[learnstats2]

The fact that Bezos can get incredibly richer this year, while other people struggle harder is symptomatic of a system that allows inequality - it's not that Bezos getting richer in itself causes inequality.

Bezos's wealth is already effectively unbounded. He has the same wealth as ~50% of the population of United States altogether. That won't immediately change if you uplift poor people's income (since income is not wealth). Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer?

[WalterBright]

> Why is it important to consider his right to get even richer?

Because it has a correlation with making a lot of other peoples' lives better. For example, I needed to do some repairs two days ago, and ordered the parts necessary from Amazon, and received the parts yesterday. I didn't have to spend 2 hours driving somewhere to get those parts. That extra 2 hours is a benefit to my life. Amazon, in aggregate, has saved me a great deal of time. Another benefit Amazon provides is selection - I can find much more exactly what I want, rather than accepting whatever the store has.

[learnstats2]

This example is a specific benefit, but not one that Amazon has provided.

It's a benefit that online shopping has provided, which Amazon has monopolized, partly via suppressing competition and exploiting labour (which society has to pay for in other ways).

[WalterBright]

Amazon utterly revolutionized online shopping, a benefit Amazon provided. There's simply no way it could have otherwise grown to the biggest company in the world from a garage in Bellevue.

25 years later it's easy to assume that online shopping was always like it is today. No way. Nobody even conceived of what it has become. I remember, for example, when ordering by mail meant "allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery". I'm still astonished by next day delivery - which Amazon created and made ordinary.

[darkerside]

I agree. They revolutionized it in a way nobody else was prepared to do. I think there should be regulations to make sure labor is treated fairly, rather than any kind of specific measure to reduce inequality, which seems like a vanity metric to me.

[WalterBright]

Yes, nobody is arguing for unfair labor practices.

For another example, Sears used to be the king of mail order. Famously, you could even mail order a house! It was delivered on a pallet and you got to put it together. I used to buy lots from the Sears mail order catalog. It was fun just thumbing through it.

Amazon wiped it off the map, from a garage.

[learnstats2]

> partly via suppressing competition and exploiting labour