[HN Gopher] Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses d...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy
holiday season
Author : petethomas
Score : 353 points
Date : 2024-12-19 04:27 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| hiddencost wrote:
| Try avoiding Amazon this holiday season, to not cross the picket
| line.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Are they specifically calling for a boycott, though? Or just
| striking? (Because if it's the latter, getting orders that go
| unfulfilled may actually help their cause.)
| bmicraft wrote:
| So what you're saying is we should order a bunch of stuff and
| then cancel at the first sign of a delay in fulfillment so
| amazon loses more by waiting it out?
| ternnoburn wrote:
| No, what they are saying is, "ask the workers what they
| want, and do that. Don't make assumptions."
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Bingo :)
| lnsru wrote:
| I am just curious who still orders anything today with delivery
| expectation to get it before Xmas. From my experience the
| delivery drivers are today delivering tons of stuff ordered a
| week ago and they are so overloaded, that todays order might come
| only in January.
| jclulow wrote:
| Speaking from personal experience: people with ADHD, who don't
| have their shit together but desperately want to avoid
| disappointing the people they care about. People who then get
| hoodwinked by the bald faced lies everybody from Amazon right
| through to the courier staff will tell you about projected
| delivery dates and "oh, gosh, sorry, you know we just attempted
| delivery but couldn't get in!" (while you're sitting in front
| of the building)
| WillAdams wrote:
| My solution for this is to keep gifts for the people I buy
| presents for in mind throughout the year, and buy things as I
| come across them, then, when it's time to wrap, my wife and I
| lay things out and decide what actually gets gifted, excess
| gets set aside for upcoming birthdays (which are both
| fortunately early in the year, Jan. and March) or possibly
| even the next Christmas, then come April I start in on the
| process again.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Back in my day, everything was 6 to 8 weeks for delivery from
| catalogs (Sears Christmas Wishbook, anyone?) and the carriers
| were far less accessible when it came to tracking packages and
| whatnot than they are today. Honestly, those times seem like a
| cold-sweat nightmare, now. Speaking as an old man who regularly
| shakes his fist at passing clouds, I'm pretty damned happy with
| the current delivery times, even if they are occasionally a few
| days late. Those folks are out there breaking their backs for
| us and we'd best not forget it
| wiether wrote:
| I ordered everything Christmas related before December 1st.
|
| Now I'm just holding my usual orders until after Christmas to
| avoid having stuff lost in the big rush.
|
| Better to go with a digital gift card if you haven't received
| everything for now.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Had to buy some simple toolkit today. It was 5 bucks on Amazon,
| but I decided to find a local store that sells it. Same price
| btw.
|
| I think we should be a bit more aware about the impact of
| ordering everything through Amazon. Not only regarding delivery,
| but also the message it sends to local stores.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Imagine you are taxed to repair the roads, on which your
| untaxed competitors is driving too ruin you.. a nightmare.
| t-writescode wrote:
| We are taxed for road repairs. It's a common tax on gasoline
| here in the United States; and, yes, there is a known issue
| around this with electric cars and some efforts in place to
| try and rectify it.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Amazon in europe went "untaxed" quite a while via the irish
| route, thus beeing subsidized by mom & pop stores.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Amazon employing people creates a lot of taxes. Don't
| forget everything's taxed, not just corporation tax.
| Every employee generates income tax, employee tax, if
| they invest their money the interest is taxed, almost
| everything they buy from a shop has VAT, fuel they
| purchase is taxed, everything they buy has a higher price
| because that business has to pay tax and so do its
| employees, ad infinitum. There's tax everywhere, and the
| roads will still be there if none of those people had
| jobs and weren't paying any tax.
| pyrale wrote:
| > employee tax
|
| There is no such thing as "employee tax". Usually, what
| exists is a scheme for some of the employee's salary to
| be paid in the form of retirement schemes, health care,
| etc. It's not a tax to subsidize unrelated things.
| Likewise, the income tax is not there to pay for the
| company's use of collective amenities, it's there to pay
| for the citizen's use.
|
| In the end, if your company doesn't pay all the stuff
| that other companies do, it's freeloading, and the
| society would most likely be better off with another
| company getting the business.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > There is no such thing as "employee tax". Usually, what
| exists is a scheme for some of the employee's salary to
| be paid in the form of retirement schemes, health care,
| etc. It's not a tax to subsidize unrelated things.
|
| I didn't say it was to subsidize unrelated things; in
| fact it's more the other way round, where state pensions,
| and state employee pensions, public healthcare etc are
| just paid for, and the money comes from whence it comes.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The local stores also employ people. They also pay
| business taxes that Amazon avoids.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't understand the dichotomy. Local stores can exist
| and their taxes can pay for things, but the Amazon HQ
| also exists and can pay for things. And its employees
| likely pay the higher taxation bands as well, although I
| could be wrong.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Many states recapture those lost taxes via vehicle
| registration surcharges for EVs. (For example, Texas
| charges $200, which is consistent with what a truck or SUV
| would pay driving around 12k mi/yr)
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| we'd be better off rectifying why everyone thinks they need
| to drive some monster truck
| portaouflop wrote:
| I agree, in almost all cases there is a store nearby that sells
| it - and if not I probably won't need it that bad.
|
| But for me it is an ideological thing - I absolutely loathe
| Amazon and it's practices; I just have to visualise how I
| insert my money into Bezos gaping asshole and my desire to shop
| at Amazon is rapidly diminishing.
|
| But I think ordering stuff when you are able bodied is immoral
| as well - not super immoral but you should always feel a little
| bit bad if you order stuff that you could've picked up
| yourself.
|
| Also the distances in my country are tiny, if you live in the
| outback with 200km to the next neighbour it's a different story
| kaskakokos wrote:
| For me it is also something ideological but even from an
| economic point of view I never buy on Amazon, this is my
| reasoning:
|
| You buy it cheaper but you are generating a debt, it's like
| buying on credit: somewhere someone is being exploited or a
| natural resource is being overexploited, and you will pay for
| it in the future, with a poorer environment socially,
| economically and naturally.
|
| Everything comes back. I once read that I don't know which
| tribe made decisions that were good for the next 7
| generations, well, buying on amazon is a decision that is not
| good even for the current generation, you will probably see
| the consequences in your own or your children's life.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Not only regarding delivery.
|
| You do realize that an electric Amazon van delivering hundreds
| of packages to your neighborhood pollutes a lot less than you
| taking your G-wagon to the local store, right?
|
| > but also the message it sends to local stores
|
| "You're obsolete", which is true? Local stores are usually more
| expensive, carry less inventory, require you to go there or
| charge delivery fees, have inexistent or predatory return
| policies, etc. It's simply a worse experience in every way.
|
| There was a time where this was compensated by the vendors
| having wide knowledge about the subject that they were selling
| items for, but it's not the case anymore, so really, what's
| left to local stores?
|
| I don't know why people have this tendency to romanticize
| outdated and objectively worse in every way things just for the
| sake of "tradition".
| chimprich wrote:
| > You do realize [...], right?
|
| You are correct, but I don't like this idiom. Your point
| would come across better if it wasn't delivered in a
| patronisation sandwich.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Ignoring the tone of your comment, I agree with you in a way,
| but I also wonder if that has something to do with where I
| live.
|
| The US suburbs don't really have what I would call "local
| stores," just big, well known corporate stores. So, when
| making the choice of where to buy Product X, my options are
| giving my money to Best Buy, Walmart, Ikea, Kroger, etc...or
| Jeff Bezos, whose online empire offers slightly more
| convenience than the others because I don't have to drive if
| I can wait a day or two.
|
| There's no family-owned businesses to hurt here because they
| were all chased out by the Big Box stores years ago. Heck, I
| remember when they filled in the pond I learned to fish in as
| a kid just to put up that Walmart. Sure, Amazon can be held
| up as contributing toward the death of the small business,
| but those wheels were spinning long before Bezos was selling
| books out of a garage or whatever mythology we want to
| accept.
|
| I don't like Amazon. I don't like the idea of one entity
| having that much influence and control over my consumer
| habits. I don't like that the business model is just drop-
| shipping in a trenchcoat of digital services. I don't like
| that their workers are basically treated as third-world
| labor.
|
| But I do have to admit that they have won the game and as a
| result, I have to use them. I wish it were otherwise, but
| we're past the point of no return, on that. We all gave them
| permission for this to happen by patronizing it for years,
| even down to the mistreated workers who keep applying for
| those jobs knowing full well Amazon's employment reputation.
| Amazon did not kill small business. Consumers did, ever
| suckered by savings and convenience.
| simoncion wrote:
| > But I do have to admit that they have won the game and as
| a result, I have to use them.
|
| Try ordering direct from the manufacturer's website. A
| surprising-to-me number of companies have set this up, and
| it's what I often do if I know what I want and Newegg isn't
| selling it for a reasonable price (or at all).
| coryrc wrote:
| I've done that, only to get it "fulfilled by Amazon"
| anyway.
| simoncion wrote:
| Weird. I've done it a bunch and not had any indication
| that Amazon was involved with either the money-handling
| or the delivery.
|
| It makes a ton of sense that it WOULD happen sometimes,
| but I've yet to see it.
| amelius wrote:
| This is probably not the most environmentally friendly
| solution, though.
| simoncion wrote:
| You're right. The most environmentally-friendly solution
| is to truck, train, or ship things into stores in big
| cities and let people walk or take public transit to get
| their things.
|
| I'm not sure how you imagine that ordering direct from a
| manufacturer works, but I'm certain that most of them
| have their goods in big warehouses and use major delivery
| services to get those goods to you, much like they would
| get those goods to an ordinary store.
|
| Goods are going to be shipped, flown, and trucked around.
| Until we invent macro-scale teleportation, there's no
| reasonable way to stop doing that entirely.
| freedomben wrote:
| Unfortunately, Amazon policies prohibit them from selling
| their product any cheaper on their own website than they
| do on Amazon. This essentially guarantees that Amazon
| will always be cheaper, so there's not much point in
| going to the manufacturer's website where you don't get
| prime, you don't get the same guarantees, and you pay at
| best the same and at worst a whole lot more.
|
| It's quite an evil genius policy on the side of Amazon.
| amelius wrote:
| This should be illegal.
| bdangubic wrote:
| what kind of a law would you put in place here to make
| this illegal? and who would it cover? amazon has a
| business, yes? and if you want to do business with amazon
| you have to abide but those rules. you can also just NOT
| do business with amazon - sell your shit at another
| place, done deal. too many times here on HN we see people
| say what you say - let's just add mooooooar laws (these
| would have to be FEDERAL to make any sense) and have
| government involved in as many things as possible... it
| is just wrong although in theory you can say this is
| unfair - but certainly should be be illegal... like
| saying apple charging 30% wig should be illegal :)
| amelius wrote:
| Are you saying that antitrust law is nonsense?
|
| The laws of our economy are not there to serve a few
| large companies. They are there to serve us, people, most
| of all. Do you think that markets will collapse if we had
| more fair rules for big companies?
| bdangubic wrote:
| > Are you saying that antitrust law is nonsense?
|
| Not nonsense of course but if what Amazon is doing is
| breaking any of the antitrust laws we have in place there
| is a machinery for that already - the government can take
| this up if they feel like Amazon is breaking antitrust
| laws. The problem is - whatever "issue" someone has with
| something amazon is doing it inevitably ends up here on
| HN as "oh that should be illegal..." you start putting
| every little thing you don't like into some federal laws
| and pretty soon you are China... it is a fine line to
| walk on...
|
| > The laws of our economy are not there to serve a few
| large companies. They are there to serve us, people, most
| of all.
|
| In some theory maybe - not in any reality... this sounds
| more like the way China is organized, not United States
| :) I personally wish this was true...
|
| > Do you think that markets will collapse if we had more
| fair rules for big companies?
|
| This depends - who is making the rules?! This is always
| easier said than done - you think that whatever "rules"
| you put in place is what "everyone/majority/..." wants
| but of course you'd be wrong. And again - who is making
| the rules? The politicians who spent over 70% of their
| fundraising for their next election... and during those
| fundraisers the donors are ... well not me and you but
| Amazon, NRA... and they will get their way... The system
| is stacked against you and you can talk fantasy like "oh
| the economy should work for the little guy..." or
| reality...
| amelius wrote:
| You are skeptical but we __do__ have antitrust laws, even
| though people in power probably opposed them in several
| ways at different points in time.
| bdangubic wrote:
| no doubt... the question remains whether what is being
| discussed in this thread falls under an antitrust law
| breach though? and if it does not (it does not) would it
| make any sense to add it (I will argue it does not)
| dns_snek wrote:
| > amazon has a business, yes? and if you want to do
| business with amazon you have to abide but those rules.
|
| And if you want to do business (at all) you have to abide
| by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world, those
| laws would be set by the people and for the people.
|
| Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-
| competitive rules help the society, and why their
| behavior should be tolerated in an ideal democratic
| society?
| bdangubic wrote:
| > And if you want to do business (at all) you have to
| abide by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world,
| those laws would be set by the people and for the people.
|
| which law is amazon breaking and if there isn't one
| (there isn't, otherwise there would be lawsuits we are
| all aware of) what's the law going to look like?
|
| > Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-
| competitive rules help the society, and why their
| behavior should be tolerated in an ideal democratic
| society?
|
| not sure what "democracy" has to do with anything? we
| don't really have a system in place where we go to a
| referendum and make decisions like this. whether or not
| amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society or not
| is on the society to decide. you have a choice whether to
| use amazon services and if you are so anti-amazon no one
| is forcing you to use their services. if amazon is doing
| something is illegal based on today's laws there is a
| machinery to bring lawsuits against (by the government
| itself or otherwise).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The conditions under which you can do business are
| governed by law. For example, you can't require that
| employees enter into a contract for eternal servitude,
| even though that too could be explained away as "if you
| want to do business with the company you need to follow
| their rules". So why exactly would a pricing scheme like
| this be uniquely difficult/undesirable to outlaw? It
| seems pretty straightforward to me.
| bdangubic wrote:
| you are comparing something as crazy as "eternal
| servitude" with company saying "if you want to use our
| platform you cannot price gouge on it"??! how is paying
| more on amazon than elsewhere "better for consumers and
| needs to be regulated"??! so weird we are discussing this
| at all...
| juliangmp wrote:
| Thing that I hate most about amazon is how it turned into
| the western version of aliexpress. Completely flooded with
| terrible products, you know the ones (badly translated,
| titles that are a list of keywords, ai generated
| everything, clearly and badly edited product images, ...)
|
| Like I'm at a point where I order like 5-10 products a year
| from amazon, mostly cause I can't get them elsewhere for
| reasonable prices. Everything else I buy in other online
| stores or physically.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > I also wonder if that has something to do with where I
| live
|
| I live in the center of London and out of the 200 non-
| household goods orders I have on Amazon this year I don't
| think I would have been able to find even 20% of them in
| local stores.
|
| Actually even when I do go in a store and find an item I
| need, I scan the barcode on the Amazon app and saw that
| it's usually a LOT cheaper on Amazon (like, 30% cheaper for
| the exact same tool).
|
| Add to that what I mention in my previous comment about
| return policies, travel time, etc. and there's absolutely
| no reason not to order on Amazon, even if you're in the
| ideal place to go to local stores.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I live in the centre of Copenhagen, and haven't ordered
| anything from Amazon for a decade -- on principle.
|
| I have ordered from online retailers in Denmark, and I've
| made 2 orders from AliExpress, and a few more from eBay.
|
| Can you give five items you can't buy in central London,
| but can buy from Amazon?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I have 400 orders on Amazon this year (I think that means
| I have more than 400 unique items since one order can be
| more than one items, but it's probably around 450 items
| total so not far off).
|
| Of those, I probably have a good portion which is
| household goods as I mentioned, like soap in bulk, soda
| cans in bulk, etc. which is cheaper than any other option
| (especially because I don't have a car in London).
|
| Then I have around 170 orders which are items I got for
| free through the Vine program
| (https://www.amazon.co.uk/vine/about). And probably
| around 30 orders that are free books
| (https://www.amazon.co.uk/firstreads).
|
| If I ignore all of those, and take only recent orders
| that I paid for, here are 5 items that I can't buy, or at
| least wouldn't know where to even begin looking for, in
| central London:
|
| - A luggage and suitcase scale
|
| - A monitor arm
|
| - A good shower filter for hard water (not the crap that
| doesn't actually filter anything which you can easily
| find anywhere)
|
| - A label printer
|
| - A moth repellent for wardrobes
| l72 wrote:
| I think what shocks me most here is that in a single
| year, you have placed 200 orders.
|
| What is it that you buy online or offline? I just can't
| imagine making a purchase every other day, especially if
| you aren't including groceries...
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| 400 actually, and there are 12 more days to the year.
|
| I just don't buy anything in brick and mortar shops,
| except food and drinks. Just out of convenience and
| price, not for ideological reasons or anything.
|
| The number of orders is also inflated by things I listed
| here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42463417 and
| by the fact that one project can be many orders. I built
| a NAS, and it was split over 10 orders, basically one per
| component when the price was right.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > Amazon can be held up as contributing toward the death of
| the small business
|
| Amazon does more than most of those to let you buy from
| small producers, which also feature in their catalog. The
| volume SMBs ship on Amazon was in the double digit billions
| per year when I worked there -- and is probably higher now.
|
| Now, back to my regular Amazon criticism!
