[HN Gopher] 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon emp...
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1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
Author : pseudolus
Score : 390 points
Date : 2021-07-30 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| justinzollars wrote:
| I have to say - Amazon is almost the only thing that works during
| COVID. Everything else is pegged.
|
| I've been waiting 6 months to buy a couch, every time I check on
| an update, its delayed. Government services are impossible to
| work with, try getting a passport or license. If you have an
| emergency every office is closed or dysfunctional. Amazon on the
| other hand works fine. I'm so thankful for it.
| ketzo wrote:
| Yeah, there's a reason Amazon is on or near the top of those
| "which institutions do you trust most?" polls. Regardless of
| what you think about the company's practices/dominance/anything
| else, there is a _lot_ to love about consistency.
| binaryblitz wrote:
| Not just consistency, but customer service. It's gone down a
| bit in recent years, but Amazon is still amazing at it. I can
| actually chat with someone, almost instantly, if I'm having a
| problem. Having had to deal with flight delays on American
| Airlines recently, it's insane how much of a difference there
| is.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I cancelled all of my 'subscribe and save' items on Amazon last
| year because they stopped delivering them. I think Amazon
| delivered maybe half of what I ordered in 2020. I've all but
| given up on Amazon at this point.
| barbazoo wrote:
| You're comparing apples to oranges.
|
| Would you be able to buy a couch on Amazon? The #1 bestseller
| on Amazon currently says "Currently unavailable. We don't know
| when or if this item will be back in stock." so it doesn't work
| here the same way other retailers don't work.
|
| So you're saying you can't get a passport from the government
| but you're able to buy certain things on Amazon therefore
| Amazon is better?
| stickfigure wrote:
| I just opened amazon incognito, searched for "couch", and
| everything seems to be available in a week. Some in 4 days.
| underseacables wrote:
| Don't you need to lay on it first? I've avoided beds like
| Casper because it's an inconvenience if I don't like it.
| Gotta lay on the couch.
| binaryblitz wrote:
| Having had to get a passport recently, yes. At least better
| in the sense that you are actually receiving a service you've
| paid for.
|
| It is virtually impossible to get an appointment at the
| passport office in the US right now. Not a local passport
| office, ANY passport office. There were people outside the
| one I went to offering a Nintendo Switch to people to trade
| for a time slot. The shortest wait time I had on the phone
| was three hours, and I called one minute after they opened.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are arguing here. You can buy things
| on Amazon but it's difficult to get a Passport right now.
| How is one thing related to the other?
| tbihl wrote:
| Probably parent is writing in terms of the common line of
| thinking that Amazon exercises significant control over
| our lives by being so enormous and saying that it's not
| nearly so abusive a relationship as ones he's trapped in
| with other large institutions.
|
| And if you have only a single citizenship, being stuck
| with the passport office is about as stuck as you can be.
| bserge wrote:
| You waited 3 hours for a passport appointment?
| samatman wrote:
| I just moved in to a new apartment, and I've been ordering
| furniture on Amazon. Why? Because the local Ikea is out of
| everything I've looked for, which is unsettling because I
| don't think of Ikea as running out of things.
|
| It works... ok. The delivery company only delivered one of
| three boxes for my bedframe, I got a refund but now I have a
| headboard and a mattress on the floor, and the model is out
| of stock. Woe is me, right?
|
| Everything else has gone off without a hitch, and so, tl;dr
| yes you can buy a couch on Amazon. Or Wayfair. But not
| necessarily at Ikea, at the moment. At least not here.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I did the same and used Home Depot ship to store, then
| picked it up myself.
| robocat wrote:
| Which might show the monopsony power of Amazon being
| abused.
|
| I recall an article talking about how manufacturers with
| limited stocks would supply Amazon first, prioritising
| Amazon other channels, due to the incentives of their
| contracts and the penalties imposed by Amazon's business
| processes. Unfortunately I can't find the article now...
| mcguire wrote:
| Burying the lede: " _Amazon is still a distant second to the
| country 's largest private employer, Walmart, which employs
| nearly 1.6 million people in the US, or one out of every 91
| workers._"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's the derivative that matters.
| taeric wrote:
| This sort of begs the question on how Walmart is growing.
|
| Actually, the more I think on this claim, the less it makes
| sense. The xkcd of how many weddings someone will have the
| day after their marriage comes to mind.
|
| What am I missing?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I can't find a graph of Walmart employees over time, which
| may not be surprising since it seems that they only
| directly employ about 50k of the cited 1.6M total.
|
| However, the graphs in this article from 2018 make it
| fairly clear how the trendlines for Walmart vs. Amazon
| compare:
|
| https://www.pymnts.com/consumer-insights/2018/walmart-
| amazon...
|
| Assuming the relationship between those curves is still
| roughly the same, it seems clear that Amazon's employee
| growth is likely to take it past Walmart's numbers within a
| couple of years.
| taeric wrote:
| Hmmm. I'm torn. At a first instinct, this seems a safe
| assumption.
|
| However, it is also somewhat safe to say that Amazon's
| growth has not been cutting in to Walmart, per that
| article. So what has been shrinking?
|
| That is, assume a somewhat finite pool of shoppers. Since
| Amazon has grown, and Walmart has remained steady, is
| Walmart about to start shrinking? Or is there enough of a
| shopper pool to maintain this growth for Amazon?
|
| Edit: I think it is safe to guess most of the growth came
| from the death of malls. But my question remains on how
| large is the pool of shoppers?
| buescher wrote:
| Neal Stephenson had the delivery part right.
| hammock wrote:
| There are still more Walmart employees than Amazon employees.
| samatman wrote:
| Movies, music, and microcode are holding up pretty well, for
| that matter.
| airstrike wrote:
| He got so much right on that book it's downright eerie
| flippinburgers wrote:
| What book is being referenced?
| airstrike wrote:
| Snow Crash. It's equal parts great and wacky
| api wrote:
| The cyberpunks were by far the most prophetic of all sci-fi
| writers. William Gibson didn't get the specifics right as he
| knew little about actual computers, but he really nailed the
| zeitgeist as well.
| itisit wrote:
| Fun fact: the name of the service AWS Sumerian comes from Snow
| Crash!
| 1001101 wrote:
| In 2021, the deliverators are robots (Dominoes Pizza Nuro N2 -
| https://selfdrivingdelivery.dominos.com/en)
| nicbou wrote:
| You have a friend in the family
| 0des wrote:
| paid for by the Our Thing Foundation
| JacobDotVI wrote:
| Now do it for:
|
| * US DoD * Walmart * McDonalds * USPS
| paxys wrote:
| > While it's possible that more people work at a McDonald's
| than either Amazon or Walmart -- the fast-food brand estimates
| more than 2 million globally -- the company primarily operates
| on a franchise model, so it directly employs less than 50,000
| in the US.
| hncurious wrote:
| Walmart, which has a presence in communities of all shapes and
| sizes, is the largest private employer in the nation with 1.5
| million workers. Yet the number of Americans who rely on the
| corporate giant for their livelihoods is dwarfed by the number
| who rely on the federal government for their paychecks. The
| federal government employs nearly 9.1 million workers,
| comprising nearly 6 percent of total employment in the United
| States. The figure includes nearly 2.1 million federal
| employees, 4.1 million contract employees, 1.2 million grant
| employees, 1.3 million active duty military personnel, and more
| than 500,000 postal service employees.
|
| https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/438242-the-federal-gover...
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| State and local is even bigger. Id guess 600k employees of
| New York state/county/city/town/authority payrolls.
|
| Mass employment businesses aren't common. I visited a gold
| ball factory once... there were about 3 people packing boxes
| and one dude fiddling with the machines.
| kaydub wrote:
| I was going to say, I've looked at local statistics before
| for my area and found out the city and local municipalities
| have a ton of employees. Typically the biggest employer in
| your city is going to be your city, possibly your county.
| np_tedious wrote:
| Is "gold ball" some kind of industry term or classification
| of a factory? Or are they literally producing spheres of
| gold?
|
| EDIT: oooh, you probably meant "golf ball". I was not being
| purposely difficult, just dumb
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I apologize I intended golf ball!
|
| I would imagine that internal controls would require more
| employees of a factory making balls from gold! :)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| When you consider "part time + another job" vs full time
| employment the "who is solely dependent on what for their
| livelihood" comparison probably tips even further toward the
| federal government.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| And those aren't the only checks people get from the
| government.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Also consider that quite a lot of people work within Amazon's
| greater sphere, with degrees of dependence ranging from
| significant to absolute. Eg all the people employed in parts of
| the ecommerce industry where amazon wields most of the power.
| AWSland. Etc.
|
| Since everyone is using government works as the comparison,
| government employees + government contractors, and those in the
| government contracting sphere.
|
| so, yeah... they're big. At the very least, amazon jobs are now a
| standard of sorts. What they do and/or don't do as an employer
| _is_ what 's normal.
| hammock wrote:
| There are still more Walmart employees than Amazon employees.
| dalbasal wrote:
| True, they're big too.
|
| That said, amazon is just more of a moving target. So, news.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| If you work in the book world, in a ton of small businesses
| that sell through or buy from amazon, they are a monster. Their
| delivery drivers seem to be everywhere these days (we have I
| think two deliveries per day in my area - one pass is as late
| as like 10PM - not your parents USPS).
| xfalcox wrote:
| It's bizarre. I'm not even american but Amazon is such a big part
| of my day to day life.
|
| - At work we use AWS
|
| - Amazon uses my company software
|
| - My wife is a retailer and now sells on Amazon
|
| - During work I use Twitch.TV as background noise (Amazon bought
| Twitch.TV)
|
| - Last week, after work I was playing the new Amazon MMO game.
|
| - After dinner I was watching The Office on Amazon Prime
| BrissyCoder wrote:
| Welcome to Hell World.
| haunter wrote:
| One of the main reason I slowly started removing american media
| (movies, series, books, games etc) from my life a decade ago or
| so
| ok2938 wrote:
| I do not envy you.
| simonw wrote:
| "The US has a population of 261 million and an employed non-farm
| workforce of 145 million, per the BLS"
|
| Anyone know why the "non-farm workforce" is the number reported
| here?
| JustARandomGuy wrote:
| It's nothing malicious; it's a common way to express employment
| figures. Farm payrolls tend to swell and contract seasonally
| (to pick/plant and much less work in-between) so "non-farm
| workforce" is a way of smoothing out the numbers.
| simonw wrote:
| That's a great explanation, thanks.
|
| I found this too: https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-
| vault/2019/july/nonfarm-payr...
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Rant time.... ;-)
|
| What's with these stupid "X in Y" numeric expressions that the
| dumb media insist on continuing to heap on the world ?
|
| Why not consistently use a standardised means of comparison.
|
| Like, I don't know .... percent. Or "X in 100" if you think your
| newspaper/blog/website readership are too dumb to know what the %
| symbol means. The clue's in the name FFS ... per... cent ...
| that's what its there for !
