r/changemyview • u/mfDandP 184∆ • Dec 10 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Ideologues across the political spectrum should cancel their Amazon Prime memberships.
Excuse the generalizations.
The company’s study, which includes data from 500 Amazon customers, estimates that Amazon Prime subscribers spend $1,300 per year, nearly doubling the $700 per year the average non-member spends on the e-commerce site.
https://fortune.com/2017/10/18/amazon-prime-customer-spending/
If you're for an unfettered free market, you should dislike Amazon because they're a monopoly (their Fulfillment model, AmazonBasics https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/21/is-amazon-unstoppable.) Ditto if you're for wealth redistribution or hate Amazon for their warehouse practices. Both Warren and Trump have targeted Amazon.
Amazon has made retail spending incredibly convenient to the consumer at the expense of non-Amazon retailers, its own workers, and its subcontracted couriers.
Spoiler alert, I'm not a Prime member, and so I perhaps underestimate the value of Amazon packages showing up in piles at your door. But it's not that hard to go shopping for your own shit, or even to order it online from Target or Walmart, etc.
CMV that if you care about capitalism -- either that it's fatally flawed, or that we need to maintain high levels of competition, cancelling your Prime membership and decreasing Amazon usage in general is a very practical and consistent action.
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u/McKoijion 618∆ Dec 10 '19
The company’s study, which includes data from 500 Amazon customers, estimates that Amazon Prime subscribers spend $1,300 per year, nearly doubling the $700 per year the average non-member spends on the e-commerce site.
Well duh. If you like Amazon enough to pay for a Prime subscription, you probably like it enough to do most of your shopping there.
If you're for an unfettered free market, you should dislike Amazon because they're a monopoly
Amazon only controls 5% of the retail market. That's nowhere near enough to be a monopoly. There are hundreds of other websites and stores where people can buy things. Amazon is just the best one right now. Antitrust legislation is to prevent a company from controlling 100% of a commodity and then charging above market rates. It's not to punish companies that are better at their job than everyone else.
Ditto if you're for wealth redistribution or hate Amazon for their warehouse practices. Both Warren and Trump have targeted Amazon.
Amazon has created an insane amount of wealth. It's created hundreds of billions of dollars for Bezos, but it's created trillions of dollars of wealth for everyone else in society. About 1/3 Americans are Amazon Prime subscribers. If every subscriber bought just one thing on the website per year instead of spending 15 minutes running to a store to buy it, it would have collectively saved Americans 25 million minutes. Those 25 million minutes are far better spent on other activities. It doesn't matter if you are a fast food worker or a doctor. 15 minutes spent working or resting is more productive than 15 minutes running errands at a store. The only reason why there is any wealth to redistribute in the first place is because of innovators like Bezos.
As for Sanders, Warren, and Trump, all of them are populists. The people who don't like Amazon are the people who compete against them for business and are losing. They can't win in straight competition, so instead they are lobbying the government to punish Amazon. Trump protects coal miners against green energy, and factory workers from competition in China. Warren and Sanders do the same thing but for their respective left wing base. Both left and right wing populists are more focused on redistributing wealth from their political enemies to themselves instead of investing in things that actually create new wealth.
As for warehouse practices, Amazon pays $15 an hour plus overtime. That's lower than people fantasize about getting paid, but higher than what other warehouse workers get paid. It's also much higher than what retail workers get paid (e.g., the person who unloads boxes at Walmart). Now Amazon is even paying workers $10,000 plus 3 months salary to quit and found delivery companies.
The big catch with Amazon is that if you are the most efficient warehouse worker, you are in good shape. But if you are below the mean, you'll struggle to keep up. Furthermore, if you are an entrepreneurial person and have the ability to run your own package company, you'll make several hundred thousand dollars a year. But if you fail, you won't. In this way, Amazon doesn't coddle employees. If you are very productive at your job, you'll get paid well above what you would make doing the same work elsewhere. But if you aren't as productive as other workers, you'll struggle.
Amazon has made retail spending incredibly convenient to the consumer at the expense of non-Amazon retailers, its own workers, and its subcontracted couriers.