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Consumers killed family owned stores not because they
| didn't like them(though true in some cases), they killed
| them because things were getting expensive and they didn't
| want to lose their standard of living.
|
| At one point in time, Wal-mart's big thing was they sold
| Made in America. Then they pivoted to cheap junk, their
| pivot occurred as jobs moved from the US to Mexico and
| China.
|
| That was the point when it became unfashionable to shop at
| Wal-mart; as recorded by the finest news network :
| https://theonion.com/hostages-trapped-inside-walmart-
| insisti...
|
| Consumers weren't completely suckered by savings and
| convenience; although that was some of it, they were trying
| to make their ever smaller budgets stretch further.
| sen wrote:
| I needed some 3D printing filament a few days ago. Shopped
| around locally and the absolute cheapest was ~$50. Amazon was
| $17 with next day shipping.
|
| The overheads of physical retail stores makes it all but
| impossible for them to compete with online shopping. I'd love
| to "support local" but I don't have the expendable income to
| spend double/more on everything.
|
| What we ideally need is more "local online businesses", but
| that seems to be very rare outside of niche hobby/craft type
| stuff.
| superb_dev wrote:
| You should check out Protopasta! Their prices aren't rock
| bottom ($30 for a 1kg spool of PLA) but the product is really
| good and if you happen to live near the warehouse you can
| pick up your order on the same day
| euroderf wrote:
| It turns local businesses into showrooms for Amazon, and that
| is a failing business model.
|
| I do not patronize Amazon. But f I did, I would pick a margin
| - let's say 20% - and resolve to buy locally when the price
| is at least that close to the online price.
| krisoft wrote:
| > But f I did, I would pick a margin - let's say 20% - and
| resolve to buy locally when the price is at least that
| close to the online price.
|
| Focusing on the price is a complete misunderstanding. Just
| looking at my recent amazon purchases. I have bought 3mm
| and 2mm thick brass sheets, 0.8mm endmills, a set of
| dwarven miner minis, and a highlander cow shaped slipper. I
| have no clue which shop would even hope to have these
| things. I could get on my bike and go to all the hardware
| shops around me in the hopes that maybe they have endmills,
| or all the department stores and walk up and down to see if
| they have the slippers I'm thinking about. And I would be
| still without brass sheets and dwarven miners.
|
| Or I can from the comfort of wherever I am browse a wild
| selection of things and get them for reasonable price. I
| bought the miner minis while physically situated in a
| coffee shop waiting for my friend to return from the
| washroom. Just because I happened to have a minute to think
| about what I need for our next DnD session. That is
| insanely convenient.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| That's equivalent to you making 20% less money.
|
| Not many people will choose that.
| euroderf wrote:
| Behold! Neighborhood businesses wither and die.
| juliangmp wrote:
| For filament I typically order directly from the manufacturer
| (dasfilament for example) but idk if that's viable in the US
| simoncion wrote:
| > The overheads of physical retail stores makes it all but
| impossible for them to compete with online shopping.
|
| As a purely-theoretical thought experiment, this may be true.
|
| As a blanket statement about prices in the real world, this
| is not correct.
|
| There are many stores around me here in San Francisco who
| absolutely do have prices that are close to (and sometimes
| lower than) "e-tailer" prices. If stores in SF can meet or
| beat "e-tailer" prices, I find it hard to believe that stores
| in Bum-fuck Nowhere, USA can't ever do the same.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I'm spoiled by having a local Microcenter here in Houston.
| Not always the cheapest filament, but it's often competitive
| enough. Inland is as good as any other brand I've tried, and
| in some cases, I prefer their colors.
|
| Xyltech is also in Houston, and they don't have a typical
| retail operation, but you can place an order and pick it up.
|
| Polymaker has a Houston warehouse, and while you can't pick
| it up, a number of SKUs actually ship from there.
|
| Often I buy bulk purchases of Sunlu from Aliexpress. Usually
| takes about 8 days to get to me, but at around $11/KG for
| PLA+, it's a great price.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I think it's a mistake to look at the % price difference
| instead of the dollar price difference. It's a $33 dollar
| difference. Which is not much if you are a busy person, but a
| lot if you have time to shop around. If you're buying a
| motorcycle and it's $6200 at your local dealer and $6100 a
| couple of towns away, then you'd consider that difference
| negligible.
|
| Every local business should be a "local online business" as
| you suggest. But most business owners don't give a fuck and
| are happy to see Amazon crush them. Why?
|
| I used to try to support local business, but frankly it's
| such a waste of time to go looking for products that they
| never have in stock, ward off annoying salesmen who never
| have a clue if you actually need help, and dealing with bad
| return policies. The price difference is but icing on the
| cake.
| flamedoge wrote:
| Order from local store, order from Amazon, use first one to
| receive, return new one to whichever was more expensive.
| coryrc wrote:
| You basically can't buy couple-dollar things on Amazon, which
| is rather annoying. F.ex. I wanted a fiberglass pole, 5/16"
| diameter. I could buy 10 for $20. Home Depot had one for $3.50.
| vasco wrote:
| I've had this exact sentiment for many years but... what are we
| supporting really?
|
| Is it because you want a distributed network of inventory
| across the country near you in case of emergency?
|
| Is it because you like talking to someone when doing purchases?
|
| Is it because you think someone is doing a societal good by
| parking money in inventory they brought near you?
|
| Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more
| efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big
| corporations?
|
| Like I feel like I should want to support local business but it
| is way less efficient and I can't really convince myself that
| I'm not just repeating something my parents also said.
| tsujamin wrote:
| Perhaps it's out of fear of what Amazon's market and price-
| setting power would be post-local stores
| roenxi wrote:
| Amazon doesn't have any extra power post-local stores. If
| Amazon ups their prices then the local stores reappear. In
| some weird future where Amazon completely obliterates small
| businesses it might take a few years, but it'd take more
| than a few years of good prices before that from Amazon to
| get to that state. The manufacturers always have strong
| incentives to defect from an AWS dominated equilibrium.
| They want middleman prices to be low, it means they move
| more goods and make more money.
|
| Although I should stress I like the idea of buying local.
| If the money goes off to some exotic foreign place it is
| less likely that I will get my hands on it later on. Better
| to live in a wealthy community than a poor one, etc. Local
| capital is local prosperity.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Local stores don't just reappear. It takes initial
| capital to purchase stock, rent building and hire
| employees.
|
| It takes knowing what market segment you are selling to
| to know what to stock.
|
| It takes business connections to but the stock.
| lupusreal wrote:
| When you spend money at businesses which are owned by people
| that live in your community, more of that money continues to
| circulate in your area. It's better for the local economy, if
| only marginally, and therefore better for you.
|
| This is more important for businesses that produce and
| capture a larger amount of value, like locally owned
| restaurants vs corporate owned chains, but any little bit
| helps at least a little.
|
| (Of course if you're a rootless corporate mercenary who goes
| wherever work takes you, with no long-term stake in the place
| you live, then it doesn't matter at all.)
| vasco wrote:
| This is an interesting take. I'm not sure it's true but I
| will look it up. My knee-jerk reaction is that most large
| purchases already siphon your money away (home, car,
| travel), and overthinking where to buy a random small
| object for the house makes no difference, but I hadn't
| considered the locality of money circulation!
| lupusreal wrote:
| Honestly it's interesting to me that this is a novel take
| to you. I believe it is a generally understood, if not
| acted on, principle.
|
| Money sent off to Detroit or Japan for your car is as
| good as lost to your community, but as I said even a
| small amount of money spent locally will help your local
| community a small amount, which is more than none. Even
| eating at a locally owned McDonald's franchise is
| slightly better than eating at a corporate owned store.
| That difference is probably too small to be worth looking
| up who owns a McDonalds, but if the choice is between
| McDonalds or some local diner then it doesn't require any
| time spent looking it up.
| toyg wrote:
| _> it is a generally understood, if not acted on,
| principle_
|
| I think you'd be surprised to realize how much that's not
| actually the case.
|
| If you google the "Preston model", you'll find a lot of
| material waxing lyrical about the government of a lone
| city in England that actually dared to follow that
| principle in their procurement strategies. They are doing
| well, but the fact that it feels revolutionary for
| mainstream sensibilities shows that those principles are
| still very unknown to most.
|
| (I should add: the principle of locality is _not_ always
| a good thing, because there are scoundrels everywhere.
| Again in England, the regeneration of massive swaths of
| land previously used for steelmaking is being done
| through well-connected local businessmen and corrupted
| politicians, and it is a shameful rip-off for the
| taxpayer. If a national government had done that, the
| relevant minister would have faced the sack; but it 's
| "old boys" from the area, the national press is not
| interested, and so it's just business as usual.)
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Amazon discusses that every dollar of salary produces
| $2.5 of local economic activity, eg, because their
| workers buy coffees that then pay the salaries of
| baristas who then...
|
| That money comes from many communities and is distributed
| to a handful; and I think it would be interesting to
| quantify the loss of economic activity from Amazon moving
| money out of a community.
| smileysteve wrote:
| It's less true in retail (of non locally made goods), here
| the margins are in the supply contract (think the volume
| discounts on alibaba or Sam's club).
|
| It's likely that a mega retailer like Walmart generates
| this margin in their supply chain, bulk land/space and pays
| out, in total more via wages and benefits (particular
| possible with the scale of healthcare costs and benefits
| programs like scholarships)
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world
| would be better off with less global trade and more local
| productions. Local productions means a stronger community and
| more visibility for business practices, because it's more
| sustainable.
|
| If a global business decides to just toss all the plastic it
| uses it in its backyard you'll never notice because it's 2000
| miles away. If Amazon decides to treat their workers
| unfairly, you'll never notice. But you'll notice if a local
| business does it because you'll be walking in there every
| day. There's a level of accountability.
| vasco wrote:
| In my grandpa's village everything was local production and
| commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my
| friends that get paid through remote companies and spend
| our money online. It's incredibly unclear to me why a super
| poor and undeveloped local economy is better than a
| specialized globalized one. In my country there was a
| dictatorship with protectionism and when we opened things
| got way better, not worse.
|
| Regarding me not noticing crimes, I think we have police
| and regulations for that.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > In my grandpa's village everything was local production
| and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my
| friends that get paid through remote companies and spend
| our money online.
|
| (1) That is because technology also takes away components
| of life that one can enjoy without being rich such as
| accesss to nature and local food production.
|
| (2) The global economy is only so "good" because it takes
| advantage of the commons in poorer places. We simply
| should not have the capability to do that. You only
| benefit off the suffering of others.
| graemep wrote:
| The first point is true, but most people do not choose
| it.
|
| I do not think your second point stands. Almost the
| entire world is financially better off than it was in the
| past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer
| than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are
| they benefitting from?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > The first point is true, but most people do not choose
| it.
|
| Because they lack wisdom and human beings en masse
| operate on instinct, not wisdom.
|
| > Almost the entire world is financially better off than
| it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are
| visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose
| suffering are they benefitting from?
|
| The classic reply of the economist. It's because the
| industrial world measures better off with variables like
| "life expectancy" and "money".
|
| But a longer life does not a better life make, nor does
| money always equate to better off.
|
| For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national
| park and walk there every day, that would be more
| valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a
| huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism
| account for that?
| gruez wrote:
| >The classic reply of the economist. It's because the
| industrial world measures better off with variables like
| "life expectancy" and "money".
|
| I'd take arguments with objective metrics over handwavy
| arguments involving vibes, because with the latter you
| can make whatever argument you want with them and it's
| impossible to refute.
|
| >For example: if I could live next to a beautiful
| national park and walk there every day, that would be
| more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in
| a huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism
| account for that?
|
| You can ask for how much people are willing to pay for
| access to such a scenery and put a dollar value on it, or
| try to infer it based on housing price patterns (eg.
| house next to national park vs equally rural house next
| to corn fields).
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > I'd take arguments with objective metrics over handwavy
| arguments involving vibes, because with the latter you
| can make whatever argument you want with them and it's
| impossible to refute.
|
| You can define other concrete metrics. Distance to wild
| nature for example. That's concrete.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The prevailing evaluative mechanism would note that you
| could take that million dollars, invest it in a 4%
| annuity, and move next to the national park of your
| choice with $40,000 in your pocket every year for the
| rest of your life. Indeed, there's a whole movement
| called FIRE of people who do things like this.
|
| But there's also people like me, who _say_ that sounds
| great but don 't really mean it, because it's cringe to
| admit that you care about money.
| graemep wrote:
| I did specify financially.
|
| Also, there has been a visible improvement in living
| standards in third world countries. More money does not
| mean people have a better life in a rich country because
| there are diminishing returns on having more money. In a
| country where most people are a lot poorer and
| desperately need more money, more money does mean better
| off.
|
| I am pretty sure people who can afford a proper house
| instead of a slum stack, or have a proper toilet, etc.
| are better off. As I said, there are visible improvements
| in the lives of the very poor.
|
| "For example: if I could live next to a beautiful
| national park and walk there every day, that would be
| more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in
| a huge city."
|
| That is your preference. Many people prefer living in a
| big city.
|
| Also, what about how good your conditions of life are
| next to the beautiful national park? A nice house in a
| big city with good food and leisure time vs a shack in
| the beautiful place, hard work to grow a barely adequate
| amount of food?
| Yeul wrote:
| The last 40 years have seen enormous economic growth
| outside the G7 to the point that North America and
| Western Europe no longer dominate the global economy.
|
| Vice president Vance marrying a woman from India was a
| look into the future. The rich elite know what's
| happening.
| graemep wrote:
| Rishi Sunak's wife is a better example: the one in the
| couple with the money is the Indian heiress not the
| British former hedge fund manager!
| ptero wrote:
| On (1), I grew up behind the iron curtain in a pre-
| internet age next to a village (no TV, no organized
| entertainment). The typical non-working activity there
| was not to enjoy the beauty of nature (as farmers they
| were fed up with it) but to be bored, get drunk and start
| fights with anyone non local. When the economy opened up
| in late 1980s anyone who could ran out to cities.
|
| I will take technology and some globalism any day. My 2c.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| False dichotomy. Both situations are bad because both are
| predicated on lack of wisdom. A lack of wisdom in a poor
| place implies brawls and wanton violence. A lack of
| wisdom in a rich, technological age implies resource
| destruction and climate change.
|
| Wisdom combined with restricted technology would be
| ideal, such as with the Amish. They have their problems
| but they show that a technologically restricted society
| is best. Note: I am not arguing for NO technology, but
| severely restricted technology.
| ptero wrote:
| Who is going to do this "severe restriction of
| technology"? The people themselves, as you write, do not
| want to do it.
|
| And anytime a self-appointed elite start doing "what is
| best for the people" against their will, police
| repression and labor camps are also on the menu. Nah, I
| will take my freedom, including the freedom to make
| mistakes.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| You assume the people always won't. There's a growing
| amount of skepticism towards technology and it's quite
| possible people will begin to hate it. I myself intend to
| spread the word about the dangers of technology to the
| best of my ability.
| arkh wrote:
| Ok, let's restrict the technology. What's the end goal?
|
| Because 1 billion years from now, even if humanity is
| back to before the wheel technology plants will have
| disappeared and the oceans evaporated due to the sun.
|
| If we want Earth originated life to have a chance to go
| over this bump something will have to go forward.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I find myself falling into this line of thought a lot:
| why should we make tradeoffs that favor the earth instead
| of hyper-accelerating progress to get off of it in
| preparation for its inevitable demise?
|
| But isn't the entire universe also going to meet its end
| as well, in an anticlimactic heat death? To overcome
| that, a civilization would have to reach universe-level
| Kardashev-like energy utilization capability, which would
| necessarily consume every particle in the universe,
| including themselves. It seems infeasible and unwise.
|
| Maybe it would lead to the next big bang... but that
| still is a death and rebirth.
|
| I think ultimately folks that support post-earth
| transhumanism operate on a notion that they themselves or
| their direct descendants that they will know and love in
| their own lifetimes will benefit from this space-colonial
| survivalist utopia. But IMO the reality is that if it is
| even possible, it would only happen long, long after they
| and everyone they could know or imagine are dead. It
| would likelier be accomplished by a society and
| civilization that they would hate and believe should be
| exterminated, due to the tradeoffs that would have to be
| made to accomplish it.
|
| It's essentially an individual's desire to live forever
| and avoid death, projected onto the human race. I'm not
| convinced it would actually be nice to live forever.
| Better to focus on how to make the short time we have be
| as good as possible. IMO the idea of eternal life leads
| to all sorts of perversions of the now in exchange for an
| assumed eternal afterward.
| badpun wrote:
| > I find myself falling into this line of thought a lot:
| why should we make tradeoffs that favor the earth instead
| of hyper-accelerating progress to get off of it in
| preparation for its inevitable demise?
|
| Get off and go where? Anywhere we could go is a million
| times worse for human habitation than post-demise Earth.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's the thing that I see a lot of. I grew up in
| Africa, and was exposed to _extreme_ poverty, since as
| far back as I can remember.
|
| People living poor don't like it. They may have accepted
| it, and may have learned to deal with it, but they don't
| tend to _like_ it. They want out, and generally jump at
| the chance to do so.
|
| People in richer communities may have fantasies about
| "living closer to nature," but that doesn't usually
| involve things like shooing rats off your kids at night,
| or having your house collapse, when there's a 3.0
| earthquake.
|
| People in poorer communities may have unreasonable
| expectations of what having money will bring, and we
| often see poor people that get rich quick (think Lotto
| "winners"), having pretty miserable lives.
|
| The grass is always greener on the other side of the
| fence.
| delichon wrote:
| I picked a place to live that's close to nature, right
| across my back fence from millions of acres of public
| forest. I love it here. Poverty is not required. I
| commute to work via Starlink and most nonperishables are
| delivered to my front porch by UPS, mostly from Amazon.
| It's green on both sides of my fence, and it's a choice
| that normal people, who can work remotely, can make if
| they value it. My house is far cheaper than one in a city
| and local costs are lower. Amazon deserves credit for
| making such a lifestyle easier, and if we can export more
| of it, that sounds like an advance.
| rickydroll wrote:
| I understand the joy of your choices. I live in an old
| mill town that has had multiple Renaissances. I consider
| myself lucky because I live at the edge of the town and
| have a 10,000-square-foot lot that is in the process of
| intentionally rewilding. My house wasn't necessarily
| cheaper than other houses. It's much more living space,
| fewer neighbors, and roughly the same cost per month as a
| three-bedroom apartment closer to where my partner works.
|
| The downside is that she has a 1 1/2 hour commute. Not
| because of distance but because of congestion. She is
| willing to take public transit, except it takes roughly
| twice as long to take the train, then a bus, then another
| bus, then a third bus, and not be able to do errands
| during the day or on the way home.
|
| life is all about trade-offs.
| Retric wrote:
| (2) They where literally describing a poor area being
| better off with global trade.
|
| Economies of scale and local advantages make the world
| better off. There's no advantage to growing bananas in
| greenhouses in Iowa when you can grow wheat and trade
| with Panama.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| That local trade involves taking advantage of the commons
| (putting CO2 in the atmosphere) to make it work. In my
| opinion, we do not have the right to take that advantage.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Few people would be able to afford much in your local
| economy.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Well for one, lots of my local economy would just involve
| trade and helping community members for free, creating
| local community gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible
| with very little.
| gruez wrote:
| >my local economy would just involve trade and helping
| community members for free, creating local community
| gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible with very
| little.
|
| Isn't this basically collectivization, which empirically
| has been shown to a massive failure? Without a monetary
| incentive, it's hard to get people to actually do stuff
| rather than lying on their couch and watching tiktok.
| Retric wrote:
| More CO2 is produced manufacturing and maintaining those
| greenhouses than shipping fruit from tropical locations.
|
| So no, in this case local production is simply worse for
| the commons. More broadly things that cost dramatically
| more are generally worse for the environment in subtle
| ways.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| In the case of bananas, then don't have bananas. Only
| locally sustainable goods or imports occasionally, not
| all the time.
| bobajeff wrote:
| Off the top of my head, the advantage in having bananas
| grown near you verses imported from Panama is that they
| are possibly fresher. This is assuming they can grow in
| your area and are in season of course. Produce is a
| special case in this regard locally sourced can
| potentially be healthier.
|
| That is to say everything isn't objectively always 100%
| better with globalization and specialization at least not
| until come up with faster methods of shipping.
| Retric wrote:
| > assuming they can grow in your area
|
| You _can_ grow bananas in Alaska, but you can't simply
| plant them outside. Thus my example assumes greenhouses
| built to a large enough scale to handle trees which is a
| major economic and environmental cost.
|
| Comparative advantage applies to a huge range of things
| not just bananas. You could mine cobalt basically
| anywhere at extreme expense, but everyone is better off
| when that happens in locations that naturally have
| extremely high concentrations of cobalt.
| graemep wrote:
| That is the other extreme that is also bad. In economies
| like that protectionism supports inefficient local
| production - favouring some people at the cost of others.
| It is designed to funnel money away from some people to
| others.
|
| The dominance of the economy by a few big companies also
| has the same effect - elimination of competition.
| gspetr wrote:
| Where were the police and regulations when Boeing's
| products killed hundreds of people? Last time I checked,
| nobody among top management went to prison for that.
|
| That's what "too big to fail" corporations can get you:
| failed products, anti-competitive environment, regulatory
| capture, no responsibility.
|
| Getting fined for a few (hundred) million dollars is not
| responsibility, it's chump change for multi-trillion
| dollar corporations.
| pif wrote:
| I agree with you: let's just buy our next 747's from the
| nearest mom-and-pop aviation shop!
| gruez wrote:
| You can have "global business" that aren't "too big to
| fail". If anything, if you're pro-competition, blindly
| buying local has the same anti-competitive effects,
| because you're protecting the local firm from competition
| from elsewhere.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| We have police and regulations but they only apply to the
| country you are in.
|
| Most of the cheap stuff we buy is from other countries,
| they don't have the same regulations and protections that
| we have, hence part(not all) of the reason they are
| cheap.
|
| Take a look at the cheap chargers on Amazon for example,
| marked as UL listed but you open them up and you see a
| circuit that is liable to start a fire. Someone reports
| it, the vendor vanishes and then there are 5 more
| listings under different names. See also the lead paint
| on toys scandal and poison pet food/treat scandals.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > What you are supporting is local sustainability. The
| world would be better off with less global trade and more
| local productions. Local productions means a stronger
| community and more visibility for business practices,
| because it's more sustainable.
|
| This is true for the extreme minority of products that ARE
| produced locally.
|
| If you buy a screwdriver from the privately-owned DYI shop
| around the corner it will have been produced in the same
| Chinese factory and shipped by the same boats and trucks as
| the one you'll buy from Amazon.
|
| You're not at all supporting local sustainability, you're
| just paying more to add one more middleman.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Well, also, if you don't support Amazon, then you don't
| support the growth of a large company like Amazon which
| is one more component of the collection of big
| corporations that are exactly those responsible for
| globalization in the first place.
| vasco wrote:
| Globalization is one of the best things that has ever
| happened to humanity.
|
| It allows whoever is willing to understand the peoples of
| the world share way more than what makes them different.
| Globalization, specially through the internet, but trade
| as whole, is my personal bet on what could "end all
| wars". In fact it is the first necessary step for the
| philosophical parts of the communist manifesto that are
| salvageable, the parts about the global coalition of
| common peoples working on shared goals and with similar
| baseline prosperity.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| It is only good if you take a short-term, human-
| supremacist view of the world. If you consider all life
| to have worth independent of its value to humanity, then
| globalization is a horror. And then globalization and the
| industrial society is the cause of climate change, so
| it's only good in the short-term.
| vasco wrote:
| If by "short-term" you mean "until we stop killing each
| other in massive wars" (I doubt we can eliminate
| individual murder), I guess I agree, but by my estimation
| that will take several centuries at least. If by short
| term you mean before that, I doubt that we can agree. I'm
| talking about something that to me is already so far in
| the future that it was strange to hear "short-term" as a
| response to that argument!
|
| Regarding human-supremacist view, I hadn't seen that
| expression before but if I interpret it correctly, I
| would say that describes a great big majority of the
| world population and I believe anyone would have a really
| hard time making this case to anyone on the street. I
| respect the moral purity in a way, but I think it's
| wildly impractical to call people around you human-
| supremacists, when like I said we are still not totally
| in agreement that things like wars should not happen. We
| say we do but there's never not been wars in our history.
| I don't know man, I feel like you're too deep in this
| rabbithole of morality to be able to have a normal
| discussion about getting a lightbulb at the local store
| when you start calling other people human-supremacists.
| But I do enjoy the banter!
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Well, when I see people dump their shit into the homes of
| animals, then I think that comes from an attitude of
| human supremacy. When I see pristine forests cut down for
| profit but laws protecting the homes of people, that's
| human supremacy.
|
| My goal is not to get most people to like me, or agree
| with my views. I fully acknowledge that I am a
| fundamentalist in the sense that I have a few axioms (all
| life is equal and technology must be regressed) and I
| have a zero compromise policy on that. Of course,
| unfortunately, to make a living I must participate in
| some of our atrocities.
|
| I don't think it's necessary either, that I conform and
| discuss as others. There is no shortage of conformists.
| Either our destructive ways will stop, in which case I am
| working to bring them down through my writing, or I will
| fail. It's something I believe in and nothing will change
| that.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > pristine forest
|
| You have probably never in your whole life been to a
| forest that's more than a few hundred years old. Even the
| Amazon was largely managed by humans with fire prior to
| about the 15th-16th century.
|
| > technology must be regressed
|
| This is a morally deranged axiom. The life-giving
| benefits of so many technologies can't be overstated.
| notTooFarGone wrote:
| It's clearly not as black and white as you paint it. Local
| production uses the same materials that global production
| uses due to pricing. As long as transportation is cheaper
| than local production this will stay the same due to simple
| economics.
|
| Also accountability is the same there, shops just buy their
| material regardless of working conditions and whatsoever.
| At least companies can be regulated based off of that.
|
| The error is too systematic to say "just produce local".
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| It's a start. As I always say, practices such as
| encouraging at least _local involvement_ is a start. Of
| course, another necessary step is revolution to bring
| down large companies.
| marpstar wrote:
| To add to this, local production means that money can be
| moving through local financial institutions, with larger
| balances, which provides more liquidity to the community.
|
| Those financial institutions hire local people. Other
| local businesses use the same financial institutions.
|
| It's not about "simple economics". This isn't a supply
| and demand curve. It's about what a higher cash
| flow/economic output can mean for the subjective quality
| of life in a community:
|
| - More jobs - Higher wages - Improved public services
| (schools, roads, healthcare) - Increased property values
|
| Tons of people in these comments talking about the shitty
| rural experience while seeming to miss the irony in "big
| cities are so much better" -- big cities started as small
| cities.
| huijzer wrote:
| This is a common sentiment especially in Germany, but
| Hannah Richie in Not the End of the World shows multiple
| studies where the impact of CO2 from transport is
| negligible for most foods. Other factors like what we
| decide to eat play a much greater role.
|
| Your plastic example is a reasonable example, but I could
| also counter that if plastic is the problem then locally
| isn't necessarily more sustainable. Local farmers can also
| wrap their products in plastic. In the end, the plastic is
| there to increase the shelf life. Even most local products
| will need to have a shelf life of a few weeks. It's
| unreasonable to demand farmers stop batching their produce
| and instead demand they carry a few apples to the market
| each day.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The products sold in local stores are never produced
| locally. It's national or international products, just like
| on Amazon.
|
| Buying from local stores pays the salaries of local
| salesmen, that is a benefit for the community. But wouldn't
| the community benefit better if they did a job that was
| needed instead?
| admissionsguy wrote:
| > It's national or international products, just like on
| Amazon.
|
| Yup. If you go to a souvenir store in a remote town (say
| Kiruna, Sweden), you will typically find local themed
| products manufactured in China.
| exe34 wrote:
| > Local productions
|
| local production happens in China though. if you live
| anywhere else, most of the stuff you can buy off Amazon was
| made in China. the local shops will ultimately buy it from
| China too.
| infecto wrote:
| Your ideas of how the world work are just patently false. A
| lot of local farms use large amounts of plastic everyday,
| its quite common to use plastic sheets to cover the ground
| when planting. You think you would know they are just
| dumping it into the pit on their land?
|
| Global trade is one of the best things to happen to the
| world, it has improved the lives of many. All your
| advocating for is going back to a time which you did not
| live it but you romanticize. I suspect it was not as
| romantic as you make it out to be.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they
| brought near you?
|
| Yes. That generates sales taxes. That generates property
| taxes. That pays for insurance. That pays for upkeep which is
| hopefully provided by a local contractor. Where this cycle
| repeats.
|
| > and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
|
| Yes. The money actually doesn't bother me, it's the access to
| unrestrained political influence it buys you, and big
| corporations monopolize labor pools and result in worse
| outcomes for working conditions and wages. Where this story
| starts.
| myflash13 wrote:
| It's because the absolute centralization of business in one
| entity is almost indistinguishable from Communism. For now it
| may appear that Amazon is cheaper/more convenient, but in the
| long run this type of monopoly leads to worse products and
| services.
| krapp wrote:
| Under communism, workers own the means of production and
| all of the profit their labor creates. Centralizing
| business into a single private monopoly whose profit is
| entirely controlled by shareholders is the exact opposite
| of communism.
|
| You're correct that monopoly leads to a degradation of
| products and services, but that's a flaw in capitalism
| (specifically the myth of the self-regulating free market
| ideal that eschews proper regulation in favor of the
| "invisible hand.")
| chgs wrote:
| It's all the downsides of communism, but non of the
| benefits.
| sokoloff wrote:
| "All the downsides"?! I find living in the US to be quite
| different from what I've seen of life depicted in
| current/past communist countries.
|
| It sure seems to me as if there were a few additional
| downsides in those communist countries that I don't see
| to anywhere near the same degree in the US.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I don't think "efficiency" is the only priority.
|
| A few reasons:
|
| - market diversity matters, and we have a more functional
| market with many smaller actors
|
| - similarly, a smaller local actor is more accountable for
| their behavior
|
| - efficiency comes mostly from cutting things, some of which
| mattered (eg, individual buyers at companies do more due
| diligence on the product than Amazon)
|
| - it's better that every community have a local moderately
| rich person than one super rich person nationally, eg, in
| terms of charity to your community
|
| - politics remains local and hence tractable
|
| - smaller organizations have less of a "frozen middle", which
| creates numerous problems with national scale organizations
|
| There's probably more reasons if I really stopped to think
| about it.
| pkaeding wrote:
| I do it to try to keep the money flowing around in my local
| community.
| aczerepinski wrote:
| For me it's that last one and also wanting more of my money
| to flow through my community. I don't want to live in a world
| where 10 trillionaires control everything. I already tried to
| avoid Amazon but Bezos blocking the Post from endorsing a
| political candidate as we descend into extreme oligarchy was
| the last straw.
| everyone wrote:
| It's basic ethics. Amazon are an evil corp, vote with your
| wallet and don't support them.
| rainsford wrote:
| I found myself gravitating back to local stores after years
| of buying essentially everything on Amazon because local
| stores at least to some degree curate their inventory while
| Amazon increasingly does not. If you're looking for a
| specific product that doesn't matter as much (although Amazon
| also has counterfeiting problems). But if you're just looking
| to browse what's available in a certain category of product,
| Amazon is nearly unusable. You'll almost certainly find
| dozens of Chinese companies with randomly generated names
| selling what are essentially copies of the same product with
| no good way to pick one or even tell if they're any good
| (reviews being basically useless on Amazon these days).
|
| Because they don't have the same unlimited inventory
| capacity, local stores have to put at least some effort into
| selling products with some base level of quality and focusing
| on the products most likely to sell in each category. Local
| stores are by no means perfect here, but they're vastly
| better than Amazon in this regard. And it's especially
| important because finding good independent product reviews on
| the internet these days is also a challenge, and even where
| they exist they're not reviewing whatever no-name Chinese
| brand Amazon is selling anyways.
| macNchz wrote:
| It has been surprising to me for years that people put up
| with this, I find it really terrible as a shopping
| experience. Like shopping in the worst dollar store you've
| ever been in that's also the size of a city and loaded with
| ads, except you can't actually touch the products or smell
| the pervasive scent of cheap plastic while you browse. And
| they want you to pay a subscription!
|
| Shopping from retailers that employ actual buyers feels
| like a real upgrade.
| justinrubek wrote:
| While the junk item situation on amazon is real, I can't
| agree with this take about local stores. I find that local
| stores tend to have random crap that they want to sell
| rather than high-quality items.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is my experience too.
|
| Local stores supply the cheapest crappiest version of
| something, but sell it at full price. This maximizes
| their profit.
|
| Online, I can actually see from the reviews which product
| is best, and buy that one.
|
| I spend the same, but get a much higher quality product.
|
| There are so many products only sold on Amazon that have
| 20,000 reviews because they're so much better than
| anything you can buy locally.
|
| I'm not talking the random Chinese brands with 50 reviews
| -- I'm talking the #1 best selling item in each product
| category.
| maccard wrote:
| I just searched for a Wifi Extender on Amazon. This [0]
| particular model has 3.6k reviews, and is the first
| option after "Amazon's Choice" Must be good, right? How
| about we scroll down to one of those reviews [1]. Oh,
| looks like it racked up a bunch of reviews for being a
| washing machine hose, and then changed product SKU.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extender-Antennas-Repeater-
| Wireless...
