07.20.12
Jeff Bezos’ plan to make more people miserable
The entire business strategy of Amazon revolves around devaluing labor, compressing prices, and taking the swag difference for itself.
With Mechanical Turk, it’s getting people to work on-line for free or almost so for the sake of small social parasite businesses. With Amazon shopping, it’s to put warehouses around the country, hire people at lousy rates and treat them poorly, so those with their consumer buying power still intact can have their stuff.
Having destroyed a lot of publishing, Amazon is striving to be Wal-Mart.
Now the idea to build more sweatshop warehouses so you can have diapers and toilet paper without going five hundred yards to the supermarket.
From the wires:
Same-day shipping has been the bane of Amazon’s existence and the single leverage brick-and-mortar retailers held over its online challenger. But Amazon may start offering same-day delivery as soon as next year, according to various reports, which could further alter the retail landscape.
Amazon has not confirmed the rumors but retail insiders believe it’s an inevitable move for the online retail giant. The Seattle-based company has been planning to add new distribution centers across the U.S. in states such as New Jersey, Texas, California, Virginia and Indiana and these new warehouses will be able to ship online purchases to consumers living in that state within hours. Same-day shipping by Amazon would be another blow to brick-and-mortar retail stores already battling the phenomenon of “showrooming,” an industry term for when customers examine products in person but buy the same goods online, often at a lower cost.
In 1999, TIME magazine made Bezos man of the year. In 1965 it did the same for William Westmoreland.