[olfactory]

That's misleading though, because he's had great risk of ruin and lots of smart people have tried (Jet, Azure, etc.) to compete with him but have fallen short.

Compare Amazon to something done by government like the highways. When I order something on Amazon it nearly always arrives exactly on time as expected. Highways are always in a state of disrepair and congestion, and get worse every day.

This is not an example of why Bezos wealth should be used to build highways. Every penny of his wealth was earned by offering services in a competitive market better than the alternatives. With government infrastructure there typically are no alternatives and so nobody cares or expects much.

Bezos is not an enemy of the little guy, he's someone who has made it so much cheaper to build a startup. Remeber the days when the first $200K of fundraising would go straight to Dell for a bunch of bare metal hardware? Contrast that to AWS. He's done the same in many areas of the economy.

[ryanmercer]

>That's misleading though

Not really. It's not an actionable metric but it doesn't change the fact he's filthy rich and I wish I could trade net worth with him.

>Bezos is not an enemy of the little guy

Indeed, he's the opposite. I clear international freight through customs for a living... it amazes me how many people/companies import direct to Amazon for FBA selling.

Yeah, Amazon certainly hits you hard with fees if you go FBA and even just using Amazon as a payment method is more expensive than a traditional credit card merchant account (I know it's Chris Bair's most expensive way to be paid by customers for Keto Chow) but Amazon offers all sorts of exposure for enterprising individuals and companies.

As lousy as compensation to employees may or may not be, there is no shortage of people willing to take the rather well-paying jobs (Amazon starts at like 13$ an hour in Indy with minimum wage being 7.25).

[gnarcoregrizz]

Amazon wouldn't even EXIST without those highways which are "in a constant state of disrepair and congestion." It's fair to say that their delivery vehicles are making it worse. Maybe some of his wealth should be used to improve or expand them?

As far as amazon being that great, a lot of the time their stuff is in fact late, and people on their marketplace sell counterfeit items. They also treat a lot of their workers like garbage.

I agree with you on your other points, he's effectively beaten the competition and Amazon is great in many ways, partly because they are so, so convenient, but I wouldn't paint him as some saint of good capitalism