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| X in <CONSTANT> is just the inverse of <CONSTANT> in X. Each is
| appropriate at different times. 0.0004 is the same as 1 in
| 2500. I feel like 1 in 2500 is more intuitive, and that's
| generally the case for rare events, because it is oriented
| around answering the question "how rare is this?"
| throwslackforce wrote:
| You can't have a fraction of a person. The probability of
| having .65 out of 100 people working for Amazon is zero, no
| matter which 100 people you select. 1 out of 153 can at least
| happen.
| drdec wrote:
| We should start using the birthday paradox number (BPN) to
| express these things. That is, the smallest group of people
| such that the probability that at least one of them will
| exhibit the criteria is greater than 50%.
|
| In this case, the BPN for working at Amazon is 107 (assuming
| everyone in the group is a worker).
| neolog wrote:
| "1 in Y" is simpler than "X in 100". 100 introduces an
| irrelevant big number.
| caturopath wrote:
| I think OP's intuition is probably wrong and that "1 in Y" is
| more effective than "X%".
|
| That being said, it is tricky to move the adjustment between
| the numerator and denominator, and there are cases where this
| choice can be key -- "25 miles per gallon" is indeed a far
| worse metric to use than "4 gallons per 100 miles".
| samatman wrote:
| It isn't if you know the capacity of your tank in gallons,
| and want to know how far you can drive on average before
| refilling it.
|
| Or if you know the price of gasoline, and want to know how
| far you can drive for some amount of money.
|
| In fact I'm struggling to come up with practical
| circumstances where gallons per 100 miles is what I'd want
| to know, could you explain why that seems better to you?
| cs2733 wrote:
| In Portugal (and I guess several other countries) fuel
| economy is defined as "how many liters per 100 km?". In
| Brazil it's "how many km per liter?".
| neolog wrote:
| > Equal increases in MPG are not equal in gas savings.
|
| http://www.mpgillusion.com/p/what-is-mpg-illusion.html
| caturopath wrote:
| Fuel economy is typically printed the same place range
| already is computed =)
|
| mpg is used to indicate fuel economy, comparing among
| cars. People might think -- do think -- that the
| difference between a 15mpg car and a 25mpg car is similar
| to the difference between a 25mpg car and a 35mpg car.
| But the difference is nowhere close in amount of gas
| saved per year of similar driving between the two. The
| former is a great boon to the environment and the
| pocketbook, but the latter is much more modest.
| throwaway672000 wrote:
| I don't think I would see anything wrong with gallons per
| 100 miles if I was used to it. Especially if it was
| "gallons per megamile" or whatever.
|
| You see (at least in the UK) dishwashers say they only use
| x litres of water per wash or even things like "this only
| costs 10p an hour running costs".
|
| It feels like one less step to get to "how much would this
| car cost me for my 250 miles a week" - which seems more
| common than "I can afford exactly 2 gallons of petrol a
| week, how far can I get with this car".
|
| Maybe I'd feel differently if we bought fuel in the same
| units we measured its consumption in!
| ingas wrote:
| I don't see anything wrong in measuring gallons per mile
| and measuring in yards and other non-metric systems when
| it's something local. Maybe it's convinient if you live
| somewhere where everybody accustomed to that.
|
| It's when I see articles about space exploration with
| miles and pounds - it feels wrong.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Why is "1 in X" so much worse than "X in 100"?
| lordnacho wrote:
| Every time X goes up 1 in the first example, the amount
| that's actually changed is different. In the second, it's the
| same.
|
| I've eaten 1/5 of the pizza. Now 1/4. Now 1/3. Slices are all
| different sizes.
|
| I've eaten 20% of the pizza. Now 40%. Now 60%. Slices are the
| same.
| niij wrote:
| It's not. They just need something to complain about.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I generally agree with your sentiment, but not in this case.
| They're doing it here because fractional humans don't exist in
| real life, and the measure isn't being used for comparison.
|
| "1 in 153 people" is easier for the human mind to visualize
| than "0.65 out of every 100 people."
| kube-system wrote:
| Ratios and fractions are covered in (hopefully?) every grade
| school, usually right along side percentages. They're an
| entirely valid representation of data.
|
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/6th_Grade_Math_Workbook...
| Animats wrote:
| Most of Amazon's workforce does very narrow jobs. Robots will be
| doing picking and boxing as soon as Amazon can make that work.
| Then will come the massive layoffs. Except that Amazon turnover
| is so high, they will just be non-hires, so it will be invisible
| in statistics.
| screye wrote:
| The convenience of Amazon is amazing, in part because American
| urban design and malls suck.
|
| In denser neighborhoods there is a certain charm to walking
| around dense streets, and sometimes randomly entering stores that
| catch your eye. Having malls be this dreary location that you
| must visit to get anything, makes amazon look so much more
| attractive.
|
| Similarly, small roadside stores in high foot traffic areas can
| end up being sustainable due to a high number of customers per
| second. On the other hand, malls are built to be large and
| inefficient in a manner that almost feels like it's by design.
|
| There are a huge number of products that benefit from use-before-
| you-buy. Brick & mortar is innately profitable in this scenario.
| Brick & mortar stores can also facilitate warranty more easily
| and will generally have fewer returns. Usually, they would have
| be able to stand against online shopping in those product
| categories. However, most US cities lack areas that would
| naturally see high foot-traffic. This makes it impossible to
| actually run a physical store. As for the other product
| categories, I am so glad online shopping became a thing.
| [deleted]
| ok2938 wrote:
| I stopped buying from Amazon a couple of years ago - not that I
| was a frequent shopper before that. I feel it is the same
| capitalistic dilemma all over again: exploit technology and as
| opposed to make technology a force for liberation use it as a
| weapon against labor and call it innovation.
|
| We are in the beginning of our probably very long dystopia, where
| only the rich will be able to live a life off total surveillance
| and the rest will be sucked out of all remaining living traces
| for survival.
|
| The only rule I live by is that I do not try to exert power over
| anyone that I would not wanted to be subjected to myself. Period.
| kaydub wrote:
| I wonder how it looks if you consider all the companies running
| on AWS and the engineers that only use AWS. 1 out of 153 working
| for Amazon, but I guess what I'm wondering is how many _depend_
| on AWS.
| manquer wrote:
| In that case you should also consider all vendors/suppliers who
| manufacture and ship for amazon either exclusively or >50% .
| That number would be lot larger than engineers on AWS.
|
| Amazon's scale and reach is frighteningly massive.
| pm90 wrote:
| AWS is the magic that allows Amazon to scale its operations. I
| wouldn't be surprised if the Retail business was getting
| discounted (possibly free) rates for AWS products.
|
| If the US was serious about antitrust, breaking AWS from Retail
| would probably be the best thing it could do.
| runbathtime wrote:
| So that is why they ended forced arbitration?
| runnerup wrote:
| I wonder what the largest private employers as % of total labor
| force have been throughout history.
|
| We currently have a labor force of ~160 million people and
| Walmart employs "1 out of every 72 American workers" or ~1.3%
| phreeza wrote:
| Wasn't basically everyone an employee of one "company" in
| communist countries?
| gurleen_s wrote:
| No, most "communist" countries (and I use the term loosely
| because really they were just state capitalist) owned many
| different companies, rather than being part of one mega
| government corporation.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Isn't that like treating the divisions of a company
| separate?
| allemagne wrote:
| I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're
| referring to as "communist" countries are in fact, Marxist-
| Leninist, or as I've recently taken to calling them, "state
| capitalist"
| handmodel wrote:
| Its all a spectrum but I think in practice the above
| statement is meaningful.
|
| In the USSR the government set ranges of wages that
| different firms/administrators could give out. I guess in
| practice you had some choice but not if you had one entity
| with practically unlimited negotiating power.
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There were political differences, though. At least in the
| Czechoslovak Socialist Republic where I grew up.
|
| First of all, there were some collectively owned
| enterprises (cooperatives), which were a tiny bit more
| independent than directly state owned business. They
| could deviate a little from the strict, centrally
| directed price and wage norms etc.
|
| Second, even in the state owned sector, there was some
| diversity among political attitudes. Some directors were
| more pragmatic and would be willing to employ even people
| whose cadre record was tainted (e.g. a relative defected
| to the West). Some directors were hardcore Communists who
| would never tolerate suspicious or politically unreliable
| characters in their workforce.
|
| Finding a job if you were deemed politically unreliable
| was a big deal, because being jobless for a certain
| period of time was a crime punishable by prison.
| (Parasitism.)
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| It varied wildly as communist countries tried every trick on
| the table to keep their economies from dying every few years,
| but the essence was that none of them really worked before
| most minimal forms of private property, and enterprise was
| allowed.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| It depends on which country, there were multiple attempts,
| there is no "one" communism, but generally "NO".
|
| The USSR after the revolution was literally called the Soviet
| Union. A "soviet" is a council elected by workers. Basically
| workers would own the means of production through soviets,
| and they would join together as a larger governing body.
| Unfortunately, the autocrats and populists took control and
| killed everyone; or as in Russia, illness also helped kill
| the vast majority of able-bodied people which really screwed
| their production. But I'm WAY oversimplifying.
| ingas wrote:
| It seems NO.
|
| In Soviet Union considerable part was in cooperation. And
| more in Stalin era then later.
|
| Citing Russian wikipedia:
|
| > By the end of the 1950s, there were more than 114 thousand
| workshops and other industrial enterprises in its system,
| where 1.8 million people worked. They produced 5.9 % of the
| gross industrial output, for example, up to 40 % of all
| furniture, up to 70 % of all metal utensils, more than a
| third of upper knitwear, almost all children's toys. The
| system of commercial cooperation included 100 design bureaus,
| 22 experimental laboratories and two research institutes.
|
| China is capitalism all the way now.
|
| IDK about North Korea but they don't seems like a "communist
| country" for me.
| rossmmurray wrote:
| The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is definitely up there.
|
| There are 1.6m people working for NHS and about 41m people of
| working age in the UK. So that's about 1 in 26 (or 3.9%).
|
| Sources: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-
| nutshell/nhs-...,
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTGBQ647S
| z77dj3kl wrote:
| They're a public employer though, no?
| austincheney wrote:
| I don't know about private. But the largest employer in the
| world is the US Department of Defense employing an estimated
| 2.8 million people which is about triple what Amazon employs.
|
| WalMart has about 2.2 million world wide of which 1.5 million
| are US employees.
|
| Amazon, according to the article, has about 950,000 employees.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Probably the East India Company. It controlled "half of the
| world's trade", had 50k employes, its own navy and army with a
| quarter million soldiers (although most of those recruited from
| local populations). All the while England's and Wales'
| population was 5 million people at the start of the 18th
| century.
| gnuarch wrote:
| Reminds me of Rob Hart's 2019 dystopian novel "The Warehouse",
| which seems to be quite popular on Amazon, too.
| https://robwhart.com/the-warehouse/
| underseacables wrote:
| I'm torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and
| what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive
| turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all
| sorts of terrible and abusive practices.
|
| Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair
| of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a
| few other stores but I just couldn't justify $100 sneakers that
| didn't look like prison issued.
|
| Opened my Amazon app in my car after leaving the crowded mall,
| and find what appear to be a decent pair of shoes. FakeSpot
| agreed with the reviews, and I bought then for $35. They will
| arrive tomorrow.
|
| That kind of convenience is terribly addicting. I haven't figured
| out the solution, but I remember what it was like when Walmart
| came to town, put others out of business, mistreated employees,
| etc. We were unable to stop it then, how the heck are we going to
| stop it now?
|
| So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do ?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Aren't size 14 shoes on the long side of the tail? Amazon will
| always be better at that than a brick and mortar retailer.
| underseacables wrote:
| For YEARS I bought Merrills in 13W from Dicks or REI. I made
| do but I hoped PayLess were still around. Shoes are really
| expensive, but fair point, I got big feet.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The rule of, er, foot, is that any shoe store will carry up
| to 12 in just about anything, and 13 in some.
|
| 14 and 15 are sometimes available.
|
| Anything larger is a specialty store... except New Balance
| will always have up to 18 in some styles.
|
| Now, width is another matter entirely.
| monksy wrote:
| This is the same reason why we still have terrible economy
| experiences on airplanes. All of the airlines are focused on
| trying to maximimize revenue by forcing you to upgrade (if you
| want anything remotely non-terrible), and they all do it
| because they're all desperate to complete for the bottom.
|
| (Well except for the MEA Carriers)
| JoeQuery wrote:
| All you can do is do your best to not contribute to the
| problems you've identified.
|
| No one wants to be the bad guy in their own story. That's why
| excuses exist.
|
| Good luck. I understand where you're coming from.
| shakezula wrote:
| > So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do ?
|
| The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me
| in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones
| budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities
| have no other viable options for some items as well.
|
| It will take massive government action and that's it. There's
| no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are suppressed
| because it's _legal enough_ to suppress them. Labor fines
| basically become a cost of doing business.
