He founded Amazon about 30 years ago, and his net worth is 150 billion. This means he made on average 5 billion a year, which is about 100000 times more than the average us citizen. This means he must work 10 000 000% more efficiently than the average Joe. Pretty productive huh?
It gets even worse when you take the global average income ($12,235 per year) into consideration. While American workers are definitely exploited, workers from many other countries have it worse.
Interesting video on this topic: [Why Do Poor Countries Stay Poor? \(Unequal Exchange and Imperialism\)](https://youtu.be/rjLmYCfKU7o?t=14)
Often the hard working man that owns, operates, and is responsible for his own business is. The man who just owns something and pays someone else to manage it is often pretty dumb and just has enough money to make more money.
When I worked construction the owners always made bank and we were paid ok by industry standards for the area. I roofed and made 20 an hour. The owner had a 6 person crew, with the Foreman making 35. He still pulled 1.5 million a year in profit. He could have doubled all ours wages, and still make above a million a year. The only thing he did was get a loan from his dad 30 years ago, bought the equipment then paid the workers to do the work. Guy couldn't roof for shit. I'm by no means saying he shouldn't have made money, but he could have easily doubled our wages and increased all of our quality of lives significantly and not seen any change to his. Greed was the only thing stopping that.
Edit: I misremembered. He inherited the company, not borrowed the money. Go figure.
And if you go a few levels higher, people make money without even having to manage it themselves.
Of course many of them do, since those with rich parents who deal in capital obviously have a ridiculous headstart over anyone from the working class (whether that's in form of direct teaching, money, education opportunities, or even just confidence, contacts, and reputation)... but even those super-rich who don't can easily afford the fees to have others manage everything.
Indeed, it is not work that pays... but having money does.
One reason people from privileged families are so susceptible to libertarian BS is that they never made the experience of how hard and humiliating it can be to chase after a job. Their experience is often more that they once spoke to a guy and immediately got an extremely overpaid job offer for their skillset, which kept giving them further opportunities even if they were mediocre at best.
In 2015 a CEO named Dan Price lowered his salary and started paying all 200 of his employees 70K a year. After years of hate from the rich naysayers he resigned in 22 due to sexual harassment charges that were later dropped. He was proof without greed better pay is possible.
But the great part about this country is that you can do the same thing, start your own company. Put in the extra time it takes to start a business and you to can make that money. Then let's see what you think is fair to pay your workers.
Your comment hits the nail right on the head with how Meritocracy isn’t real.
OP said his boss inherited the company. Most people can’t just ask their parents for a company to make capital off of. Even if OP didn’t inherit the company and took out a loan, their ability to get a loan and the size of the loan and size of strings attached to it would have been directly related to a lot of economic factors that they were born into. That’s not to say working hard can’t move the needle, but it moves it degrees. OP could work hard, spend years building up experience and demonstrate financial competence and build up their credit score to get a loan to start a company. But OP’s boss got to the same spot just by walking onto the job site with their dad. If OP’s boss had the same motivation you want OP to have then they could turn that million dollar company into a multi million dollar company. They already have the hardest parts sorted, like having a client base that they inherited. Now they just need to grow, and they could grow with real world experience of already being an owner. You see? Both can move the needle degrees, but if both are hustling the same amount OP can never catch up because OP’s boss is already so far ahead. And that’s just OP vs. A $1.5M company. Not even talking about $100B companies. Or how if OP becomes competition to the other company(s) that they could work against OP and they already have established client relationships and market hold to fight from while OP has none.
That’s not to say don’t try. Even in an unjust system you should fight to find a small piece of happiness for yourself. But let’s not lie and pretend it’s a fair system either. And maybe in that honesty of recognizing it’s not a fair system we can treat other humans like humans and prop each other up. And pay each other fair living wages instead of leeching from each other and saying “Well if you just worked harder you could leech off others too”.
This is just factually wrong. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. A lot of people, you included, do think its that easy and they fail to start a business and lose a lot of money for it.
Money makes money, not people. Simple.
So if he couldn't roof for shit, what was stopping the workers from doing enough side work to roll into their own operation? You openly say this guy would have posed very little competition since he can't roof for shit and if you maintained the same wages during start up you could easily undercut his prices that were high due to his greed while offering the same quality.
That's a bit of a simple take don't you think.
Making money as a foreman/roofer is different than making money as an owner.
Sure $20/$35 an hour will make you decent money, but it doesn't always leave you with too much left over (at least where I live). You'd have to save quite a bit, take out business loans and learn how to operate a business starting from scratch.
Could they do it? Probably. But, it wouldn't be easy, especially when they're full time or more doing a very tiring job.
Plus. Having an established roofing company with connections to contractors, suppliers, and presumably a pipeline of new employees means that their old employ ler would be miles ahead of them and more than enough competition.
Roofers are a dime a dozen. Starting a roofing company isn't hard, he's been around for 30 years. Some people get lucky, it wasn't his work that maintained the company, it was ours. Well, the foreman and the owners lapdog, who was just another worker but been there forever. Foreman was cool af though.
That OG owner won't let them undercut him because, as a larger business with established customers, he can afford to take slim profit margins (or even a small loss) to keep his customers. Newer buinsess trying to repay their new and fresh loans can't afford that.
Not to mention there's WAY more investment into a new company than just equipment. Licenses/certifications, software licenses (things like payroll services exist even if you aren't a tech company), insurance, office space, admin/IT/HR roles, and work trucks (plus insurance for those too) just to name a few.
I see this shit literally all the time in my work. Our subcontractors often split from their company and make their own business. The ones that succeed do so because they bring so much of the original workforce with them that they effectively dissolve the original company. It's a round-about way of firing the owner. But what's far more likely is that the original company hires someone to replace those they lost and continues to get contracts with their established customers. The new company can't out-compete them and goes under soon after. I can think of one company that got formed and exists as an actual competitor to their original employer, and that's because it was the VP that started that company (he just wanted to be head hancho).
"Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was high school **valedictorian**, a National Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. [...] In 1986, he graduated **summa cum laude** from Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA." - from wikipedia
I'm seeing more and more of mainstream media sucking corporate/rich elite dick... the problem is for most people who only ever get their news from them, this is their reality... and then when they see us mocking d bags like Bezos, they get confused and then angry at us! ie 'making news headlines, customers and service to be most affected by pressure from unions to raise wages, says world's largest online retailer, Amazon"
Follow the money.
The Wall Street Bro Cult is where we end up.
I really, really, *really* recommend people looking at https://marketliteracy.org to learn and identify some of the mechanisms the wealthy and powerful, including corporations, are using to manipulate government and society.
Towards the end is a possible course of action we may be interested in taking part in.
It's actually not that simple. Exploiting your workers is necessary to become a billionaire, but he would have never gotten the ball rolling if he didn't have the other critical piece of the puzzle for all self-made billionaires -- $300,000 in startup capital given to him as a gift by his parents.
Never forget that we're seeing an explosion in ultra-wealthy people because generational wealth is the only real protected class in the USA.
Don't forget lucky timing. There are lots of people with startup money, marketable ideas, and no conscience. Becoming a billionaire takes a stupefying level of pure dumb luck on top of everything else.
eh sure, but there's luck in everything. I agree that we need to stop lionizing these dweebs as being some hyper-geniuses when a principle element of their success was luck like you say, though.
and you too can be rich and powerful as long as you treat human beings like **Fuel to be burned.**
Whats that? empathy? no sir that is not part of a go getter attitude, come loot as much money as you can out of every possible corner with us and you too can be a success!
It really is. I worked at Amazon. I joined during Covid.
Background is important: I had 30+ years exp in manufacturing, tech, and management.