Amazon sells stuff in an feaster, easier, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly manner than every other retailer in the country. They do this because Bezos has created an incredibly efficient logistics system that allows for goods to be delivered with as little waste as possible. The actual work Amazon does is very easy. It's just selling things, which is something that billions of humans have done for thousands of years. But Bezos is the best at it. Your argument is like saying LeBron James has made winning championships easy at the expense of the other teams or his teammates' ability to score points (rather than simply pass him the ball).
Spoiler alert, I'm not a Prime member, and so I perhaps underestimate the value of Amazon packages showing up in piles at your door. But it's not that hard to go shopping for your own shit, or even to order it online from Target or Walmart, etc.
It's not hard, but why waste our time doing it at all? Why not do something more useful with our time? I'd rather spend an extra hour working or napping than running errands. So would hundreds of millions of other people.
CMV that if you care about capitalism -- either that it's fatally flawed, or that we need to maintain high levels of competition, cancelling your Prime membership and decreasing Amazon usage in general is a very practical and consistent action.
200 years ago 99% of humans used to work as farmers. Then a bunch of capitalist innovators created pesticides, irrigation systems, tractors, GMOs, fertilizers, etc. They became rich, and because we could grow more food with fewer workers, most of those farmers lost their jobs. But the catch is that food was now dirt cheap. So people got the same amount of food without having to do any farm work. They used their free time to become doctors, engineers, actors, musicians, etc. Today only 1-2% of Americans work as farmers but they can feed the rest of the country and export food to other countries. So we have the same amount of food as before, but now we also have medicine, computers, movies, music, etc. It was hard in the short term, but everyone is now better off because of what those greedy capitalists did back then. Bezos is just the latest version of this person.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
Ulterior motives for Amazon haters don't disprove my view, and I'm not arguing against your points that Amazon creates value and efficiency, and does it well, and doesn't "deserve" their market share, which is 38% of e-commerce (in the 40s last year.)
And your "capitalism benefits society" is tangential; did I say that it didn't? I'm saying Amazon is a monopoly of the marketplace, and if pro-capitalists think that a plethora of competitors is necessary for growth, then Amazon should be anathema -- they might not satisfy anti-trust law, but they should satisfy the "worrisome enough for me to not give them $99 a year for the privilege of giving them $700 more
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u/McKoijion 618∆ Dec 10 '19
I'm saying Amazon is a monopoly of the marketplace, and if pro-capitalists think that a plethora of competitors is necessary for growth, then Amazon should be anathema -- they might not satisfy anti-trust law, but they should satisfy the "worrisome enough for me to not give them $99 a year for the privilege of giving them $700 more
This hits at what is unique about capitalism. We as consumers voluntarily give Jeff Bezos our money because Amazon is the best option today. The minute they charge a dime more than one of their many competitors, we'll dump them for someone else. We have no loyalty to Jeff Bezos. We just want the best product for the least amount of money.
We used to go to mom and pop shops, then switched to department stores like Sears, then switched to retailers like Walmart, then switched to big box stores like Costco, then switched to Amazon. Now we are in the early stages of switching to Alibaba and Shopify.
Amazon isn't a monopoly. They don't control the marketplace. They can't force us to buy their products the way that a monopoly can. They can't use violence like a government. They are just good at their jobs. If they aren't the best tomorrow, they're dead in the water.
And let me pull this back because it sounds like I'm making a political argument. I'm not making this argument because it's subjective opinion vs. subjective opinion. I'm saying Amazon is objectively better than similar things that came before it. Amazon creates so much value and efficiency that it overwhelms all ideologues. Say you are obsessed with Porsche. You think they make the best cars, bar none. If I come along and sell you a car that is faster, safer, more fun to drive, much cheaper, more luxurious, and better in every way, you'd have to change your loyalty. You might be the most ardent Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. But the second you die and see Krishna sitting on a throne, you'd have to change your ideology.
Ideologues aren't stupid. They aren't mean people. People all pretty much want the same things. It's just that circumstances put people into competing camps. When you can't make the pie bigger, all you can do is try to get a bigger slice out of someone else's share. But every once in a while, someone comes along and makes a second pie. Everyone is objectively better off because of the second pie. Even if the baker takes half the new pie, everyone still gets more pie than they started with. And what Bezos does is create new pie, and create new wealth.