|
| After the union busting that went on during the Alabama Amazon
| unionization votes, after all of these labor complaints against
| Amazon coming under media attention and not a single thing
| being done about it, it's clear that there is truly nothing
| that will stop it except a general strike.
| dstick wrote:
| And it's a negative cycle. Those already budget stretched
| people are getting paid poorly by Amazon, so they too will
| shop at Amazon. We're not there yet but the cycle is
| reminiscent of the factory owners with factory stores and
| pubs where the workers spend all their money during the
| industrial revolution. Unions and worker laws stem from that
| era. So who knows - maybe we're on the cusp of another
| revolution that's similar, but in our current digital
| revolution!
| marcusverus wrote:
| > We're not there yet but the cycle is reminiscent of the
| factory owners with factory stores and pubs where the
| workers spend all their money during the industrial
| revolution.
|
| Is it? Amazon employees (presumably) have the same options
| as everyone else. Many of those options are, generally
| speaking, _cheaper than Amazon._ Whatever your feelings
| about Amazon in general, fact that Amazon's supposedly
| cash-strapped employees choose to pay a premium for
| convenience is not evidence of Amazon's malevolence.
| shakezula wrote:
| There was an article on the front page about how Amazon
| does this in some places already.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store
| drorco wrote:
| There's also the other option similar to what happened after
| the New York Elevator Operator Strike in 1945 -- the total
| elimination of a profession.
|
| https://www.inc.com/thomas-koulopoulos/100-years-ago-we-
| fear...
|
| "It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that the
| tipping point came along for the driverless elevator as the
| result of a strike by the elevator operators' union in New
| York City in 1945.
|
| The strike was devastating, costing the city an estimated one
| hundred million dollars. Suddenly, there was an economic
| incentive to go back to the automatic elevator. Over the next
| decade there was a massive effort to build trust in automatic
| elevators, which resulted in the elimination of tens of
| thousands of elevator operator jobs."
|
| If Amazon is close enough to automating these jobs, then it
| will likely just automate it and fire whoever it can. If not,
| then you're likely making the path towards that faster.
|
| I don't see any way for the employees to win this beyond
| buying a bit more time. Unless the employees, the government,
| and Amazon, find a way for them to get a profession in which
| they have more leverage thanks to the *high individual value*
| they provide, rather than being a temp for future robots.
|
| One solution can be for a union, government, Amazon etc, is
| to put aside money for a fund that will invest in training
| these employees so they could one day not depend on these
| kind of low-leverage jobs.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| retraining does not work
| https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/the-
| fa...
| saurik wrote:
| > If Amazon is close enough to automating these jobs, then
| it will likely just automate it and fire whoever it can.
|
| They will do this anyway. The reason it mattered for
| elevator operators is that you had to convince a bunch of
| end users that it was reasonable to self-operate the
| elevator after they had been trained for years to have an
| attendant, and you probably had to modify the deployed
| elevators all over the city--which weren't owned by and one
| party but had been installed by various buildings--to have
| additional safety features. Amazon can replace out how
| Amazon works internally and I would have no clue.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "being a temp for future robots"
|
| While everyone was predicting that the dirty jobs would get
| automated, instead its a lot of midlevel jobs are getting
| automated, but we still don't have a robot that can take
| out the trash.
|
| I am willing to bet my house thay we can automate away the
| CEO but not the janitor, and it will be hilarious.
|
| Management is just analysis of data, we can do that. But
| the physical works requires dexterity and robotics that
| still escapes us.
| kungito wrote:
| Management isn't analysis of data, it is making a
| decision based on that analysis. A completely different
| and more complex problem. One could argue that the border
| between the two is unclear but we have for sure been
| automatizing the analysis and we are nowhere near
| removing the managers. Maybe we could say we have removed
| layers of management though
| foobiekr wrote:
| I'm with the bet-the-house guy. I've worked for huge
| organizations since 1990 and I really think that even a
| mid-grade student project could make decisions as well as
| the management I've known, which includes multiple
| Fortune 50 CEOs. When I say "known" I mean "known" and
| not "been ten layers under."
|
| What I think will happen is CEOs will be glorified actors
| that are tasked with delivering the decisions some ML
| system has made. It'll be like the "white guy in a suit"
| role that some Chinese companies have.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > we still don't have a robot that can take out the trash
|
| Because it's hard to justify the $$$ on a robot to
| automate a job that takes 30 seconds once a week.
|
| Modern people don't realize it, but an awful lot of
| household drudgery has been automated. I'm old enough to
| remember life before the microwave. What a marvelous time
| saver that is! You can even buy one from the thrift store
| for $10. I remember them being $1000, and that was back
| when a dollar was worth something.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| There's 152 other families to work as scabs for each striking
| worker. I worry all of this won't be resolved until the next
| State level paradigm shift, like when the world mostly did
| away with kings and queens for liberalism.
| shakezula wrote:
| The vast majority of those other workers won't be flexible
| enough to be able to just drop and work for Amazon.
|
| This is a problem inherent to neoliberalism, you're right,
| I'm just not sure I'd agree that it requires a nation state
| level shift in politics to make Amazon pay their fare share
| in taxes and wages.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| > A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for
| some items as well.
|
| I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to live in
| a mild-to-moderately isolated community - moving to Hawaii,
| northern Alaska, some random island. It's fascinating reading
| blogs by people who live there, and many of them have a "So
| You Want to Move to _____" type of post. In virtually all of
| them, there is some comment along the lines of "It's really
| hard to find all the things you're used to buying out here,
| but at least Amazon delivers to us." One of those that I was
| reading about Hawaii said the big island only has a few big
| box stores but Amazon can deliver in two to three days.
|
| Just thought that was an interesting tidbit.
| ProAm wrote:
| > The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to
| me in the first place, because most people who use it are the
| ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural
| communities have no other viable options for some items as
| well.
|
| They've become the new Walmart, they killed off all other
| options so now its the only place left for a lot of people.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they killed off all other options_
|
| Is it that difficult to imagine the amount of value it
| _created_ for those communities, too?
| fakesheriff wrote:
| > Is it that difficult to imagine the amount of value it
| created for those communities, too?
|
| "Value creation" generally reveals itself through a
| rightward shift in the distribution of household incomes,
| increased standards of living, and resilient supply
| chains. At least that's what Adam Smith had in mind when
| he wrote "The Wealth of Nations".
|
| If the only "value creation" KPI that ticks up is
| corporate earnings in offshore tax havens, the system
| starts to look like a non-governmental tax authority.
| ProAm wrote:
| Walmart is known as a town killer, Amazon is an industry
| killer.
| unchocked wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that commodity retail has always, for my living
| memory at least, been a pretty stressful, insecure, and low-
| wage position.
|
| Amazon's scale brings welcome visibility to the problem, and
| offers employees the chance to unionize, but I'm puzzled by
| upper-class culture's seemingly new discovery that commodity
| retail is a shitty job.
| prostoalex wrote:
| > Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed
|
| I never saw the definitive source on this, but around the time
| when the unionization vote was happening, people claiming
| experience in the logistics industry described Amazon as a
| place with low starting wages, but aggressive bonus structure
| for high performers. They also offered health benefits on day
| 1, which is unheard of in logistics.
|
| Other warehouses in the area might have different compensation
| schemes, and people would generally gravitate to the one that
| suited their work style better.
|
| The unionization vote seemed like it corroborated this thesis -
| it wasn't even 52/48, but something definitive, like 70/30
| against the union.
|
| Perhaps someone is aware of the data that incorporates take-
| home compensation with benefits and all, not the base rates
| advertised in job ads.
| forz877 wrote:
| Rewarding a select group of high performers is a great way to
| underpay overall. You sell the idea of a bonus, but bonuses
| get easily taken away, and only go to a few select
| individuals.
|
| I don't think Amazon "underpays" per say - but the working
| conditions described seem quite poor.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do?
|
| Motivate other retailers to not be such lazy louts about
| technology?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am quite impressed with all the other retailers websites,
| much more than Amazon's actually.
|
| I can see which aisle things are in the store, what can be
| picked up today, what can be ordered to the store, etc.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Half the reason I use Amazon is there web app doesn't suck. If
| I go to Walmart's website it will be ugly and slow and I'm not
| confident it will work well on my phone. Why can't Walmart get
| this right? I'm fine buying from Walmart and having them store
| my CC info like Amazon does, it's only that poor web app
| experience holding me back.
|
| Maybe someone can make an Amazon competitor that is just a
| decent shopping app. I don't care if your store only has shoes,
| if I see it and think "oh, this is another one of those non-
| shitty-web-app stores" I'm likely to come back.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| walmart.com is rebadged jet.com. It isn't a clusterfuck with
| a tech debt extending back to the 00's like the old walmart
| site.
| godot wrote:
| This is only tangentially related to your post at all, but as a
| budget-conscious shopper, I've come to realize that in America,
| there is usually a retail shop or two locally that consistently
| has the best deal for a category of things. Don't get me wrong,
| I still have to buy from Amazon for a lot of really
| miscellaneous things, but I think I manage to find good local
| deals (better than Amazon in most cases) for most category of
| items I buy, more so than most people. You just have to put in
| the work to do the research to find where those are (a lot of
| times that's about going to all these stores often enough that
| you get an understanding).
|
| In your example of sneakers, Adidas/Footlocker/Dicks are not
| the places to go for me. Here in California there is a store
| called Big5 Sporting Goods that consistently has incredible
| prices (on sale or not). In the past decade I've pretty much
| never bought shoes anywhere else; most sneakers or hiking shoes
| I've bought are under $35 and they are the most comfortable
| shoes I've tried anywhere. There may be a similar store in
| whatever state you're in.
|
| For clothes and some home goods items, similarly I wouldn't go
| to brand name stores at the malls; Ross and Marshall always
| have the best deals. For random home goods, Daiso (an
| Asian/Japanese brand store) which, fortunately for myself, has
| a lot of stores in California, has tons of super affordable
| options, as it's basically a Japanese dollar store. Then there
| are random things that Target has the best deals for; and other
| random things that Walmart has the best deals for (I know,
| buying from Walmart is not much better than buying on Amazon).
|
| My main point is, you don't always have to resort to Amazon for
| budget, you just have to do enough research work to find out
| where else to go.
| indigochill wrote:
| > That kind of convenience is terribly addicting.
|
| Cigarettes are terrible addicting too and people quit them all
| the time.
|
| As far as I can see, the low cost of the American lifestyle is
| largely subsidized by shifting the price onto others. Whether
| that's Amazon keeping prices low by exploiting labor in the
| west or Chinese manufacturers keeping prices low by exploiting
| labor in China or meat manufacturers keeping prices low by
| running factory farms, at the end of the day, the ethical
| choice is always going to have a higher price attached because
| you're eating the cost so others don't have to. The only
| solution is to put your money where your mouth is.
|
| Others say legislation, but that's a transient solution at
| best. If the lobbyists don't get to twist the legislation in
| the first place, they'll just keep lobbying until they get
| their way. They have the money and organization to make it
| happen.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I come at this from the other point of view: I used to work as
| an equity analyst (analysing companies), and I ended up
| gravitating towards retail.
|
| The issue, as you imply, isn't only that Amazon is very good
| but the experience at many physical retailers is very poor. It
| is difficult to simplify this down to one thing imo.
|
| Managers in physical retail are unusually bad. Retail used to
| be ludicrously profitable, so most companies have a dense layer
| of MBAs who have no real idea how to adapt or innovate.
|
| I recently read The Secret Life of Groceries (not great tbh,
| but did cover some useful themes) and towards the end of the
| book (paraphrasing), it is framed as grocers all "compete" to
| be the best version of the same thing. They strip all the
| difference out of their product, usually compete solely on
| price, and (ofc) someone eventually comes in and undercuts
| them. That is a failure of incentives and management.
|
| This varies by industry, and is not limited to
| incentives/management. One reason for the lack of innovation in
| sports apparel is that there are basically two suppliers, and
| one of them is moving heavily into DTC. Every sportswear shop
| is just a Nike distributor, so there is no real differentiation
| there (the only innovation in the sector has been distributors
| moving up the chain like Sports Direct and Decathlon in
| Europe). So the reason why you can't find shoes cheaper is
| actually because of Nike, not distributors (and those
| distributors lack any capacity to innovate, management is
| mostly composed of MBAs who likely have worked at Nike or
| Adidas at some point).
|
| But the solution is counter-intuitive: keep buying from Amazon.
| There is nothing structural or inevitable about Amazon's
| success (compare them with the large Chinese retailers, they
| actually look quite blundering and incompetent, they have made
| mistakes in distribution already that are going to choke them).
| Physical retail needs more innovation which can only come
| through firms dying, and entrepreneurs thinking about what
| consumers want (this happened with WMT, there was consolidation
| then competition as WMT got overrun by MBAs and they lost their
| edge...Tesco in the UK is a very extreme example of this too).
|
| I wouldn't be pessimistic either: the distinction between
| online and offline retail really doesn't exist. Look at
| restaurants like CMG, they are taking most of their orders
| online...but that doesn't change the product. It is the same
| with retail: taking an order online doesn't change the fact
| that the retailer is holding some product somewhere, and is
| distributing that to you (this is the mistake that Nike is
| making, they are going into DTC thinking they just can just cut
| everyone out, and jam up prices...it is MBA, day one strategy,
| and idiotically wrong). The real difference with offline retail
| is actually the cost of property, which is going to narrow over
| time. Ofc, this isn't universal...some verticals like hardware
| stores are ready-to-go already, others like clothing probably
| aren't (there isn't much value-add at consumer contact, and
| they pay v high rents)...but the innovation will come. I don't
| think physical retail is dead at all though. If anything the
| weakness of physical retail is that MBAs stripped all the life
| out of it which left them open to competition from online.
| Online is just delivering the message that consumers have had
| enough.
|
| EDIT: I will add that personally I think a lot of the stuff on
| Amazon is terrible. A lot of retailers in the 2000s were just
| innovating by going deeper into China, and closer to factories.
| Amazon just took that to it's logical conclusion. It works for
| some products, not for everything. Branded stuff also tends to
| be fake.
| oezi wrote:
| > There is nothing structural or inevitable about Amazon's
| success (compare them with the large Chinese retailers, they
| actually look quite blundering and incompetent, they have
| made mistakes in distribution already that are going to choke
| them).
|
| Could you elaborate?
|
| What mistakes did they do in distribution?
|
| I am just seeing them out-compete everyone. With their own
| dedicated shipping they can grab that essential percentage
| point of margins that makes them either rich or gives them
| the ability to be the best price in town.
| hogFeast wrote:
| AMZN hasn't built out close to consumers fast enough (I
| don't necessarily mean last mile here). Chinese online
| retailers, as an example, were able to same-day delivery,
| do lots of volume, hold lots of SKUs but do this with less
| space because they have a denser network (and denser
| population).
|
| This was done for rational reasons (partly US population
| density, zoning issues) but, I think, the mistake was
| motivated largely by going into third-party in the way they
| did, which necessitated tall and narrow distribution. And I
| think it is going to be difficult to make that space
| economic if third-party softens (imo, inevitable because
| they went for a free-for-all, which can only devalue your
| brand over enough time).
|
| Maybe, the position in the US is defensible. Outside the
| US, particularly in Europe, I think it is unrecoverable
| (this is partly my biased experience, AMZN has one of their
| largest warehouses globally near me, and the economics make
| zero sense given population density). So I think you will
| see companies that already have very tall and narrow
| distribution in some verticals compete within third-party
| (I am seeing this locally, apparel retailers suddenly
| becoming platforms), and then the short and wide
| distributors will cut them to pieces with less SKUs/faster
| delivery/more control over products (if you look WMT, their
| failure online is unbelievable...they probably had better
| infrastructure than AMZN until very recently, and maybe
| still have an advantage because of their locations).
|
| EDIT: I will add, this is measurable in terms of a rather
| standard retail metric: sales per sqft of warehouse space
| (inc. system/third-party sales). Right now, I think they
| are in a self-reinforcing cycle but if this softens, all
| the strengths become weaknesses (again, quite like standard
| retail). But if you see sales per sqft keep trending up for
| the next five years then I am wrong.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| When was retail ridiculously profitable? The charts for
| public retail companies going back 2 or 3 decades show sub 5%
| profit margins.
|
| The weakness of retail is that it has a low barrier to entry
| and does not provide much more utility compared to
| competitors. Quality control and branding and the internet
| make obtaining information about good products and being able
| to trust them much easier than in decades long ago.
|
| Some retail companies with upper middle class clientele can
| afford a little bit of extra margin, but it is a small
| portion of the population with that kind of disposable
| income. You put a Target/Costco/Nordstrom/Home Depot/Best
| Buy/IKEA/Apple/Trader Joes somewhere, and a handful of other
| stores and you basically have it all covered.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Margins are the difference between what it cost, and what
| you earned. But what I would call "profitability" is your
| actual return versus capital deployed.
|
| For example, I know a retailer that earns a 1%
| margin...terrible? No. They turn over their inventory every
| week (roughly), so they earn that 1% 56x times a
| year...that is a very profitable business. Similarly, I can
| earn a 90% margin but if I can only turn my assets over
| every ten years (some business are like this) then that
| business isn't very profitable.
|
| Retail provides massive utility. Retail is the link between
| producers and consumers. Most producers do not have the
| interest or the ability to sell direct to consumers, it is
| a totally different (and very expensive) business. And
| barriers to entry are significant: retail is complex, there
| are huge fixed costs, and you own the link to consumers
| (that is why distribution is where all the profit is within
| most value chains). The internet does make information
| easier but retailers also do that job, Amazon doesn't but
| product selection a competitive advantage (most consumers
| trust retailers more than they trust brands...Amazon's
| return policy is a prime example, retailers need trust).
| And there is a difference between providing information and
| distribution: if that wasn't true Consumer Reports would be
| the biggest retailer in the world (I actually agree with
| this a huge amount though, this has never made sense to
| me...but trust is complex, humans aren't totally logical,
| and the system we have is pretty good).
|
| I am not clear what your point is. But one, small
| proportions are fine, Ferrari doesn't sell to everyone and
| they do okay. Restoration Hardware is a more modern
| example. Two, your point about those stores is my point
| about why distribution is profitable. Three, and the point
| I made earlier is that most of those stores (but not all)
| have essentially become derivative of each other...and that
| is why physical retail isn't competitive. Most physical
| retailers essentially threw up their hands, and decided to
| compete on price alone which suited online retailers very
| well (as I said though, this happened when retailers took
| more control over supply chains and started sourcing
| directly from factories in China, and this largely started
| before Amazon existed but accelerated hugely in the 2000s).
|
| I can consolidate these points by mentioning Restoration
| Hardware again: no-one knew they needed Restoration
| Hardware before Restoration Hardware existed, their model
| is ludicrous, it makes no sense...but it is also very
| successful and gives consumers something they cannot get
| online. If you asked consumers what they want before cars
| were invented, they will tell you they want a better horse
| (btw, Trader Joe's is also the perfect example of
| this...they did almost everything you shouldn't do in
| retail, that is how they succeeded).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Margins are the difference between what it cost, and
| what you earned. But what I would call "profitability" is
| your actual return versus capital deployed.
|
| >For example, I know a retailer that earns a 1%
| margin...terrible? No. They turn over their inventory
| every week (roughly), so they earn that 1% 56x times a
| year...that is a very profitable business. Similarly, I
| can earn a 90% margin but if I can only turn my assets
| over every ten years (some business are like this) then
| that business isn't very profitable.
|
| I do not know what most of this is supposed to mean, but
| that is not what profit margins indicate on a company's
| 10-K. A 1% profit margin indicates little room for error,
| and given that most retailers pay bottom tier wages, it
| means they have intense competition and little pricing
| power. Very few at the very top might get rich in retail.
|
| >Retail provides massive utility.
|
| I specified that retail does not provide much utility
| compared to other retailers.
|
| >I am not clear what your point is.
|
| My point was that I disagree with your original comment
|
| >They strip all the difference out of their product,
| usually compete solely on price, and (ofc) someone
| eventually comes in and undercuts them. That is a failure
| of incentives and management.
|
| There is no failure of management or incentives. There is
| customers willing to shop somewhere else for 5 cents
| less. A few retailers, that I mentioned, will succeed
| catering the the top 1 or 2 quintiles who can afford to
| pay a little extra, but most retailers will be competing
| on mostly price alone.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Okay, to make this clear: the company that I am talking
| about earned a 67% return on investment...does this sound
| high or low level of profitability? Margin tells you
| nothing, businesses are not valued on margin but by
| return on capital (of which margin is a component but not
| the only component).
|
| Also, your points about margin are all
| wrong...supermarkets control both the price they charge
| and the price they pay. To give a simpler example (you
| are confusing lots of things like having low-paid staff)
| is HFT a profitable business? Margins are the lowest of
| possibly any business known to man, these firms are
| usually making significantly under 1% or even 0.01% on
| each trade...that ignores two things: they don't take an
| opportunity unless it is profitable (gas stations are
| another example, margins are low but essentially fixed),
| and they turn their portfolio over thousands of times per
| day. If you earn 0.01% that isn't a lot, if you earn 100
| 000x per day then that is very profitable.
|
| And I explained why retail does. If retailers aren't
| necessary, why is Amazon so large? Are Chinese factories
| just choosing to set fire to money? You explaining it
| does not make it true.
|
| Again, Trader Joe's is a perfect example. Because people
| care about price does not mean they don't care about
| anything else. This is the mistake that MBAs at retailers
| made, they chose to compete at a game they would lose.
| Again, the reason why consumers perceive their choices in
| that way is because that is how retailers have chosen to
| compete. There are lots of other models (you named one,
| Trader Joe's grew by competing on price AND also choosing
| to narrow their range significantly...the same model was
| actually used by dollar stores, they actively chose to
| run against competitors who tried to carry
| everything...competing on price does not mean that you
| have to compete on price alone).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If you earn 0.01% that isn't a lot, if you earn 100
| 000x per day then that is very profitable.
|
| My point about profit margins is that they are low profit
| margins per employee. Retail companies do not have room
| to hire better managers and workers.
|
| The low margins show that customers are only willing pay
| so much and that it is a basically all optimizations have
| been wrung out. At least until a game changer comes along
| like the internet, which provides even further
| optimizations, but those are about lowering costs,
| generally including payroll.
|
| > And I explained why retail does. If retailers aren't
| necessary, why is Amazon so large? Are Chinese factories
| just choosing to set fire to money? You explaining it
| does not make it true.
|
| I never wrote retailers are not necessary. I explained
| why most retailers cannot be differentiated from one
| another. And the answer is because for most things, the
| customer does not care for much other than low prices.
|
| Trader Joe's is a good example of there being a little
| bit of opportunity serving the richer households. Trader
| Joe's are always only in the richer parts of town, like
| Costco. But Trader Joe's is certainly not cheaper than a
| mainstream grocery store like Kroger or Winco or Aldi,
| and won't be able to compete with them in neighborhoods
| with poorer demographics.
| jliptzin wrote:
| We can start by taxing enormous corporations more, not less,
| and direct that tax revenue to the benefit of local
| communities, not the military or some general federal slush
| fund. If we're not going to go after monopolies then least we
| could do is separate companies with >$50 billion in quarterly
| revenue and tax them differently than everyone else. Obviously
| they wield a ton of power to get to that point.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Buy directly from the manufacturer's website whenever possible.
| It's not hard, especially for big-label names like those who
| make sneakers.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Amazon is Amazon because they didn't let size dull their edge.
|
| Unfortunately, that cuts both ways. There are a lot of ways to
| be exploitive, to your and your customers' benefits, when
| you're a $113 B revenue/quarter company, that simply aren't
| available when you're a startup.
|
| Hell, Walmart pioneered the "How'd you like to sell in our
| stores?" + "You need to reduce prices, or it'd be a shame if
| we, your biggest customer, had to drop you" two step. And
| Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies. Both of
| which only work if you're giant.
|
| If we want a return to competition of yore, I think it's only
| going to happen if we (a) prevent "extra-large" companies from
| having in-house logistics & (b) prevent predatory contracts and
| pricing when a size disparity exists (e.g. Walmart/supplier).
|
| And given both of these are pretty fundamental to the way many
| companies work, I'm not even sure they'd be feasible.
| wil421 wrote:
| Don't forget that Amazon still needs almost $200 billion more
| in revenue to beat Walmart. They have $550 billion in revenue
| and don't have something like AWS.
|
| Amazon has only recently pioneered last mile logistics. It
| still isnt that great. I'm in a large metro area and 25-50%
| of my packages do not meet the prime delivery dates. I'd
| argue Walmart is still the king of logistics, for now.
| brutus1213 wrote:
| Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the
| pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept
| iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app
| and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an
| extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend
| there!
|
| Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They
| iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it
| seemed.
| TheSoftwareGuy wrote:
| > Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies
|
| Actually, I believe that was Walmart as well: >TIMMER: I used
| to ask my class, I'm talking 1985, "Where is the world's
| largest supercomputer?" And the correct answer was, "It's at
| the Pentagon." Okay. "Where is the world's second largest
| supercomputer?" Bentonville, Ark. Home of Walmart. They used
| that computer to track every single item on every single
| Walmart shelf. That information technology is what
| revolutionized food marketing. And it was pretty much
| invented by Walmart.
|
| Source: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-
| race/#:%7E:text=where...
| dekhn wrote:
| Um the pentagon didn't have the world's largest
| supercomputer, and neither did walmart. walmart wouldn't
| buy a supercomputer to do logistics, as supercomputers are
| super expensive for modest speed improvements and you
| didn't need them to do supply chain optimization, and
| anyway, product tracking is a DB problem, not a
| supercomputer problem.
|
| What's sad is that there probably is some interesting IT
| story behind Walmart scaling, but not using supercomputers
| and using PCs or somethign instead.
| syshum wrote:
| It would be funny if everyone thinks they used this
| sophisticated technology or supercomputer when in reality
| it was just someone with an excel workbook at ton of vba
| code
|
| /s
| 14u2c wrote:
| In this context it sounds like supercomputer would more
| analogous to mainframe.
| chubot wrote:
| Ironically Barnes And Noble was also a significant computer
| user in the 80's and 90's. They put a lot of local
| bookstores out of business with superior inventory, prices,
| and generally being data driven. Then they were one of
| Amazon's first casualties!
| tjr wrote:
| I frequently shopped at Barnes & Noble ~20 years ago. But
| they slowly carried less and less that I was interested
| in, seemingly shifting from a "store for people who like
| books" to a "store for people to buy gifts for people who
| like books".
|
| At first I placed online orders with them, but once
| moving to online shopping at all, it was clear that
| Amazon had even better selection, prices, shipping, etc.
|
| But I still enjoy a good physical bookstore. I might
| still shop there in person today if their stock was more
| interesting, even if the prices were a little higher.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I buy books by the bushel from thrift stores. Can't beat
| those prices!
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| Chapters/indigo in Canada is like that. Half the stores
| are gift shops for socks and blankets etc. They removed
| all the tables and chairs they had 20 years ago for you
| to read at. At least they still exist though, all 4 used
| bookstores (plus one chapters) near where I live have
| closed down
| echelon wrote:
| The pattern is that efficiency increases and hyperscale
| fell the previous incumbent. If the pace of innovation
| doesn't slow, Amazon may fall to the same forces.
|
| Imagine a virtualized army of engineers that the AI or
| brain upload future may bring. Maybe that won't happen in
| our lifetimes, but it will happen at some point if we
| don't manage to nuke ourselves.
|
| There are probably a handful of other trends that will
| cause instability and salients to develop in the fitness
| gradient.
| DougN7 wrote:
| That sounds scary - a company even more powerful and
| competitive that could beat Amazon. Imagine what their
| abuses would be!
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Then they were one of Amazon's first casualties!
|
| They're still in business. I browsed one last month. I
| was amused that one entire rack, 6 shelves, was filled
| with "Trump is Evil" books. Somebody at that store
| doesn't like Trump :-)
| cbozeman wrote:
| > If we want a return to competition of yore
|
| I think we're beyond that now. I really do.
|
| We thought we were going to get Weyland-Yutani, but I think
| we're going to end up with Bezos-Walton instead.
| hosh wrote:
| That is the heart of "Aggregation Theory" from the stratechary
| blog. That these companies amass their market power by making
| their product so easy to use, they aggregate demand and are
| able to squeeze suppliers. They hold monopolistic power, but it
| is hard to argue that they "harm consumers". Unlike old school
| monopolies, consumers go to aggregators because they want to,
| not because they are forced to.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| This articulates exactly what I've been thinking about
| technological progress for a long time. When Discord stopped
| marketing itself as a chat service "for gamers," suddenly
| huge swathes of chat groups from high schools to electrical
| engineering projects moved their discussions there. It was
| giving me a strange feeling, maybe because Discord was a
| product instead of a protocol, and also because it means that
| all the domain-specific knowledge produced in those chat
| rooms becomes siloed inside the servers of a single
| proprietary company, unable to be indexed publicly. But that
| was a point in time where a company improving the quality of
| its product and its market reach gave me hesitation for some
| reason. Improving your service and having more people talking
| about it and using it is supposed to be a good thing, right?
|
| The notion of a baseline of satisfaction required for
| consentual opting-in to monopolies seems to have produced
| this perpetual equilibrium where even if people don't like a
| service they still throw up their hands and use it because
| everyone else happens to use it since it is the one and only
| place that this one crucial discussion about X or Y is taking
| place in the entire world, and the subject matter has nothing
| to do with the platform itself, but that platform was the one
| that happened to win out, because it was superior.
|
| It's caused me to think that just because you are fixing bugs
| or legitimately making improvements to a product, or have big
| dreams and an idea that actually does change the world, it
| doesn't mean that you are necessarily mean that you are doing
| the world a favor overall. The people in control or the
| incentives could rule what actually happens.
|
| And the scariest thing is, people don't want to outlaw or
| regulate innovation or growth. People are fine with Amazon
| improving its marketplace to the point where there are no
| other marketplaces left offering a comparable set of
| products. A lot of people seem to be fine with letting social
| media grow to dominate our lives if it's reframed as "making
| it easier to keep in touch with your distant relatives."
|
| Now it really _is_ easier to keep in touch with your
| relatives than ever. And now, social media is also starting
| to dominate our lives.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| >consumers go to aggregators because they want to, not
| because they are forced to.
|
| Recently I wanted to buy 10-ish dead tree books in English
| and get them shipped to an eastern EU country. Going through
| the first 20~ DDG results of online stores exactly zero would
| ship them here. Also, the local bookstores would have only
| few books in English, mostly the 'bestseller'-type stuff.
|
| Amazon was the only place that would have them available
| _and_ would ship them here..
| eplanit wrote:
| I have the same feelings. I'm really fine with Amazon -- but
| I'd be much more fine by seeing them reduced via antitrust
| actions, with the goal of seeing more competition.
|
| First, I'd like to separate AWS from Amazon the Bazaar. It's
| just too much control over _both_ the Internet (including all
| other e-commerce) and retail merchandise commerce.
|
| It's like they own the railroads, the ports, the trucks, and
| the stores -- we've seen the Robber Baron movie already.
| vmception wrote:
| > So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do
|
| There are two issues here: One is that you want to boycott a
| company that treats its employees bad, and two is that you
| buying local makes money circulate in the local economy.
|
| Make sure to decouple those.
|
| I like to play a game of "how is this retail employee going to
| lie to me today" when I walk in any brick and mortar
| establishment. Its entertainment.
| tacocataco wrote:
| I was under the impression that Amazon's web hosting drove it's
| profitability.
| TheSoftwareGuy wrote:
| > Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all
| sorts of terrible and abusive practices
|
| We need to make those things illegal and we need to make sure
| those laws are enforced. This is the greatest downfall of
| capitalism, morals cannot be enforced by consumers because
| business operations are completely opaque to them. No company
| should be able to outcompete another by using such terrible,
| exploitative practices.
| orangegreen wrote:
| You can use eBay if you don't want to use Amazon. Plus, you can
| even sell your stuff on eBay when you're done using it. I've
| never been an Amazon customer and don't plan on ever being one.
| I buy most things used too, saving lots of money along the way.
| nunez wrote:
| LOL.
|
| eBay is even worse!
|
| Zeroth, lots of eBay resellers drop-ship from or resell
| directly from Amazon. There are plenty of bots looking for
| arbitrage opportunities between Amazon, brick-and-mortar, and
| OEM.
|
| First, there's absolutely zero guarantee that you'll get what
| you bought. The chances of you getting a box of rocks is
| significantly greater on eBay than on Amazon (unless you use
| Amazon Marketplace, in which the chances of this happening
| are _still_ lower).
|
| Second, returns and disputes are generally settled C2C
| (consumer-to-consumer). Which means you're completely at the
| mercy of the seller (or the buyer, if you're selling). PayPal
| acts as a mediator, but they are really easy to game.
|
| Ever heard of the US Postal Investigations Service? Or the
| FBI IC3? Well, you'll get to know those departments _real_
| well once you start using eBay enough.
|
| Third, PayPal has a Buyer Protection guarantee, but it only
| applies in a handful of specific situations and is, again,
| very easy to game. Hard contrast to Amazon's return policy,
| which is, basically, "if you still have it, and it's in the
| return window, you can return it, unless you abuse it."
| taurath wrote:
| > So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do ?
|
| Lobby your congressperson to break up Amazon and all the other
| big tech companies. Prevent them from bundling, vertically
| integrating, and using loss leading products to make all
| competitors not competitive.
|
| Make their delivery network its own company who takes orders
| from other suppliers. Make their storefront and warehouses its
| own entity. Make their media organization stand on its own.
| People smarter than me can figure this out.
|
| Make policy that punishes national and international companies
| and favors local businesses, and keeps the taxbase local rather
| than in Delaware.
|
| Ultimately there's little that one can do with this hyper
| concentrated economy other than push for and join the political
| wave against concentration.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| try ordering Allbirds directly from their website or in their
| stores, I'm a 14-15 too, they're in the $100 range but they're
| pretty stylish imo and last a while
| chubot wrote:
| For diversity, I buy from target.com. They don't have the
| selection but sometimes that's what you want. I don't need to
| look through 20 brands of tissue. Their prices and shipping are
| generally on par with Amazon (I assume they are forgoing profit
| to get loyal customers)
|
| So basically I would try going to target first, then Amazon. Or
| Newegg or B&H first, then Amazon. There are other retailers of
| course but those tend to have operational competence, which is
| hard because Amazon raised the bar.
| r00fus wrote:
| This is a good point. I've found stuff on Target I wouldn't
| have considered on Amazon.
|
| I also like Target's pickup option - it's even better than
| Amazon sometimes because it'll often be ready for me in like
| 15-30m and driving/biking over there is like a 10m exercise.
| masterof0 wrote:
| > So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do ?
| Create a better service, sell cheaper and better quality
| products, etc. Is it easy? Of course not. But what do you want
| to do? Why would I buy product X more expensive at another
| store? The convenience is not addictive, is just good. People
| who don't have SDE salaries can afford the things they need at
| amazon, because are cheaper. Most people will find the best
| deals, unless you know a better place, I don't think you can do
| anything about it.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Fact is, a lot of times that extra 50% you pay will come back
| in lifetime of the product, if you know how to shop for it. And
| shopping in person often makes it a lot easier to assess
| quality. Especially when Amazon orders turn out to be straight
| up forgeries.
| mywacaday wrote:
| Lots of options, little will power, consumer and political.
| Unions, monopoly legislation, tie CEO salary to a multiple of
| employee salary and probably 100 other smarter ideas than
| those.
| allturtles wrote:
| I'm increasingly put out by Amazon and am trying to stop the
| habit of shopping there. I like books, and Amazon was founded
| on books, but the way they ship books now (typically loose in a
| soft envelope or mostly empty box) means that >50% of the books
| I've ordered recently have arrived damaged and had to be
| returned. They used to shrinkwrap books to a cardboard plate
| inside the box.
|
| There are other problems: 1) Search is just terrible. Often I
| have to search in Google to find the product I'm looking for at
| Amazon. The "other people bought/looked at these items"
| functionality which partially made up for bad search has been
| pushed out in favor of sponsored products (i.e. ads).
|
| 2) Shipping is only fast and cheap if you get Prime, which
| basically means paying for your shipping in advance and buying
| constantly at Amazon to amortize your initial investment.
|
| 3) Because Amazon no longer actually controls its own catalog,
| duplicate listings, misleading listings, merged listings that
| amalgamate multiple different editions of the same book, etc.
| abound. e.g. search for "Norton Anthology of English
| Literature". Instead of a neatly sorted list by
| volume/edition/condition, you get a whole mess of
| duplicate/overlapping listings, and also misleading garbage
| like this (shows 3 books but you only get 1 of them):
| https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-English-
| Literature-P....
|
| I'm shifting towards just using Amazon as a 'wishlist' shopping
| cart and then finding the actual thing to buy elsewhere.
| phatfish wrote:
| I have also been annoyed by damaged books and is one reason I
| avoid Amazon. I've had them arrive damaged from specialist
| online book stores as well, but not as often. The only way to
| avoid that is to go to the book store and inspect the product
| first (which I do on occasion).
|
| They don't seem to be damaged in transit, usually it looks
| like they have been dropped or badly stored.
|
| I always price check Amazon too, quite often it is not the
| cheapest, and you can get caught out on shipping costs as you
| say.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > I bought then for $35. They will arrive tomorrow.
|
| Shouldn't you wait to see what kind of cheapo $35 shoe arrives
| tomorrow, one you never got to try on, before you celebrate?
| BrissyCoder wrote:
| Sounds like he did due-diligence on reviews.
| learc83 wrote:
| Still a bit early to celebrate. You really can't trust
| aggregate review scores these days--even if you scan them
| with a 3rd party tool.
| macintux wrote:
| FWIW, when I wanted a specific pair of shoes, I ordered them
| directly from the brand.
|
| It's very convenient to buy from Amazon, but it's hardly a
| hardship to _not_ do so.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No reputable brand is going to sell even half decent shoes
| for $35. This is a good example where you can see how much
| people are really willing (or able) to spend on "local" or
| "quality" goods that can help pay for a store's staffing
| needs and other expenses.
| zzleeper wrote:
| I was in the same dilemma a month ago. Went to the closest
| outlet and got a great pair of Nike running shoes for about
| $55 (which I could try before buying).
|
| I think a KEY benefit of amazon is that you know it has
| everything.
|
| Sure, you might get better Foo at another store, but that's
| not the same store that sells you the better Bar. So you
| just default to amzn
| ravenstine wrote:
| I'd buy more often from smaller businesses if it didn't take
| most of them 3 days to merely put the shipping label on the
| box, let alone actually ship it. Amazon is top dog because they
| know people want a shot at getting items on the same day or
| next day. Almost no other online business can match that
| besides _maybe_ Walmart, but they 're vastly inferior and their
| fast shipping rarely pans out.
| munificent wrote:
| _> So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do
| ? _
|
| As far as I can see, there are only two forces potentially big
| enough to fight a big corporation today:
|
| 1. Another equally big corporation.
|
| 2. The federal government.
|
| The fact that US anti-trust enforcement has been essentially
| non-existent means that #1 is almost gone these days. Citizens
| United allowed corporations to buy politicians, so it seems
| that #2 is dead too.
|
| It sucks.
| lupire wrote:
| 3. Don't buy junk you don't need. Pay people to create real
| value.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Walmart is starting to become more competitive again re #1
| pyrale wrote:
| Amazon is a poster child for antitrust litigation. They're
| publicly known for using their dominant position to compete
| with their suppliers, and drive their competitors out of
| business with price dumping. There is little chance you'll find
| alternatives to Amazon if they're allowed to destroy
| competition.
|
| Regulation can only go so far, it can help build and stabilize
| a healthy ecosystem but it can't help with a fully consolidated
| business like with a decade of experience in killing
| competition.
|
| There's a good case to be made that they should get the
| standard oil treatment.
| [deleted]
| tvirosi wrote:
| Stop being a slave to your addictions and form some principles.
| Come on.
| bobthechef wrote:
| You got downvoted but there's something to be said for this.
|
| If you are "torn" over this, if it's so bad that you're
| "torn", how is this a difficult decision? Convenience trumps
| being "torn". I mean, really.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Any situation that has a plus and a minus is hard to
| decide. Typically it's also a private plus versus a public
| minus. If you remove yourself, you lose the benefits but
| the beast goes on without you. If it's going to survive
| regardless of your actions anyway, why not throw another
| drop in the ocean?
|
| Goes for employees and customers.
| r00fus wrote:
| There are other megastores with options other than Amazon.
| Target, Walmart, etc.
|
| I have found Amazon to be not the best with clothing/shoes
| unless you're buying the same shoes over and over - the pricing
| in that case is often not competitive either.
| nunez wrote:
| The reason why I'm personally okay with buying stuff from the
| Everything Store is because [1] retail is a brutal business,
| [2] _everyone_ in retail (except perhaps the executive
| leadership) is treated like shit, and [3] Amazon, for all of
| their failings, is still absolutely obsessed with customer
| satisfaction.
|
| Amazon is still one of few companies that has a completely
| seamless, no-BS return policy, for example.
|
| The "sensible" alternative is to shop direct from small
| businesses, which I do sometimes, but see [2] from above.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >[3] Amazon, for all of their failings, is still absolutely
| obsessed with customer satisfaction.
|
| I recently had an AWS issue. Emailed our rep. Next day I was
| on the phone with like 8 Amazon people, high up enough to
| make things happen and low enough to make things happen.
|
| It was pretty wild and yes, for all their faults, the are the
| most customer focused company I've ever worked with.
| fridif wrote:
| >"So aside from just stop buying from Amazon, what can we do?"
|
| Lower the barriers to entry for business. It is not easy to
| comply with regulations and reporting.
|
| A scrappy startup can replace Amazon if they can focus on
| things that are not burdensome and arbitrary, like rent +
| insurance + tax reporting + legal.
| shakezula wrote:
| Lol, no a startup can't replace Amazon without themselves
| having all of those rents, and insurances, and reporting
| accountants and lawyers. Amazon has a logistics network that
| rivals the U.S. military's right now. You can't just
| "displace & disrupt" that with a trendy San Francisco office.
| jefftk wrote:
| Why wouldn't you have said the same about Amazon and B&N in
| 1994?
| fridif wrote:
| I second this comment 1000x. Amazon beat Barnes, and then
| Walmart, and then Jet tried to beat Amazon. If the
| average Joe was able to give it a shot instead of just
| the Harvard elite, then we'd have many more chances
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't think the previous commenter was saying that no
| startup could disrupt Amazon, but that no startup could
| disrupt Amazon simply by spending less time on tax
| paperwork.
|
| Amazon didn't disrupt B&N by spending less time on tax
| paperwork. They disrupted them by changing essentially
| every fundamental piece of how they conducted their
| business.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Amazon wasn't competing with B&N in 1994. B&N however
| (and Borders, and so many others) were.
|
| Amazon in the 90s wasn't about "getting a book" but
| "getting a book via a computer, from a place with "all
| the books" and I don't have to drive".
|
| B&N could have competed with that if they had understand
| what was happening, but I don't think they did.
|
| bookshop.org appears to do so, but may be 20 years too
| late.
| robocat wrote:
| > burdensome and arbitrary, like rent + insurance + tax
| reporting + legal.
|
| If "rent + insurance" are unnecessary overheads, you might as
| well say employee protections are completely useless
| regulations too.
| krapp wrote:
| You expect a scrappy startup which has few or no regulations
| to comply with to treat their employees _better_ than Amazon,
| which only treats their employees as well as they do because
| regulations force them to?
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| In other words, if the scrappy startup is worse than Amazon?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Why do you accuse them of suppressing wages when they lead the
| way to $15/hr, and when they literally spend money lobbying
| congress to raise the federal minimum wage?
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobby...
| _greim_ wrote:
| Amazon has committed the "sin of success", so they're in the
| spotlight. Criticisms of Amazon make sense when viewed as
| criticisms of laws and incentives all business operate under.
| underseacables wrote:
| That's a fair point. I see them as suppressing wages because
| they open warehouses in small towns, pay $15/hr and then work
| the person to death so they become dependent on that job.
| Amazon can totally dominate an area's workforce and use that
| to drive wages and benefits down.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > then work the person to death so they become dependent on
| that job.
|
| Any evidence for this? Especially in COVID times when
| there's massive unemployment checks programs, if that were
| remotely true nobody would be working for Amazon right now.
| lupire wrote:
| They don't drive down hourly wages, they drive down wages
| per effort and health cost.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| One more reason to decouple Americans healthcare from their
| employment ... and yes, I am a broken record =)
| jaredklewis wrote:
| This argument sounds entirely theoretical. Do you have an
| example of even one small town where average or median
| wages or benefits were decreased as a result of Amazon?
|
| I frequently encounter armchair economists on the Internet
| making sweeping claims about various, but it is
| frustrating. It takes basically no effort to think up
| something plausible. But to take even the first step
| towards empirically verifying a given hypothesis is an
| enormous amount of work. Without even a rough empirical
| foundation, how valuable are these armchair theories?
|
| A little dated now but the Economist had a little mini-
| article about Amazon and wages. Really highlights how
| difficult it is to draw any definitive causal links, as
| well as trade offs (like benefits and unemployment):
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-
| amaz...
| jfim wrote:
| > Do you have an example of even one small town where
| average or median wages or benefits were decreased as a
| result of Amazon?
|
| A couple of quotes from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/1
| 8/business/economy/amazon-w...
|
| In making the case against a union at its warehouse in
| Bessemer, Ala., Amazon has touted its compensation
| package. The company notes that base pay at the facility,
| around $15.50 an hour for most rank-and-file workers, is
| more than twice the local minimum wage, and that it
| offers comprehensive health insurance and retirement
| benefits.
|
| But to many of Amazon's Bessemer employees, who are
| voting this month on whether to unionize, the claims to
| generosity can ring hollow alongside the demands of the
| job and local wage rates. The most recent figure for the
| median wage in greater Birmingham, a metropolitan area of
| roughly one million people that includes Bessemer, was
| nearly $3 above Amazon's pay there, according to the
| Bureau of Labor Statistics.
|
| But other workers emphasize that pay at Amazon isn't
| particularly high for the Birmingham area, even if the
| pandemic has reduced their job options.
|
| The retail workers' union said it represented employees
| at nearby warehouses where pay is $18 to $21 an hour,
| including an ice cream facility and a grocery warehouse
| not far from Amazon.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| I think these are interesting points (though a union in a
| standoff with Amazon isn't a great source for
| information), but I don't find them very convincing
|
| For example, it is not surprising that amazon warehouse
| workers, an unskilled job with minimal required training,
| make less than a median wage. For example, the average
| salary of a warehouse worker in Los Angeles (where I
| live) is $38k/year. The average salary of a paralegal is
| $45k/year. This is unsurprising. I am not saying that
| warehouse work is easier than paralegal work, but I am
| saying that this phenomenon has nothing to do with
| Amazon.
|
| Further, it is worth noting that Amazon Warehouse jobs
| are unlike most many other warehouse jobs. Being able to
| use a pallet jack or forklift is a skill and that workers
| with those skills can command higher wages than workers
| without those skills is again unsurprising.
|
| I think it is hard to objectively analyze the situation
| by taking talking points from a union in a confrontation
| with Amazon. $18-$21 with what kind of benefits? For what
| kind of labor?
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| bloomberg had an article along similar lines late last
| year. The main hypothesis isn't terribly controversial to
| me, amazon lowers logistics wages since it pays less than
| the traditional players, and has sort of the 'business
| gravity' to immediate move in and be a significant
| employer. I would not call that suppressing wages on its
| own.
|
| Amazon's argument is that they aren't driving wages down,
| they are raising them up because their employees are not
| from traditional logistics, but most retail and service
| jobs, again, on its own, probably more right than not.
|
| That's the thing I think is hard to separate, and I want
| to know more about. These industries feel threatened by
| amazon, so where is that coming from? Is it all just
| business muscle and monopsony, or is there genuine
| disruption (even in something that relies on amazon's
| scale)? Sort of a competitively 'legitimate' advantage.
| And I would say that you can definitely discuss if they
| are externalizing societal costs with how they treat
| employees.
|
| It's not a direct comparison, but I think about the
| crafts that were overtaken by factories. I think it can't
| be that simple, but amazon clearly changed the labor
| dynamics, so what did it do and how did it do it?
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon
| -am...
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Yea, if the argument is that amazon drives wages lower
| because Amazon took a skilled job (forklift operator) and
| turned it into an unskilled job anyone can do, then I
| agree with that premise.
|
| I just think it is misleading to call that wage
| suppression as that is not how the term is traditionally
| used. Operating a loom probably does take less skill than
| knitting fabric by hand, but that's not wage suppression;
| that's just creative destruction.
|
| With that definition of wage suppression, pretty much
| every app, piece of software, or other innovation is
| suppressing wages.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| In Road to Wiggan Pier, George Orwell wrote that the worst
| housing available to people weren't the major corporations
| or business that owned numerous properties, but the petty
| landlords. The ones who barely could afford upkeep. We also
| noticed that after the Land Consolidation Act in Britain
| that food outputs shot up enormously so as not to waste
| peoples time being minor farmers who toiled a lot for
| little in comparison to major institutions that could
| create much larger outputs at a fraction of the effort.
|
| What I'm getting at is, small towns and the like tend to be
| dominated by petty landlords and what have you. Or someone
| wealthier elsewhere that can fund endeavors there because
| they can't where they live. The unfortunate aspect is like
| the events George Orwell stated. Lots of rundown or lesser
| paying places.
|
| The notion that consolidation of markets is somehow bad
| because it drives down people's autonomy has been around
| for ages and all we've seen time and time again that it
| actually benefits people more often than it doesn't. You
| don't have to worry about crop yields, you worry about a
| boring office job. You don't have to worry about house
| maintenance, just who to call to fix these complex things.
| It allows for people to specialize in fields instead of
| making a population of "Jack of All Trades." The latter
| make for a better system when you're predominantly
| agrarian. The former is better when you've got a system so
| complex that you need people to hyper specialize in
| something specific so they don't have to worry about other
| minutia work.
| shakezula wrote:
| Because they participate in union busting?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/09/amazon-.
| ..
| ekianjo wrote:
| Because if they don't, it's the end? You can't seriously
| expect corporations to welcome unions?
| shawnz wrote:
| I'm not happy about that, but what bigcorp doesn't try to
| bust unions? Certainly Walmart does it too, so that really
| seems to just be an instance of Amazon merely matching
| their competitors' abuses.
| shakezula wrote:
| I absolutely agree with you, they all do it, because all
| major corporations suppress wages, because there's no
| real consequences for it anymore.
|
| "If the only punishment is a fine then it's legal for the
| rich" or however the saying goes.
| splatzone wrote:
| I think almost all large corporations are abusive and
| will bust unions to maintain their dominance, it's still
| unacceptable though
| pengstrom wrote:
| That just means everyone is suppressing wages to some
| degree. The whole class thing, you know.
| SahAssar wrote:
| > but what bigcorp doesn't try to bust unions?
|
| I know it's slightly off topic, but in some areas of
| Europe it is considered essential for any big employer to
| have a healthy union. The employer encourages
| unionization, and there are certain benefits for them
| too.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Is it because they can crush small business who can't afford
| to pay as much through regulatory capture?
| cassac wrote:
| Does that include their contractors ? Or the "gig economy"
| delivery style workers they try to trim all the fat off of?
| The only thing they lead the way on is new ways to package
| their poor behavior.
| bmcahren wrote:
| Yes. It does.
|
| https://www.ridester.com/how-much-do-amazon-drivers-
| make/#:~.... https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Amazon-
| Flex/salaries/Independent-...
|
| There are many things Amazon could improve but
| unfortunately this is the most blatantly incorrect argument
| that is repeated the most.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "So aside from "just stop buying from Amazon" what can we do ?"
|
| IMHO, the system is [china builds things] -> [middle man sells
| it on amazon] -> [consumer buys it on amazon]. Amazon _needs_
| these middle man people and has starting cutting them out by
| producing their own lines to create even more profit. The only
| way Amazon will die is if the graph turns into: [china builds
| things] - > [consumer buys it]. I know, I know, i hear everyone
| saying: _that is impossible_. But I don 't think it is and I
| think that is coming.
| rexreed wrote:
| For comparison, and to show how much our economy has changed:
|
| The Biggest Employers in 1955
|
| 1. General Motors Employees in 1955: 576,667 Employees today:
| 204,000 (as of 2010)
|
| The No.1 car company in the US used to be the No.1 car company in
| the world. In 1955, GM had more than 50% of the American vehicle
| market and, between direct employees and those at suppliers, it
| was responsible for more than 3 million US jobs. GM has emerged
| from bankruptcy, but has fewer than half as many people, and its
| US market share is only 20%.
|
| 2. U.S. Steel Employees in 1955: 268,142 Employees today: 43,000
| (as of 2010)
|
| US Steel was the largest company in its industry worldwide and
| was among the Fortune 50 in 1955. A large portion of the steel
| manufacturing business has moved offshore, first to Japan and
| then China.
|
| 3. General Electric Employees in 1955: 210,151 Employees today:
| 304,000 (as of 2010)
|
| General Electric is one of the few companies that has grown
| significantly over the last five decades. It was largely an
| industrial firm in 1955, and now makes a large amount of its
| revenue and profits from financial services.
|
| 4. Chrysler Employees in 1955: 167,813 Employees today: 58,000
| (as of 2010)
|
| Another car company that benefited from a very limited number of
| imports. The firm nearly went out of business during the 1980s
| recession and was rescued by the US government. It moved into
| Chapter 11 nearly two years ago.
|
| 5. Standard Oil Of New Jersey Employees in 1955: 155,000
| Employees today: 102,700 (as of 2010)
|
| Standard Oil of New Jersey was part of the original Standard Oil
| trust created by John Rockefeller. The company was merged into
| what eventually became Exxon Mobil.
|
| Also Read: Apple's Downfall: Android Sales
|
| 6. Amoco Employees in 1955: 135,784 Employees today: N/A
|
| Another piece of the Rockefeller trust, the company was merged
| into BP America and is now part of BP plc.
|
| 7. CBS Employees in 1955: 117,143 Employees today: 25,580 (as of
| 2010)
|
| The dominant force in both national radio and TV, the company
| also owned several large stations. As media has broken into more
| forms of delivery, including cable and Internet, CBS has grown
| smaller.
|
| 8. AT&T Technologies Employees in 1955: 98,141 Employees today:
| N/A
|
| This division of AT&T handled the telephone company's R&D was was
| spun out of AT&T completely in 1984.
|
| 9. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Employees in 1955: 95,727 Employees
| today: 69,000 (as of 2010)
|
| The largest tire company in the world in 1955, Goodyear had large
| plants around the world. As competition from Japanese companies
| grew, the company went through several restructurings including a
| move into energy.
|
| 10. Firestone Tire & Rubber Employees in 1955: 90,000 Employees
| today: N/A
|
| The second largest tire company in the world in 1955, Firestone
| was at one point the exclusive supplier to Ford. The company was
| sold to Bridgestone of Japan in 1988.
|
| * From: https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/21/americas-
| biggest-...
|
| NOTE: The above link was produced in 2010. In 2010, Amazon wasn't
| even in the top 10 of employers in the United States. And since
| 2010, some of the employers above have shrunk in size further.
| sharkmerry wrote:
| > The US has a population of 261 million and an employed non-farm
| workforce of 145 million, per the BLS.
|
| >According to the most recent US employment report, there are
| 145.8 million nonfarm payroll workers out of a total population
| of 332 million.
|
| ignoring the mismatching "Populations". (261 million seems to be
| "Civilian noninstitutional population")
|
| This [0] seems to say there are 152,283,000 employed in US.
|
| are there really ~6.4 million people working on farms in US? i
| thought farm work was <1% of employed peoples.
| burkaman wrote:
| Nonfarm also excludes military workers and non-profit
| employees, and a couple other categories.
| runnerup wrote:
| Probably has to do with precise definitions of "non farm",
| "farmer", "farming" and "agricultural".
|
| BLS has this showing 2.3 million people working in agriculture:
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat15.htm
|
| And this showing there are 900,000 jobs for "Agricultural
| worker" https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-
| forestry/mobile/...
|
| Clearly the terms "Employed persons in agriculture industries"
| and "agricultural workers" have definitions that diverge much,
| much more than I would have thought as a layperson.
| meepmorp wrote:
| If you expand the "What Agricultural Workers Do" section, it
| says:
|
| > Agricultural workers maintain crops and tend livestock.
| They perform physical labor and operate machinery under the
| supervision of farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural
| managers.
|
| According to https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/farmers-
| ranchers-and-othe..., there are 952,000 jobs as "agricultural
| managers," which isn't how I'd naively expect things to be
| divided, but it does make sense.
|
| I wonder how the remaining jobs are categorized.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| With automation, they may not manage anybody anymore, just
| machinery.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Eventually, we'll need philosophers to sort it all out.
| mirkules wrote:
| Luckily, there is no shortage of philosophers, especially
| on the internet.
| munk-a wrote:
| If agricultural workers are people working under the
| guidance of other folks then managers may also include the
| "self-managed" i.e. any independent farmers including those
| that rely heavily on automation. There's also probably a
| fair chance that subcontracting can mess this up with
| multiple farm hands hired onto a farm all counting as
| agricultural managers.
|
| It feels like agricultural worker is actually quite
| narrowly defined to only be unskilled people specifically
| requiring oversight and management.
| bluedino wrote:
| There are 328 million according to the Census
|
| https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
| trhway wrote:
| When AWS sneeze we all cough hard.
| morelandjs wrote:
| I'm not sure why everyone continually romanticizes brick and
| mortar retail. Its terribly inefficient, and wasteful of time,
| energy, space etc.
|
| Think of all the Walmart, Dicks, Big Lots parking lots and strip
| malls that could be converted into better space. Think of how
| much waste there is when you have to pack, unpack, stage and
| repack merchandise.
|
| Amazon's distribution is a superior business model which is why
| it is popular. I'd also reckon that the carbon footprint per
| package is lower if you account for the driving that is required
| for more traditional shopping.
|
| I'd rather see more competition using a similar business model
| than a return to concrete strip malls full of big box retailers.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Amazon is putting in a new warehouse near where I live. They
| bought up farm land and are converting into a crazy large
| building that spans the distance between to major roads. Its
| going to impact traffic on both of those roads, construction
| already has. We'll probably need a bigger bridge on one of
| those roads too. It will also have a huge parking lot for the
| people that will work there. This building is bigger than
| Walmart, Dicks, and Home Depot combined. I don't see how this
| is an improvement, just another big addition.
| plandis wrote:
| The contractors are not economically benefitting? Some Amazon
| customers won't benefit from faster shipping? New employees
| won't benefit from the added jobs? The local government won't
| benefit from the added tax revenue?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I was commenting on the parent comment about Amazon being
| 'better'. I'm arguing that its just different than, and in
| addition to, brick and mortar stores. Not clear that its
| any 'better' for whatever a measure of 'better' is.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Excluding the Post Office and the Military, 2 million people--
| just over 1% of the U.S. workforce or 0.6% of the total working
| population--are permanently employed by the federal government.
| grandvoye wrote:
| And McDonalds feeds 1% of the world every day.
| punnerud wrote:
| And their main business is not food, but property:
| https://www.google.no/amp/s/qz.com/965779/mcdonalds-isnt-rea...
| 360noscoper wrote:
| Actually, it's a pokemon card distributor:
| https://dotesports.com/news/players-are-sharing-positive-
| fir...
| tyingq wrote:
| _" Amazon employs 950,000 workers in the US"_
|
| Is that the count of actual "employees with an employee number",
| or does that include contractors?
|
| Edit: Apparently, yes, actual US employees. From the Q2 2021
| Quarterly Results:
|
| _" Amazon introduced a new mental health benefit for all of its
| 950,000 U.S. employees..."_
|
| https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2021/q2/...
| techbio wrote:
| That's a million great poaching opportunities for recruiters if
| there's a better deal.
|
| For scale, one in how many Americans is an Amazon consumer?
| cs702 wrote:
| That makes Amazon #3, after the federal government and Walmart:
| Entity US Employees 1. US Government 2.7M
| 2. Walmart 1.6M 3. Amazon 1.0M
|
| If Amazon continues to grow at current rates, it will surpass
| Walmart's figure within 2 years.
|
| Looking at these figures, it's evident that these three entities
| are far larger, wealthier, more connected, and likely more
| powerful than the vast majority of US cities, the vast majority
| of small countries in the world, and maybe even a few smaller US
| states.
| tptacek wrote:
| Is this level of concentration a totally new phenomenon? In the
| 1970s GM employed almost 700k people, and the US population
| like 30% lower. Is it just different companies every
| generation?
| cs702 wrote:
| Clearly, it's not a new phenomenon. That's an easy question
| to answer :-) The more interesting question is whether such a
| high concentration of wealth and power in non-democratically-
| elected entities is a net-positive phenomenon for the US.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Oh boy, the new quote: "What's good for Amazon, is good for
| America."
|
| When GM was "good for America", we pretty much lost public
| transportation, so what are we losing now?
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That makes me feel a lot better. Much of Amazon is "worth
| nationalizing", but the is nothing I'd want from GM.
|
| Saying "well GM is better to labor" I think is highly
| paternalistic. Labor was stronger in the postwar era, and
| the unionization of the auto industry is a holdover from
| that.
| echelon wrote:
| - Book stores (which were pretty awesome, actually)
|
| - Open source
|
| - Concentration of compute resources
|
| - American cinema (well, I suppose Disney has a hand in
| this too)
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| >Book stores
|
| Ebooks killed book stores. Amazon was one of the many
| involved in that process. Like Pitney Bowes holding on to
| the printer industry for dear life. And stores sucked
| cause they charged ridiculous amounts of money for a
| glorified paperweight. Might as well scour Goodwill.
|
| >Open Source
|
| We live in a time with the most available and easily
| discovered open source code in the history of the world.
| This is nothing but false.
|
| >Concentration of computer resources
|
| Which is not a bad thing.
|
| >American Cinema
|
| That has been dominated well before Amazon came around.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| How are we losing open source?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I don't agree with OP, but what they were trying to say
| is they're killing open source business models. They take
| a popular open source project, turn it into an AWS
| offering and then crush any SaaS/cloud ambitions of the
| open source developers.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I don't know that bookstorez are dying, in the US. Amazon
| killed Borders, sure, and Barnes and Noble isn't as
| focused on books anymore. But independent bookstores have
| been doing okay afaict, though having to make changes.
|
| Here's data from the American Booksellers Association:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/282808/number-of-
| indepen...
|
| It's possible that the bookstores are increasingly in big
| cities or something, but I don't think that's Amazon's
| fault.
|
| A lot of this is just about certain commerce moving
| online, and books competing against more and more forms
| of content. Amazon can provide low prices, but does
| terrible at spontaneity or getting me to read something
| totally new to me.
| tptacek wrote:
| Books have kind of also never been more available than
| they are today? We've come a long, long way from the
| heyday of Waldenbooks. I feel like I might rather be an
| author today than pre-Amazon.
| glial wrote:
| - family-owned retail businesses
|
| - distribution of ownership of the 'means of retail
| production'
|
| - worker rights (looking at you, gig economy and Amazon
| delivery drivers)
|
| - brand reliability (so much on Amazon is brand-free)
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm not sure you can have both a wealth of family-owned
| retail businesses and healthy workers rights at the same
| time.
| _delirium wrote:
| U.S. Steel peaked around there in the 1940s too, somewhere in
| the ballpark of 1 out of 175 U.S. workers.
| polote wrote:
| > likely more powerful than the vast majority of US cities, the
| vast majority of small countries
|
| Indeed there are not a lot of countries/cities that are
| wealthy/powerful enough to send people in space
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| Blue Origin isn't that expensive, at least by nation state
| standards. Its just if there's no political will for a space
| program then there will be no space program. Space is a money
| blackhole for the most part so there's no big incentive to
| start one especially when governments are busy, ideally,
| fighting poverty, enforcing law, regulating capitalism, and
| protecting workers. The USA didn't have its own human rated
| launch vehicle for years and it wasn't a big deal. Space
| isn't a compelling target for good reasons and the midcentury
| space-race was little more than showing off ICBM capabilities
| between two nations who wanted to murder each other.
|
| I'm glad we've moved to a peaceful and private-public model
| with BO and SpaceX but its not like every country is failing
| everyday at getting rockets off the ground. They just don't
| care that much and know they can buy rocket rides from other
| nations, the same as buying medicine or arms from them. It
| just makes a lot more sense to buy space-related services
| from others than start your own for almost all nations.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Neils degrasse Tyson has a really good video presentation
| he made at some UAE conference that's on YouTube somewhere.
| I normally don't listen too much to the science
| popularizers (Bill Nye, Tyson, Kaku...etc) that get
| consulted to talk about subjects outside their specialty
| (Example: talk to a geologist or whatever and not a string
| theorist when discussing plate tectonics). However, this
| one got my attention.
|
| NDT says that people do big expensive projects for 3
| reasons: 1.) War (people will do anything not to die like
| build a great wall or an atom bomb), 2.) For religious
| reasons or to satisfy a monarchy(pyramids, Notre Dame
| cathedral), or 3.) For economics.
|
| We spent $$$$ on the space program as it was a key part of
| showing off our might in the cold war (#1). NDT speculates
| that Mars will not happen unless there is a military or
| economic reason to go there since #2 isn't big anymore.
| postmeta wrote:
| "Across the U.S., nearly 24 million people--a little over 15%
| of the workforce--are involved in military, public, and
| national service at the local, state and federal levels. Of
| this number, approximately 16 million are employed in state and
| local governments. The federal government numbers include
| active duty military personnel and U.S. Postal Service workers.
| The U.S. military has about 1.4 million active duty service
| members and another 800,000 reserve forces. There are
| approximately 800,000 postal workers. Beyond the military and
| the postal service, 2 million people--just over 1% of the U.S.
| workforce or 0.6% of the total population--are permanently
| employed by the federal government. More than 70% of the
| federal workforce serves in defense and security agencies like
| the Department of Defense, the intelligence community agencies,
| and NASA.
|
| Contrary to popular belief in the bloated growth of the U.S.
| public sector, the size of the federal government proportionate
| to the total U.S. population has significantly decreased over
| the last 50 years. It has also shrunk in absolute numbers in
| terms of both the full-time and part-time workforce. If we
| compare the size of the U.S. public sector as a percentage of
| the total workforce with other advanced countries, the U.S. is
| often smaller than its European counterparts, including the
| United Kingdom, although larger than Japan, which has one of
| the smallest public sectors internationally. In stark contrast,
| 40% of the workforce in Russia is employed in the public
| sector. In Europe, the optimal size of government is equally
| hotly debated, while in Russia, the size of the government and
| the dependency that this generates within the workforce tends
| to mute critical commentary."
| https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-servi...
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'd like to see how that proportional drop in workforce
| compares to the contracted workforce. Are they actually
| purchasing less labor or just directly employing fewer of the
| people they pay for labor?
|
| I think states and cities have legitimately shrunk budgets in
| proportion to regional economic output since the downsizing
| efforts of the 80s, but the federal government has not. Tax
| revenue as a proportion of GDP has dropped, and presumably
| discretionary budget has, but debt-financed mandatory budget
| has skyrocketed. The chart from the Fed seems to show outlays
| in proportion to GDP steadily growing for over a century, but
| pretty slowly: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
|
| Obviously, the ginormous spikes for WWII and Covid are
| outliers.
| hansvm wrote:
| Not just a few, Amazon has more workers than any of the 10
| smallest states and more revenue than the GDP of the smallest
| 30 (individually, not summed).
| cs702 wrote:
| I meant _entire_ states, not just state employees. Some
| states have fewer _residents_ than Walmart and Amazon have
| employees.
| hansvm wrote:
| Me too, sorry if that wasn't clear. Amazon has more workers
| than the smallest 10 states have people.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The law grants cities powers that corporations do not have.
| Corporations are only more powerful if wealth can be used to
| subvert the rule of law.
|
| And that never happens. /s
| narrator wrote:
| In the spirit of the FSF's "Right to Read"[1] dystopia story, I
| present "Fully Automated Amazon Communism" :
|
| 1. Everyone works at Amazon
|
| 2. Amazon has vertically integrated into every conceivable
| industry.
|
| 3. Everyone gets paid in Amazon gift cards.
|
| 4. Amazon automatically delivers to your home everything you need
| to live your life without you having to ask. It knows what to
| order based on an AI model of everything you have ever done or
| thought. Your level of consumption is automatically scaled to
| your gift card balance.
|
| 5. You rent everything that's not a consumable from Amazon.
|
| 6. If you quit your job at Amazon, you starve to death. You must
| even return your clothes because your license to them has been
| canceled. You could try and live in the woods and eat nuts and
| berries. Using someone else's Amazon prime account is punishable
| by death since that's the practical consequence of getting fired
| from your job at Amazon. The right of first sale has been
| abolished for all goods, so even if someone wanted to give you
| food, they don't have a product license to do that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read
| rantwasp wrote:
| you're being downvoter and I don't understand why.
|
| Here are a few more things for your list:
|
| 7. Amazon monitors everything you do online and offline (they
| do provide the backbone and all of ISP services). Corrective
| action is taken if needed
|
| 8. Amazon decides who get to live and who gets to die based on
| your predicted future value. Also, Amazon decides who gets to
| reproduce.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >you're being downvoter and I don't understand why.
|
| Probably because Amazon historically hasn't done vertical
| integration. Amazon Basics items aren't manufactured in
| Amazon factories. Heck, half the time they're not even
| branded. I bought an AB air conditioner last month and there
| wasn't a single Amazon logo on the box.
|
| A maximal Amazon would eat all retail, but I don't seem them
| running hotels or hospitals. They could still cause plenty of
| problem if 1 in 4 people worked there, though.
| rantwasp wrote:
| they don't run hotel and hospitals yet.
|
| also GP was half serious/half joking and was talking about
| some point in the future, not today
| novok wrote:
| Kind of reminds me of the corpo start in cyberpunk 2077
| paxys wrote:
| Number will be a lot bigger if you count all their "independent
| contractor" delivery drivers.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| So 0.65%? Not insignificant, but using "1 out of every 153" seems
| intentionally worded to sound more outsized and draw eyes.
|
| I wish HN posters would stop encouraging this lowbrow form of
| journalism. For an educated community, people sure do love their
| cheap clickbait headlines here.
| glasss wrote:
| I think 0.65 of the country sounds similar in scale to me, and
| I would also naturally be curious as to what that means in
| terms of "how many people out of X"
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