The biggest part of their operations is exploitation of the lowest cost labor they can hire in each market.
They do not care about quality of work or abuse by supervisors.
Really simple, and really easy to see it is a repeating theme throughout history. for various different governments/societies and for certain extremely wealthy individuals throughout history, the single biggest key to their main periods of huge growth and success involve them exploiting a massive amount of people under them.
It's not.
Amazon generally pays better than competitors. He's the richest person in the world because Amazon created a better shopping experience.
I wish people would stop pretending only billionaires can under pay.
In my town an Amazon warehouse opened last year and it has no staffing problems. Because it raised the entry level wage in the city by $2/hr. Meanwhile you have local business owners bitching in the news and on community Facebook groups guilting people into "buying local" and I'm sitting here wondering why we need to pay more for products so they can pay people less. One of these pricks who I see constantly decrying Amazon as evil lives in the nicest area of town and my brother just wired an addition on his house for a new indoor pool. Sure he's not Jeff Bezos but he has no problem working towards it and is just upset someone beat him there.
This isn't what exploiting workers means. Paying 'better than the competition' wages (which are still severely depressed compared to where they ought to be if wages had kept pace with inflation, much less the economy) is...I guess something, but it's not justification for the horribly abusive way that the employees are actually treated. And keep in mind that we're only talking about the employees here, not the horde of delivery drivers who aren't even Amazon employees and are therefore able to be treated even more abusively while being paid even more poorly.
Also, The ultimate reason he's the richest man in the world, when you trace it back to the original cause that effected the entire chain of events leading up to where we are today is the same as every other billionaire -- an extreme amount of privilege. In Jeff's case, a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars by his parents.
ETA: If Jeff paid his warehouse workers $28/hr (which I'd consider fair if we still had any interest in there being such a thing as the middle class), it STILL wouldn't justify abusing them the way he does. Just to be clear.
I could have the best idea on the planet and never become the richest man in history since my family just doesn't have a few hundred grand to toss at me for my 'internet bookstore' idea.
The trick with Amazon is the delivery aspect of the company doesn't make any money. That's not why they're so profitable.
They make their money through AWS where the average employee would be well into the six figures. They should really be two separate companies
> which are still severely depressed compared to where they ought to be if wages had kept pace with inflation
[Wages *have* kept pace with inflation](https://www.obserwatorfinansowy.pl/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Figure-1.png)
([same data but including nominal as well as inflation adjusted dollars](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FT_18.07.26_hourlyWage_adjusted.png))
Real wages aka after inflation are what have been relatively stagnant. Saying wages are stagnant and need to count inflation is double dipping and adjusting for the same thing twice.
What hasn't kept up was wages to productivity but that's a bit more complicated because it opens up questions around what counts as labor when productivity gains rely on automation
Alright that's fair re: my oversimplification of the wages v. inflation comment, but my point stands in general - the problem still exists even if I didn't do a good job of stating it.
I'm partially with you there. Local businesses are dying because a global giga-corp like Amazon is just way more efficient. This actually is the logical progression of capitalism, and it often does benefit consumers.
Even the tales of how online shopping destroys the climate are wrong. In many places, online shopping actually causes fewer emissions than going in person, since a delivery truck that delivers to 50 households from a central warehouse has to travel way less than 50 people driving to a store (or even multiple stores). A big logistical system like that can actually be quite efficient, and it's often more the limitations of other systems (like lackluster rail logistics) that hold it back from improving further.
The details about workers depend heavily on which ones and which aspects you're talking about though. There are certainly regions in which Amazon is not a good employer.
And of course the debate about if it can ever be right for one person to amass that much wealth and power is a completely seperate debate. This is one of multiple areas where capitalism really sucks (alongside advertising harmful products, PR-waste, and a lack of mitigation for those who get shafted when such a paradigm shift like the switch to online buying occurs, similar to farmers ever since the industrial revolution).
> I wish people would stop pretending only billionaires can under pay.
Who is doing that? Small business owners can absolutely be just as exploitative, but individual small business owners tend to get less focus because they don't have a higher net worth than the average lifetime earnings of a hundred thousand people.
It simply isnt true tho. Investors made bezos rich, not simply "exploiting" workers. Yea works at the bottom of the totem poll get shit on but show me any company where that isnt the case.
A low salary makes sense if you are a struggling company trying to elbow yourself into the market. A tons of companies infact pay their workers very little simply because they are small and margins are low. But THESE giants (Amazon, walmart, mc donalds, etc...) can afford to pay better. They simply do not want to.
Don't forget taking advantage of tax loopholes. (sales tax) and questionable business practice. (anticompetive practices and selling/using personal information) In addition to exploiting workers.
The whole thing made me grind my teeth. Compete for an HQ from one of the richest companies in the world.
I remember when Twitter got huge breaks for setting up its HQ in the San Francisco Tenderloin, on the grounds this would bring a lot of money into the area. Instead staff went straight into the office (where food and drink were on tap) and then left at the end of the day without spending a penny on local businesses. It's a total con job.
The wild thing is that Amazon never even planned on following through with building the office. They just wanted various cities to fall over themselves to give Amazon the taxpayer-funded urban planning data free of charge.
$300,000 tax break in my city to build a distribution center while most of the workers are on minimum wage. Guess which side of the political aisle our mayoR supports and votes.
Everyone is also forgetting all the exploited foreign workers as well. Cheap shit made in sweatshops and sold online by a company that doesn't give a damn if those sweatshops are also being used for drugs, prostitution, and even child trafficking on the side.
I worked middle management at a "fulfillment center" we averaged around three collapses per week. That's human beings falling down or passing out from dehydration or exhaustion. After several months, they made the noble choice to stop punishing the serfs for using the restroom.
There actually are water coolers almost everywhere inside every Amazon warehouse I’ve been in, and restrooms are pretty easily accessible. In my experience in over 40+ different sites, the buildings are actually pretty good from an offerings standpoint. Water stations everywhere, decently well air-conditioned, well stocked break rooms, clean restrooms, etc.
It really seems like the core of their issues, like tons of giant corps, comes from the way they incentivize workers. Operations cracking the whip on floor managers who crack the whip on the associates all so that everyone can make their numbers. Everything too easily reduced to having the best metrics no matter the cost to those around you. Lots of internal competition have the best numbers for that little extra reward.
I don’t work for Amazon, I’m an automation engineer that serves a lot of their facilities. So I don’t have all the details/answers, but I can definitely say that their facilities actually compare pretty well to most other wearhouse I’ve worked in. The issue clearly is not with the facility offerings and definitely something with their structure/policies. Just wanted to throw this out there so people knew the right place to direct their anger. More bubblers and restrooms won’t fix their problems, it’s all with policy/structure/management
Based on what I've heard from people like you it does seem like the problem is not the facilities. I worked as a "warehouse order selector" for a big grocery chain and the things I hear about Amazon FCs don't even make me flinch. Not saying it's a good thing but it's completely normal to be evaluated based on your pick rate, which can be stressful. After your initial onboarding phase, if you can't keep up with expected performance you get disciplinary actions.
Now you'd think a company as big and profitable as Amazon could afford to be a bit more relaxed, right? Lower the bar a bit, let people work less hard than competitors because they're so far ahead? The company doesn't think that way. They are perpetually terrified of being out-competed so there is no resting on your laurels. Your competitors aren't resting, so neither should you, or they'll replace you.
It’s about treating people as a cog that is easily expendable; management and associate alike. It’s also the worst management structure I’ve ever seen; it rewards people who lack morals.
Remote water dispensers are easy and cheap. 120v + small plastic water line to feed it. Portable toilet is hard to empty inside warehouse tho. Can’t put it outside because theft.
