This was an interesting read. I had a pretty negative opinion of amazon before, I didn’t realise that they had increased minimum wages to $15 in response to criticism. But I also didn’t quite...
This was an interesting read. I had a pretty negative opinion of amazon before, I didn’t realise that they had increased minimum wages to $15 in response to criticism. But I also didn’t quite realise how broad their reach was.
The whole thing makes me feel incredibly uneasy. One person should not have that much power in a democratic system. Technology has allowed for corporations to expand in ways that were not previously possible, and policy has not caught up with reasonable checks and balances to maintain the public’s interests.
Those last 4 words are the important part. It honestly pisses me off that he drew so much of his inspiration from star trek because in the world of star trek, the whole principle is that we have...
I didn’t realise that they had increased minimum wages to $15 in response to criticism.
Those last 4 words are the important part.
It honestly pisses me off that he drew so much of his inspiration from star trek because in the world of star trek, the whole principle is that we have moved past a point in which we needed money as a resource - everyone has what they need to live comfortably and resources are split much more evenly among individuals.
Meanwhile this asshole is sitting in his fucking golden mansion and rather than doing a shit ton of good by improving how much he pays his employees, he's focusing on increasing the profitability of his company at the expense of the workers.
It's like his only real inspiration from star trek was "lol space is cool".
It's the literal USS Callister, where the main character tunneled in on "in the show, the crew was loyal to the captain and he was the focus" and missed that the Star Trek analogue was also about...
It's the literal USS Callister, where the main character tunneled in on "in the show, the crew was loyal to the captain and he was the focus" and missed that the Star Trek analogue was also about the ship being a representation of the Federation, and the Captain was in charge of maintaining those principles, not putting his feet up and being in charge.
I mean, Amazon has done a lot to push us forward in the areas of Tech and Industry. You don't get to a utopian Star Trek style future without that progress being built with innovation and...
I mean, Amazon has done a lot to push us forward in the areas of Tech and Industry. You don't get to a utopian Star Trek style future without that progress being built with innovation and currently you dont have massive innovation without profits. Think of Amazon as a stepping stone to that future.
True, but in order to achieve such utopian goals, it's important to ensure technological and industrial progress is actually used to help people. The trope of "fully automated luxury gay space...
True, but in order to achieve such utopian goals, it's important to ensure technological and industrial progress is actually used to help people. The trope of "fully automated luxury gay space communism" is an exaggeration, of course, but it depends on automation being used to fulfill people's resource needs. Under capitalism, though, automation is turned into a bad thing because it's implemented for the business owners' profit and leads to job loss. If these innovations aren't applied in a way that increases equity for everyone, they can actually lead to regressions in societal benefit.
Ehh, I don't really think this is a technology outpacing policy issue, more of a refusal to enforce antitrust law due to regulatory capture issue. It's not like Bezos' overall strategy is...
Technology has allowed for corporations to expand in ways that were not previously possible, and policy has not caught up with reasonable checks and balances to maintain the public’s interests.
Ehh, I don't really think this is a technology outpacing policy issue, more of a refusal to enforce antitrust law due to regulatory capture issue. It's not like Bezos' overall strategy is fundamentally new, it's just that we used to break up business empires that tried it.
I agree with your main point, but I also don’t think that this kind of rapid expansion would not have been possible without technology. The speed and reach of amazon’s expansion was facilitated by...
I agree with your main point, but I also don’t think that this kind of rapid expansion would not have been possible without technology. The speed and reach of amazon’s expansion was facilitated by tech, and, at least from where I’m sitting, it feels like the company got incomprehensibly huge before public debate really had any hope of wrangling with the full implications of letting this kind of growth go unchecked. And now it’s probably too late to do anything about it.
Edit: that said, I’m not American so I’m sure I only have an incomplete understanding of the situation
I don't think big tech really grew that much faster than past paradigm shift businesses. Standard Oil (the archetypal American monopoly) controlled 90% of the oil production in the United States...
I don't think big tech really grew that much faster than past paradigm shift businesses. Standard Oil (the archetypal American monopoly) controlled 90% of the oil production in the United States less than 20 years after its foundation; Amazon's been around 25. It's also absolutely not too late to do anything about it, we've dealt with this kind of thing before, and the laws we used to break up and regulate the old monopolies of the gilded age are still on the books, all we need to do is enforce them. Judiciously.
You're right. The reason I wrote that was that I have become extremely pessimistic about politics lately, and I struggle to see a reality where there is the political will to carry it through. But...
