[newhaus1994]

> When you say “you can’t blame Amazon, they’re just paying market wages” what you’re saying is “profit is the only thing that could possibly matter.”

You put your finger on the thing that bothers me most about the free-market critique of labor conditions. They all hand-wave away the responsibility that corporations have as entities run by (presumably) empathetic humans. Amazon does not have to automate away jobs instead of giving workers fairer conditions and wages. In fact, they may find that the boost in productivity that comes from happier, more rested, more focused workers more than makes up for the marginal decrease that comes from less pressure in the workplace.

The point is that we don't have to accept that corporations are, and should be, perfectly "rational" economic actors. They don't have to pursue profits at every conceivable avenue unless the market tells them otherwise.

[fuzz4lyfe]

>Amazon does not have to automate away jobs instead of giving workers fairer conditions and wages.

I'm Amazons competitor, I automate away the jobs and pay the lowest wages possible. Now my goods are cheaper than Amazons and you buy from me instead.

[akudha]

True, but I bet there would be at least a small percentage of people who would still not buy from you because you don't treat your workers well. Most people would still shop with you, as their own wages are crap and they are looking for cheapest places to shop. But if they were paid well, they will at least consider shopping with ethically sound companies.

It is like a circle - lower wages lead to lower purchasing power, so companies pay their workers low to lower prices to sell to low earning customers, and so on...

[cavisne]

Amazon is the second most trusted institution in the USA, behind the military.

It's fairly obvious how the above "draconian" conditions benefit customers. Employees that take long breaks or pick items slowly leads to delayed deliveries, having to employee more staff per delivery, having to raise prices or reduce range to cover this cost.

This is really the flip side of "customer obsessed", when you are focused on customers you don't particularly care about any individual employee (all the way up the chain).

For a counterexample, google and facebook mostly treat their employees well (with the exception of some contractors). However customers don't trust them as much, because they know they are profit/employee focused.

[mikeash]

Why don’t you do that now? Amazon takes in billions in profit, meaning that their prices are substantially higher than they could be. Why aren’t you (or some other competitor) taking advantage of this?

It’s funny how this sort of argument never comes up in the context of taking profits.

[blackoil]

Amazon profit from non AWS biz is in small billions and less, while it may be large in absolute, it is not high as percentage of revenue or by employee. Only way to beat Amazon in profit is have ridiculously high efficiency which is very difficult, or have a different business model which is normally a niche and will not be amazon scale.

[harryh]

Competitors do take advantage of this! There is vicious price competition for most of the kinds of goods that amazon ships from its warehouses. This competition has pushed profit margins into the single digits (probably low single digits). There's really not any room for prices to fall further with given technology.

Retail is BRUTALLY competitive.

[mikeash]

And yet some retailers make tons of profit. If it were so easy to swoop in and defeat the top dog with lower prices, how is Amazon still dominating?

[harryh]

As I said before: "This competition has pushed profit margins into the single digits"

This is not tons of profit. Your assertion is incorrect.

[mikeash]

It’s more than enough to pay their warehouse workers substantially better without making any changes to their prices.