations to Amazon, compete with Amazon in the marketplace, provide more choice to workers, thus driving their salaries up? What is stopping the workers from learning some useful skill and bringing more economic worth to their jobs as opposed to a skill that will be automated 5 years down the line?

mpyne 13y ago
> But what is stopping someone from opening competing operations to Amazon, compete with Amazon in the marketplace, provide more choice to workers, thus driving their salaries up? Well it's a nice hypothetical, but has very little support historically. In fact the trend is completely opposite; Amazon swoops in and other businesses fold. The theoretical thing stopping it is simply the initial capital costs and (more importantly) the embodied body of knowledge, gained over a long period of time of "how best to win at logistics". One does not simply hang their tile and beat Amazon at <price, service, convenience>, there's a lot of effort that goes into making Amazon as efficient as it is that cannot be simply duplicated by a random VC-backed startup. It is for that reason that the old libertarian trope about "just wait for some entrepreneur to start a better competitor" is so out-of-touch... people are going to be waiting a long time, but they need to eat today.
- adharmad 13y ago
  You have a point - getting to where Amazon is now is hard. That should make us appreciate the perseverance, acumen and sheer willpower of Bezos. And I am not even mentioning the tremendous risks he took. So yes, duplicating Amazon is not easy, but then doing anything worthwhile is not going to easy and quick. But then, the "competitor" or "job provider" need not be in the same space as Amazon. They can be restaurents, transportation companies, anything. However, you will quickly realize that running a business of any sort is hard, full of unpredictable variables and very risky. The people who do it, as well as the people who invest in such companies should not be penalized by legislating a solution that would transfer wealth. Eventually, if the cost of the employee is more than the value that the employee is providing, then the economy will move towards automating such jobs. And Amazon-type jobs are going to be very easy to automate.

mpyne 13y ago

> But what is stopping someone from opening competing operations to Amazon, compete with Amazon in the marketplace, provide more choice to workers, thus driving their salaries up? Well it's a nice hypothetical, but has very little support historically. In fact the trend is completely opposite; Amazon swoops in and other businesses fold. The theoretical thing stopping it is simply the initial capital costs and (more importantly) the embodied body of knowledge, gained over a long period of time of "how best to win at logistics". One does not simply hang their tile and beat Amazon at <price, service, convenience>, there's a lot of effort that goes into making Amazon as efficient as it is that cannot be simply duplicated by a random VC-backed startup. It is for that reason that the old libertarian trope about "just wait for some entrepreneur to start a better competitor" is so out-of-touch... people are going to be waiting a long time, but they need to eat today.

adharmad 13y ago
You have a point - getting to where Amazon is now is hard. That should make us appreciate the perseverance, acumen and sheer willpower of Bezos. And I am not even mentioning the tremendous risks he took. So yes, duplicating Amazon is not easy, but then doing anything worthwhile is not going to easy and quick. But then, the "competitor" or "job provider" need not be in the same space as Amazon. They can be restaurents, transportation companies, anything. However, you will quickly realize that running a business of any sort is hard, full of unpredictable variables and very risky. The people who do it, as well as the people who invest in such companies should not be penalized by legislating a solution that would transfer wealth. Eventually, if the cost of the employee is more than the value that the employee is providing, then the economy will move towards automating such jobs. And Amazon-type jobs are going to be very easy to automate.