It's also absolutely not too late to do anything about it, we've dealt with this kind of thing before, and the laws we used to break up and regulate the old monopolies of the gilded age are still on the books, all we need to do is enforce them. Judiciously.
You're right. The reason I wrote that was that I have become extremely pessimistic about politics lately, and I struggle to see a reality where there is the political will to carry it through.
But I'm going to try and stop posting so pessimistically, I don't think it's helping anything.
I don’t have the background to thoroughly do a comparison, but if you compare Amazon/Bezos to some of the U.S. corporations/barons of the gilded age, I think they stack up similarly. Or something...
I don’t have the background to thoroughly do a comparison, but if you compare Amazon/Bezos to some of the U.S. corporations/barons of the gilded age, I think they stack up similarly. Or something like the British East India Company. Amazon isn’t unprecedented, but also, there are political issues such as the Citizens United ruling in the U.S. which gives Amazon certain legal influence that was not overtly afforded to U.S. corporations in the past.
This was an interesting read. I had a pretty negative opinion of amazon before, I didn’t realise that they had increased minimum wages to $15 in response to criticism. But I also didn’t quite realise how broad their reach was.
The whole thing makes me feel incredibly uneasy. One person should not have that much power in a democratic system. Technology has allowed for corporations to expand in ways that were not previously possible, and policy has not caught up with reasonable checks and balances to maintain the public’s interests.
Those last 4 words are the important part.
It honestly pisses me off that he drew so much of his inspiration from star trek because in the world of star trek, the whole principle is that we have moved past a point in which we needed money as a resource - everyone has what they need to live comfortably and resources are split much more evenly among individuals.
Meanwhile this asshole is sitting in his fucking golden mansion and rather than doing a shit ton of good by improving how much he pays his employees, he's focusing on increasing the profitability of his company at the expense of the workers.
It's like his only real inspiration from star trek was "lol space is cool".
It's the literal USS Callister, where the main character tunneled in on "in the show, the crew was loyal to the captain and he was the focus" and missed that the Star Trek analogue was also about the ship being a representation of the Federation, and the Captain was in charge of maintaining those principles, not putting his feet up and being in charge.
I mean, Amazon has done a lot to push us forward in the areas of Tech and Industry. You don't get to a utopian Star Trek style future without that progress being built with innovation and currently you dont have massive innovation without profits. Think of Amazon as a stepping stone to that future.
True, but in order to achieve such utopian goals, it's important to ensure technological and industrial progress is actually used to help people. The trope of "fully automated luxury gay space communism" is an exaggeration, of course, but it depends on automation being used to fulfill people's resource needs. Under capitalism, though, automation is turned into a bad thing because it's implemented for the business owners' profit and leads to job loss. If these innovations aren't applied in a way that increases equity for everyone, they can actually lead to regressions in societal benefit.
Ehh, I don't really think this is a technology outpacing policy issue, more of a refusal to enforce antitrust law due to regulatory capture issue. It's not like Bezos' overall strategy is fundamentally new, it's just that we used to break up business empires that tried it.
I agree with your main point, but I also don’t think that this kind of rapid expansion would not have been possible without technology. The speed and reach of amazon’s expansion was facilitated by tech, and, at least from where I’m sitting, it feels like the company got incomprehensibly huge before public debate really had any hope of wrangling with the full implications of letting this kind of growth go unchecked. And now it’s probably too late to do anything about it.
Edit: that said, I’m not American so I’m sure I only have an incomplete understanding of the situation
I don't think big tech really grew that much faster than past paradigm shift businesses. Standard Oil (the archetypal American monopoly) controlled 90% of the oil production in the United States less than 20 years after its foundation; Amazon's been around 25. It's also absolutely not too late to do anything about it, we've dealt with this kind of thing before, and the laws we used to break up and regulate the old monopolies of the gilded age are still on the books, all we need to do is enforce them. Judiciously.
You're right. The reason I wrote that was that I have become extremely pessimistic about politics lately, and I struggle to see a reality where there is the political will to carry it through.
But I'm going to try and stop posting so pessimistically, I don't think it's helping anything.
I don’t have the background to thoroughly do a comparison, but if you compare Amazon/Bezos to some of the U.S. corporations/barons of the gilded age, I think they stack up similarly. Or something like the British East India Company. Amazon isn’t unprecedented, but also, there are political issues such as the Citizens United ruling in the U.S. which gives Amazon certain legal influence that was not overtly afforded to U.S. corporations in the past.
Standard oil
Well, I guess this is good for science fiction? I'm curious about what Neal Stephenson project is in the works.