IF there’s such a thing as a deserving billionaire, Bezos comes closest in my mind. Remember when Amazon was nothing but an online bookstore? It’s been an amazing journey from those times to today, when I can order a thing and have it in hand within 3-days, tops. If that thing doesn’t suit me, for whatever reason, returns are free and simple.
Then came COVID. Since then, I buy most everything from Amazon. It’s too convenient, saves me gas and time, saves me from the Walmart crowd. Plus, I get a 1% kickback using my Amazon card. You gotta admit, from an environmental standpoint, relying on their delivery service is like taking a bus vs. everyone driving out in their own cars. Not to mention wear and tear on a fleet of like vehicles vs. all our thousand different vehicle models, that’s gotta cut down on manufacturing emissions.
They brought a LOT of innovation to online retailing that we now take for granted. Seen stories over the years, don’t remember enough to talk about it in detail. Simple ordering, no-questions-asked returns, fulfillment speed, stuff like that. I will say that the business side sucks compared to the consumer version. Prices are higher, fewer goods available, harder to review past purchases, all kinds of nonsense that the consumer side perfected. WTF?
With all this praise, there’s the elephant in the room, treatment of employees. We’ve all heard the horror stories, no need to recount. It would take QUITE some time. Given the maturity of the systems, and wild profits, it seems a no-brainer to start hiring more and kicking more back to the ground troops.
“But it’s necessary with capitalism!” No it ain’t. I’m aware of at least 4 companies, 2 of which I’ve had involvement with, and 1 I’m employed at, that pay extraordinarily well, give extraordinary benefits and treat people as humans first, employees second. (Funny enough, 2 are convenience store chains of all things.) These companies also make extraordinary profits for their owners and/or shareholders. All the greed and evil we see is NOT necessary to practice capitalism, it just more often works out that way.
Now how about AWS? Outside of the IT crowd, I very much doubt anyone realizes what a monster they are. AWS IS the cloud. Unless you’re balls deep in Microsoft’s ecosystem, I’m not sure why you would pick Azure. (I’ll admit much ignorance here.) Every other cloud provider is miles behind.
Even if you don’t need the flexibility, scalability and horsepower of AWS, their scale and size (help me with the word I want) allows them to price on par with smaller outfits. I shopped some cloud services at my last job and the sticker shock was worse than AWS. LOL, if you can believe that.
The platform is mature to the point where if you imagine it, they’re probably already doing it. “Sure wish AWS would…” “They do.” It’s called <confusing_name_that_sounds_like_20_other_products>." Having a solid grasp of all the services/offerings is a career unto itself.
My only complaint is that small timers like me can’t affordably dabble. I’ve got a web server and a Pi-hole in Lightsail, $11/mo. or so? But fuck me, play much beyond that and you’ll get handed a $500 invoice. (There’s some entry level stuff that’s free and cheap, but don’t slip! I added a directory service I never used or configured, $65/mo. and it was painful to kill and get refunded.)
Unlike another tech billionaire, who shall remain unnamed, at least Bezos keeps his mouth shut. Also, he quietly throws around a good bit of charity that he doesn’t talk about and you won’t hear about. Could he do more? Certainly. I’d like to see him pledge the same as Gates and Buffet, maybe he will when he gets old.
Someone will come along to call me a bootlicker, ask why making fun of Bezos tRiGGerEd me. I just happen to (mostly) admire Amazon’s success, and to lesser extent, the man himself. (Plus, I’m dodging work and felt like writing something.)
It’s me. I’m here to call you a bootlicker. Ya bootlicker. No one works hard enough to earn a billion dollars, simple as. He got as wealthy as he did by employing the usual monopolization tactics. Such as undercutting his competition to drive them out of business. There’s also the whole thing about Amazon barely paying taxes, exploiting and abusing their workers, union busting and horrible conditions things too. Among many, many others. Using his ill gotten gains to then expand vertically and horizontally (shipping infrastructure and AWS for example) are also common tactics utilized by companies aspiring to be a monopoly to keep their overhead low and further eliminate competition. Amazon should have never been allowed to get this big. Amazon and Jeff bezos are only as big as they are because of a corrupt system that didn’t rein them in.
Also, billionaire philanthropy is a tax dodging scheme that rarely, if ever, does what it’s “supposed” to do
There’s a difference between admiring Amazon’s success and attributing that success to Bezos. Amazon’s success from that elephant in the room that you pretty quickly glossed over, the employees. Did Bezos come up with AWS? No. Do you think he directly contributed to its success? No. But who takes credit and profits from that? Bezos and the board. This is what people mean when they say there’s no such thing as a “deserving billionaire”. The only reason Bezos is a billionaire is because he owns the company. His actual labor contributions definitely haven’t been even close to being worth a billion, but because of the work of others he has a worth of a hundred billion. If you took the entire worth of Bezos and distributed it evenly between all Amazon employees then every employee of Amazon would be a millionaire. And there’s an entire board just profiting from the actual work people in Amazon are doing. But what do those workers get for that work? Having to piss in bottles to not lose their job.
You can admire Amazon for what it was able to achieve, but let’s not act like Bezos or the board are the reason Amazon is successful. Bezos and the board are the reason Amazon is so shitty and the company would be better off without them.
Thank you. I don’t agree with all your points, but it’s nice to see someone that accepts things as they are and finds the good. Amazon has redefined the world as we know it. After paying for prime it’s amazing I ever have to wait more than 3 days for a package. I can buy freakin snail excrement if I want to. Did Bezos “earn” his billions? No, but he provided a way for others to make millions and that gets rewarded
IF there’s such a thing as a deserving billionaire, Bezos comes closest in my mind. Remember when Amazon was nothing but an online bookstore? It’s been an amazing journey from those times to today, when I can order a thing and have it in hand within 3-days, tops. If that thing doesn’t suit me, for whatever reason, returns are free and simple.