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extender-Antennas-Repeater-
| Wireless...
| crazygringo wrote:
| You're completing ignoring the advice I gave. 3.6k
| reviews is nothing.
|
| But if you visit the page for the product's category:
|
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/computers/4305780
| 31/...
|
| You see the #1 option has 36K+ reviews. Looks pretty
| solid to me.
|
| Yes, you can purchase pages and change the product, it's
| a known scam that I agree Amazon should crack down on.
| That still doesn't change the fact that there are super-
| popular items that are usually way better than what you
| can purchase locally.
| maccard wrote:
| I didn't ignore the advice - I showed a link to a popular
| product that has thousands of almost perfect ratings that
| is readily available on amazon.
|
| An even better way to do it is don't use Amazon for
| discovery, and only buy stuff you've researched off the
| site. But walking into Amazon to buy something is just as
| likely to land you with crap as going into your local
| shop and doing so.
| bombcar wrote:
| Local stores vary wildly in quality, and that's part of
| the reason they've been pushed aside by the giants.
|
| However, now "local store" _includes_ the giants like
| Walmart, etc.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yes, exactly my experience as well. And the more of a mom
| and pop store that it is, the worse this problem tends to
| be. I have actually audibly laughed out loud for a second
| before catching myself when seeing some of the prices.
|
| Ironically, it's the big chains that seem to be the best
| on this. They have some curation and their pricing is
| usually a little higher than What I'll see on Amazon but
| isn't outrageous.
|
| The big exception is anything edible, such as groceries.
| Anything edible on Amazon is going to be wildly
| overpriced. For edible items I definitely go to big
| chains that are local
| pyrale wrote:
| > you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently
|
| For some value of "more efficiently". I mean if the most
| efficient way to work is to have delivery drivers pee in a
| bottle and warehouse workers develop RSIs, who am I to
| complain? Someone else's dignity is a small price to pay in
| order to get a 3% rebate on some commodity.
| dartos wrote:
| One big reason is it keep money local.
|
| When you buy from a non local business, that money leaves
| your towns microeconomy.
|
| It's part of why dollar stores destroy low income areas.
| crazygringo wrote:
| When I buy from Amazon, it pays local warehouse workers and
| local delivery people.
|
| Amazon is a big employer in a lot of local communities.
| jjav wrote:
| Yes, minimum wage jobs for the locals, most of the profit
| goes to Bezos.
|
| When you shop at locally-owned stores the money goes to a
| local small business owner, truly staying local.
|
| Look up how walmart used to destroy small town economies
| by bankrupting all the local businesses and converting
| all those previously middle-class shop owners into
| minimum wage jobs at walmart.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _most of the profit goes to Bezos._
|
| Incorrect. Bezos only owns 8.8% of Amazon.
|
| Most of the profit is distributed to a wide variety of
| shareholders in the form of rising share prices,
| reflected in things like retirement accounts. In other
| words, a lot of that profit goes to grandmas across the
| country with their money in a Vanguard retirement fund.
| Including grandmas in your local community.
|
| And you really think the local shopowner kept all the
| profit in their community? E.g. they didn't send their
| kids to college in another state? Or build a house with
| materials sourced from all over the country?
|
| It's a whole lot more complicated than you seem to think.
| dartos wrote:
| > And you really think the local shopowner kept all the
| profit in their community? E.g. they didn't send their
| kids to college in another state?
|
| Imagine spending money and having that money allow people
| in your local community to afford college.
|
| Then imagine thinking that's a bad thing.
|
| Obviously it's complicated, but the gist is longer money
| stays in a local area, the better off that area is going
| to be.
|
| It's better for money to leave my town so that my
| neighbor's kid could go to college than it is for me to
| get two day shipping on a new game console.
|
| A pathological case could be made that every dollar that
| you keep in town is a dollar someone spends outside of
| the town. That's a valid argument in theory, but in
| reality that doesn't happen.
|
| People go to local businesses and spend money. Local
| bars, specialty markets, farmers markets, etc.
| freedomben wrote:
| GP definitely did not say he thinks having people in the
| local community afford college is a bad thing. That's
| quite a straw man. Their point about the money quickly
| leaving the local economy is valid. If the shop owner is
| making a reasonable wage at the end of the day, then I
| think the local effect is good. Doubly so if they employ
| people from the local area. However, if the shop owner is
| getting rich and most of those profits are going into a
| fat bank account, then it makes no difference to the
| local economy. If helping the local economy is really
| your goal, I think there are much more efficient ways.
|
| That said, I do mostly agree with you. Where we might
| differ is that I don't accept paying significant markup
| to shop local. If an item I want is available locally and
| is close to the same price as online, I will go local
| every time for exactly the reasons you mention: to help
| the local economy. But I have a low tolerance for The
| outrageous markup that most Small shops insist on
| applying. In my opinion, those shops probably should go
| out of business by being non-competitive. That would open
| up some room for a less greedy retailer to come and be
| more of a service to the local community.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > if the shop owner is getting rich and most of those
| profits are going into a fat bank account, then it makes
| no difference to the local economy
|
| While arguably not ideal I would also argue that is still
| better than the same profits being captured by an
| increasingly centralized corporation many states or
| countries away.
|
| Local millionaires using a bank will incentivize that
| bank keeping branches open in town, which can help other
| locals more easily maintain savings accounts. I
| personally make a point to use at least one locally
| incorporated bank for similar reasons.
|
| Even something frivolous like a local millionaire buying
| a powerboat stimulates the economy because the
| infrastructure that is required to maintain that keeps a
| demand for other jobs open and keeps money flowing.
|
| Now I'm not saying powerboats are intrinsically good. All
| I'm saying is that if someone is going to buy one with
| the profit captured from running a business selling eg
| home goods, it's better for a local economy for a local
| to do it vs a Bay Area Bezos a thousand miles away.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Then imagine thinking that's a bad thing._
|
| You seem to have missed my point entirely. I'm _not_
| saying that 's a bad thing -- but I'm saying that by
| _your_ logic, you seem to think it is.
|
| You're looking at money like it's some kind of zero-sum
| thing that ought to be hoarded by every local community.
| You say:
|
| > _but the gist is longer money stays in a local area,
| the better off that area is going to be_
|
| That is contrary to all standard economic theories of
| free trade. The entire engine of economic growth is that
| when communities trade between each other, everyone's
| standard of living goes up.
|
| The economy theory you seem to be promoting is what is
| known as mercantilism [1], which has been thoroughly
| discredited.
|
| Circulating money broadly is a _good_ thing. You don 't
| need to worry about it leaving your local area, because
| it _comes back_ according to whatever goods and services
| you produce! You don 't need to hoard it locally.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > when communities trade between each other
|
| > it comes back according to whatever goods and services
| you produce
|
| Extractive industry like Amazon kill the local producers
| and siphon the money out of smaller areas and concentrate
| it in richer areas. When there are no local producers or
| wealth left, what is there to circulate or trade?
|
| Amazon is an Internet-myelinated version of the Wal-Mart
| effect, with more packaging waste.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _When there are no local producers or wealth left, what
| is there to circulate or trade?_
|
| If that were true, then sure it would be a problem. But I
| don't know of many communities in the US where there are
| literally _no jobs_ , nothing being produced at all.
| Where economic activity is zero.
|
| Some jobs go away and new ones arise. And remote work
| makes it easier than ever for jobs to move from cities to
| smaller areas.
|
| Can you really show that Amazon has had a net effect of
| shifting wealth "out of smaller areas" and into richer
| ones? Especially when you consider the amount of money it
| _saves_ people in smaller areas, which makes them _more_
| wealthy than they would be otherwise?
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I cannot. I am operating on an assumption that each
| dollar that goes to Amazon vs a local producer is an
| opportunity cost for the community's long-term wealth.
| Saving a few bucks here and there on individual purchases
| seems like short-term thinking and small potatoes. Scaled
| up, that is what lead to rust belt decay after offshoring
| so much manufacturing. I know a lot of ink has been
| spilled on the effects of walmart and dollar stores on
| local economies, but I will also admit that I have not
| done any legwork to vet the hypotheses or conclusions, or
| if I have, I've forgotten and wouldn't be able to produce
| any citations. As far as I can get in systems thinking
| with the initial conditions I know, which is assuredly a
| small subset of the totality of reality, the
| concentration of ability to produce and purchasing power
| is dangerous for those in the leaf nodes. I'm always
| interested to see more data proving me more right right
| or wrong on this.
| nine_k wrote:
| A hyper-efficient system is inherently fragile: if something
| happens to any part of it, it has a big ripple effect all
| over the place, because there's no slack anywhere. More
| resilient systems always have some redundancy that helps them
| cope in a case of failure. If you think about societally
| optimal setup, it likely should include a mix of systems,
| from very efficient to very resilient. Something about eggs
| and baskets.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| This is an insightful breakdown, though I think it leaves out
| the option I would have chosen. A small business run by a
| human who is physically present is going to make different
| decisions that are better for the community.
|
| I have to say though I have evolved a bit in this perspective
| as I've come to realize that these small business owners can
| be every bit as greedy or even more. Especially there are a
| lot who are just fundamentally incompetent at business and
| try to make up the difference by extracting it from their
| employees, willfully ignoring labor laws in ways a large
| company would not dare. A large company is a big target
| surrounded by people who want a piece of the action and often
| must tread carefully as a result.
|
| I've personally never worked in such a position, but I have
| heard absolutely crazy stories from people who have, things
| like demanding that commission only sales people come in
| hours early to do unpaid work like cleaning unrelated to
| their job title, "fining" people $75 for checking their phone
| while "on the clock" (again in a commission only job),
| constantly helping themselves to their employees paycheck
| finding things to "charge" them for, and just generally being
| a menace and treating employees like they personally owned
| them. Their ego and sense of entitlement go completely wild.
| The owners I have known personally will brag about cheating
| on their taxes while railing against the government, running
| an atrociously inefficient business that they talk about as
| if it's some sort of charity. In many cities there's a whole
| good old boy network type system in place that's no less
| corrupt and ugly than whatever you want to say about
| companies like Amazon.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I used to work at Amazon.
|
| What you want to support are:
|
| - local retailers offer better jobs, and often better
| benefits. The work you do stocking at Menards is much better
| than sorting boxes at Amazon
|
| - support local repair vs repurchasing. This cuts down on the
| upstream demand and does wonders for local small-business
| economies. And again, provides better jobs than sorting
| boxes.
|
| - Efficiency is great! But what is Amazon efficient _at_?
| They have maximized the speed and convenience of delivery.
| Once stated that way it 's obvious there must be tradeoffs.
| One of those tradeoffs is the shit work. In one dist center,
| a guys entire job was to wheel odd shaped boxes from one side
| of a warehouse to another. Whenever you order a big or
| weirdly shaped box, that guy moved it. Even he hates that
| job. It's meaningless, non social, provides no transferrable
| skills.
|
| - ultimately what your parents were talking about is how one
| chooses to shape their local economy and jobs market. I want
| to buy from companies that I would want my friends and family
| to work for.
|
| But yeah, I buy from Amazon all the time too.
| gruez wrote:
| >- local retailers offer better jobs, and often better
| benefits.
|
| Is this backed by empirical evidence? I've also heard that
| small local companies have worse labor conditions, because
| they're small and fly under the radar compared to
| multinationals. One incident of an Amazon delivery driver
| peeing in bottles (even if they're technically working for
| a local subcontractor) is enough to show up on the New York
| Times. The same isn't going to be true for some local firm.
| Moreover, it's possible that "local retailers" targets a
| more upmarket segment compared to national chains. When I
| think "local retailers", I think small boutique shops in
| gentrifying neighborhoods. Obviously those stores will have
| better working conditions than Amazon, but it's not as if
| we got rid of Amazon, it'll get replaced by boutique shops,
| or that most people would be better served by them.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I was wrong to imply "local" since that conjures images
| of things like a main street one window shop with 3
| employees. Obv their benefits are lower.
|
| I had in my head things like Target, Best Buy, or more
| social, occasional-customer-interaction-based work. It's
| just those mega corps are local. Also the large retailers
| like Home Depot, Menards, etc. At least those aren't as
| soulless and monotonous. By "local" I meant "brick and
| mortar" etc.
|
| But I'm out of the edit window so, best to ignore it.
| smileysteve wrote:
| To disagree, local "mom and pops" often don't offer better
| jobs or benefits, or meaning.
|
| Historically, in the US, these shops and restaurants often
| depended on underpaid (often children of the owner) labor,
| offered no benefits, and had no safety net in case of owner
| or business failure.
|
| On average, today, starting wages at McDonalds, Walmart, or
| your "local" Amazon warehouse are 25-50% higher than local
| restaurants and retailers for rural America (which more
| typically pay minimum wage). And benefits, a local mom and
| pop is less likely to account for paid sick/vacation days,
| retirement savings, healthcare coverage, and workplace
| insurance (in some cases, a disability or workplace injury
| would make the business unprofitable + less oversight).
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Comparing Amazon to an average rural main street coffee
| shop or craft store isn't fair.
|
| But you're right I suppose, if your choice is employee
| number 3 at a tiny thrift store for half the pay, I'd
| choose Amazon too. But I'd probably want my kids to work
| at Target stocking shelves rather than Amazon hauling
| boxes.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Of course a tipped minimum wage is less than a McDonald's
| non-tipped wage. It's disingenuous to make the
| comparison. Just as a bus boy at a local restaurant, I
| took home more money than my friends who worked at major
| chains.
| psychoslave wrote:
| >Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more
| efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big
| corporations?
|
| That's such an odd way to paint it.
|
| When people live in a system with millions of
| quettallionaires and the bilion left are mere millionaires
| where 1 unit of currency is enough to buy the best meal in
| town with all towns in the world equally provided in
| services, the system won't see much strikes happening soon.
|
| When people live in a system where a small cake is growing at
| a slow rate and a few hundreds people are cornering always
| more of it at an accelerating rate, all the more when the
| extraction rate of the cake is known to exceed the cake
| regeneration rate, the system is well on its road for
| repeated strikes or even bloody social movements.
|
| Ok, these allegories are two possible points in a spectrum.
| Which scenario is most likely to be closest to the world as
| its perceived by most people out there?
|
| People don't love or hate big corporations and riches out of
| the blue. If there are given room out of the vivid feeling
| that their life is a day to day struggle to survive, most
| people can perfectly demonstrate nuances in their judgment.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There are many replies already, but one point that hasn't
| been mentioned:
|
| The local store pays their taxes -- local and national taxes.
| Amazon is big enough to evade these, or where possible, pay
| small amounts only in Luxembourg, Delaware etc.
| gruez wrote:
| Amazon pays sales taxes, which makes up a big chunk of the
| local business' tax burden anyways. Moreover, the retail
| division Amazon barely makes any money, so any taxes on
| profit going to delaware or whatever is probably minimal
| (as % of your spend).
| Symbiote wrote:
| > Moreover, the retail division Amazon barely makes any
| money
|
| That is exactly the kind of creative accounting
| unavailable to a small business.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| If the retail division of Amazon barely makes any money,
| why hasn't it been cut or spun off so that the company
| can concentrate on the things that it is really good at
| and are more profitable?
| beowulfey wrote:
| It's called "community" and our generation has no idea what
| that word means or why there is value to it.
| partytax wrote:
| On the localist/resilient extreme in a developing world
| village you have the problems of:
|
| * Inefficiency
|
| * Lack of options
|
| * Stupid business practices uncritically continued
|
| See https://asteriskmag.com/issues/07/want-growth-kill-small-
| bus...
|
| On the globalist/efficient extreme in the USA, for example,
| you have the problems of:
|
| * Economic dependence on large, national players that can
| leave at any time
|
| * Business proprietors feel no social responsibility to your
| community because they do not live there and interact with
| locals
|
| * Little power in deciding what products businesses offer
|
| * Profits enriching another place rather than your own place
|
| I don't want either of these.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Amazon used to be the cheapest in almost every category, but
| more and more, I find that places like Harbor Freight beat
| them. I even bought a pricey resin printer and a wash and cure
| station the other day; Microcenter had them beat by $100+.
| bdangubic wrote:
| I don't think people buy on Amazon because it is the
| cheapest, they buy on Amazon for convenience. EVERY SINGLE
| TIME I buy something from someone else (talking online here)
| I painfully regret that decision (didn't arrive on time,
| didn't arrive at all, shipped in multiple shipments, one
| arrived, two didn't and yet order is showing as delivered ->
| this is just small sample of what I have seen just in the
| last say 6 weeks). My wife and I have been trying all year to
| purchase as much as we can on other e-commerce websites but
| in often (always) ends up like these examples above...
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Harbor freight also has much more consistent quality and no
| fake name brand items. It's funny because they used to be
| synonymous with low quality- but now they seem to have the
| highest quality tools you can easily buy as a consumer.
| csomar wrote:
| If I don't need to drive to the "local" store, then the local
| store is miles better than Amazon especially if it has the
| choices you need. The problem is: 1. many times they don't have
| _exactly_ what you need but Amazon does and 2. if it requires a
| ride, then both are no longer 5 bucks.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Amazon does not seem to have good prices anymore. And it is
| hard to judge the quality compared to seeing stuff in person.
|
| I feel like they are riding on old momentum by now. The
| experience shopping there is terrible.
| WillAdams wrote:
| I worked in an Amazon warehouse for two different periods:
|
| - for over a year part-time on weekends
|
| - four-day full-time in-between jobs recently
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/dmnuts/53mamazon_fulfi...
|
| Once, when polled by HR, I noted that it should be more
| efficient for many different people in a given neighborhood to
| place orders, and for one delivery truck to run through it
| dropping off packages even if somewhat fuel-inefficient, than
| for that myriad of consumers to make separate trips even if
| using fuel-efficient vehicles.
|
| Stores should not try to "out-Amazon" Amazon --- I buy my
| groceries from a store which is 1 mile away, and usually stop
| on the way home from work --- if I need something over the
| weekend or on a telework day which won't wait, I walk or ride
| my bike unless there is some other errand which needs to be
| made. Similarly, I prefer to shop the local hardware store
| (bike-distance) for hardware and tools (when suitable ones are
| available, if not, then it's Harry Epstein, or Jim Bode, or a
| trip to Woodcraft, or an on-line order).
|
| Folks forget what life was like before Amazon --- there were
| occasions when I drove all around multiple towns looking for
| one connector because I didn't want a project to wait for a
| special order and 6--8 weeks delivery --- my kids were amazed
| when we came across my copy of the book: _U.S. Mail Order
| Shopper's Guide: A Subject Guide Listing 3,667 Unique Mail
| Order Catalogs_ by Susan Spitzer
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4313476-u-s-mail-order-s...
| rectang wrote:
| Apple Pay has raised my confidence level about buying directly
| from smaller internet sites. Since those sites don't get my raw
| credit card info when I use Apple Pay, I don't have to worry
| about whether they've implemented CC handling well (most have
| not).
|
| I almost never have to resort to Amazon any more.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Did America go straight from giving full credit card info to
| Apple Pay? Chip and pin and card contactless both solve that
| problem
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Yes mostly. The cell phone wallets were the convenience
| difference that caused merchants to upgrade their POS
| systems to support contactless. Before that there just
| wasn't much reason for merchants to change their existing
| card infrastructure. Now customers feel inconvenienced if
| they have to use a credit card.
| rectang wrote:
| I was talking about buying from online merchants. I'm less
| familiar with the security implications of chip-and-pin or
| contactless card for in-person transactions. Do those
| technologies prevent the merchant from getting raw CC info?
|
| Rightly or wrongly, I worry less about the security
| implementations of hardware point-of-sale terminals than
| the security implementations of small websites.
|
| I mostly prefer Apple Pay for in-person transactions
| because of anonymity -- my understanding is that it makes
| it harder for companies (other than Apple) to track my
| purchases.
| iszomer wrote:
| Bank of America automates the process of creating virtual
| cards for your account when you set up contactless
| payments such as Google Pay. It is not an anonymous
| service as the bank still keeps the transaction records
| and iirc, will occasionally sell or relinquish the data
| on request to 3rd parties or enforcement agencies.
| rectang wrote:
| Apple Pay is set up as a front for my credit card, which
| is a Visa card I get through my credit union. Whether
| it's Apple Pay or Google Pay (or PayPal, or others), I
| think the card provider is always going to have full
| records -- in addition to the payment channel provider.
