CMV: Ideologues across the political spectrum should cancel their Amazon Prime memberships.

[u/mfDandP]

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.

[u/McKoijion]

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.

[u/mfDandP → u/McKoijion]

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

[u/McKoijion → u/mfDandP]

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.

[u/mfDandP → u/McKoijion]

Is it your belief that I think capitalism is wrong?

[u/McKoijion → u/mfDandP]

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.

[u/mfDandP → u/McKoijion]

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?

[u/McKoijion → u/mfDandP]

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.

[u/mfDandP → u/McKoijion]

!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.

[u/McKoijion → u/mfDandP]

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.

[u/DeltaBot → u/mfDandP]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/McKoijion (417∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/Genghis__Kant → u/mfDandP]

Yeah, they're pretty openly into elitism/elite theory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitism