[Cyberdog]

> Jeff Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance.

Poorer than what? Than being unemployed? I don't see how you can make someone poorer by employing them unless you forcefully ripped them out of a higher-paying job somehow.

[toss1]

>> don't see how you can make someone poorer by employing them unless you forcefully ripped them out of a higher-paying job somehow.

How?

Destroy the companies that previously provided higher paying jobs and are one of the few remaining opportunities that are not the unemployment queue.

WalMart was astonishingly successful at this. Their strategy was to move into small towns, on the outskirts where land was cheap, and setup a superstore that competed with basically every small business in town. Within years, 'Main Street' was a row of empty storefronts. It becomes one of the only places in town to work. The jobs at WalMart consistently pay so little that WalMart holds seminars for it's employees on how to get government assistance to survive. You and I are literally subsidizing WalMart's profits by enabling them to pay a sub-living wage to so many people.

WalMart so consistently made poorer everyone in the targeted communities that organized opposition sprang up. I watched it happen when I lived in Vermont, and it delayed WalMart's entry into the state for many years; a quick look still shows only 7 stores in the state, and there's still not a single store in the southeast.

WalMart was easier to identify because it had such measurable local effects, and it still took decades for people to catch up to their strategy and start to oppose it. Amazon's effects are much more diffuse and will take longer to measure.

So, yes, scaled-up organizations can literally rip out the higher paying jobs from under people and leave them no options. They can literally make people poorer by employing them.