| So I should have said "(besides Apple or my card
| provider)" rather than just "(besides Apple)".
| rectang wrote:
| Answering my own question...
|
| > _Do those technologies prevent the merchant from
| getting raw CC info?_
|
| They do:
|
| https://www.worldpay.com/en/insights/articles/how-does-a-
| chi...
|
| > _An enabled EMV terminal reads and verifies the card
| information contained in the embedded chip when inserted
| into the slot of the payment terminal. Like using the
| magnetic stripe, card data is then processed for payment
| authorization; the key difference is that the chip card
| generates a one-time code for each transaction while a
| traditional magnetic stripe card does not._
|
| So, the merchant doesn't get the raw CC number; they get
| a transaction token.
|
| This doesn't prevent someone from reading the CC account
| number off of the physical card, but unlike swiping a
| stripe, the act of purchasing via an EMV token means that
| the CC account number doesn't enter the system.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Is this an ad? Paypal's been doing this for 25 years.
| rectang wrote:
| I've used PayPay a lot over decades, starting with when
| they were mainly a way of paying on eBay, but I haven't
| thought of them as "making the rest of the web an
| alternative to Amazon". Perhaps that's because PayPal
| didn't achieve the same market penetration. Or because I
| didn't perceive them as providing the same level of
| service, or ease of use -- for example, they haven't made
| shipping as easy (or if they have, I'm not aware of it).
|
| And no, my post is not an "ad" *eyeroll*. There seem to be
| several competitors active in a maturing ecosystem. I don't
| have experience with them them to the level that I'd feel
| comfortable citing them, but I regret not mentioning them
| if it would have made the point more effectively. If
| PayPal, or Google Pay, or some other provider has served
| that role for you, I'm glad.
| nxm wrote:
| Should I spend 15 minutes each way driving (carbon emissions)
| to the store and waste 1 hr of my time in this case, when it
| can be delivered to me tomorrow? I definitely want to support
| local, but the cost/benefits are not as clear in this case.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You really need to consider the reality outside of your own
| bubble of concern. Especially as your bubble doesn't even
| extend beyond the door of your house, since you don't
| understand that the Amazon delivery driver is also driving
| and also spending his time.
| cpitman wrote:
| That driving and time is amortized across 1000s of
| deliveries.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The product is delivered the same distance, whether it is
| from "Producer -> Amazon warehouses -> Customer" or if it
| is "Producer -> Retail warehouses -> Customer". An Amazon
| delivery car with a bunch of products to deliver is the
| equivalent of OP filling up his car with purchases when
| shopping in town.
| gruez wrote:
| >An Amazon delivery car with a bunch of products to
| deliver is the equivalent of OP filling up his car with
| purchases when shopping in town.
|
| Right, but if you want something in 2-3 days (which
| amazon provides), you need to make a dedicated trip. Even
| if timing wasn't a factor, at best doing a consolidated
| errand run allows you to visit a handful of stores,
| whereas an amazon delivery van delivers to dozens of
| houses in your neighborhood in one trip.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Amazon built up a dedicated logistic network in order to
| get the 2-3 day delivery time. How does the Carbon
| Emissions of that factor in?
| gruez wrote:
| Is there to believe that logistics network has worse
| emissions compared to logistics networks for brick and
| mortar stores? At least for me, most of the amazon
| packages' tracking shows up as departing from a local
| warehouse, so I'd imagine most of the fast delivery time
| comes from pre-positioning goods in warehouses near
| buyers, rather than shipping packages across the country
| using planes or whatever.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Most existing retailers did not own or run a private
| logistics network, they would use XPO, R+L, Old Dominion,
| etc.
|
| In order to get that amazing fast delivery time, Amazon
| had to create their own system. The creation of that
| system, created a large amount of Carbon emissions at
| it's onset just with the requisite vehicles require to
| make it happen. It also set off an arms race between
| logistics enterprises to try and deliver the same
| performance, leading to further emissions.
|
| >The primary function of Amazon Air is to transport
| Amazon packages from distant fulfillment centers that are
| outside of Amazon's local ground linehaul network for a
| specific area.
|
| They have their own air cargo service for shipping
| packages between Distribution centers. They wouldn't
| invest in that unless they had enough volume to make it
| profitable.
|
| I get that it is easy and convenient but please don't try
| to claim that it is ecological.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Air
|
| https://www.businesstechweekly.com/online-sales-and-
| growth/s...
|
| https://www.warehousingandfulfillment.com/warehousing-
| and-fu...
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| The driver is getting paid for his time. You driving to a
| local store are not paid.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| How much carbon emissions went into making that available to
| be delivered tomorrow?
|
| You have a a large fleet of 18 wheelers, delivery vans and
| forklifts. Then the warehouses that go into making the supply
| chain work.
| cloverich wrote:
| Which are definitely more efficient than having every
| individual that needs something hop in a car and drive for
| 20+ minutes. One delivery person with goods for 100 people
| in their truck is literally one truck replacing one hundred
| drivers. It is absolutely much more efficient carbon wise.
| All of the warehouses and 18 wheelers exist either way,
| since the local shops still need all the same supplies,
| although presumably more widely distributed.
|
| The only way it works out is if people buy much less, which
| given prices would be much higher, they likely would.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| They didn't exist prior to Amazon deciding to offer 2day
| delivery, that's my point. Why else would they invest all
| that money, when they could use the already existing
| services that deliver to people's houses fairly quickly:
| FedEx, UPS and DHL or the slightly slower but goes
| everywhere every day USPS?
|
| Your one person is a truck delivering to 100 homes
| ignores the fact that at least 80% of the people in those
| homes have a car that they use everyday, often passing a
| grocery store and most other local shops.
|
| I have a longer reply talking about the Carbon usage
| below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42463832
| roboror wrote:
| I live in a big city and unfortunately the local price gouging
| has gotten out of control. It's now often 50% cheaper to buy
| basics like aluminum foil and cereal on Amazon compared to even
| the discount dollar store.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Most of the time it's not the same price, and most of the items
| are not in local stores. I know because I comparison shop, and
| 90% of the time I end up ordering from Amazon, because it's
| still the quickest and cheapest way to get things.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Just a reminder that if you search for "Thank my driver" on
| Amazon you'll get $5 donated to your most recent delivery driver
| at no cost to you. You can do this once per delivery, for every
| delivery, for the few weeks leading up to the holidays.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| There seems to be a cap per local area. My area hasn't donated
| any money for the past week or so. It just says a thank you
| will be given to the driver. I presume it's because enough
| people used it to max out the allotment in our zip code(?).
| tjpnz wrote:
| Surprised to see they're also offering it in Japan.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Does this work if the driver is UPS or FedEx? Amazon drivers
| don't exist in my county and probably not in my state.
| batch12 wrote:
| Looks like they no longer get the tip. This is what I see:
|
| As of December 10, 2024, we have received more than 2 million
| "thank yous," concluding the promotion offering $5 per "thank
| you" to eligible drivers. You can continue to thank your
| drivers and we will share your appreciation with them.
| erellsworth wrote:
| Not any more, apparently. Now all they get is a pat on the
| back.
|
| "As of December 10, 2024, we have received more than 2 million
| "thank yous," concluding the promotion offering $5 per "thank
| you" to eligible drivers. You can continue to thank your
| drivers and we will share your appreciation with them."
|
| https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=18271648011&pd_rd_w=v1...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Amazon Teamsters in NYC have voted to authorize a strike_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42436279
| a12k wrote:
| I've found that the rise of Apply Pay as a payment mechanism on
| random sites has been helpful in getting me off of Amazon. Often
| it's just as easy to order something direct if they have Apple
| Pay (or ShopPay, but I have other issues with them) and the same
| price as Amazon. Plus discoverability is awful on Amazon anyways.
|
| Still don't get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping
| from Amazon, but not punching in my credit card number to random
| sites has been enough to get me to move 50% of my shopping to
| retailers direct.
| nine_k wrote:
| To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with
| Prime. Do other merchants offer fast delivery often enough?
|
| Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for
| virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card
| details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or
| cashback.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The local Target and Home Depots all offer same day pickup
| and delivery. For our house, that's taken 90% of the business
| away from Amazon.
|
| What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't
| require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect
| it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that
| don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned
| to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies,
| art, etc.
|
| Realizing this was what made me quit Prime years ago, and
| eventually drive down my Amazon purchases to just a handful
| of times a year. For the most part, there's really not much
| of a difference if I get a book tomorrow vs. four days from
| now, or if I get it from Amazon or from the nearby Target.
| But there's a lot of infrastructure built up to satisfy
| this admittedly frivolous expectation of fast delivery.
|
| Are there cases when rapid delivery is necessary and
| valuable? Absolutely. Are those cases the norm? Not in my
| life, by an overwhelming margin.
| n144q wrote:
| Exactly. The $35 free shipping threshold actually helped
| me hold off a few impulse purchases. Thanks Amazon!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Realizing this was what made me quit Prime years ago
|
| I quit Prime after Amazon replaced "two-day shipping"
| with "it'll get there when it gets there".
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| For the most part these days, Amazon seems like a fast way to
| ship goods from Alibaba in the one to two day time frame.
|
| For a lot of other stuff, it feels like they've lost their
| edge on price and shipping.
|
| Often my main reason for using Amazon is that it reduces the
| friction associated with buying for more retailers. For
| example worrying about data breaches, being put on spam email
| lists, etc.
| n144q wrote:
| Do you _actually_ care that much about fast delivery?
|
| My Prime membership ended 3 years ago. These days I just put
| items in the cart, and place order whenever it reaches $35.
| If I need an item in a hurry -- which rarely happens -- I go
| to a store to buy it.
|
| This barely affected me, and I ended up with much fewer
| impulse purchases.
|
| What's funny though is that the "standard" delivery often
| takes 5 calendar days. But AliExpress shipments can take as
| few as 8 calendar days. I ended up spending even less --
| well, if the items are manufactured in China, why not just
| order on AliExpress where you get the same/similar items and
| pay less.
| Yeul wrote:
| This is true. DHL asked me to delay my shipping because of
| Black Friday chaos and it was a bunch of crap that I didn't
| really need immediately so I delayed it for a week.
| MoreMoore wrote:
| Generally when I order something it's because I need it now
| and I live at the ass end of nowhere, so it's too
| inconvenient to find a decent store that sells what I need
| at a decent price (if that exists at all nearby).
|
| I think the biggest issue is just the uncertainty. I've
| been ordering at other places lately and it's just ...
| frustrating that I have no idea if it'll take them a day or
| three days to process before shipping.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Do you actually care that much about fast delivery?
|
| Yes. Simple as. But a lot of people don't, so it's nice
| that there's options.
| ghaff wrote:
| What Prime did for me, which didn't start with but was
| emphasized by COVID, was that if I needed/wanted many items
| I could just order them from Amazon with fairly prompt
| delivery rather than putting them on a shopping list. I'd
| probably get them quicker than I'd have gotten around to
| going to the store and probably save at least 30+ minutes
| into the bargain.
| nine_k wrote:
| Most of the time, when I order something on Amazon, it's
| because something broke and I need to fix it, or something
| is running out, or there's some other time-sensitive need.
|
| I rarely buy big-ticket items, and these can definitely
| wait.
| RankingMember wrote:
| > well, if the items are manufactured in China, why not
| just order on AliExpress where you get the same/similar
| items and pay less.
|
| Yep, I've come to see it as a general rule that, if the
| item on Amazon is sold under one of those all-caps
| gibberish brand names, the same exact item is almost always
| on AliExpress for 30-50% less.
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| Fantastic experiences doing this, highly recommend
| discovering on amazon and shifting to bargain sites to
| actually purchase
| RankingMember wrote:
| Sometimes I'll even browse Amazon for a product I'm about
| to buy on AliExpress simply because their reviews are
| much better than Ali's. Someone wanna write a
| greasemonkey script to replace the AliExpress reviews
| with Amazon ones when browsing AliExpress? :)
| maccard wrote:
| > Do you actually care that much about fast delivery?
|
| I care about knowing when it's going to arrive. I don't
| necessarily need next day delivery, but if something says
| 2-3 day delivery that doesn't mean it will arrive in 3
| days, it means it will arrive 3 days after it's shipped.
| Which for some major UK retailers can be 3-5 days. All of a
| sudden your delivery window is 2-8 days.
|
| Also, much of the stuff I buy off Amazon is the sort of
| "crap" you make a single trip to the dollar store for -
| lightbulbs, wood filler, bin liners. They're the sort of
| things that I kind of need when I need them, or shortly
| after. My parents are the sort of people who will spend 20
| minutes doing a quick round trip to the nearest dollar
| store/supermarket to get one thing, twice a week. I order
| it on amazon, and know it'll be there by the weekend for me
| to do whatever I need to do with it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why the incredulity?
|
| Yes, people often care about delivery time.
|
| Most of the time, if I'm buying something, it is because I
| need it for a project, trip, or event. If I could buy it at
| a store today I would.
| crote wrote:
| I really wish there was a non-rush way to order with a
| guaranteed delivery moment.
|
| Usually I'm not in a huge hurry, and I would happily wait a
| few days extra if it means workers don't have to pee in a
| bottle during their night shift. However, a "3-5 days"
| delivery means there's a pretty decent chance I won't be
| home and have to go to the other side of town to pick it up
| - and that's _incredibly_ annoying. So I end up choosing
| next-day delivery and order it when I _know_ I 'll be home
| the next day.
|
| Why can't I just place an order on Monday with a guaranteed
| delivery on Saturday? Ordering on Friday with a guaranteed
| delivery on Saturday is already possible, so what's
| stopping them?
| harvey9 wrote:
| Amazon offered me exactly that during checkout recently:
| 'no rush delivery', and deducted the price a little as an
| incentive.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with
| Prime
|
| Most websites won't even give you a realistic shipping time
| (major brands might but the long-tail of online merchants
| don't). They might say "2-3 day shipping" but that's how long
| it takes after they ship it, sometimes it can take up a week
| before they actually ship it. It means than if I buy from
| anyone but a massive retailer I am rolling the dice on if
| I'll get something in 2 days or 2+ weeks. Some things can
| wait 2 weeks but when I'm moving between my house and my
| parent's house (I visit often) it's really hard to remember
| "2 weeks before I move locations I need to start directing
| packages at the other location". The two locations are 3hrs+
| apart so I can't just pop over and pick up something sent to
| the other place.
| MoreMoore wrote:
| It's really hard to beat Amazon just because of logistics.
| Amazon tells me if it'll arrive tomorrow or the day after if
| I order now and I can be 99% sure that it'll be processed
| today or tomorrow and it'll arrive as expected.
|
| Anybody else? I have no idea how long it'll take them to
| process my order, how long it takes for it to be processed by
| DHL/DPD/GLS and how long the actual delivery will take.
| asah wrote:
| +1 - when I order on Amazon, it mostly gets here. Others, I
| suffer stress & distraction.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Hm, I have an active order right now. I ordered three
| things simultaneously on December 15 with a stated
| delivery date of December 20, also called out by the
| website as "arrives before Christmas".
|
| One of those things shipped the next day and is currently
| reported to be arriving tomorrow, which happens to match
| the stated delivery date.
|
| The other two have yet to ship, but their delivery date
| has slipped to "December 21 - 24".
|
| Realistically, they look unlikely to arrive before
| Christmas, and Amazon seems to feel no need to honor
| their contract.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Big day in 4 days. Amazon is currently dealing with
| hundreds of millions packages. Those not using fulfilment
| have less but even worse on them.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Update: between my comment above and now, Amazon has
| marked the other two items shipped, and un-slipped the
| expected delivery date back to the 20th.
|
| Interestingly, the "shipped" status is matched to a
| tracking update that says "package left the shipper
| facility" with no time or location information. All
| further updates have a location and a timestamp.
| (Everything is shipped by Amazon.)
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| It's interesting to me that some people really see fast-
| delivery as an important feature of e-commerce. In the 20+
| years I've been buying stuff online I think maybe less than
| 5% of the time I have cared about how fast I get something
| delivered.
|
| Then again I don't have a business that relies on things
| getting to me fast. I'm just a guy who buys crap online for
| myself and my family. If I'm getting a book or some
| electronic doodad it rarely matters to me if I get it
| tomorrow or in 10 days.
|
| For most Amazon non-business shoppers is getting stuff
| delivered quickly really an important consideration? I've
| always assumed that fast shipping, and the importance that
| Amazon places on it, was at least partly because of their
| desire for rapid cash flow. That fast shipping was more
| instituted because of Amazon's accounting needs than because
| most customers actually needed it. Maybe I'm wrong. It would
| be nice to hear people's informed opinions on this.
| ndileas wrote:
| Fast delivery not a daily need for most people, but the
| dopamine hit is huge, and it makes people buy more stuff. I
| think an underappreciated factor of amazon's success is how
| it makes normal people feel like they're the boss, who can
| slam their fist and get immediate action.
|
| Personally, I feel similarly to you, that most of the time
| the difference between one day and 1-3 weeks shipping is
| negligible. However, I think that relies on certain
| assumptions; I buy most consumable items (food, sponges,
| soap, etc) in person and almost always have enough to last
| another month or without buying more. Not everyone does
| that, some are JITing their daily needs and/or don't have
| enough free time and energy to make sure everything is
| always set well in advance (think working single mom, kid
| needs dress shirt tomorrow for whatever).
| ghaff wrote:
| Another factor is that, while I travel less than I used
| to, I do like the schedule deliveries around being at
| home. Although package theft is not really a factor where
| I live, I also don't want my mailbox getting overstuffed
| or a package potentially sitting out in the elements for
| a week. As a result, I don't lke to order things with an
| indeterminate delivery if I might have travel coming up.
| (Which used to be a LOT.)
| maccard wrote:
| I think it's less fast shipping, and more reliable
| shipping.
|
| I ordered a pair of shoes from a major UK high street store
| earlier this year who advertised 3 day shipping. Fine, I'm
| going away next weekend. Except, it turns out their
| guarantee is from dispatch, which is 3-5 days. It was
| listed in the small print on the order page, but even the
| order page still had the "Free 3 day shipping" banner on
| it. Unsurprisingly, they took 5 days to dispatch, and 3
| days to deliver. I actually ended up going into the store
| to buy them, and returning them when I got home.
|
| Amazon, for all it's faults, if they say next day, it's
| almost certainly going to arrive next day.
| bombcar wrote:
| Prime delivery is rarely 2 day anymore, and Walmart/HD/Target
| often match or beat it.
|
| And you still get free shipping over $35 which covers most
| anything else.
|
| Prime is too heavily tied to video now, which is a $0 value
| for me.
| kube-system wrote:
| Depends on where you're at. The vast majority of stuff I
| buy on Amazon is same or next day.
| maccard wrote:
| Prime is almost always next day, occasionally same day
| delivery for me, FWIW. B&Q (home depot equivalent in the
| UK) can occasionally be the same as ordering off of
| aliexpress.
|
| In the UK, the only place that I've found beats Amazon for
| delivery is Argos. For some utterly insane reason, they do
| their own delivery logistics from my nearest store and it
| can only be a fleet of vans sitting waiting for an online
| order to come in. I've _regularly_ had orders delivered in
| about 15 minutes from them (which is about how long it
| takes to drive to the nearest store).