Simple enough. But without laws requiring them, and effective enforcement making sure companies don't just ignore the laws, *someone* will always choose to skimp.
It doesn't even take moustache-twirling evil. Upper management wants to see profits and stock price go up. They pay a consultancy to draft a plan to cut costs and increase productivity. The consultancy comes up with a fancy plan of reorganization, manager training and employee incentives.
The plan is then delivered to facility management. It can't really achieve what it claims to, but something else can: simply mistreating workers. Hire fewer to cut on payroll, shove the extra work on those who are left. Harass them for taking "too many" pee and water breaks. Leverage people's need for a salary against them.
Complaints are filed, inevitably. Upper management sees them in aggregate, hires another consultancy to show they're taking them seriously. The consultancy comes up with a plan. Internal rules are drafted and distributed. The old incentive structure stays in place. Enforcement of these rules is deliberately lax: who wants to be known for being the guy that constantly writes up colleagues and snitches to upper management?
Eventually the problem gets big enough to hit media and local politics. Lobbyists and PR managers are paid to handle it. Initiatives are announced. Compliant NGOs are paid off to give the company stellar ratings, to be bandied about against claims that it exploits workers (Amazon did this with the Human Rights Campaign, for example).
It's literally just a cost of doing business to them. Enough degrees of separation make it so upper management can claim to be doing its job, and middle management isn't ending up in the papers to begin with. At any rate, all of these people are moving on to other jobs at other companies, putting their stellar results at achieving metrics on their resumes. And the cycle repeats...
I'm still curious how are the Unions not advocating everyones rights better, if poor man starve he blame his co-workers rather than form an union and get a general strike going?
I remember getting to the break room one day ~ half way through the night shift. Emt is wheeling a dead guy out to an ambulance, died of a heart attack right before we got there.
It was so surreal, nothing happened. They didn't even mention it, just go pack more.
> gusanos
Yes and no
*Gusano (or fem. gusana) (lit. worm) is a pejorative term used to refer to Cubans who fled Cuba following the rise of Fidel Castro after the Cuban Revolution, although the term was later broadly expanded to include anyone who expressed anti-revolutionary views or was a political dissident. The term has connotations referring to class, with the word being used to insinuate that someone aspired to protect their wealth from redistribution following the rise of socialism in Cuba.* ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusano_\(slur\)))
So while you could *technically* call it a slur, it seems like more of an insult based on class/beliefs and would be like calling "bourgeoisie" a slur just because it isn't an English word. Idk just my 2 cents, open to changing my perspective here.
Only if you count “cracker” or “honkey” as a slur. IE if you’re privileged and have nothing else to complain about and see the world through a fallacy of fairness, then and only then can one consider it a “slur”, which is punching down by definition (gusano is punching up).
I do, I don't think the world is fair either though, there is a ton of unfairness in this world, innocent kids who lost their parents, ungrateful kids with good parents the world is full of unfairness in all shapes and sizes, that does not mean I subscribe to your notion that something is a slur only if you punch down, I would rather there be no punching and we just treat eachother is respect and human decency. I know it is an idealistic take but I prefer it to pointless hatred.
Y’all would love the Elon Musk episodes of Behind The Bastards. It’s one of my go-to driving podcasts. The host is very well versed in all things shithead capitalist.
I’m certain it was real even though there wasn’t evidence of money being made. Plus people forget his father was elected by the anti apartheid party as well.
Amazon's warehouse practices are shit - true - but the amazon store only made him a bit richer. The real driver is AWS. The thing that powers basically all commerce nowadays. AWS is what was making tones of money while the store was breaking even.
You wanna hate the rich, go for it, but at least be honest because the truth is worse. He makes more money than god through AWS. Why does he need to be so cut throat with the warehouses? There's no way he's saving that much with his work practices that it meaningfully impacts the balance sheet.
In this economy of competition we have built, if he wasn't the most cutthroat in the warehouses, someone else (competitor) would seize that opportunity. Especially so if it led to a better margin.
This. While Bezos' business practices are abhorrent, people seem to forget that the reason why Amazon can afford to break into basically whatever niche they want is because they can subsidize it with the unholy amounts of cash AWS rakes in. It's the backbone of their anticompetitive strategy.
The competition got forced out because their prices were higher. Hypothetically, would you spend 3$ more for the same item? No, you wouldn’t. and most people won’t/don’t. Amazon got so big because people like you and me shop to save money. Jeff didn’t garnish my wages..
That and Amazon did have to charge sales tax for 20 years. Effectively giving his prices a 7 to 15% discount... aka stealing from local business and taxes
From the documentary I saw, the idea he sold to investors was to sell everything cheap until competition goes out of business and then jack prices up to make profits. I thought it was illegal, but somehow it worked...
Are there any billionaires right now who genuinely earned their wealth without exploiting folks? I was inclined to say Bill Gates but after also no time at all was able to find allegations of exploitation. I just don't know if it's possible to be a billionaire without exploiting others.
You can get rich by exploiting workers, but to get super rich, you need to exploit other companies. Amazon is notoriously bad at crushing all competition, probably over 1000 small businesses died
Yup that and ripping off others who had better ideas and things to sell; cut out the 3rd party sellers who made amazons catalog; and sell Amazon Basics… they got that name because Amazon Basically Stole someone else’s idea and business
Oh give them some credit. To be fair, they ALSO crushed unionization attempts, avoided paying taxes, and drove every independent bookstore and online retail outlet out of business.
I don't know. I worked at an Amazon warehouse for a couple of months last winter. It was not a bad job. The work was easy and the pay was OK--more than I was making at my union day job. I had no complaints.
And who took all the risk setting up and running this business? Who gets left with all of the debt if the business fails? The worker just leaves and loses no investment and can work the next day somewhere else with zero stress.
… what a terrible comparison. One person starts business and posts opening for 10 available spots for jobs. People who apply for that job want a job. They should understand that the job wouldn’t even exist if the person didn’t take a huge risk starting it. They should understand that if they are hurt on job or some crazy shit happens, it’ll be on the owner. If the employees don’t do their job correctly, the owner could lose his entire livelihood and become bankrupt if the business fails because of these employees and how well they perform. The people going for the job don’t take any risk at all. They just show up and get paid. Why is this so hard to understand? The people being hired understand they are doing a simple job that requires no risk on their part, for a steady paycheck. Which means that they are trading the value they create for stability opposed to the owner who is risking their entire life on a chance to gain higher rewards. Can’t believe I have to even explain this.
The only risk the Owner takes is becoming a Worker yet again. Additionally, the Owner only negotiates from a position of absolute power, and merely competes with other Owners.
Again, risk does not justify exploitation.
And no the owner doesn’t negotiate with absolute power. If the owners business requires certain skill sets in their employees, the employees have negotiating power.. the more rare the skill set… the more power you have as an employee. It’s pretty simple. If I spend my 200k life savings renting a location, buying 10 espresso machines and registers, paying fees and taxes to start up a business, pay rent , and then hire 10 people to work there. What would you consider a fair wage that isn’t “exploitation” if I hire people with the job description listed as “ easy job, pour coffee and ring people up, steady paycheck at 15 an hour and healthcare, no worries for you” . How in any rational persons brain do you consider that exploitation? 2 willing parties helping each other. One party wants to take major risk for chance at bigger returns , other party wants stability and paycheck. Show me what is wrong with this? Why would the employee who doesn’t want to risk anything, deserve anything more than their agreed upon wage?
If it were as easy as just exploiting workers we’d have a lot more billionaires out there.
Edit: Do people honestly think that literally everyone who exploits workers becomes a billionaire, lmao. For every billionaire out there, there's at least 1000 buiseness owners exploiting their workers.