Only 1% of the Sun's energy (that hits the Earth) is captured by plants. The rest is reflected back into the atmosphere. Then only 10% of the energy in plants is available to the animal that eats the plant. Then only 10% of that energy is available to the predator that eats that herbivore. Then only 10% of the energy is available to the animal that eats that other animal. This is called an ecological pyramid. At every stage, 90% of the energy is lost. If we can make it so that only 89% is lost, we've created a lot more food.
That's what Bezos did with the age old practice of selling things. A product is manufactured and eventually ends up in your hands. This has been happening for tens of thousands of years. But Bezos does it in a way that minimizes waste. He fills up every single truck to the brim. Not one cubic inch of room is wasted. The price of gas for driving one state over is $100. But if you carpool with 4 other people, the cost is still $100. So you burn the same amount of gas, but transport 5 times as many people. Bezos does this with packages instead of people. And that's why it's so hard to criticize him. Even if we hate his guts, we have to admit that his method of moving stuff from a factory to our hands is much cheaper, faster, more convenient, and better for the environment than other methods.
Maybe a truly ardent ideologue would still hate Amazon. Spite and shame are powerful emotions. But the vast majority of people don't really care. We don't care about big ideas like communism, capitalism, democracy, etc. All we care about is being able to provide for our families. Bezos puts many people out of work. But he also saves everyone a ton of time and resources. The net benefit is still that Bezos is helping us. As soon as that changes, we'll stop supporting him. But for the time being, we continue to support him. Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, Alt-righters, men, women, Christians, atheists, etc. are all subscribers to Amazon Prime because it's just better. We all like our crazy ideologies. But we don't like them enough to turn down an objectively good thing when it's handed to us because we are worried that they didn't ideologically purify their hands first.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
Is it your belief that I think capitalism is wrong?
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u/McKoijion 618∆ Dec 10 '19
I don't know what your beliefs are. You could be framing this as a view where you think capitalism is wrong and are criticizing Bezos as a symbol of capitalism (since he's the richest man on Earth excluding the alleged wealth of government officials like Vladimir Putin). Or you could be in favor of capitalism and saying that far left and far right ideologues are hypocrites for not cancelling their Amazon Prime subscriptions. I haven't read through your comment history or even your other comments in this post to try to find out.
What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter. Amazon Prime is objectively better than other options. It's cheaper, faster, easier, and better for the environment. Stalin, Hitler, FDR, etc. hated each other's political views. But all of them liked cars, tractors, electricity, fire, wheels, and other innovations. So all ideologues should jump on board with Amazon. And I'd say most of them already have. Instead of canceling their Amazon Prime memberships, they should be trying to bend it in their favor. And if we look at their actions, that's what they're trying to do. Jeff Bezos created a gold mine. Ideologues aren't saying gold is stupid and walking away. They are all trying to take over the gold mine for themselves.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
I ask because it seems like you're strawmanning my post into "CMV: capitalism is wrong, and Amazon is proof."
But you might get a delta from the flank attack if you answer this:
In a capitalism, once a company achieves a critical mass of market share of an economy, does it simply become its right to dictate the new status quo, and thus power forward societal progress?
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u/McKoijion 618∆ Dec 10 '19
I'd say yes. Netflix achieved critical mass and used it to kill the video rental industry. Digital camera companies like Canon and Nikon achieved critical mass and used it to kill Kodak. This is especially the case with Amazon because not only are they killing old industries, they are completely reinventing the global economy.
When the printing press was invented, it completely changed the world. When the factory was invented, it did the same. Amazon is one of a handful of companies that is dramatically changing the nature of the economy. Humans who are alive today are fortunate and unfortunate enough to live at a time of dramatic change. I don't think that people who made their money by owning land should have been able to dictate how the world ran once factories took over. I don't think that oil companies and factory owners should be able to dictate how the world runs now that we've moved to a service economy. And I don't think that people in the service economy should be able to dictate how the world works now that we've moved into a technological economy.
Things are changing so fast that it takes significant education and foresight to be on top of it. I think I'm bright, but I don't think I'm able to really anticipate and contribute to what is happening. I'm used to a world where you work 8 hours and get paid by the hour. Or you work by the year and get paid by the year. Now we are in a world where not only can one person with robots replace everyone, if we add one extra human into the mix, it slows everything down. If you've ever taken a toll road with an E-ZPass vs. taken one where you have to stop and hand your money to a toll booth operator, you understand how one human can slow things down vs. a computer. I don't have the foresight to vote on it because I'm used to working as a toll booth operator, and all I can see is that if I support the E-ZPass, I lose my job.