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't dislike typing in my credit card numbers because I'm
| worried about the number leaking (This is the US, I hand my
| card to strangers a half dozen times per week), I dislike it
| because I have to go find my wallet and fill out a long form.
| Apple Pay is nice because I can slap one button on the top
| right of my keyboard.
| Bishonen88 wrote:
| A password manager can fill out CC details automatically as
| well.
| kube-system wrote:
| Except basically none of them store the CVV and so even
| if I use them, I still have to go get my wallet. And many
| cannot fill out the varying expiration date fields
| correctly.
| ianburrell wrote:
| 1Password fills out CVV. I sometimes have problems with
| zip code and state drop downs, or with weird validation
| that prevents filling. I just copy and paste CVV from
| 1Password. Better than typing out the number.
|
| There is on browser thought. It doesn't work on mobile so
| I usually wait until at computer which is better anyway.
| Izkata wrote:
| The speed is nice, but for me it's more about the
| reliability. For example, a few years ago when my router
| broke I decided to try something else (Newegg I think) and
| after several weeks it just never arrived and I got a refund.
| Found the exact same model on Amazon and it arrived two or
| three days later, without Prime and without issues.
|
| I just don't ever have the problems with Amazon that people
| complain about online.
| awkward wrote:
| For me, the fast shipping is at a point where more
| reliability would be better than the current speed of
| delivery. If it's on time, I'd prefer to get a package in two
| days than have it delivered at 10pm in one. If it's behind
| the deadline, I'd prefer a more realistic deadline than
| emails about slipping on the schedule.
| asah wrote:
| For me, Amazon cuts delivery times, improves reliability and
| makes returns 10x easier.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I live in a big city and the last few years especially it's
| very easy to see the cost of that approach to delivery.
| Residential streets are clogged with double parked amazon
| vehicles, I can't go three blocks in the bike lane without
| having to get into traffic to go around one. If they can't
| figure out the apartment buzzer in a few seconds they just
| ring them all, I'm buzzed multiple times a day even if I
| don't use amazon.
|
| It has made life worse in small but tangible, concrete ways.
| I don't need it that fast, probably neither do you. You can
| blame enforcement or the individual drivers or whatever but I
| think that's a cop out. Amazon demands efficiency of its
| drivers, this is what efficiency looks like.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I've gotten a lot of free stuff from Amazon. Shipped
| duplicate products to me? Just keep the other. Food bottle
| slightly cracked and leaked in transit? Keep it and we'll
| send another.
|
| I was even able to get another 30% off an already sale price
| for a Kindle because my old one (>5 years) died, and they
| couldn't fix it.
|
| Not justifying any particular actions on their part, but
| their customer service has been above and beyond and other
| major retailer I've interacted with.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I recall it _used_ to be like that....but I haven 't had
| that level of customer service out of amazon since like,
| 2017-2018 at the latest.
|
| Amazon earned my business back in the day, but they don't
| seem very interested in it anymore.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| Making me drive 20 mins to Whole Foods to deliver some items,
| and wait in a line where there's one kiosk, has completely
| turned me off of Amazon.
|
| This is probably by design, but I don't return a whole lot.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Mine is 5 minutes away. Two kiosks plus a person is always
| on site. The most I've ever had to wait for the person is
| 30 seconds -- all they do is scan the QR code and take the
| item. So I guess it's YMMV.
| neilv wrote:
| Until the person enters something wrong on the screen,
| and you get emails claiming you will be billed if you
| don't return the item, and you end up spending a few
| hours with Kafkaesque customer service, repeatedly, over
| the course of weeks, interrupting multiple days with
| time-sucking aggravation.
|
| Unless Mr. Bezos has been putting on a disguise, and
| secret-shoppering his own company, I have a suspicion he
| has no idea how much his Leadership Principles have been
| eroded in the last few years. I don't think metrics will
| tell you that, when your staff has been conditioned to
| desperately make their metrics look good. The short-term
| quantitative metrics will be hit, at least on paper, and
| everything else will be neglected or outright
| cannibalized.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Ease of returns is probably the main feature that makes my
| household have some degree of Amazon preference.
|
| But that's increasingly offset by an inability to find
| quality products.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm always surprised how often I contact Amazon to do a
| return and they refund my money and tell me to keep the
| item.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| I suspect it's just cheaper for many things.
|
| You not only have to consider the money spent on shipping
| it back to them at their own cost but also then deciding
| whether the product is still in good enough condition to
| be resold or most likely it would just go wholesale
| directly to a business that sells returns at a cheaper
| price and they handle that checking / repackaging. That
| by itself still probably costs money to handle. At Amazon
| scale, all of that together is a lot of money.
|
| If the amount of profit they made from selling to you is
| offset by all those costs, why not let the customer keep
| it and get free goodwill and repeat business?
| vel0city wrote:
| > makes returns 10x easier.
|
| Makes dumping what would otherwise be useful goods into
| landfills 10x easier*
| switch007 wrote:
| They're also 10x more efficient at providing counterfeits
| asah wrote:
| I hear people complain about this but maybe I'm just better
| at serving fake goods.
|
| I grew up in a place and time where scams were everywhere.
| I now invest in garage stage startups, and endlessly
| amused.
| int_19h wrote:
| You sure need that ease of return when Amazon repeatedly
| ships the wrong item again and again.
| driverdan wrote:
| Why do you care about providing your credit card number to
| order something? You're not liable for fraud and most banks
| will replace the card quickly. In 25 years of having credit
| cards and using them extensively online I've had them
| compromised only a few times. It's really not something to
| worry about.
| hirsin wrote:
| Convenience. If it works like Google pay (fair bet?), it
| hands over your payment, billing, and shipping details in one
| go. It's wildly effective.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| "not punching in my credit card number to random sites"
|
| Not sure about OP, but for me it's about convenience. My pet
| peeve is credit card forms. Do you know what % of websites
| I've used that have at least minorly broken credit card
| forms? It's literally 99%.
|
| Random common issues that are annoying but can be fixed:
|
| - autocomplete doesn't work at all
|
| - autocomplete only fills in half the fields
|
| - autocomplete only fills in 1 field at a time
|
| - autocomplete doesn't interact correctly with the rich
| widgets they provided for date picking or zip code
|
| - autocomplete doesn't play well with js validation, which is
| only on callbacks for typing. Now I have to go backspace and
| re-insert the last character of every field so it doesn't
| think it's blank
|
| - my town name has a ' in it. complete fucking crapshoot on
| whether sites DEMAND or HATE the '.
|
| Common issues that are complete fucking messes that can't be
| fixed:
|
| - javascript between fields fights over edits between them
| and I can't get the form simultaneously filled out correctly
|
| - rendering issues on mobile leaving fields not visible
|
| - autocomplete doesn't work and I've for some reason
| forgotten my CVV again and don't want to go get my wallet
|
| I could go on and on. It's amazing how hard it is to get this
| right and how obviously nobody tests the flow where PEOPLE
| GIVE THEM MONEY which as I understand it is the primary
| purpose of these places.
| benterix wrote:
| > [5 complaints about autocomplete]
|
| Maybe it's just me, but why would you want too have
| autocomplete for CC forms enabled? Personally, on these
| very rare consciously chosen occasions where I decide to
| give my CC number to another entity, I prefer to copy it
| from my banking site and never save it anywhere, neither
| locally nor in a cloud.
| nullandvoid wrote:
| To flip the question - any modern card provider will 2fa
| through an app if the payment is suspicious, so why waste
| your time manually entering them?
|
| It's the same reason I use a password manager, it's
| convenient and 2fa exists.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Can you name some specific sites where this is an issue for
| you? I've had nothing but good experiences buying online,
| in the US at least.
|
| Every single site I've bought from has the same boring and
| functional checkout experience, whether it's Stripe
| Checkout, Google Wallet, or Shopify. They're practically
| all the same, and they all work fine.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sounds like the real problem is autocomplete. Do what I do,
| disable it. I never have autocomplete issues on websites.
| seunosewa wrote:
| Then you'll have to memorize a lot of long numbers.
| ToDougie wrote:
| I used to have my CC numbers memorized, until over time
| they were all replaced due to fraudulent charges.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You know they print them right on the card right? How
| hard is it to punch in 20 characters and a name and
| billing address? Talk about first world problems.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| "disable it"
|
| No
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I don't use autocomplete, but a large number of sites
| feel the need to reinvent how a credit card form should
| be displayed. I do not care for your innovation. Put it
| in the same layout as the physical card. Plus the large
| number of sites that have broken tabbing (does not work
| or seemingly jumps to fields at random).
| kakuri wrote:
| This is what you get when "frontend devs aren't real devs"
| and every job wants a "full-stack dev" (surprise, they
| can't do frontend!).
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Legally liable is one thing, arguing with a bank another.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| For me it is 2-3 times a year, which is a major pain. I have
| to switch every billing service over manually. Sometimes
| bills lapse. I have even had replacements stolen from mail
| and used.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >You're not liable for fraud and most banks will replace the
| card quickly.
|
| It's enough of a pain in the ass that most people would
| rather not deal with it at all. An extra layer of security to
| help it not happen is a very nice benefit.
| yAak wrote:
| Cancelling and replacing credit cards is a massive pain and
| waste of time.
| crote wrote:
| > You're not liable for fraud
|
| No, but you're still _paying_ for it.
|
| Let's say you're a small EU-based merchant accepting payment
| for international orders via Stripe. An incoming iDEAL
| payment costs EUR0.30 / transaction. An incoming credit card
| payment? EUR0.25 / transaction, plus 2.5% of the transaction
| value. On top of that, you as merchant are charged EUR20 for
| every chargeback! And those additional costs are of course
| passed on to the customers because they _will_ raise all
| prices by 2.5% to make up for it.
|
| There is no free lunch. You are implicitly buying fraud
| insurance on every order and paying 2.5% for it.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Shopify has helped a lot too. Having all my info on their
| platform with a checkout that's familiar really helps. Plus
| their app to track everything is nice - although could do
| without all the spam.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Still don't get the Whole Foods return ability when not
| shopping from Amazon
|
| Free returns aren't free. We need to de-normalize this practice
| of people buying so much junk just to immediately return it.
| maccard wrote:
| > Free returns aren't free. We need to de-normalize this
| practice of people buying so much junk just to immediately
| return it.
|
| One of the things you lose from online shopping is sizing.
| Shoes run in different sizes, lengths, widths. How do you
| suggest you order shoes to find the right size if shopping
| online?
| vel0city wrote:
| > How do you suggest you order shoes to find the right size
| if shopping online?
|
| Don't shop for shoes online? Unless you're happy with most
| of those shoes you tried on but returned going to the
| landfill.
| crote wrote:
| That's not an option for a lot of people. For example,
| the _vast_ majority of physical shoe stores simply don 't
| carry my size. There is literally only a handful of
| stores in my country I could go to - and I don't even
| have an incredibly unusual size!
|
| Physical stores increasingly cater to the average. They
| would rather stock 20 different items in 5 sizes than 10
| different items in 10 sizes. All of the long-tail stuff
| is only available online, so you are _forced_ to buy
| online.
| maccard wrote:
| If your solution to the problem is "don't do the thing
| you want to do" it's never going to work. It's not just
| shoes, it's all clothing, lots of tech (ever bought a
| device only to find out it doesn't actually do what it's
| supposed to do?), lots of homeware goods. You're
| basically saying don't shop online.
|
| If you think retailers are dumping every pair of shoes
| they get returned, you're wrong by the way.
| vel0city wrote:
| > lots of tech (ever bought a device only to find out it
| doesn't actually do what it's supposed to do?)
|
| No, because I don't buy the cheap no-name junk off
| Amazon. It's pretty rare for me to encounter returns for
| stuff like that, because I already try and avoid
| supporting the e-waste game from the get-go. But I would
| say if you honestly tried to get a good and it wasn't
| what was advertised that's a good reason for a return.
|
| But acting like the majority of returns are things which
| weren't as advertised is ignoring reality. Look no
| further than sibling comments here where that user openly
| acknowledges buying more than needed regularly and
| returns the rest. They're not alone with this; tons of
| people behave in this way. Buy something, decide later
| they didn't really want it/need it, return it. Decent
| chance it went to the trash. It's not worth it for the
| retailer to actually inspect and restock it.
|
| > If you think retailers are dumping every pair of shoes
| they get returned, you're wrong by the way.
|
| Not all of them, just most of them.
|
| Buying a dozen shirts and returning 10 of them because in
| the end you just didn't like the fit, you probably sent
| 5-7 otherwise fine articles of clothing straight to the
| landfill. Maybe a few of those will make it to some
| "donation" scheme, which will probably send half of those
| "donation" bound goods to the landfill. Then the last few
| will get put on a boat in a giant pile of goods, dropped
| off to some poor part of the world, and have a 50/50
| chance of being worn by someone there or just become
| another piece of trash floating around.
|
| Buying five pairs of shoes and returning four of them
| probably sent 2-3 pairs to the landfill. The rest are
| probably following that same flow above.
| maccard wrote:
| Do you honestly think retailers are throwing away 50% of
| their returned stock? They're absolutely, 100% repacking
| and reselling what they can.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Do you honestly think retailers are throwing away 50%
| of their returned stock?
|
| For lots of categories of goods like apparel, yes. Its
| far cheaper for them to trash the item than spend all
| that money on the reverse logistics of actually analyzing
| the item. Other categories are probably more like 20-30%.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1yqcagavfY
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG8idKaX9KI
|
| If you're thinking the vast majority of your returns are
| getting restocked you're woefully uninformed.
| maccard wrote:
| Both your links are related to amazon for cheap items,
| not e.g. high street retailers that are managing their
| own stock and inventory. Do you think Office [0] are
| chucking 4 pairs of New Balance trainers in the trash?
| No.
|
| [0] https://www.office.co.uk/
| vel0city wrote:
| These links are _not_ just about Amazon, but Amazon is
| overrepresented here due to the high percentage of their
| overall online sales.
|
| And if Amazon can't get it to work with their already
| centralized logistics, smaller retailers probably have an
| even harder time with the reverse logistics.
|
| > Do you think Office [0] are chucking 4 pairs of New
| Balance trainers in the trash? No.
|
| Sure. If it costs them more to handle the return than
| what their margin on the goods would be, why would they
| reprocess it? Of that original sale say a $100, they
| probably only got $5-10 or so of original profit. And
| that was with the optimized supply chain getting it in to
| the original warehouse. So now they have to figure out
| the return shipping to the processing center, pay for
| inspections on the item, probably pay to re-ship to a
| warehouse, pay to re-stock it, and then for a lot of
| items list it as open box (if its anything that could
| have been plugged in to the wall it cannot be sold as new
| in the US), and then have all the regular costs of
| selling the item again.
|
| Or they just eat the loss and increase prices a few
| percent and send it to "energy recovery". Or they
| "donate" it and claim they gave $100 worth of goods to
| charity. Or they sell the lots of returned goods for a
| few bucks a pound at the place where the returns were
| originally mailed to.
| mindslight wrote:
| Well the first step is retailers and manufacturers needing to
| de-normalize this practice of playing continual games with
| pricing. These days if I see a "good sale" (aka non-sucker
| price) on something I'm in the market for, I will hit buy and
| then make the actual purchase decision over the next few
| weeks. Or if I'm unsure how many of something I will need, I
| will buy extra and then figure out how many I need later.
| Because I'm sure as shit not going to buy one or two for an
| honest price and then feel like a sucker later when I end up
| needing more but they've got me over the barrel. My main
| consideration is whether I've already got pending returns
| using the same method, or if I'm making a new task for
| myself.
|
| It feels like this is part of a larger dynamic where
| companies are basically arbitraging consumers' feeling bad
| about waste and environmental destruction to increase their
| own bottom line. Like Target is abjectly terrible at packing
| items in boxes, such that things often get crushed in
| shipping. So then you're left with the dynamic of either
| complaining and accepting that return/resend creates a bunch
| more waste, or just shrugging off the damage they've caused
| (willfully, at this point). Now that I've seen the pattern, I
| just call that bluff too.
| RavlaAlvar wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonFC/comments/1hhips1/amazon_te...
|
| Interesting to see discussion on Reddit from r/AmazonFC are
| pretty negative , wonder if these are genuine employees comment
| for PR team hired by Amazon
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Amazon actively incentivizes (pays) employees to write
| positively about their experiences on social media.