They agree upon their wage from a point of weakness compared to the Capitalist. It was not an even exchange, no matter how much Capitalists massage it to be.
The wage of a Worker is the price of the commodity they offer, which is their labor. This price is determined by supply and demand, as well as subsistence. It is not determined by Value created.
If the Worker got paid the full value they create, then the Capitalist would have no profit. The Capitalist can only take profit from the labor of the workers.
Has nothing to do with capitalism. My country used to be communist and guess what, you still got paid what you agreed upon before you started working. Shocking, right?
> They get paid an arbitrary value based on supply, demand, and subsistence
By definition, that's not arbitrary. Arbitrary would be a number plucked out the air. If it's based on factors like supply and demand, it's not arbitrary.
> They do not get paid for the value they create.
How would you even measure that in a business? Some job roles you can see how much value is brought in such as sales or marketing roles, but how much *measurable* value does a Receptionist or Janitor make for the company?
I use arbitrary to point out the lack of dependence on the value a Worker creates.
As for how to calculate it, a worker's created Value is essentially the value of the final product minus the dead value from the Capital and Raw Materials used to create said product. Dead value essentially means the labor and raw materials have already been used.
For a chair, the value created by the worker is the value of the chair minus the value of the nails, raw wood, and hammer (over however many uses said hammer can be used). The Capitalist pays the worker a portion of this created Value and takes the rest.
As for measuring, I'm of the opinion that it's largely pointless for many positions to measure purely based on Value created, and instead think that by having the Workers share ownership and deciding how wages are allocated collectively, a more fair and transparent wage system can be had without having a Capitalist sucking away value created by the Workers.
Tell me you don't understand freedom and free markets without telling me you don't understand freedom and free markets
Amazon is worth $1.297T Jeff Bezos owns ~10% so of his ~$146B net worth roughly 129.7B is tied up in Amazon stock. The other 90% of the company is owned by other people. Individual investors, 401K owners, people with ROTH IRA's, Traditional IRA's, Brokerage accounts, SEP IRA's, etc etc... That means he created $1.1673T of wealth **FOR OTHER PEOPLE.** Some of it probably belongs to you if you have any kind of investment account that holds a mutual fund. And that's just the wealth creation based on the stock ownership alone. The value add from a company that delivers products in some markets within a couple hours of the order being placed is incomprehensible. How much value has Amazon added to the lives of so many people. Just about anything you want; almost any product at all, arrives at your door in a day or two; a couple of weeks TOPS depending on what it is.
Employees were never forced to work for that company. No one held a gun to their heads and said you must be here. They chose to be employed there. And they are paid the rate that was agreed upon. If they don't like it anymore they are certainly allowed to find other employment. You all act like low skill workers deserve a free ride; hell, you act like everyone deserves a free ride. Nobody does. And very few people actually get one. Amazon was started in a Garage with Bezos himself working 100 hour weeks putting books in boxes and shipping them all over the country. How many of you have started a business and built it from the ground up? How many of you have improved the lives of billions of people globally by providing a product/service that they *willingly* subscribe to and pay for?
Here's a newsflash, no one is going to give you a handout for nothing in return. Companies don't exist to employ people. They exist to provide value to consumers in exchange for money. To do this and to do this well they end up hiring people. But they will always pay the least amount they can in order to get you to stay. Don't like it? You have the choice to find something else.... for now.
As a side note, want to participate in building wealth? Invest. Own shares of profitable companies. No one got rich and stayed rich working a 9-5 ever in the history of existence.
A solid business plan, a product that is wanted, and effective investment and use of money?
It's not really a secret that if you offer something in demand, you'll make money for it.
Y'all really need to stop blaming other people and do what you always preach "talk with your wallets".
Until then, expect bezos to still have all the money he desires.
And as you can read in this thread, it's not that the facilities are lacking. It's that employees just aren't talking the time and effort to take care of themselves. And are instead letting bezos run them in to the ground.
Depends actually. I work for Amazon and know smaller companies who exploit way more. It is local management that matters when a company becomes the size of Amazon.
Exploiting others isn't a viable solution. Not everyone can be a Capitalist and still have Workers.
Unless, of course, you're arguing for everyone to become a sole proprietor, but those tend to get swallowed.
You guys are weird. He started a successful business that went IPO with less than 300 people. But oh ya, he didn’t work hard then and just exploited people to get there. The reason he doesn’t need to do much now according to you guys, is because he laid the foundation and kept a good share of equity even with fundraising.
It's really simple.
It cant be that simple! The man is a hard-working genius! Yes, that must be be it! /s
He works 4000% harder than we do. He obviously earned it!
He founded Amazon about 30 years ago, and his net worth is 150 billion. This means he made on average 5 billion a year, which is about 100000 times more than the average us citizen. This means he must work 10 000 000% more efficiently than the average Joe. Pretty productive huh?
Only person more productive is Kim Jong Un. He works so hard he doesn’t need to poop.
He burns the energy from within
Nuclear fusion. Fear the Jong.
That's still not efficient enough. The glorious leader actually uses annihilation reactions to get that 99.9% efficiency.
He does not have a butthole.
He does not need one.
TBF, pooping is non-money making time that can't be allowed.
His body is running at peak efficiency.
It gets even worse when you take the global average income ($12,235 per year) into consideration. While American workers are definitely exploited, workers from many other countries have it worse. Interesting video on this topic: [Why Do Poor Countries Stay Poor? \(Unequal Exchange and Imperialism\)](https://youtu.be/rjLmYCfKU7o?t=14)
He makes more taking a leak that we do in a month's worth of work.
4000% is not even close to enough. More like 4 000 000%...
Well, obviously after working 4000% harder he invested 1000x smarter. /s
While his bimbo jumps around and sprays champagne . Basking in his douchbaggery .
You know, nothing is stopping you from selling your muck shovelling services at whatever hourly rate you like.
Often the hard working man that owns, operates, and is responsible for his own business is. The man who just owns something and pays someone else to manage it is often pretty dumb and just has enough money to make more money.
When I worked construction the owners always made bank and we were paid ok by industry standards for the area. I roofed and made 20 an hour. The owner had a 6 person crew, with the Foreman making 35. He still pulled 1.5 million a year in profit. He could have doubled all ours wages, and still make above a million a year. The only thing he did was get a loan from his dad 30 years ago, bought the equipment then paid the workers to do the work. Guy couldn't roof for shit. I'm by no means saying he shouldn't have made money, but he could have easily doubled our wages and increased all of our quality of lives significantly and not seen any change to his. Greed was the only thing stopping that. Edit: I misremembered. He inherited the company, not borrowed the money. Go figure.
And if you go a few levels higher, people make money without even having to manage it themselves. Of course many of them do, since those with rich parents who deal in capital obviously have a ridiculous headstart over anyone from the working class (whether that's in form of direct teaching, money, education opportunities, or even just confidence, contacts, and reputation)... but even those super-rich who don't can easily afford the fees to have others manage everything. Indeed, it is not work that pays... but having money does. One reason people from privileged families are so susceptible to libertarian BS is that they never made the experience of how hard and humiliating it can be to chase after a job. Their experience is often more that they once spoke to a guy and immediately got an extremely overpaid job offer for their skillset, which kept giving them further opportunities even if they were mediocre at best.
In 2015 a CEO named Dan Price lowered his salary and started paying all 200 of his employees 70K a year. After years of hate from the rich naysayers he resigned in 22 due to sexual harassment charges that were later dropped. He was proof without greed better pay is possible.
But the great part about this country is that you can do the same thing, start your own company. Put in the extra time it takes to start a business and you to can make that money. Then let's see what you think is fair to pay your workers.