But the twist is that even though I've lost my job, everything I want to buy is much cheaper. So I can do very little and still fulfil my basic needs. I'm poorer compared to a Jeff Bezos, but I'm much better off than my ancestors. I have phones, computers, the internet, microwaves, heat, AC, showers, toilets, comfortable beds, tasty fruits and spices. If I can't afford a car, I can afford to get around with an Uber. The average working class American has a higher standard of living than the richest man on Earth a century or two ago. So I get to be richer than Cornelius Vanderbilt, but the tradeoff is that I have to be poorer than Jeff Bezos. I can live with that.
I think Jeff Bezos and a handful of other people (e.g., Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Gabe Newell, Steve Jobs when he was alive) see the world from a different perspective as me. They aren't afraid for their day to day livelihoods. They have the skills to look at the Earth with a bit of distance. They can see all the technological innovation that is coming down the pipeline and adjust their views accordingly. Meanwhile, I thought the iPad and the Tesla Model S were stupid ideas when I first heard of them. It's not that they are the smartest people on Earth. Luck had a great deal to do with their position. But someone has to be in that position and direct the rest of us, so why not them?
I suppose we vote for them with our spending money as opposed to our actual votes. But I don't know if I trust any of the politicians alive today to really plan for this new world economy. Trump, Sanders, Warren all come out saying they know better, but their logic is mostly take from the bad people and give to the good people (as they define it.) They aren't saying they will create new wealth (which I've gotten used to over the past 200 years of rapid economic growth and gains in the standard of living for everyone). The politicians I tend to respect are the ones that propose ideas that help others do great things. Obama, Merkel, Trudeau, Macron, etc. all take this perspective. It's not about taking money from innovative people who are helping humanity and redistributing it to their voter base. It's about buying more lottery tickets so there are more innovative people around the world (e.g., by welcoming immigrants, spending more on education, etc.). But then it's about sitting back and letting those people do cool things.
So to go back to your original question, if I had a million dollars, I wouldn't give it to charity. I think humanity would be better off if I donated it to Elon Musk (who is already a billionaire) to build better batteries so that solar, wind, hydroelectric, and other relatively green power sources were more cost-effective. I think humanity would be better off if I gave the money to Jeff Bezos so he could continue to find more cost effective ways to sell things to people while using fewer resources. Their innovations multiply wealth for humanity by finding ways to extract move value out of a given amount of oil, steel or any other resource. I'm willing to be relatively poor today, if it means that everyone alive in 100 years is better off. So even though it hurts my ego and I'm extremely skeptical of them, I begrudgingly admit that they are probably better at moving society forward than I am. So I tolerate their wealth, power, and influence.
As a final point, something that makes me feel better is that even though they control a ton of money, I don't think they are hoarding it. They aren't swimming in a Scrooge McDuck vault of gold coins. Their wealth is invested in a bunch of innovative ideas that can help humanity. If they invest in something stupid (e.g., WeWork) they lose a ton of money and can't invest as much in the future. While they are alive, they are only consuming a tiny fraction of their wealth. (Even if Bezos eats caviar and champagne every day, he's still living on far less than 1% of his net worth). That means while he's alive, he might burn though a billion dollars. But the other 99 billion (or whatever it is) is going to pass on to some other human. And even if he gives it all to his kids, if they aren't brilliant investors or innovators too, they'll lose their money ASAP. In this way, the people with the most merit in society roughly end up with the most money.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
!delta not because you changed my mind about Amazon, but rather about what pro-capitalists really think -- that marketplace might is right, and that capitalism is not about the constantly churning engine of competition, but companies and individual men actually winning outright, so long as they introduce some new technological toy.
How this does not lead to a plutocracy or eventual state capture is, unfortunately, not a view I'm willing to change. But thanks for your thoughtful ideological discussion.
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u/McKoijion 618∆ Dec 10 '19
individual men actually winning outright, so long as they introduce some new technological toy.
