the unstoppable local-biz-swallowing pseudo-monopoly that is AMAZON

xp i don't want them here bc my city doesn't need it. other cities do. and again, you're acting as if the alternative to corporations is some utopia and not detroit

Is anyone trying to "get rid of" Amazon? I just want them not to be above regulation, and for cities not to crawl to Amazon to propose deals that are good for developers and business tycoons but not urban planners and the majority of the current residents who'll be displaced when rent triples.

also, $100k near an Amazon HQ doesn't go nearly as far as you'd think, even if it's pretty damn good

the last time I did a comparison to see what my (midwestern mid-sized city, tech job) salary would have to be for me to have the same spending capability in say, Seattle or SF, it came out to a lot more than $100k, when I definitely don't make that

they just can't justify relocating to a place that size because they're leeching off of the rep/resources of a larger metropolis and would have to build up their own infrastructure if they located somewhere smaller

at some point we should probably have a thread on the unstoppable mid-sized datacenter swallowing monster that is Amazon Web Services

the current tech company grift is, imo, even worse in that realm because they pull the rent-seeking behavior off, and the number of people actually employed full time on-site is in the double digits once everything's built. it's like a warehouse with zero workers, just machine and building maintenance

Is anyone trying to "get rid of" Amazon?

Nationalize, ideally.

oh hell no

I think the ideal thing would be Amazon choosing several cities, giving an influx of workers/construction/capital to multiple areas that could use that, and not setting up the problem where their workforce is dictating housing costs but idk that would be a good thing for someone to study

also, pay warehouse workers more and let them unionize

like the problem isn't necessarily Amazon eating everything, it's that they're doing so by wrecking the low end of the pay scale in warehouses AND the upper middle class end of the pay scale by concentrating those jobs

"let them unionize" - sure, let's ask them nicely to support workers' right to organize, they'll love that

the tech giants cannot/will not be reformed

Is anyone trying to "get rid of" Amazon?

― Conic section rebellion 44 (in orbit)

seattle

I think the ideal thing would be Amazon choosing several cities, giving an influx of workers/construction/capital to multiple areas that could use that, and not setting up the problem where their workforce is dictating housing costs but idk that would be a good thing for someone to study

also, pay warehouse workers more and let them unionize

― mh

yes, this will work wonderfully when amazon replaces them all with robots in ten years

well then you make them pay to retain the workforce in robot repair

JUST IN: Amazon is partnering with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest bank, to explore getting into the health insurance business https://t.co/pCM00ICALo pic.twitter.com/ZA04vC1kui

— CNN (@CNN) January 30, 2018

okay time to break up amazon pls

Customers who've undergone this medical procedure also underwent:

can't wait to have a conversation with alexa about my cancer treatment

It's a real pisser because they just recommend u different versions of the operation you just had ffs

not completely odd, it'll be weird if they decide to somehow market it at large

I had John Deere Healthcare as my insurance provider for a few years because they started a company for insuring their employees and eventually offered the plan to other businesses in the area.

also, I am a tractor

best thing about america imo is that no matter how utterly alien parts of it seem to me, they can and do still regularly get weirder

john deere health insurance ffs

Your Amazon.com order of

"A Kidney"

has shipped!

Click here to track your package

then you have to file a complaint cuz the delivery guy kicked it all the way up your driveway and left it bleeding on the porch and the customer service drone gives you an extra month on your prime subscription as compensation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/12/22/someone-stole-a-childs-parcel-off-his-porch-it-contained-his-kidney-transplant-medication/

www.washingtonpost.com

#irony

Amazon knows a lot about cost effective healthcare because they station ambulances outside their warehouses to treat employees with heatstroke because it's cheaper than proper air conditioning. https://t.co/Otqf5SrIJf

— Jame singular (@FunnyLikeAClown) January 30, 2018

Uh, Mr. Bezos could have just let them die from heat stroke. You're welcome, Amazon employees.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114045132
pretty good history on the basic start of american healthcare insurance

basically organizations strongly pushing medical care as a for-profit service (chamber of commerce, american medical association) opposed a national plan, and worker organizations forced it as a condition of employment, so most insurance plans started as a single employer or group of employers pooling funds and partnering with specific hospitals. so a company that's strongly unionized and large enough would definitely come up with its own plan
(the aforementioned farming machine company is organized under the United Auto Workers iirc)

the idea an intensely un-unionized company like Amazon would decide to set up their own insurer, in 2018, is pretty much an indicator the insurance system is totally fucked as far as effectiveness goes

