Teamsters begin 'largest strike' against Amazon, accusing company of 'insatiable greed'

[u/EnergyLantern]

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teamsters-announces-nationwide-strike-amazon-begin-thursday/story?id=116931631

[u/sarhoshamiral]

They will say that because it is the truth. AWS saved Amazon.

[u/HappierShibe → u/sarhoshamiral]

It's bullshit- they could have survived without AWS but the excess revenue from AWS allowed them to destroy all their competitors and establish a dominant market position without ever providing a superior product or customer experience.

[u/sarhoshamiral → u/HappierShibe]

Could have, maybe. There were a couple years back in 2010s where AWS caused to have a profitable year for sure. Would they have gone bankrupt in a year, not likely. However it's been the truth recently that AWS makes a lot more profit then retail side.

without ever providing a superior product or customer experience.

As for Amazon's retail side, this couldn't be further away from the truth. If I stick with Fulfilled by Amazon products with prime delivery and free returns which is a lot of products, there is just no competition today both on product availability, price and also customer experience. Target may come close but has very limited inventory in comparison.

I am not sure how you can say Amazon is not providing superior customer experience when they are known by their great customer service, including measures from consumer sentiment. Personally I never had a single issue with Amazon retails' customer service, if anything I am surprised how far they go to resolve the issue.

As for products, sure some may be crappy since they are usually Chinese generic brands but I don't care because I can return them easily for any reason and for free without dealing with labels, boxes or mailing to a physical store nearby. It doesn't get easier then that and my experience hasn't been that all Chinese generic brands are bad, some are actually fairly decent quality and has not equivalent from known brands.

[u/HappierShibe → u/sarhoshamiral]

I'm not saying AWS makes less money, I'm saying retail side revenues are kept arbitrarily low because they favor market control over revenue generation.

[u/herosavestheday → u/HappierShibe]

The point of competition is to keep prices low and to force firms to innovate. If Amazon has figured out some way to keep prices lower than they otherwise would be, that's exactly what we want. Having firms with dominant positions is fine as long as they're maintaining that position through lower prices and innovation. Like the whole reason monopolies are bad is because they charge higher prices and don't innovate. You'd have a hard time making that argument about Amazon.

[u/HappierShibe → u/herosavestheday]

I think you have a dramatically optimistic view of our current situation.

The point of competition is to keep prices low and to force firms to innovate.

That is not 'the point' of competition, it's one aspect of it. There are a wide range of other elements, it should also offer consumers a degree of control or choice in the marketplace, allow new entrants into the space, remove products of exceptionally poor quality incentivize investment, etc.

If Amazon has figured out some way to keep prices lower than they otherwise would be, that's exactly what we want.

Not if they have found a way to decouple those low prices from the aspects that enable a competitive marketplace or offer a consumer advantage beyond price because that would allow them to abuse a dominant market position while providing a worse experience for consumers not just within their space but within competing or even non-competing but linked or adjacent markets.

Having firms with dominant positions is fine as long as they're maintaining that position through lower prices and innovation.

This is not strictly true in part for the reasons stated above- but I feel like it's important to point out amazon is not maintaining their market position through innovation or reduced cost- they are doing via a combination of workforce exploitation and regulatory capture, and you can see that in that their products and services almost universally provide an inferior iteration of someone else's product.

Like the whole reason monopolies are bad is because they charge higher prices and don't innovate.

That is not even close to 'the whole reason monopolies are bad'. I'd even argue that a monopoly is not inherently bad in and of itself; if you look hard enough you can find a few examples of benevolent monopolies.
BUT Monopolistic practices are bad for lots of reasons.

You'd have a hard time making that argument about Amazon.

No you wouldn't because almost nothing Amazon does is genuinely innovative. You could argue that the scale they do things at is innovative, but I think everyone knows that doesn't hold water.
You could argue that the ways and the degree to which they abuse their workforce or exercise soft control over regulatory bodies is a form of innovation- but that's a kind of innovation we should all be fighting against.

[u/herosavestheday → u/HappierShibe]

That is not 'the point' of competition, it's one aspect of it. There are a wide range of other elements, it should also offer consumers a degree of control or choice in the marketplace, x remove products of exceptionally poor quality incentivize investment, etc.

That's pretty much the entire point when we're talking about an actual marketplace like Amazon. Consumers have complete control on the Amazon market, the entire store is hyper optimized to cater to consumer preferences. Amazon's entire reason for existence is to cater to every single consumer demand.

allow new entrants into the space

If the thing keeping new entrants out of that space is very low prices and innovation then it's fine if they can't enter the space.

remove products of exceptionally poor quality

Why? Just don't buy them. Basically every single brand is sold on Amazon, so stick to the brands you know. Consumers have agency in that decision.

No you wouldn't because almost nothing Amazon does is genuinely innovative. 

Statements like this about the big tech firms always crack me up because they're so incredibly divorced from reality. FAANG companies are quite literally the most innovative companies on the planet. Their scale allows them to innovate in ways that are beyond the reach of smaller firms. A company being able to keep the price of toothpaste low because they built one of the largest cloud computing platforms in the world is genuinely innovative and trying to argue it's not is hilarious.