Then came COVID. Since then, I buy most everything from Amazon. It’s too convenient, saves me gas and time, saves me from the Walmart crowd. Plus, I get a 1% kickback using my Amazon card. You gotta admit, from an environmental standpoint, relying on their delivery service is like taking a bus vs. everyone driving out in their own cars. Not to mention wear and tear on a fleet of like vehicles vs. all our thousand different vehicle models, that’s gotta cut down on manufacturing emissions.
They brought a LOT of innovation to online retailing that we now take for granted. Seen stories over the years, don’t remember enough to talk about it in detail. Simple ordering, no-questions-asked returns, fulfillment speed, stuff like that. I will say that the business side sucks compared to the consumer version. Prices are higher, fewer goods available, harder to review past purchases, all kinds of nonsense that the consumer side perfected. WTF?
With all this praise, there’s the elephant in the room, treatment of employees. We’ve all heard the horror stories, no need to recount. It would take QUITE some time. Given the maturity of the systems, and wild profits, it seems a no-brainer to start hiring more and kicking more back to the ground troops.
“But it’s necessary with capitalism!” No it ain’t. I’m aware of at least 4 companies, 2 of which I’ve had involvement with, and 1 I’m employed at, that pay extraordinarily well, give extraordinary benefits and treat people as humans first, employees second. (Funny enough, 2 are convenience store chains of all things.) These companies also make extraordinary profits for their owners and/or shareholders. All the greed and evil we see is NOT necessary to practice capitalism, it just more often works out that way.
Now how about AWS? Outside of the IT crowd, I very much doubt anyone realizes what a monster they are. AWS IS the cloud. Unless you’re balls deep in Microsoft’s ecosystem, I’m not sure why you would pick Azure. (I’ll admit much ignorance here.) Every other cloud provider is miles behind.
Even if you don’t need the flexibility, scalability and horsepower of AWS, their scale and size (help me with the word I want) allows them to price on par with smaller outfits. I shopped some cloud services at my last job and the sticker shock was worse than AWS. LOL, if you can believe that.
The platform is mature to the point where if you imagine it, they’re probably already doing it. “Sure wish AWS would…” “They do.” It’s called <confusing_name_that_sounds_like_20_other_products>." Having a solid grasp of all the services/offerings is a career unto itself.
My only complaint is that small timers like me can’t affordably dabble. I’ve got a web server and a Pi-hole in Lightsail, $11/mo. or so? But fuck me, play much beyond that and you’ll get handed a $500 invoice. (There’s some entry level stuff that’s free and cheap, but don’t slip! I added a directory service I never used or configured, $65/mo. and it was painful to kill and get refunded.)
Unlike another tech billionaire, who shall remain unnamed, at least Bezos keeps his mouth shut. Also, he quietly throws around a good bit of charity that he doesn’t talk about and you won’t hear about. Could he do more? Certainly. I’d like to see him pledge the same as Gates and Buffet, maybe he will when he gets old.
Someone will come along to call me a bootlicker, ask why making fun of Bezos tRiGGerEd me. I just happen to (mostly) admire Amazon’s success, and to lesser extent, the man himself. (Plus, I’m dodging work and felt like writing something.)
I can’t believe someone wrote this about Bezos. I stopped reading after this clown said it is more environmentally friendly to order from Amazon lmao
Is it a copypasta?
It’s me. I’m here to call you a bootlicker. Ya bootlicker. No one works hard enough to earn a billion dollars, simple as. He got as wealthy as he did by employing the usual monopolization tactics. Such as undercutting his competition to drive them out of business. There’s also the whole thing about Amazon barely paying taxes, exploiting and abusing their workers, union busting and horrible conditions things too. Among many, many others. Using his ill gotten gains to then expand vertically and horizontally (shipping infrastructure and AWS for example) are also common tactics utilized by companies aspiring to be a monopoly to keep their overhead low and further eliminate competition. Amazon should have never been allowed to get this big. Amazon and Jeff bezos are only as big as they are because of a corrupt system that didn’t rein them in.
Also, billionaire philanthropy is a tax dodging scheme that rarely, if ever, does what it’s “supposed” to do
Corporate bootlickers gtfo
There’s a difference between admiring Amazon’s success and attributing that success to Bezos. Amazon’s success from that elephant in the room that you pretty quickly glossed over, the employees. Did Bezos come up with AWS? No. Do you think he directly contributed to its success? No. But who takes credit and profits from that? Bezos and the board. This is what people mean when they say there’s no such thing as a “deserving billionaire”. The only reason Bezos is a billionaire is because he owns the company. His actual labor contributions definitely haven’t been even close to being worth a billion, but because of the work of others he has a worth of a hundred billion. If you took the entire worth of Bezos and distributed it evenly between all Amazon employees then every employee of Amazon would be a millionaire. And there’s an entire board just profiting from the actual work people in Amazon are doing. But what do those workers get for that work? Having to piss in bottles to not lose their job.
You can admire Amazon for what it was able to achieve, but let’s not act like Bezos or the board are the reason Amazon is successful. Bezos and the board are the reason Amazon is so shitty and the company would be better off without them.
Fucking bootlicker
Thank you. I don’t agree with all your points, but it’s nice to see someone that accepts things as they are and finds the good. Amazon has redefined the world as we know it. After paying for prime it’s amazing I ever have to wait more than 3 days for a package. I can buy freakin snail excrement if I want to. Did Bezos “earn” his billions? No, but he provided a way for others to make millions and that gets rewarded
“…accepts things as they are…”
“After paying for prime it’s amazing I ever have to wait more than 3 days for a package.”
What the fuck did I just read?