| cpufry wrote:
| yea they pay employees and also have bots that do this
| jedberg wrote:
| It's interesting, because I know a few warehouse workers, and
| they all sing the praises of the job (all in the Bay Area). But
| yet I can see what the conditions are. I feel like every
| warehouse is a semi-independently run fiefdom and some are run
| a lot better than others.
| david38 wrote:
| They sing the praises in the Bay Area? What pay do they get?
| This is one of the least affordable places in the country
| 65uu6 wrote:
| reddit is no longer a good place to try and get a pulse on
| general sentiment. comment section is filled with bots and the
| front page has the most random content i have ever seen, like
| occasional random creep shots of celebs that get like 3,000
| upvotes that gain more transaction than current events.
| nimbius wrote:
| as a union diesel engine mechanic i can _guarantee_ most, if
| not all these comments are complete PR.
|
| I went on strike about ten years ago to protest mandatory
| overtime and lack of chemical PPE. the minute we authorized the
| strike, we had news channels from three states covering us and
| a billboard up the road that demanded an end to the strike by
| "concerned" truckers was erected in _hours._ Every day I could
| count on at least four emails from various sources, everything
| from "your union is cancelled" to "union declared illegal" and
| everything in between including offers to work for more pay but
| no contract. weekends were nearly a dozen phone calls, mostly
| robo, threatening pay cuts and layoffs and asking to cancel
| your healthcare and benefits.
|
| we stuck out 19 days and won, and the very same news crews
| showed up again with no interviews from us, only management
| praising their great negotiation effort.
| immibis wrote:
| I feel that the Luigi Mangione case is making more people
| aware of this type of dynamic.
| david38 wrote:
| I would love for astroturfing to be illegal and heavily
| enforced.
| nickff wrote:
| Would union supported/enforced comments count as
| astroturfing as well? I think it'd be interesting to ban
| pay for picketing & comments, though I'm not sure it's
| enforceable.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If the union pays you because you are not working, and
| you choose to use that time to talk about how much you
| value unions on the internet, that's not astroturfing. If
| the union pays you TO post about how good the union is on
| the internet, that IS astroturfing.
|
| At one point, amazon had a literal program where
| warehouse workers could opt to sit at a desk and post
| propaganda comments instead of doing their normal manual
| labor job.
| nickff wrote:
| Strike pay (at least often) requires picketing to
| qualify. Unions also often pay people to post comments
| online and otherwise present the union's perspective to
| media or the public. Sometimes these people are listed as
| unit leaders, or have other 'union management' positions.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| This seems like something a disclosure would reasonably
| solve. The anti-union PR posts aren't going to disclaim
| that they were paid by Amazon to post the comment but the
| pro-union wouldn't give a shit.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| As an aside, on Reddit a similar thing is disallowed
| (brigading other subreddits in an organized way)
| jimt1234 wrote:
| My Boomer Dad was a Teamster. I remember there was a several-
| weeks-long (might have even been months-long?) strike when I
| was a kid, probably around the late-70s. Shit was real. One
| day I saw him loading baseball bats and clubs into the trunk
| of his Buick before he left the house. I was just a kid; I
| had no idea what was going on. I asked him about it later in
| life and he just said, "That's how it was back then. We had
| to fight for what we wanted." And he was being literal. He
| talked about people who were even _suspected_ of crossing the
| line or talking to management would get a severe beatdown. He
| even said people would harass management and their families.
| Dudes would sit outside their homes, just to intimidate them.
| And, he said they rarely got punished because the cops
| supported their union and would look the other way. Different
| times.
| nimbius wrote:
| our local PD was union at the time. we never got any overt
| support but there were a few kind gestures. on a cold
| morning an officer dropped a box of chemical hand warmers
| by the dumpster and made it very clear he was disposing of
| them because they were "the wrong size" and he wouldnt be
| back today to check on them. about three days later his
| supervisor made a trip to the dumpster and left out a box
| of donuts and a big take-out coffee jug, warning us we
| absolutely shouldnt consume them after he left as the
| donuts were the made the wrong size and the coffee was too
| hot.
| rsanek wrote:
| 10k is about 0.7% of their total employee count. I wonder if this
| will have any effect.
| ActionHank wrote:
| It will have more business people asking about robots, other
| than that I doubt it will. Amazon don't even care if the
| packages are late because of this, they still get your
| purchase.
| cpufry wrote:
| i used to work on bezo's fc automation back in 2012 to 2016,
| they've been they'd been talking about "lights out fc" being
| just around the corner since since those days. if anything we
| had adjacent teams that were working on temp worker and
| worker scheduling systems, "people management" systems that
| had more interest from leadership. imo a lot of the
| automation stuff ended up being real timid and imo really was
| to juice valuation.
| GreedIsGood wrote:
| Of course Amazon cares. They measure fulfillment time
| religiously.
|
| Amazon is amazingly well run.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| if they really cared the would not have gotten Puralor to
| deliver my order in the middle of a Canada Post strike.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Amazon is only well run for the shareholders and
| executives. It is not well run for the people filling the
| boxes. It seems down right sadistic. Like the executives
| don't even see them as people.
|
| And they sent me a 43" Samsung TV when I ordered a 42" LG
| OLED. How the hell can their many billions of dollars of IT
| investment not automatically scan the barcode on the box or
| weight the box or use computer vision and notice this error
| before they sent the wrong TV out?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| they truly don't care. I had an order that was supposed to be
| delivered tuesday by 8pm (delivery guarantee!) but at 8:10
| switched to "now arriving Dec 27th". The person I chatted
| with gave me a $10 amazon credit and refused to even
| acknowledge my (much more expensive for them) solution that
| since all the items in my order were showing "delivery by Dec
| 19th" they should resend everything Prime. They still have my
| money even if I don't have Christmas presents, and I need to
| go through the hassle of returning it - when I eventually get
| it.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Unfortunately, Moravec's paradox has you jammed up. So for
| now, negotiate they must.
| viraptor wrote:
| > don't even care if the packages are late because of this,
| they still get your purchase.
|
| Not at this time of the year. If something doesn't have a pre
| Christmas delivery, it won't be bought in many cases. Or even
| if it does, people may hear about the strike and not risk it.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| I wonder that too. They been doing this for a while now around
| the big shopping holidays. And yet, I never hear about any
| major disruptions.
|
| Maybe the union needs to change tactics?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The amount of leverage workers have is proportional to how
| hard it is for the company to replace them. Replacing
| unskilled workers isn't that hard so those workers don't have
| much leverage.
|
| The only real solution is to become skilled workers. Which,
| almost ironically, is to do the thing the company threatens
| to do -- find a way to automate work like this, so the people
| working at the warehouse are robotics technicians etc.
| zzzeek wrote:
| it's likely not the case here but more powerful unions can
| block non-union scabs from taking the jobs of striking
| workers (in that this is usually part of the contract the
| union has with the employer). at scale, unions have a lot
| more power to affect things
|
| but the point is it's not about worker skill when unions
| are at sufficient power levels
| immibis wrote:
| Isn't Amazon getting to the point where they're having
| trouble finding employee candidates they haven't previously
| fired?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Amazon here advertises (and this is several months ago,
| so not even seasonal) on the radio and local media,
| without paraphrasing:
|
| "Want a job? Can pass a background check? No interview.
| Apply today, start tomorrow."
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| I've unsubscribed from Amazon Prime and Audible.
|
| I don't mind waiting an extra for my stuff to arrive.
|
| It's important to support other smaller retailers.
|
| Amazon already started with enshittyfying some of their services.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| What audible alternative are you using?
| zefhous wrote:
| I have found a lot of great content available in Libby and
| Hoopla. I use my local library card, but am also able to get
| a card from a nearby larger city library, and between the two
| I have access to a lot of content and very soon in a lot of
| cases.
| anon_ask_acct wrote:
| Libro.fm is basically bookshop.org but for audiobooks.
| Supports local bookshops, has roughly the same 1 credit per
| month price.
|
| There are some audible-only titles, which is frustrating.
| ITB wrote:
| I don't understand why all these comments are about who buys or
| doesn't buy at Amazon. The article is about unionization and
| strikes. I expect a conversation about the merits of unions and
| their negotiation tactics. In my opinion, events like these will
| just accelerate job elimination. The goal of a logistics company
| is to be reliable. Humans are unreliable and more so when they
| are purposely and collectively unreliable. I've lived in a
| country with very powerful unions and it sucks-- miss every 5th
| flight because the union decides to strike.
| benterix wrote:
| > I don't understand why all these comments are about who buys
| or doesn't buy at Amazon.
|
| The logical connection is as follows: Bezos decided to optimize
| everything to its limits, including human behavior, to the very
| limits of law. To literally track every movement of employees
| and abusing the power the company holds over them. This is an
| ongoing process that we are all painfully aware of. Because of
| that, there is a growing negative feeling towards them that
| causes people not to give them their money. That's why instead
| of unions we are talking about boycotting Amazon.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Because people want to feel connected, and recognize that
| Amazon is an unethical entity.
|
| If you read about Amazon mistreating workers to the point that
| they strike, you can feel good by saying, "I won't support that
| company!"
|
| The general term is "solidarity", and it's a mix of empathy and
| action and encouragement for others to do the same.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| > I've lived in a country with very powerful unions and it
| sucks-- miss every 5th flight because the union decides to
| strike.
|
| I'm willing to accept inconvenience if it means strong workers'
| rights.
| Fin_Code wrote:
| Keep saying that when a vacation get ruined because your
| connections got messed up and your out thousands of dollars.
| maccard wrote:
| Where are you based?
|
| > Keep saying that when a vacation get ruined because your
| connections got messed up and your out thousands of
| dollars.
|
| Travel Insurance?
| ITB wrote:
| No longer there, but Argentina. The current government is
| squashing that fortunately.
| willismichael wrote:
| Many of the folks in the unions can't even dream of
| spending thousands of dollars on a vacation.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Poor guy. I'll be sure to let them know their selfish need
| for fair wages is affecting rich peoples vacations.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| unions and strikes are not illegal.
|
| The merits of unions, not always but their goals are, multiple.
| a/ compensation and working conditions leverage in negotiations
| b/ structure that can directly address all sort of issues the
| employer don't care about and isn't obliged to deal with.
|
| That it makes your service experience particularly painful is
| exactly the goal, bad (or better, no) customers experience
| hurts the employer, guaranteed.
|
| Disclosure: raised in France.
| ITB wrote:
| But it's also not illegal to get fed up and go above and
| beyond to automate everyone.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Was responding to the sufferings of travelers who disliked
| the strikes.
|
| Unions are at war using any effective and legal weapons
| they can find. The same stands for "the capital".
| vel0city wrote:
| > In my opinion, events like these will just accelerate job
| elimination
|
| Sure, probably. The jobs that can be automated will eventually
| be automated. But while they're still needed, I'd hope they
| have some basic protections and decent wages.
|
| If my online shopping costs go up 0.5% but now a thousand
| workers don't have to have the mental stress of "I really need
| a pee break, can my metrics take the few minute hit this week
| or will I lose my job and go homeless?", I'll take that trade
| in a heartbeat.
| nickff wrote:
| Most companies' largest expense is labor/wages (usually
| somewhere on the order of 25-50%), and profit margins are
| usually on the order of 0-5%. Increasing pay or benefits
| substantially would increase costs by a lot more than 0.5%.
| vel0city wrote:
| Sure, 0.5% is hyperbole on my part. Sorry. It's not like a
| 20% bump in costs for these workers would result in a 20%
| bump in prices or anything like that.
|
| Their margin on that retail item is probably 30-40% of the
| cost of that product though. Let's assume the workers'
| benefits and wages in question here are 35% of Amazon's
| costs. If there was a 20% increase of that labor cost,
| that's going from 35% to 42% of the total share of costs,
| or an increase of 7% of the total costs. But that's 7% of
| the 30-40% of their markup. For a product with a 40% markup
| and they were to just pass that entire cost along to the
| consumer, it's a 1.6% increase in price.
|
| So like in this hypothetical, which is not anywhere near
| real numbers for Amazon, we could give these workers a 20%
| benefit bump for increasing prices 1.6%.
| nickff wrote:
| I don't understand how you got down from 7% down to 1.6%.
| I think you are not counting COGS as an expense, and
| that's where the error comes from. If your assumptions
| are otherwise correct, I think you'd get roughly a 7%
| increase in prices to sustain the 20% bump in wage
| expense.
| vel0city wrote:
| I am including COGS in this; that's the retail price
| minus the markup. The markup is all the rest of Amazon's
| costs, of which I agree wages for workers are probably
| somewhere around 30%ish.
|
| Are you suggesting the warehouse worker's benefits and
| pay is really 25-50%+ of the final purchase price of the
| good?? That'd be an extraordinarily high amount of cost.
| nickff wrote:
| Yes, though I am including delivery and support staff
| with warehouse workers (basically everyone who is working
| 'on the floor'). More than half of their employees are
| categorized as "laborers and helpers", and there are a
| number of other categories that seem similar. https://ass
| ets.aboutamazon.com/64/79/d3746ef14fd99cc6be94532... (I
| only found this after your latest comment).
|
| The largest categories of employees tend to dominate most
| companies' cost structures. I would like to run some
| numbers to see what the likely distribution is here, but
| the annual filings are quite sparse (in terms of income
| statement details), and I don't have the time to do an
| extensive analysis.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Online retail North America booked $65.55bn in sales
|
| > Amazon estimates the price of labour, labour-related
| productivity costs and cost inflation was $2bn in Q3
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/29/amazon_q3_2021/
|
| It cost $2b-4b in labor to do ~$65.55b in sales. Their
| labor cost of revenue was 3-6%. Pretty far from 50%,
| wouldn't you say?
| okokhacker wrote:
| I'm not sure why the general sentiment here is that Amazon
| workers do not deserve a living wage and should be replaced with
| robots.
|
| All the best to the union, I sincerely hope they meet your
| demands.
| billy99k wrote:
| Amazon warehouse work pays almost $20/hour where I live, which
| is well above the federal minimum wage and more than almost
| every other company in the area for this type of work. This is
| a living wage.
|
| "should be replaced with robots"
|
| I also think it's funny we are having this discussion. When
| songwriters and other creators were complaining about piracy in
| the 2000s, the general response from the tech community was
| that this was the future and you didn't deserve to earn a
| living.
|
| My response is the same.
| greesil wrote:
| Minimum wage != Livable wage
|
| I don't think it's worth considering the comparison.
|
| But sure, maybe working at a distribution center pays well
| enough where you're located. Likely that's not the case where
| these strikes are happening. It's expensive out there.
|
| Also, what you wrote gives the impression of "I've got mine
| already so I don't care what happens to you."
| abduhl wrote:
| Define what a livable wage is then. Is it $25/hr? $50/hr?
| $100/hr?
| philipov wrote:
| To start with, any definition that ends with a constant
| number is wrong. The living wage in an area depends on
| the cost of living in that area. I don't have that number
| on hand, but I expect it to be included in any discussion
| of what people should get payed.
|
| After that, we need to ask how much profit a person
| should be allowed to make on their labor.
| mbauman wrote:
| $20/hr fulltime is ~40k/yr or ~$3300/mo. As just one
| benchmark: can you find housing in your area for
| $1100/mo?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Healthcare, decent sized apartment, 5 weeks of paid
| vacation, free or easily affordable pre school, overtime
| pay, decent schools and free college, is a good start.
| Then some left over on top after essentials so you aren't
| living paycheck to paycheck.
| aio2 wrote:
| Yea no. I understand the sentiment and agree with it, but
| not exactly feasible for a lot of companies, especially
| for the type of job they offer
| Hikikomori wrote:
| So you acknowledge that the job should be done but the
| people doing it deserve to live in squalor even though
| they work a full time job. Just for corporate profit and
| your convenience.
|
| Just so you know, all things I listed are things most
| people in Western Europe already have. Including
| employees of Amazon and McDonald's.
| aio2 wrote:
| Here's my perspective. Not exactly related, but I hope
| you understand how I think:
|
| If I am a small shipping company, and all I need is
| someone to wrap boxes and store them, and the load isn't
| much, then should I be paying them full time for the job?
| Heck, should I pay them a living wage? No. I pay them the
| value of the job.
|
| Obviously, we need a certain minimum wage because nobody
| deserves to get scammed and make 10 cents a day, but at
| the same time, this push for all these benefits isn't
| realistic. I wish it was, but it isn't.
|
| Obviously, my example is different from Amazon, but this
| is more a business owner perspective.
| int_19h wrote:
| If they are working for you full time, but you aren't
| paying them living wage, how exactly are they supposed to
| make ends meet?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Unless you're the only one selling a product that people
| need and want to buy you're going to be undercut by your
| competitors that aren't paying for these things either as
| that is how it works in America. Quite expected when
| there's no worker shortage so companies have to compete
| for workers, but that's not the kind of competition
| capitalists want.
|
| In most of Europe workers wouldn't have to worry about
| any of that, everyone enjoys the basic package. So your
| competitors wouldn't be able to undercut you on price by
| not providing healthcare and thus force you to do the
| same.
|
| Is it the best system for startups, corporate profits and
| the stock market? Obviously not but people are happier.
| rlupi wrote:
| Guys, you have to fix USA!
|
| > Healthcare, decent sized apartment, 5 weeks of paid
| vacation, free or easily affordable pre school, overtime
| pay, decent schools and free college, is a good start.
|
| This is literally the (by-law) standard of living for
| people with full time jobs with employment contracts[1]
| where I grew in Italy... that's not Silicon Valley, but
| one part of Italy that has been depressed for many years.
| (It's also the second top region in Italy by life
| expectation, that's between the 6th and 7th place in the
| world ranking by country) So much that in this very town
| Amazon is building a new warehouse that opens next year.
|
| [1] Granted, permanent positions are rare; but permanent
| or temporary positions do offer this stuff by law. Fake
| contracts (partita IVA) and the gig economy exists there
| too.
|
| Free college almost... public universities tuition fees
| are 500-4000 EUR per year, depending on the location and
| prestige.
| drawfloat wrote:
| Right, but we're talking about Amazon who make billions
| annually not "lots of companies".
| ssl-3 wrote:
| So 6 weeks of vacation, then?