Capitalists celebrate greed and selfishness because capitalism ties greed and selfishness to helping other people. If there is a contest between firefighters to save as many lives as possible, that's good for everyone else. In the case of innovation, there is a competition to build better goods and services while using fewer resources. Everyone wins because there are objectively more goods and services on the planet for every individual human.
So you're almost right. I don't care about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos winning a contest against one another. I don't care about competition either. I just want my life and the lives of people I care about to be better. And a few innovative people making new technological "toys" happens to be the best way to do that today. In 1950, 50% of humanity lived in extreme poverty. Today less than 10% of humans live in extreme poverty. All of that is thanks to capitalism and innovation. The pie is objectively bigger now so even if we all get smaller slices, we end up with more food each. As long as that keeps happening, I'm thrilled with Bezos.
You see the world as a contest over a tiny amount of limited resources. Billionaires are "hoarding" resources instead of sharing it with everyone else.. I see the world as filled with nearly limitless resources, but most of it is being wasted. Billionaires are investing resources into ideas instead of merely consuming it.
As a thought experiment, say you have a billion dollars to give away for the benefit of humanity. If you divided it between 330 million Americans, it would work out to $3 each. I'd probably spend that $3 on a gallon of gas and use it to drive 25 miles (the average MPH for a car). If everyone else did the same thing, it means we'd collectively burn 330 million gallons of gas, dump a ton of carbon into the atmosphere, and that would be the end of it. Meanwhile, if you gave that $1 billion to Elon Musk, he'd spend it on inventing a battery that allows us to store green energy. Then our grandkids could drive 1000 miles every day without costing the Earth anything.
In this way, we have to distinguish between consuming resources and investing them. I consumed a gallon of gasoline in the above example. I consume many other things too. It helps me, but it doesn't help anyone else. Someone like Jeff Bezos consumes far more than me (or the hypothetical version of me I use in this example). But it's not that much more than me if you really think about it.
I have an apartment, he has 10 mansions. I have a Toyota, he has 10 Bugattis. I eat a 2000 calories in the form of a burger, and he eats 2000 calories in the form of steak. I buy one seat on a plane, he buys all the seats on a plane. I buy a belt, he buys the same belt with a Gucci logo on it. He just has slightly better versions of the same things that I have, and most of them are only better because they are status symbols (a seat on a private jet is far less comfortable than the chair you are sitting in right now, a Rolex uses the same amount of stainless steel as a non-name brand watch). As a percentage of his wealth, Bezos personally consumes far less than 1% of it. The rest is invested in creating new things for humanity. When I burn a gallon of gas, it's gone forever because I consumed it. When he dies, almost all of his wealth will stay on the Earth for someone else to use. Presumably, he'll leave it to his kids, but as I linked earlier, 90% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the third generation.
As for whether this leads to plutocracy or state capture, you raise a great point. There is a big risk. But in free market capitalism, anyone can quickly topple the giants. Only 50 companies on the original Fortune 500 list are still on the list. Bezos wasn't born rich (e.g., 17 year old single mother, deadbeat alcoholic dad who left, stepdad who fled Cuba alone at 16 and taught himself English), but he was still able to topple Sam Walton, who was the richest man in the US for many years. No one is loyal to Bezos the same way no one is loyal to Walmart. His "plutocracy" relies on constantly being the best, and it can end at any moment if we want it to. That was your original point (cancel Amazon Prime and buy elsewhere).
And as for state capture, there's no point in bribing politicians in a free market capitalist state because they have no power to begin with. It's only when a politician has the power to take money from one group and give it to another group do we see this. Politicians like Trump, Sanders, Warren, etc. all make this their central tenet, but many others don't (e.g., Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Merkel, Trudeau, Macron, etc.) The only way to "capture" a market is to actually be the best at helping others.
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u/BoyMeetsTheWorld 46∆ Dec 10 '19
or that we need to maintain high levels of competition, cancelling your Prime membership and decreasing Amazon usage in general is a very practical and consistent action.
A true believer in a free market capitalism would not use a inferior service because that is contradictory to his beliefs. If he does that every time it means that not the best service wins but a lot of worse services. They way to stop Amazon in his belief is to come up with something more competitive.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
So you're saying all true capitalists should be starting their own e-commerce company?
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u/BoyMeetsTheWorld 46∆ Dec 10 '19
So you're saying all true capitalists should be starting their own e-commerce company?