What @amazon does for—and does to—poor cities https://t.co/uQUC1IYV3B pic.twitter.com/UvqrUcGZOe

— Andy Kroll (@AndyKroll) February 1, 2018

seems like a cool place to work

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20180201/news02/180209990/call-an-amazon-truce-top-economists-tell-cities-vying-for-hq2

lmao I was sure this latest bump would be for this

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16958918/amazon-patents-trackable-wristband-warehouse-employees

...or this...

https://gizmodo.com/whole-foods-is-datafying-its-employees-to-death-1822636920

I'm sure openly-weeping Amazon employees are nothing new, it's just that those employees never been customer-facing before.

from Jan 2016: keep yer web services like a secret

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazon-web-services-data-center/423147/

Wow that got pretty florid by the end :)

And maybe my desire to submerge myself in that sediment, to weave The Cloud into the timelines of railroad robber-barons and military R&D, emerges from the same anxiety that makes me go try to find these buildings in the first place: that maybe we have mistaken The Cloud's fiction of infinite storage capacity for history itself. It is a misunderstanding that hinges on a weird, sad, very human hope that history might actually end, or at least reach some kind of perfect equipoise in which nothing terrible could ever happen again. As though if we could only collate and collect and process and store enough data points, the world’s infinite vaporware of real-time data dashboards would align into some kind of ultimate sand mandala of total world knowledge, a proprietary data nirvana without terror or heartbreak or bankruptcy or death, heretofore only gestured towards in terrifying wall-to-wall Accenture and IBM advertisements at airports.

But databases alone are not archives any more than data centers are libraries, and the rhetorical promise of The Cloud is as fragile as the strands of fiber-optic cable upon which its physical infrastructure rests. The Internet is a beautiful, terrible, fraught project of human civilization. While I make light of language like “pilgrim” to describe this cross-country journey, at the end of the day it has been an affirmation of a kind of faith: faith in the humanity of that beautiful, terrible, fraught project, and in the possibility of being able to see ourselves in all that beautiful, terrible, fraught truth.

"florid" is a nice way to put it

BTF projects for BTF truths man

ateotd count: 1

CAPITALISM: NOT EVEN ONCE

From a decades-long strategy of exploiting state sales tax loopholes to its ongoing “HQ2” sweepstakes, Amazon’s leaders have rarely turned down a chance to use the tax system as the source of their competitive advantage.

The online retail giant has built its business model on tax avoidance, and its latest financial filing makes it clear that Amazon continues to be insulated from the nation’s tax system. In 2017, Amazon reported $5.6 billion of U.S. profits and didn’t pay a dime of federal income taxes on it. The company’s financial statement suggests that various tax credits and tax breaks for executive stock options are responsible for zeroing out the company’s tax this year.

The company’s zero percent rate in 2017 reflects a longer term trend. During the previous five years, Amazon reported U.S. profits of $8.2 billion and paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 11.4 percent. This means the company was able to shelter more than two-thirds of its profits from tax during that five year period.

Incredibly, Amazon’s corporate tax goose egg for 2017 doesn’t include the effect of a second big tax disclosure: the $789 million one-time tax break the company projects it will receive due to the new tax law. While the Trump Administration’s corporate tax cuts generally took effect on January 1st, the law includes a grandfather clause for companies that (like Amazon) have managed to defer or postpone tax liability from prior years.

Instead of paying these deferred taxes at the previous 35 percent rate, Amazon now gets an extra reward for postponing the taxation of this income: a 40 percent discount from 35 to 21 percent. This is the source of Amazon’s $789 million windfall.

This is quite interesting:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/02/money-laundering-via-author-impersonation-on-amazon/

But that didn’t stop someone from publishing a “novel” under his name. That word is in quotations because the publication appears to be little more than computer-generated text, almost like the gibberish one might find in a spam email.

Ian Duncan Smith is available!

I'm expecting a flurry of drug dealers closing their sandwich shops, car-washes etc and suddenly taking the world of e-book publishing by storm.

I can't remember which thread this piece was posted on, but it's quite good:

https://medium.com/s/story/the-singular-pursuit-of-comrade-bezos-3e280baa045c

Well, humanity. We had a good run. pic.twitter.com/BrrlCvaf2D

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) March 7, 2018

What in the absolute hell

The smartest thing Amazon did was build these things without arms and legs. Good luck with the uprising, stumpy.

lol

just a li'l device that sits in your house, listens to everything you say at the behest of the world's richest man, and giggles to itself from time to time, nbd

picturing an Echo jammed in the toilet, burbling laughter endlessly, in an abandoned neighborhood

wot if etc etc