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by samg 4621 days ago
Please read the post with a heavy dose of sarcasm mixed with admiration :) I'd very much like to see formidable challengers arise.

And I actually wrote this post a week before Bezos bought the WaPo, although I think it only underscores the point.
1 comments
chatman 4621 days ago
Before you write anything again on Bozo or Amazon, please read http://stallman.org/amazon. If you have already read it, fine.
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hef19898 4621 days ago
I just read through that link. What a nice list of naive points. Well, maybe I miss some context on the UK angle, i can make some comparisons with the german one.

The sweatshop warehouses, yeah. And you really think when you order a bokk by your local book store the people in the warehouse sending are treated any better? In this part of logistics, and I'm not at all proud of that, one of the easiest ways to cut costs (and everyone operating a warehouse will do that since logistics is regarded by most people as costs) is HR. The part of being ordered around by a computer, welcome to logistics in the 21st century. And that part is true for truck drivers, too. How are books delivered to your local book store again? If you think the boys and girls delivereing parcels for UPS and the like are treated any better, forget it. Most of them aren't even employed by these companies anymore, they are mere sub-contractors.

And at least were I live, the credit of killing local, independant book stores goes to big bookstore chains and not Amazon. Quite ironic that these chains are now trying to get a share of the eBook market using the same DRM techniques everybody is blaming Amazon for.

And this tax evading scheme. Hell I worked for big company that operated at the same site for more tha a decade before they payed ANY taxes there. The COO was quite sad they finally had to. Most european big corps are doing the very same thing with branches in, say, Delaware.

All that is not to say I consider all this to be good or even OK. It's just the way it is. Classical case of hate the game, not the player. But I don't think Benzos is troubled a lot by all this.

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