– Amazon works its staff hard. As in, unkindly. As in, likely to cause a revolution if more companies take this approach.
I get the sense Amazon, Google and Apple are run by geeks who treat people like code; as something that can be made more efficient and then discarded. They should read more history.
– Amazon hasn’t created value; it has destroyed it. It has helped push down prices for … junk, and the only cost is human misery; in foreign factories and local warehouses. It has put many other businesses out of business, AFAIK. And for what?
So you and I can buy Chinese-made consumer junk, cheaper.
– Did you know Amazon competes with its own sellers? I understand if it finds out Joe Seller is doing well, it will recommend other sellers compete with him. And, of course, it undercuts its own sellers, by selling the same items, itself!
I see it as a monstrous parasite, run by a man with no discernible character, encouraging addicts to buy junk, made in sweatshops, which they’ll dump in the spare room in 6 months, while ultimately moving towards monopoly status of retail sales.
It’s all fun until you realise you can only by x online and there’s nowhere local left to get it any more.
The capitalist running-dog says: it’s your choice to do it; work for them, buy from them, but:
1. No one has the right to maltreat workers (ambulances parked outside warehouses?)
2. The greater tendency towards monopoly in an industry, the greater the likelihood of immorality, illegality and bad quality. It’s reined in under antitrust legislation in the US, but, hey, Amazon isn’t really in the US, is it? It’s offshore!
3. Amazon is practicing tax-avoidance. This is legal, but the money is tending to move one way: from US/UK, to offshore.
The local stiffs get subsistence-level wages. The state pays the serfs benefits funded by taxes which Amazon works hard to avoid. Funny outcome, from that justice-n-peace-n-tolerance class of leftist 21st C. geeks.
So, at the very least, Amazon should be given no credit at all, socially or any other way, and if local governments want to screw them for taxes, I don’t suppose many will shed a tear. We’re paying for their profits, which they move offshore.