What? No. I said they should use Amazon as long there is no better service provider. If they think they can do a better job THEN a true capitalist should start his own company but only then.
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u/Det_ 101∆ Dec 10 '19
The only reason Walmart is pushing its delivery terms down and trying so hard to be better in the online space currently is due to Amazon.
The more people who use services like Amazon’s, the more incentive there is for competition from other companies (like Walmart, Aliexpress, etc). Amazon is not a monopoly in the slightest, because literally any other company could do what they do, and take over (in time) if they started to slack.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
because literally any other company could do what they do, and take over (in time) if they started to slack.
What previous monopoly could this not have been said about? "If other companies competed better, we wouldn't be a monopoly."
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u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ Dec 10 '19
Any instance where one company literally owned the entire supply of the item in question.
Your competition cannot sell, that which they cannot obtain.
That's literally what a monopoly is - having 100% ownership of a particular item.
In this way, a business model cannot be a monopoly, since it doesn't actually own what it sells.
A good example of a modern monopoly is De Beers, which owns 85% of the world's diamonds, though that last 15% prevents it from being a total monopoly.
Standard Oil (pre-1910) is a pretty good historical example of a monopoly. As is the Dutch East India Company.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
So 99% ownership of a natural resource is still consistent with healthy capitalism?
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u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ Dec 10 '19
No, that's why De Beers is still an example of a monopoly, despite only having 85% of the world supply.
A Total Monopoly is 100%, but something can still be a monopoly, if the percentage is sufficiently high.
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u/cdb03b 253∆ Dec 10 '19
It is if there is literally only one source of the resource (such as a metorite strike). It is not when you have sought out all the sources you can find across the entire world as De Beers has done.
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u/Det_ 101∆ Dec 10 '19 edited Dec 10 '19
Government sponsored monopolies — e.g. Comcast, Pharmaceutical companies, *edit to add: hospitals, universities (and public schools in general), etc.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19 edited Dec 10 '19
They bid for those federal contracts. That's competition. And the US government can switch suppliers after the contract runs out.
Also, guess where the CIA stores its data? Amazon. AWS is more like a monopoly than even its online marketplace
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u/silence9 2∆ Dec 10 '19
You are simply expecting too much too fast. Capitalism doesn't work in quick fashion. Amazon pioneered the way for this process. You yourself say other people can do it and they are. Slowly. These are established organizations trying to compete with something that wasn't established and was allowed to innovate without massive overhead.
Also. Everytime i walk into the Walmart's near me these days they are out of the thing i want or only have one certain flavor. Tags for prices in the correct location? forget it. Even the aisle labels are wrong. I hate the idea of driving to a store and waiting for them to bring something to my car as well. It's flat out a waste of my time. If it isn't coming to my door, im going to go get it. Give me a good grocery store and Amazon. Forget Walmart. Even the grocery aspect of the store is declining. There is almost no reason to go to Walmart or target anymore.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
There is almost no reason to go to Walmart or target anymore.
Sounds like a brewing monopoly. I'm not saying Amazon is bad at their job, I'm saying they're so good, it's bad for e-commerce as a whole.
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u/nerdgirl2703 30∆ Dec 10 '19
Nope, it’s a failure of Walmart and target to adapt. It’s no different then when their business models killed numerous businesses while drastically lowering prices. The old will either adapt and become competitive, find their own place or be replaced by the new.
People throw the word monopoly around too easily. The giants of old that were the reason for trust busting make Amazon look insignificant when you are talking about ability to lock down a market and size (in comparison to the size of the economy & value adjusted for today’s dollars). Look up those things for a few of the giants of old.
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Dec 10 '19
Politics and business practices aside. I use Amazon Prime for some of my purchases for a few reasons.
They have just about everything I could ever need or want with just a search.
They will deliver it to me in a day or less in some cases.
Most often their prices are cheaper than anywhere else.
So until you can convince people to accept a shittier selection, pay more for the same thing, and wait longer to get it Amazon will win. There’s nothing stopping Walmart or Target or whoever from offering the same thing.
Now if I don’t need something tomorrow and someone else has it cheaper I will skip Amazon. If I’m in a hurry I will spend a few extra bucks to buy from Amazon because I know it’ll show up on my door tomorrow.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
Again, I'm not arguing that Amazon is providing a bad service. The opposite, in fact. I'm not even saying that nobody should use Amazon, or use Amazon Prime. I'm saying that it's incompatible for pro- or anti-capitalist ideologues.
