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by threatofrain 2212 days ago
In the context of national lockdown, Amazon is basically of national security importance right now as Amazon not working right would’ve killed any lockdown strategy. America doesn’t have enough slack for Amazon to bow out in any way.

This should’ve been very clear when we talk about any shutdown — things were never going to work if we all insisted on the same level of sacrifice. Amazon workers must keep working, just as food and transportation workers had to keep going at any cost, and next will be the teachers inside closed rooms with 30 or 40 kids.
2 comments
CoffeeDregs 2212 days ago
This is an excellent point and one I had not considered.

I'm generally anti-intervention but do strongly support the notion of driving diversity-of-business within markets. A common measure of market concentration is a sum of squares of market-share percentages (see: https://www.justice.gov/atr/herfindahl-hirschman-index). I'm not sure exactly what to do about this right now but I would suspect Amazon is a huge percentage of the distribution-to-the-home market so should be looked at closely. Their position could be good if they provide excellent Covid policies/procedures (and would be much worse to have a large diversity of participants with poor Covid P&Ps), but could be quite bad if people got scared of Amazon and effectively shutdown-by-virtue-of-disuse a large percentage of the distribution infrastructure in the US...

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Avicebron 2212 days ago
Isn't it a little questionable that we are discussing one singular company as being a requirement for a country to remain functional? is this peak capitalism, a monopoly has a country by it's throat and doesn't pay taxes in said country?
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krapp 2212 days ago
>is this peak capitalism, a monopoly has a country by it's throat and doesn't pay taxes in said country?

It's not actually true. I'm not aware of any lockdown or shelter in place orders which don't allow people to buy food or necessities, and plenty of essential businesses remain open, and also deliver.

Also, the vast majority of items being shipped by Amazon remain non-essential goods. Amazon may well be helping people, but their necessity in keeping the country running is overstated.

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