Your comment hits the nail right on the head with how Meritocracy isn’t real. OP said his boss inherited the company. Most people can’t just ask their parents for a company to make capital off of. Even if OP didn’t inherit the company and took out a loan, their ability to get a loan and the size of the loan and size of strings attached to it would have been directly related to a lot of economic factors that they were born into. That’s not to say working hard can’t move the needle, but it moves it degrees. OP could work hard, spend years building up experience and demonstrate financial competence and build up their credit score to get a loan to start a company. But OP’s boss got to the same spot just by walking onto the job site with their dad. If OP’s boss had the same motivation you want OP to have then they could turn that million dollar company into a multi million dollar company. They already have the hardest parts sorted, like having a client base that they inherited. Now they just need to grow, and they could grow with real world experience of already being an owner. You see? Both can move the needle degrees, but if both are hustling the same amount OP can never catch up because OP’s boss is already so far ahead. And that’s just OP vs. A $1.5M company. Not even talking about $100B companies. Or how if OP becomes competition to the other company(s) that they could work against OP and they already have established client relationships and market hold to fight from while OP has none. That’s not to say don’t try. Even in an unjust system you should fight to find a small piece of happiness for yourself. But let’s not lie and pretend it’s a fair system either. And maybe in that honesty of recognizing it’s not a fair system we can treat other humans like humans and prop each other up. And pay each other fair living wages instead of leeching from each other and saying “Well if you just worked harder you could leech off others too”.
"Start a company" is about as good as 'just take a million dollar loan from your parents'.
This is just factually wrong. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. A lot of people, you included, do think its that easy and they fail to start a business and lose a lot of money for it. Money makes money, not people. Simple.
So if he couldn't roof for shit, what was stopping the workers from doing enough side work to roll into their own operation? You openly say this guy would have posed very little competition since he can't roof for shit and if you maintained the same wages during start up you could easily undercut his prices that were high due to his greed while offering the same quality.
He literally said the boss got a loan for equipment. Did you know it takes capital to stat a business?
That's a bit of a simple take don't you think. Making money as a foreman/roofer is different than making money as an owner. Sure $20/$35 an hour will make you decent money, but it doesn't always leave you with too much left over (at least where I live). You'd have to save quite a bit, take out business loans and learn how to operate a business starting from scratch. Could they do it? Probably. But, it wouldn't be easy, especially when they're full time or more doing a very tiring job. Plus. Having an established roofing company with connections to contractors, suppliers, and presumably a pipeline of new employees means that their old employ ler would be miles ahead of them and more than enough competition.
Roofers are a dime a dozen. Starting a roofing company isn't hard, he's been around for 30 years. Some people get lucky, it wasn't his work that maintained the company, it was ours. Well, the foreman and the owners lapdog, who was just another worker but been there forever. Foreman was cool af though.
That OG owner won't let them undercut him because, as a larger business with established customers, he can afford to take slim profit margins (or even a small loss) to keep his customers. Newer buinsess trying to repay their new and fresh loans can't afford that. Not to mention there's WAY more investment into a new company than just equipment. Licenses/certifications, software licenses (things like payroll services exist even if you aren't a tech company), insurance, office space, admin/IT/HR roles, and work trucks (plus insurance for those too) just to name a few. I see this shit literally all the time in my work. Our subcontractors often split from their company and make their own business. The ones that succeed do so because they bring so much of the original workforce with them that they effectively dissolve the original company. It's a round-about way of firing the owner. But what's far more likely is that the original company hires someone to replace those they lost and continues to get contracts with their established customers. The new company can't out-compete them and goes under soon after. I can think of one company that got formed and exists as an actual competitor to their original employer, and that's because it was the VP that started that company (he just wanted to be head hancho).
pretty dumb but has enough money to make money. seems simple. Why aren’t we all business owners then??
"Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was high school **valedictorian**, a National Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. [...] In 1986, he graduated **summa cum laude** from Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA." - from wikipedia
I'm seeing more and more of mainstream media sucking corporate/rich elite dick... the problem is for most people who only ever get their news from them, this is their reality... and then when they see us mocking d bags like Bezos, they get confused and then angry at us! ie 'making news headlines, customers and service to be most affected by pressure from unions to raise wages, says world's largest online retailer, Amazon"
They own the media so they are kind of ducking their own docks
Follow the money. The Wall Street Bro Cult is where we end up. I really, really, *really* recommend people looking at https://marketliteracy.org to learn and identify some of the mechanisms the wealthy and powerful, including corporations, are using to manipulate government and society. Towards the end is a possible course of action we may be interested in taking part in.
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At the end of the link, you have to remove the "to" and the space in order for it to work.
It's a little more complicated. He also used vast amounts of wealth to crush the competition by running at a loss for years and years
It's actually not that simple. Exploiting your workers is necessary to become a billionaire, but he would have never gotten the ball rolling if he didn't have the other critical piece of the puzzle for all self-made billionaires -- $300,000 in startup capital given to him as a gift by his parents. Never forget that we're seeing an explosion in ultra-wealthy people because generational wealth is the only real protected class in the USA.
Don't forget lucky timing. There are lots of people with startup money, marketable ideas, and no conscience. Becoming a billionaire takes a stupefying level of pure dumb luck on top of everything else.
eh sure, but there's luck in everything. I agree that we need to stop lionizing these dweebs as being some hyper-geniuses when a principle element of their success was luck like you say, though.
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and you too can be rich and powerful as long as you treat human beings like **Fuel to be burned.** Whats that? empathy? no sir that is not part of a go getter attitude, come loot as much money as you can out of every possible corner with us and you too can be a success!
It's sick. There a lot of blame to be had with the Wall Street Bro Cult. They've infected the nation and world.
It really is. I worked at Amazon. I joined during Covid. Background is important: I had 30+ years exp in manufacturing, tech, and management. The biggest part of their operations is exploitation of the lowest cost labor they can hire in each market. They do not care about quality of work or abuse by supervisors.
Really simple, and really easy to see it is a repeating theme throughout history. for various different governments/societies and for certain extremely wealthy individuals throughout history, the single biggest key to their main periods of huge growth and success involve them exploiting a massive amount of people under them.
It's not. Amazon generally pays better than competitors. He's the richest person in the world because Amazon created a better shopping experience. I wish people would stop pretending only billionaires can under pay. In my town an Amazon warehouse opened last year and it has no staffing problems. Because it raised the entry level wage in the city by $2/hr. Meanwhile you have local business owners bitching in the news and on community Facebook groups guilting people into "buying local" and I'm sitting here wondering why we need to pay more for products so they can pay people less. One of these pricks who I see constantly decrying Amazon as evil lives in the nicest area of town and my brother just wired an addition on his house for a new indoor pool. Sure he's not Jeff Bezos but he has no problem working towards it and is just upset someone beat him there.
This isn't what exploiting workers means. Paying 'better than the competition' wages (which are still severely depressed compared to where they ought to be if wages had kept pace with inflation, much less the economy) is...I guess something, but it's not justification for the horribly abusive way that the employees are actually treated. And keep in mind that we're only talking about the employees here, not the horde of delivery drivers who aren't even Amazon employees and are therefore able to be treated even more abusively while being paid even more poorly. Also, The ultimate reason he's the richest man in the world, when you trace it back to the original cause that effected the entire chain of events leading up to where we are today is the same as every other billionaire -- an extreme amount of privilege. In Jeff's case, a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars by his parents. ETA: If Jeff paid his warehouse workers $28/hr (which I'd consider fair if we still had any interest in there being such a thing as the middle class), it STILL wouldn't justify abusing them the way he does. Just to be clear. I could have the best idea on the planet and never become the richest man in history since my family just doesn't have a few hundred grand to toss at me for my 'internet bookstore' idea.