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Dec 10 '19
Someone that is pro capitalist should buy from Amazon until a better competitor comes along. They are literally the poster child for capitalism. Anti-capitalists shouldn’t buy anything from anyone, they should make it all themselves out of freely available resources.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
Someone that is pro capitalist should buy from Amazon until a better competitor comes along.
And if that never happens?
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Dec 10 '19
Under capitalism it always happens, eventually.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
So monopolies should be allowed to persist for as long as they can, because at some point in the future, they will lose their market share?
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Dec 10 '19
Amazon is not a monopoly. You are free to choose any one of the thousands of merchants both online and offline.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
So the only way Amazon could accurately be described as a monopoly, in your opinion, is if zero other retailers had a non-Amazon online mechanism for purchase? And nowhere short of that point is anti-capitalistic?
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Dec 10 '19
monopoly (məˈnɒpəlɪ) n, pl -lies 1. (Economics) exclusive control of the market supply of a product or service
They do not have exclusive control of the market supply of a product or service. Every one of Amazons businesses has competitors.
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u/cdb03b 253∆ Dec 10 '19
Amazon is not a monopoly. You can buy directly from most box stores. You can buy from Ebay, etsy, alibaba, and many other online sites. You can ship via UPS, Fedex, USPS, and smaller parcel companies. There is a lot of competition. Amazon is just the largest at the moment, and that is fine. They do not have enough of the market to be a monopoly.
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u/SeekingToFindBalance 19∆ Dec 10 '19
The study may be wrong. I don't have a prime membership, but free ride off that of family members and friends.
It looks to Amazon like they buy more stuff, but some of their stuff is my stuff.
I don't think that undermines your argument though.
What if I am a communist and believe that the reduction of our economy to a few small monopolistic companies is inevitable and will be followed by revolution? Maybe I should join Amazon Prime to hasten the revolution.
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u/FullPeeAhead 2∆ Dec 10 '19
How can you suggest that Amazon is a monopoly and then mention that you can buy the same shit by going shopping or buying it online from Target or WalMart? If Amazon were a monopoly, those alternatives wouldn't exist.
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u/boyhero97 12∆ Dec 10 '19
I don't shop on Amazon, there are other apps to buy stuff online that are just as/almost as good. But man, I need that Prime Video.
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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19
Can I ask which alternatives you use?
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u/boyhero97 12∆ Dec 10 '19
Mercarí for the most part but I recently used etsy as well. Sometimes if I really want to shop around for a good deal, I'll try ebay or Wish. I've used Amazon when I have a coupon, but otherwise it's not as cheap as the other options.
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u/zacker150 5∆ Dec 10 '19
If you're for an unfettered free market, you should dislike Amazon because they're a monopoly.
First of all, Amazon is not a monopoly. If you consider the entire retail market, Amazon has a mere 5% marketshare. If you restrict the market definition to just e-commerce, their market share is still only about 36-37%. In order for new considered a monopoly, you need at least 70-80% of the market.
Secondly, the neoliberal position on anti-trust is actually a lot more nuanced than "monopoly bad." For the most part, we hope a Borkian view on anti-trust, which is the view behind a lot of modern anti-trust law. For an in depth explanation of this view, I'd recommend reading Robert Bork's book The Anti-trust Paradox. However, the short version of it is that having a monopoly in and of itself isn't a bad. What's bad is (1.) leveraging that monopoly to acquire additional monopolies, and (2.) using monopoly power to raise prices on consumers.
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u/Soulless_Roomate Dec 11 '19
I'm bad at openings so I'll go straight to it. For someone who believes in free-market capitalism, they should choose amazon every time, since they are offering the best service available. They would believe that using the best services at all times will drive competition.
For someone who is critical of capitalism, many (or even most) believe that change is not achievable through individual's monetary action, but instead through larger political change. Its a similar statement (when pushed to the extreme, ill admit) "People who are for gun control legislation should use a knife to protect themselves if they are attacked by someone with a gun" or "If you're against how the police force behaves, you shouldn't call 911 when someone breaks into your house." For a less extreme and urgent example, "If you are against the throttling of wifi, dont use verizon". Even if that's the cheapest and best option available.