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's not like this is an unstudied concept.
|
| Here is one calculator:
| https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/methodology
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Everyone deserves the opportunity to earn a livable income,
| but not all jobs can or should be paying a "living wage."
| Some jobs by their nature are part time and some people
| only want to work part time.
| greesil wrote:
| Uh sure. Then why are they striking? I honestly don't
| know.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Some large number of them have been "agitated". You can't
| acknowledge that propaganda exists which is capable of
| manipulating people into doing things they wouldn't do on
| their own (or that they shouldn't do), and then say that
| the left does not create that sort of propaganda.
|
| They're striking not for better wages, but so that some
| local or state politician wins an election in 2026.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Yeah, they're being agitated alright... by horrible
| working conditions, declining real wages, and the people
| who apologize for it and pretend they're all bots or
| something rather than real people with real interests
| that are every bit as deserving of respect as some
| corpo's bottom line.
|
| Anyone thinking this is a one time thing and is going to
| blow over hasn't been paying attention.
| sumOne00 wrote:
| Negative. All jobs should be paying liveable wages. One
| off type of jobs for 'this and that' sure, but showing up
| every day and expectation for deliverables or being on
| time? Absolutely, pay a liveable wage. Too many Ferrari,
| BMW, new speed boat from the PPP loans greed to show that
| employees mean nothing. All jobs deserve liveable wages.
| We should be advocating for a more peaceful society.
| bangaloredud wrote:
| Don't confuse the HN sociists with real-life scenarios.
| They live in their artisanal coffee bar-office bubble.
| sterlind wrote:
| That's fine. Part time jobs can pay a living wage/hr
| instead.
| pm90 wrote:
| That doesn't seem like a contradiction. Full time jobs
| should offer livable wages, part time could offer less.
| However, you can't do some shenanigans like force workers
| to be part time by making them work less than 40 hours a
| week just so they don't get classified as full time.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| What is a livable wage? That differs if someone is living
| with their parents, or if they have 3 kids and are living
| alone and the sole earner in the family.
| harvey9 wrote:
| My unscientific view is a person working 40 hours a week
| should at least be able to afford a modest home, fresh
| food and other ordinary expenses. If a job pays less than
| that and needs to be topped up by some kind of public
| assistance then we should think of that as a subsidy to
| the business rather than welfare to the employee.
| azemetre wrote:
| $20/hr still isn't much money and you can only survive, note
| I'm not saying thrive here, on that amount in the poor areas
| in America.
|
| There are very few jobs that actually pay well in America
| nowadays, and the ones that do tend to be congregated in few
| geographical areas and require extensive schooling.
|
| The vast majority of Americans deserve more money.
|
| Also check your priors, there are many musicians that do not
| complain about piracy and even partake in it (see Trent
| Reznor being part of oink/what, or Dead Kennedys encouraging
| people to record music on their tapes). I know many musicians
| that would upload their music on private trackers, regardless
| of what their label wanted or said.
| webdood90 wrote:
| > The vast majority of Americans deserve more money.
|
| This is pedantic but I strongly dislike when people say
| anyone deserves anything.
|
| I support an equitable system that allows citizens to move
| up in economic class (which we don't currently have) but I
| don't subscribe to the idea that everyone inherently
| deserves anything.
| sterlind wrote:
| That puts you at odds with the tradition of natural
| rights. The Declaration of Independence says everyone
| deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Does not mean that they deserve a specific fixed
| income...
| webdood90 wrote:
| I think it's an intellectually dishonest interpretation
| of my reply
| sterlind wrote:
| No, I don't think so. You specifically rejected the idea
| that everyone inherently deserves _anything._
| Objectivists would agree, but I don 't think Ayn Rand
| would have been popular with Jefferson.
|
| Perhaps you could clarify - what do you mean by
| "everyone", and what do you mean by "anything?" Does
| everyone deserve UBI? Do workers deserve disposable
| income? Do the homeless deserve housing? Healthcare?
| Food? An attorney, if arrested? Do children deserve
| college? High school? Primary school? Orphanages?
|
| You can't say that nobody inherently deserves anything,
| then say I'm intellectually dishonest when I take you at
| your word.
| abduhl wrote:
| The Declaration of Independence doesn't actually say
| that. It says that everyone is endowed with certain
| unalienable rights including the right to life, liberty,
| and the pursuit of happiness.
|
| Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
| of happiness whether they deserve it or not. Just like
| people have the right to free speech or a jury trial in
| front of their peers, whether they deserve it or not.
|
| The distinction is important because whether someone
| deserves something is a normative statement while having
| the right is a descriptive statement.
|
| What you deserve because of your right to life, liberty,
| and the pursuit of happiness is up for debate.
| rascul wrote:
| > $20/hr still isn't much money and you can only survive,
| note I'm not saying thrive here, on that amount in the poor
| areas in America.
|
| That's enough to thrive in lots of places in the USA, in
| some cases. Maybe not the most desirable places, though.
| 0_gravitas wrote:
| absolutely not, maybe if you're living with parents and
| not paying for rent or groceries
| 93po wrote:
| I think your standard for a living wage is way, way too low.
| We should be able to comfortably afford food, housing, and
| medical care at minimum - both without spending most of your
| paycheck, to be able to afford it during periods of
| joblessness, and with a retirement at a reasonably young age.
| You cannot do this at $20/hour, and the only reason this
| isn't the normal standard is incredible greed and capitalism.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| A livable wage is a wage a husband can make to raise a
| family, including housing, food, transportation, schooling,
| etc.
|
| $20/hr is about $40k/yr. Using 30% towards housing, that
| means they can only denote $12/yr to housing, or $1k/month.
| At current interest rates, that translates to a $150,000
| house.
|
| What can you get for $150? There's nothing in any area I've
| looked that was actually habitable ever since the
| government's COVID debacle.
| regnull wrote:
| I don't think it's a question of who deserves what. They
| deserve a living wage. The kids deserve to get their presents
| on time. I deserve a pony. The question is how whether to see
| it as a smart tactical choice to get that they "deserve" or a
| cynical move to strike when they get maximum publicity and do
| maximum damage.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Isn't that the whole point of a strike?
|
| You're going to have a bad time if you plan your strike at
| the most opportune time for your company.
|
| Whether or not striking is good for society is a separate
| discussion, but striking when you have the most leverage over
| your company makes the most sense for those striking to get
| what they want.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Just to add to this, the point of laborers striking is to
| show the company the value of their labor. If laborers not
| laboring means profiteers not profiting, it's good for the
| laborers' negotiating power because the profiteers _really_
| want to profit.
| aguaviva wrote:
| I would apply the term "cynical" to the decisions made by
| Amazon's management which create the working conditions that
| compel their workers to strike, while providing top 1%
| compensation to themselves.
|
| These people are just doing what they have to do to survive.
| If anything, going on strike a truly desparate move.
| Insinuating that they are childishing in doing so (as if they
| feel they "deserve a pony") on the other hand, seems simply
| -- snide.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _I'm not sure why the general sentiment here is that Amazon
| workers do not deserve a living wage and should be replaced
| with robots_
|
| These are two entirely unrelated issues.
|
| If the world doesn't need a particular task to be done by
| humans, then the task should be performed by robots.
|
| Until that happens, the workers should be treated humanely.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If the world doesn't need a particular task to be done by
| humans, then the task should be performed by robots.
|
| The problem is, our society isn't ready for that shift, not
| even close. Employment opportunities for the low skilled have
| all but gone down the drain - there is a reason why Walmart,
| Amazon and the other usual suspects love to set up shop in
| devastated communities: they have a captive audience that has
| no other realistic opportunities for gainful employment and
| thus is much, much less likely to resist when faced with
| exploitative and/or abusive conditions.
|
| Warehouse work and logistics in general is the last
| employment opportunity many of these people have, and while
| it being replaced by robots may be better for society as a
| whole (if one follows the belief that _all_ work should be
| done by machines so that humans can follow their individual
| interests), just standing by idling around while the markets
| enforce the shift is going to be a political disaster.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >while it being replaced by robots may be better for
| society as a whole (if one follows the belief that all work
| should be done by machines so that humans can follow their
| individual interests)
|
| While "robots" are a fairly recent concept, the advancement
| of human civilization has been predicated on ever
| increasing efficiencies of human labor.
| jedberg wrote:
| The problem is, since the beginning of time, all the
| improvements were in mechanical work, allowing humans to
| shift towards more intellectual work.
|
| Now the "robots" are replacing intellectual work, and
| humans have no where to go.
| viraptor wrote:
| Is that really the case? So far all the examples I've
| seen were closer to "change X caused people to shift to
| another type of job, or to a new area opened up by X".
| Very recently some creative work has been impacted by
| LLMs, but apart from that, are there real stats on the
| intellectual work being taken over?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > While "robots" are a fairly recent concept, the
| advancement of human civilization has been predicated on
| ever increasing efficiencies of human labor.
|
| Agreed. But in general, the efficiency gains got
| redistributed to the people - usually, by (bloody)
| revolutions and strikes.
|
| Across the Western world, we haven't seen any meaningful
| progress in that redistribution in _a fucking century_ -
| the 40 hour work week got introduced around 1926 [1].
| Instead, all we got was that women now get exploited by
| employment providers as well, so the pool of available
| labor power virtually doubled, driving down wages while
| over the last few decades housing costs exploded and the
| demand for labor went down, _further_ driving down wages.
| It remains open if the rise of pacifism and "non-violent
| action" in general that has happened in parallel in the
| same timeframe was coincidence, causation or consequence.
|
| We are in for a wild ride over the next years. Luigi will
| not be the last one of his kind, I think this was just
| the start...
|
| [1] https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/40-hour-work-week
| snikeris wrote:
| I worked for a Walmart store as a young man. It was well
| run, and they were adamant that you took your breaks
| throughout the day. I faced no exploitative or abusive
| conditions and was well paid.
| switch007 wrote:
| How long ago?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Was this 80s Walmart, 90s Walmart, 00s Walmart? Their
| corporate culture has changed dramatically into a
| cutthroat business.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I believe you other than well paid
| rascul wrote:
| This is the same experience a friend of mine had working
| for Walmart for a couple years, until they moved earlier
| this year. I suspect each location is going to vary,
| though, just like any chain store.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > The problem is, our society isn't ready for that shift,
| not even close.
|
| Percentage of US labor force working in agriculture by
| decade: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-
| resources/teacher-reso...
|
| 1950 was 15.2%, 1970 was 4.7%
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Yeah, but manufacturing picked up a lot of the slack...
| until that went down the drain when China came, so Amazon
| et al picked up the slack, but now there is nothing left.
| nradov wrote:
| The US Navy is rebuilding to fight a war with China.
| There are jobs available in the shipyards, mostly
| unionized. It's tough work, probably harder and more
| dangerous than an Amazon warehouse.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| That's good for the coastal towns that have shipyards,
| but useless in the flyover states.
| nradov wrote:
| Most of my recent business and personal travel has
| involved flying to "flyover states". But whatever.
|
| People are allowed to move for work. I have. Shipyards
| are expanding in the Great Lakes region.
|
| https://maritime-executive.com/article/navy-expands-
| shipbuil...
|
| The shale gas revolution has created a lot of blue collar
| jobs. The chemicals industry is booming in Ohio.
|
| https://www.jobsohio.com/news-events/news-press/energy-
| chemi...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >It's tough work, probably harder and more dangerous than
| an Amazon warehouse.
|
| My buddy who is a union welder at a shipyard doesn't have
| to piss in a bottle to make his quota. His job is fucking
| fantastic, thanks to the union, and the hardest part of
| it is navigating controls around what the navy allows
| civvies to touch.
|
| It's predominantly a lot of professional work by tradies,
| NOT grunt work. Use the proper PPE and you probably won't
| even have any lasting injuries or bodily damage. Take
| your time and follow the rules and you won't even be the
| cause of death for a hundred sailors like with the
| Thresher.
| abduhl wrote:
| >> the hardest part of it is navigating controls around
| what the navy allows civvies to touch.
|
| Well, that and using the proper PPE so that you
| _probably_ won 't even have any lasting injuries or
| bodily damage and taking your time/following the rules so
| that you _probably_ won 't even be the cause of death for
| a hundred sailors or coworkers.
|
| Compare that to putting the wrong shipping label on the
| package. I'd rather piss in a bottle than be a welder, to
| be honest.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Everyone cheering for automation and AI always says "oh
| we'll just implement UBI" but none of them ever seem to
| actually be working to help make that happen; I doubt we
| will get a glimpse of that until things get bad enough for
| CEO-murder to be a much more common thing.
| int_19h wrote:
| UBI at this point is entirely a political decision to be
| made by the legislators. How do you expect others to
| "actually be working to help make that happen"?
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Yeah, but at Amazon people will be more concerned of a robot
| part squeaking for better care than a human yelling for it.
| spamizbad wrote:
| What's funny is even if you hate unions, surely the
| demographics who frequent HN at least has a solid grasp of the
| capital investments and R&D costs necessary to "replace them
| with robots" - We are talking about delivery station roles
| here. You gotta build something that, amortized, can do it for
| less than $500/day in a climate where Wall Street is putting
| pressure on tech stocks to control costs. Have at it.
|
| We heard this same argument about automation in food service.
| Remember when Miso/Flippy was going to put all those $20/hour
| fast food workers out on the street? Turns out hiking prices
| was way easier.
| irq-1 wrote:
| (off topic) I was thinking today about how robots should
| throw packages to each other. It'd be faster and it's all the
| things robots are great at: hand-eye coordination, weight and
| holding angle, and group coordination.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| think of how you do any similar activity; is the slow part
| walking a short, line of sight distance?
| jedberg wrote:
| > We heard this same argument about automation in food
| service.
|
| Have you been to a fast food joint lately? Even at peak
| traffic they have maybe three people working when they used
| to have 7-10. Now you walk in and you _have_ to order from
| the kiosk, which is literally the iPhone app on a vertical
| touch screen. You don 't even talk to a human until they hand
| you the food.
| nine_k wrote:
| Ordering from a machine actually makes sense, and,
| crucially, _is easy to implement_.
|
| Replacing the actual burger-fliping workers, or order-
| assembling workers is much harder. An adequate robot, even
| if built with today's technologies, will likely never pay
| for itself.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this doesn't happen with a literal human flipping burgers
| replaced with a robot flipping burgers. It's complex
| drinks made with a button push instead of mixed by hand,
| more of the delivery chain pushed to the left of the
| restaurant, like Tim Horton's making all the donuts in
| factories and "finishing" them in store instead of hiring
| bakers, shifting traffic to drive through, and gig-
| delivered take away. Having customers order and queue up,
| etc. There are way less employees and they are only doing
| the "hard" work, massively parallelized.
| spamizbad wrote:
| That might be what you see but during your rush shifts
| you're looking at 10+ at places like McDonalds with 6-7
| during less busy shifts and those 6-7 people are busting
| their asses. Churn has also jumped way-up post-COVID. A
| bunch of once-reliable food service workers moved up the
| labor value chain and left the industry and this has left
| the F&B industry with some pretty major staffing problems.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| This is just not true.
|
| Maybe your area suffers from that, but mine doesn't.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Fast food - like McDonalds - have followed through with this.
| They now have a single human register and much smaller
| kitchens, and 1/2 their business is take out. It's not all
| automation; a lot of it is factory prep and shifting the work
| on to customers & gig workers.
| Spivak wrote:
| That's fine, this is the natural and expected response to
| labor getting more expensive. The bad outcome is when
| government steps in to artificially push wages down.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >It's not all automation
|
| Almost none of it is automation. McDonalds invested in a
| fully automated fry machine but they basically don't get
| deployed because thanks to COVID "labor shortages", they
| all figured out a much better strategy:
|
| Just have fewer employees and make them do more work. It
| doesn't matter how much people bitch about wait times and
| product quality on twitter, _they still buy_. Americans
| love to bitch about things on the internet, but they still
| wait in the drive through line for tens of minutes for
| "fast food" that is demonstrably worse than it was five
| years ago.
|
| Americans have comprehensively demonstrated that they are
| unwilling or unable to just, not fucking buy stuff. Despite
| all the rhetoric about the economy suffering before the
| election, even here on HN (which coincidentally disappeared
| the day after the election, how about that...) we are
| seeing record breaking holiday consumer spending. It's
| fucking insane how willing Americans are to just throw
| money at companies that are outright hostile to them. I
| cannot fathom the unwillingness to not buy stuff that the
| average American has.
|
| Quality, service, value, all of it will continue to degrade
| until US consumers finally figure out that you have an
| OPTION to, you know, not buy worthless trash. When PepsiCo
| basically doubled their prices in the past couple years,
| for products that are literally colored water and
| automatically cooked potato chips, which had near zero
| increase in cost of inputs, PepsiCo called it "inflation".
| In France, the news ran articles about clear price gouging
| by PepsiCo. In the US, Americans blamed it on Biden,
| somehow, including Americans who literally _grow and sell
| the potatoes PepsiCo buys_ and therefore KNOW that PepsiCo
| did not pay more for those inputs, and KNOW that Biden has
| zero input on the prices anyone in the chain charge. It 's
| insane to me how unwilling my fellow countrymen are to just
| consider they might be taken advantage of by business.
| spamizbad wrote:
| They correctly figured out customers could tolerate
| slower times for fast food because a significant chunk of
| their orders are delivery and pickup, so having it take 7
| minutes instead of 3 won't really be noticed by the
| consumer.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There are robot grocery warehouses in England:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE (5 minutes, Tom
| Scott video).
|
| Lots of Amazon's stock would be easier, but Amazon also has a
| greater range of sizes.
| twiddling wrote:
| Bring in the Pinkertons
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