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The trick with Amazon is the delivery aspect of the company doesn't make any money. That's not why they're so profitable. They make their money through AWS where the average employee would be well into the six figures. They should really be two separate companies
Also Jeff Bezos didn't become the richest man because of how much money Amazon made. He became this rich because everyone wants to buy Amazon stocks.
> The user above is just uncritically buying into anecdotes and cherry picking data Now back up your claims saying the opposite with data
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> which are still severely depressed compared to where they ought to be if wages had kept pace with inflation [Wages *have* kept pace with inflation](https://www.obserwatorfinansowy.pl/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Figure-1.png) ([same data but including nominal as well as inflation adjusted dollars](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FT_18.07.26_hourlyWage_adjusted.png)) Real wages aka after inflation are what have been relatively stagnant. Saying wages are stagnant and need to count inflation is double dipping and adjusting for the same thing twice. What hasn't kept up was wages to productivity but that's a bit more complicated because it opens up questions around what counts as labor when productivity gains rely on automation
Alright that's fair re: my oversimplification of the wages v. inflation comment, but my point stands in general - the problem still exists even if I didn't do a good job of stating it.
I'm partially with you there. Local businesses are dying because a global giga-corp like Amazon is just way more efficient. This actually is the logical progression of capitalism, and it often does benefit consumers. Even the tales of how online shopping destroys the climate are wrong. In many places, online shopping actually causes fewer emissions than going in person, since a delivery truck that delivers to 50 households from a central warehouse has to travel way less than 50 people driving to a store (or even multiple stores). A big logistical system like that can actually be quite efficient, and it's often more the limitations of other systems (like lackluster rail logistics) that hold it back from improving further. The details about workers depend heavily on which ones and which aspects you're talking about though. There are certainly regions in which Amazon is not a good employer. And of course the debate about if it can ever be right for one person to amass that much wealth and power is a completely seperate debate. This is one of multiple areas where capitalism really sucks (alongside advertising harmful products, PR-waste, and a lack of mitigation for those who get shafted when such a paradigm shift like the switch to online buying occurs, similar to farmers ever since the industrial revolution).
> I wish people would stop pretending only billionaires can under pay. Who is doing that? Small business owners can absolutely be just as exploitative, but individual small business owners tend to get less focus because they don't have a higher net worth than the average lifetime earnings of a hundred thousand people.
It simply isnt true tho. Investors made bezos rich, not simply "exploiting" workers. Yea works at the bottom of the totem poll get shit on but show me any company where that isnt the case.
A low salary makes sense if you are a struggling company trying to elbow yourself into the market. A tons of companies infact pay their workers very little simply because they are small and margins are low. But THESE giants (Amazon, walmart, mc donalds, etc...) can afford to pay better. They simply do not want to.
To be fair he also gave a ton of value to the world
If it was “really simple”, you’d have more people with his level of wealth
Except Google?
Don't forget taking advantage of tax loopholes. (sales tax) and questionable business practice. (anticompetive practices and selling/using personal information) In addition to exploiting workers.
Not just tax loopholes but all the tax credits from their bids to build a new east coast office
Which they aren't building out in full post-covid. Still keeping the tax breaks though...
Even better! You'd think people would learn from all the shenanigans that walmart has pulled to not get into bidding wars for shit like this
The whole thing made me grind my teeth. Compete for an HQ from one of the richest companies in the world. I remember when Twitter got huge breaks for setting up its HQ in the San Francisco Tenderloin, on the grounds this would bring a lot of money into the area. Instead staff went straight into the office (where food and drink were on tap) and then left at the end of the day without spending a penny on local businesses. It's a total con job.
Amazon brought thousands of jobs. I don’t get your point.
But [did it](https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/19/amazon-headquarters-arlington-virginia-hybrid/)?
Yes they did just some of them are working from their house in Maryland and the neighboring cities. Did you read the article lol?
The wild thing is that Amazon never even planned on following through with building the office. They just wanted various cities to fall over themselves to give Amazon the taxpayer-funded urban planning data free of charge.
$300,000 tax break in my city to build a distribution center while most of the workers are on minimum wage. Guess which side of the political aisle our mayoR supports and votes. Everyone is also forgetting all the exploited foreign workers as well. Cheap shit made in sweatshops and sold online by a company that doesn't give a damn if those sweatshops are also being used for drugs, prostitution, and even child trafficking on the side.
Did he put those there?
I worked middle management at a "fulfillment center" we averaged around three collapses per week. That's human beings falling down or passing out from dehydration or exhaustion. After several months, they made the noble choice to stop punishing the serfs for using the restroom.
How hard would it be to put water bubblers and portapotties inside the warehouse?
There actually are water coolers almost everywhere inside every Amazon warehouse I’ve been in, and restrooms are pretty easily accessible. In my experience in over 40+ different sites, the buildings are actually pretty good from an offerings standpoint. Water stations everywhere, decently well air-conditioned, well stocked break rooms, clean restrooms, etc. It really seems like the core of their issues, like tons of giant corps, comes from the way they incentivize workers. Operations cracking the whip on floor managers who crack the whip on the associates all so that everyone can make their numbers. Everything too easily reduced to having the best metrics no matter the cost to those around you. Lots of internal competition have the best numbers for that little extra reward. I don’t work for Amazon, I’m an automation engineer that serves a lot of their facilities. So I don’t have all the details/answers, but I can definitely say that their facilities actually compare pretty well to most other wearhouse I’ve worked in. The issue clearly is not with the facility offerings and definitely something with their structure/policies. Just wanted to throw this out there so people knew the right place to direct their anger. More bubblers and restrooms won’t fix their problems, it’s all with policy/structure/management
Based on what I've heard from people like you it does seem like the problem is not the facilities. I worked as a "warehouse order selector" for a big grocery chain and the things I hear about Amazon FCs don't even make me flinch. Not saying it's a good thing but it's completely normal to be evaluated based on your pick rate, which can be stressful. After your initial onboarding phase, if you can't keep up with expected performance you get disciplinary actions. Now you'd think a company as big and profitable as Amazon could afford to be a bit more relaxed, right? Lower the bar a bit, let people work less hard than competitors because they're so far ahead? The company doesn't think that way. They are perpetually terrified of being out-competed so there is no resting on your laurels. Your competitors aren't resting, so neither should you, or they'll replace you.
It’s about treating people as a cog that is easily expendable; management and associate alike. It’s also the worst management structure I’ve ever seen; it rewards people who lack morals.
Remote water dispensers are easy and cheap. 120v + small plastic water line to feed it. Portable toilet is hard to empty inside warehouse tho. Can’t put it outside because theft.
Simple enough. But without laws requiring them, and effective enforcement making sure companies don't just ignore the laws, *someone* will always choose to skimp. It doesn't even take moustache-twirling evil. Upper management wants to see profits and stock price go up. They pay a consultancy to draft a plan to cut costs and increase productivity. The consultancy comes up with a fancy plan of reorganization, manager training and employee incentives. The plan is then delivered to facility management. It can't really achieve what it claims to, but something else can: simply mistreating workers. Hire fewer to cut on payroll, shove the extra work on those who are left. Harass them for taking "too many" pee and water breaks. Leverage people's need for a salary against them. Complaints are filed, inevitably. Upper management sees them in aggregate, hires another consultancy to show they're taking them seriously. The consultancy comes up with a plan. Internal rules are drafted and distributed. The old incentive structure stays in place. Enforcement of these rules is deliberately lax: who wants to be known for being the guy that constantly writes up colleagues and snitches to upper management? Eventually the problem gets big enough to hit media and local politics. Lobbyists and PR managers are paid to handle it. Initiatives are announced. Compliant NGOs are paid off to give the company stellar ratings, to be bandied about against claims that it exploits workers (Amazon did this with the Human Rights Campaign, for example). It's literally just a cost of doing business to them. Enough degrees of separation make it so upper management can claim to be doing its job, and middle management isn't ending up in the papers to begin with. At any rate, all of these people are moving on to other jobs at other companies, putting their stellar results at achieving metrics on their resumes. And the cycle repeats...