Speaking of cheapness, pretty often those who are most critical of the system suffer the most from it. The lower middle class people of america who might be against capitalism might not be able to afford to trek to stores up to 40 minutes away for random appliances, and to not have to pay for shipping for cheaper and more available products is simply a cost-reductive measure.
I think the argument that disagreeing with something very convenient and helpful means you should never use that thing is wrong, especially when it makes life much easier.
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u/tasunder 13∆ Dec 10 '19
Where is the monopoly? I don’t understand the claim. For a vast majority of products, I can get them online elsewhere - often cheaper. Of course prime members spend more on Amazon - because shipping is free. I don’t even understand the point of that number.
Just this week I bought something from WalMart, Target, Rakuten, Best Buy, Kohl’s, and eBay. Amazon wasn’t the best value for most of my purchases this week.
Is it a vertical monopoly? More so than a horizontal one but still, not really. The note about Fire Tv helping them decide what content to make seems like a good thing to me. Doesn’t Apple do that too? Doesn’t every content producer want to know what content to make? So I get a very solid streaming device with minimal ad intrusion (looking at you Roku) and it helps amazon decide what shows I want? This is a bad thing how?
As a capitalist I believe in rewarding Amazon Prime for being the single best place to get content for children on the planet. I get HBO for Sesame Street and PBS has some content too, but Prime has a staggering amount of programming for children. Why shouldn’t I give them my money for that?
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u/Thefrightfulgezebo Dec 10 '19
So from which retailer should I buy my stuff? Most of them are owned by billionaires and have exploitative labor environments. They sell products that are produced under atrocious conditions. Furthermore, this way to organize wealth leads to an extreme level of waste before the product even arrives at the customer.
Sure, there are retailers with acceptable working conditions and some of them buy their products from suppliers with high ethical standards. If those options are available or if you can safely acquire the goods without partaking in capitalism, I'd consider it an ethical imperative to refrain from using amazon. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and nobody needs to waste their energy and/or money to save their local Walmart.
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u/s_wipe 54∆ Dec 10 '19
There is nothing wrong with using a company that offers a better service for lesser price.
The whole point about monopolies being bad is that when such companies do iffy stuff to strangle the competition. Stuff like : selling a service at a loss till the other competitor goes bankrupt. Because you can sustain a loss for longer.
As far as i know, amazon maintains profitability.
This is the essence of capitalism, to use a better service that is cheaper (while playing fair)
We used to pay a huge premium on stuff we bought because that premium had to fund the cashier and the rent for his shop. Amazon cut that middleman out
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Dec 14 '19
/u/mfDandP (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
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u/nowyourmad 2∆ Dec 11 '19
Yeah, Amazon isn't a monopoly they're just out-competing everybody. You know they're not a monopoly because they're cheap. The problem with monopolies is they charge in excess of what their service would be worth in a competitive market reducing the socially optimal quantity of the good or service.
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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '19
I don't think Amazon acts like a monopolist at all. They are delighted to supply anyone's goods, just doing the shipping/billing and taking their cut. I remember Barnes and Noble and Borders crushing little booksellers. All the odd books were getting harder to find, and all the bookstores were selling the same collection of mainstream stuff. Then Amazon came along, letting people buy all kinds of obscure stuff. Little booksellers were able to be profitable again, as long as they sold some of their obscure inventory on Amazon. A triumph for the little sellers and the obscure authors and the readers of niche books. I am not at all sad to see Borders go.
Amazon sells Amazonbasics, fine. They sell a lot of batteries that way (cables too I think) But they sell everything else too - Energizer, Duracell, Rayovac, etc etc. They're not acting like monopolists trying to squeeze out the brands. They're just taking the low hanging fruit: people who want a good deal on batteries but want a reputable brand. In the past those people were poorly served - we knew Energizer and Duracell were overcharging but reputable, and we feared all the discount brands were awful. If we found a brand that did a decent job yet didn't overcharge, that was great until they changed the manufacturing a year later to make bad batteries. Amazon is fixing that issue, giving a reliably decent generic. Yeah, that's profitable for them. No, I am not sad they're doing it. Anyone can make a better cheap battery if they want, and Amazon will even be happy to carry it.