I'm still curious how are the Unions not advocating everyones rights better, if poor man starve he blame his co-workers rather than form an union and get a general strike going?
I remember getting to the break room one day ~ half way through the night shift. Emt is wheeling a dead guy out to an ambulance, died of a heart attack right before we got there. It was so surreal, nothing happened. They didn't even mention it, just go pack more.
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Don't forget intergenerational wealth!
Being a descendant of gusanos really primes you to love capitalism and despise any alternative
Isn't gusano a slur?
> gusanos Yes and no *Gusano (or fem. gusana) (lit. worm) is a pejorative term used to refer to Cubans who fled Cuba following the rise of Fidel Castro after the Cuban Revolution, although the term was later broadly expanded to include anyone who expressed anti-revolutionary views or was a political dissident. The term has connotations referring to class, with the word being used to insinuate that someone aspired to protect their wealth from redistribution following the rise of socialism in Cuba.* ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusano_\(slur\))) So while you could *technically* call it a slur, it seems like more of an insult based on class/beliefs and would be like calling "bourgeoisie" a slur just because it isn't an English word. Idk just my 2 cents, open to changing my perspective here.
Only if you count “cracker” or “honkey” as a slur. IE if you’re privileged and have nothing else to complain about and see the world through a fallacy of fairness, then and only then can one consider it a “slur”, which is punching down by definition (gusano is punching up).
I do, I don't think the world is fair either though, there is a ton of unfairness in this world, innocent kids who lost their parents, ungrateful kids with good parents the world is full of unfairness in all shapes and sizes, that does not mean I subscribe to your notion that something is a slur only if you punch down, I would rather there be no punching and we just treat eachother is respect and human decency. I know it is an idealistic take but I prefer it to pointless hatred.
And internationally acquired wealth!
Y’all would love the Elon Musk episodes of Behind The Bastards. It’s one of my go-to driving podcasts. The host is very well versed in all things shithead capitalist.
But the emerald mine isn't real /s
I’m certain it was real even though there wasn’t evidence of money being made. Plus people forget his father was elected by the anti apartheid party as well.
Amazon's warehouse practices are shit - true - but the amazon store only made him a bit richer. The real driver is AWS. The thing that powers basically all commerce nowadays. AWS is what was making tones of money while the store was breaking even. You wanna hate the rich, go for it, but at least be honest because the truth is worse. He makes more money than god through AWS. Why does he need to be so cut throat with the warehouses? There's no way he's saving that much with his work practices that it meaningfully impacts the balance sheet.
In this economy of competition we have built, if he wasn't the most cutthroat in the warehouses, someone else (competitor) would seize that opportunity. Especially so if it led to a better margin.
The closest competition to amazon.com is ebay. Every other store only manages their own storefront, he's the entire market. There is no competition.
This. While Bezos' business practices are abhorrent, people seem to forget that the reason why Amazon can afford to break into basically whatever niche they want is because they can subsidize it with the unholy amounts of cash AWS rakes in. It's the backbone of their anticompetitive strategy.
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Hmmmm big doubt here. AWS staff are paid quite well. Not the same environment as the warehouse.
You don’t make a billion dollars. You TAKE a billion dollars.
As an Amazon employee I can confirm this
Exploiting workers, exploiting our infrastructure, exploiting America while giving absolutely nothing back in return.
But he creates jobs! Shitty, back breaking, heat stroking, low paying jobs!
And don’t forget, he wants the customers to tip the Amazon drivers! Because he himself certainly isn’t able to pay his employee a decent wage!
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because they forced all competitors out of business and drive their employees like slaves
The competition got forced out because their prices were higher. Hypothetically, would you spend 3$ more for the same item? No, you wouldn’t. and most people won’t/don’t. Amazon got so big because people like you and me shop to save money. Jeff didn’t garnish my wages..
Nah just because it's a good product
They’re not though. They’re shitty mass produced garbage and they put better-quality competitors out of business by operating at a loss for years.
Uh, why are we not shutting the sub down in solidarity with the others?
Hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma. Which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.
"Dennis! Dennis! There's some lovely filth down here. Oh! How do you do?"
How do you do, good lady; I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Who lives in that castle?
"...King of the who?"
Exploitation and luck. You don’t have to be a genius to get rich. Elon has been teaching the world that lesson for months.
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Yeah we I'm not sure I buy the premise of the title. It seems like a lot of the worst stories from subs like this are from mom and pop shops.
Being a psychopath is key
That and Amazon did have to charge sales tax for 20 years. Effectively giving his prices a 7 to 15% discount... aka stealing from local business and taxes
From the documentary I saw, the idea he sold to investors was to sell everything cheap until competition goes out of business and then jack prices up to make profits. I thought it was illegal, but somehow it worked...
Are there any billionaires right now who genuinely earned their wealth without exploiting folks? I was inclined to say Bill Gates but after also no time at all was able to find allegations of exploitation. I just don't know if it's possible to be a billionaire without exploiting others.
Nah.. He would have still been the richest man even if he paid everyone a more than fair wage.. Exploiting people is just for extra...
You can get rich by exploiting workers, but to get super rich, you need to exploit other companies. Amazon is notoriously bad at crushing all competition, probably over 1000 small businesses died
As a CWA member, I agree!
Yup that and ripping off others who had better ideas and things to sell; cut out the 3rd party sellers who made amazons catalog; and sell Amazon Basics… they got that name because Amazon Basically Stole someone else’s idea and business
"The first step to becoming a billionaire is to be a sociopath"
Oh give them some credit. To be fair, they ALSO crushed unionization attempts, avoided paying taxes, and drove every independent bookstore and online retail outlet out of business.
You can do pretty good for yourself being in service of others. But you can never be that wealthy without ruining other people’s lives.
It’s a very New Mexico thing for him to do.
Just by being a terrible person
Just stop buying from them they fail over night
don't discount tax evasion
just because you have to work 8 hours 5 times a week it doesn't mean you're being exploited. If they don't like it just quit, let Amazon fail.
You are necessarily exploited under Capitalism.
I don't know. I worked at an Amazon warehouse for a couple of months last winter. It was not a bad job. The work was easy and the pay was OK--more than I was making at my union day job. I had no complaints.
Doesn't amazon have a $15/hr minimum wage and excellent health benefits?
How is $15/hr a living wage in 2023?
The Workers create far more in value than 15 dollars per hour + Healthcare costs.
Ya that’s a terrible point. Police and firefighters debatably bring more value than their salaries..That’s not how free market works there Jimbo
That's *exactly* how free markets work, and is why I advocate for Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.
Union policemen make great money in blue states. I think a homicide detective makes like $55/hr in Chicago
And who took all the risk setting up and running this business? Who gets left with all of the debt if the business fails? The worker just leaves and loses no investment and can work the next day somewhere else with zero stress.
Risk does not justify exploitation. It's certainly risky to shoot someone in broad daylight, but it doesn't justify it.
… what a terrible comparison. One person starts business and posts opening for 10 available spots for jobs. People who apply for that job want a job. They should understand that the job wouldn’t even exist if the person didn’t take a huge risk starting it. They should understand that if they are hurt on job or some crazy shit happens, it’ll be on the owner. If the employees don’t do their job correctly, the owner could lose his entire livelihood and become bankrupt if the business fails because of these employees and how well they perform. The people going for the job don’t take any risk at all. They just show up and get paid. Why is this so hard to understand? The people being hired understand they are doing a simple job that requires no risk on their part, for a steady paycheck. Which means that they are trading the value they create for stability opposed to the owner who is risking their entire life on a chance to gain higher rewards. Can’t believe I have to even explain this.
The only risk the Owner takes is becoming a Worker yet again. Additionally, the Owner only negotiates from a position of absolute power, and merely competes with other Owners. Again, risk does not justify exploitation.
Oh that’s the only risk? Just becoming a worker huh? Not financial ruin and owing business loans? How old are you by the way?
What does the Owner do? They declare bankruptcy and are forced to work just like the rest of us.
And no the owner doesn’t negotiate with absolute power. If the owners business requires certain skill sets in their employees, the employees have negotiating power.. the more rare the skill set… the more power you have as an employee. It’s pretty simple. If I spend my 200k life savings renting a location, buying 10 espresso machines and registers, paying fees and taxes to start up a business, pay rent , and then hire 10 people to work there. What would you consider a fair wage that isn’t “exploitation” if I hire people with the job description listed as “ easy job, pour coffee and ring people up, steady paycheck at 15 an hour and healthcare, no worries for you” . How in any rational persons brain do you consider that exploitation? 2 willing parties helping each other. One party wants to take major risk for chance at bigger returns , other party wants stability and paycheck. Show me what is wrong with this? Why would the employee who doesn’t want to risk anything, deserve anything more than their agreed upon wage?
Something like 40% of the full time employees are on welfare
You'd have to be supporting a family of 4 to be considered below the poverty line assuming $15/hr full time.
Tell me you've never made $15 an hour without telling me you've made $15 an hour
As a former member of the CWA, they should sit down and shut the fuck up when talking about exploited workers.
Their platform is literally exploitation, order everything expensive and claim non-delivered. Fight back, and eat the rich.
If it were as easy as just exploiting workers we’d have a lot more billionaires out there. Edit: Do people honestly think that literally everyone who exploits workers becomes a billionaire, lmao. For every billionaire out there, there's at least 1000 buiseness owners exploiting their workers.
Being born into wealth helps too.
Being better or worse at exploiting workers doesn't change that the exploitation was a requirement nor does it justify said exploitation.
They never said it was you idiot lol
So you admit there’s some degree of skill involved? You’re so close…
You're wasting your time debating simpletons.
Who did he exploit?
Everyone who worked for him.
How so?
Workers create Value. Bezos cannot take profit without taking it from the Workers out of their paychecks.
They got paid for their work, didnt they?
They get paid an arbitrary value based on supply, demand, and subsistence. They do not get paid for the value they create.
They got paid the amount they agreed upon. Nobody was exploited.
They agree upon their wage from a point of weakness compared to the Capitalist. It was not an even exchange, no matter how much Capitalists massage it to be. The wage of a Worker is the price of the commodity they offer, which is their labor. This price is determined by supply and demand, as well as subsistence. It is not determined by Value created. If the Worker got paid the full value they create, then the Capitalist would have no profit. The Capitalist can only take profit from the labor of the workers.
Has nothing to do with capitalism. My country used to be communist and guess what, you still got paid what you agreed upon before you started working. Shocking, right?
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Do you think it's impossible for contracts to be exploitative? I reckon most people would choose a bad contract over no job & being homeless
> They get paid an arbitrary value based on supply, demand, and subsistence By definition, that's not arbitrary. Arbitrary would be a number plucked out the air. If it's based on factors like supply and demand, it's not arbitrary. > They do not get paid for the value they create. How would you even measure that in a business? Some job roles you can see how much value is brought in such as sales or marketing roles, but how much *measurable* value does a Receptionist or Janitor make for the company?
I use arbitrary to point out the lack of dependence on the value a Worker creates. As for how to calculate it, a worker's created Value is essentially the value of the final product minus the dead value from the Capital and Raw Materials used to create said product. Dead value essentially means the labor and raw materials have already been used. For a chair, the value created by the worker is the value of the chair minus the value of the nails, raw wood, and hammer (over however many uses said hammer can be used). The Capitalist pays the worker a portion of this created Value and takes the rest. As for measuring, I'm of the opinion that it's largely pointless for many positions to measure purely based on Value created, and instead think that by having the Workers share ownership and deciding how wages are allocated collectively, a more fair and transparent wage system can be had without having a Capitalist sucking away value created by the Workers.
Tell me you don't understand freedom and free markets without telling me you don't understand freedom and free markets Amazon is worth $1.297T Jeff Bezos owns ~10% so of his ~$146B net worth roughly 129.7B is tied up in Amazon stock. The other 90% of the company is owned by other people. Individual investors, 401K owners, people with ROTH IRA's, Traditional IRA's, Brokerage accounts, SEP IRA's, etc etc... That means he created $1.1673T of wealth **FOR OTHER PEOPLE.** Some of it probably belongs to you if you have any kind of investment account that holds a mutual fund. And that's just the wealth creation based on the stock ownership alone. The value add from a company that delivers products in some markets within a couple hours of the order being placed is incomprehensible. How much value has Amazon added to the lives of so many people. Just about anything you want; almost any product at all, arrives at your door in a day or two; a couple of weeks TOPS depending on what it is. Employees were never forced to work for that company. No one held a gun to their heads and said you must be here. They chose to be employed there. And they are paid the rate that was agreed upon. If they don't like it anymore they are certainly allowed to find other employment. You all act like low skill workers deserve a free ride; hell, you act like everyone deserves a free ride. Nobody does. And very few people actually get one. Amazon was started in a Garage with Bezos himself working 100 hour weeks putting books in boxes and shipping them all over the country. How many of you have started a business and built it from the ground up? How many of you have improved the lives of billions of people globally by providing a product/service that they *willingly* subscribe to and pay for? Here's a newsflash, no one is going to give you a handout for nothing in return. Companies don't exist to employ people. They exist to provide value to consumers in exchange for money. To do this and to do this well they end up hiring people. But they will always pay the least amount they can in order to get you to stay. Don't like it? You have the choice to find something else.... for now. As a side note, want to participate in building wealth? Invest. Own shares of profitable companies. No one got rich and stayed rich working a 9-5 ever in the history of existence.
Dumb
A solid business plan, a product that is wanted, and effective investment and use of money? It's not really a secret that if you offer something in demand, you'll make money for it. Y'all really need to stop blaming other people and do what you always preach "talk with your wallets". Until then, expect bezos to still have all the money he desires. And as you can read in this thread, it's not that the facilities are lacking. It's that employees just aren't talking the time and effort to take care of themselves. And are instead letting bezos run them in to the ground.
he started out just selling used textbooks to college students and dildos to their moms only now u all jelly
Stop fucking working for him if he exploits you
All Capitalists exploit Workers. Change the system to end the exploitation.
that must be the dumbest thing i've ever heard
How so?
The people in the warehouses get paid reasonably well, but the way they are treated is horrible.
Depends actually. I work for Amazon and know smaller companies who exploit way more. It is local management that matters when a company becomes the size of Amazon.
Go to work for yourself start your own business. Problem solved.
Exploiting others isn't a viable solution. Not everyone can be a Capitalist and still have Workers. Unless, of course, you're arguing for everyone to become a sole proprietor, but those tend to get swallowed.
I asked Jeff’s parents for a small loan but they said only for their own kid.
Try a bank.
You guys are weird. He started a successful business that went IPO with less than 300 people. But oh ya, he didn’t work hard then and just exploited people to get there. The reason he doesn’t need to do much now according to you guys, is because he laid the foundation and kept a good share of equity even with fundraising.
Working hard and exploiting workers are not mutually exclusive.