This is a much needed pushback, but of course there are plenty of "yes, but..."s available. The trade-off of democratizing business is that since there is very little barrier to entry, the share of the pie available for an individual business owner is much, much lower today than it was 20 years ago.
My perspective here is unique, for what it's worth: I was selling stuff online 20+ years ago, poorly but better than most. The easier it has gotten, the worse the opportunity to sell has become and the tougher it has become to make a profit. If you had published a book even 10 years ago, you might be much, much better off due to far less competition in the space... but on the other OTHER hand, maybe you would never have published at all.
On the third or fourth hand, the customer experience with Amazon is nothing short of incredible, and anyone who says they don't think so doesn't remember how things used to be.
Spot-on about their logistics business being paramount. I might include cloud computing here as well, and point out that they're slowly becoming an advertising business, further shifting away as a mere retailer.
Yeah, the nostalgia for times past ignores the reality of times past. My dad will always share the car he bought back in the day for like $2800 off the lot. But inflation adjusted it was $15,000 today. And it didn't have a radio, or AC, and it had vinyl seats, and the windows were manual, and it was a 2 door, and it didn't last 60K miles. Now for $15K I can buy a car that will last for 150K miles with Android auto and AC.
Amazon is a little evil but not because it's a monopoly. It's evil because, unlike those small stores of yesterday that never had exactly what us shoppers wanted, it's not a physical place: we don't GO there. In some ways Amazon is an abstraction. It's like pulling out a credit card rather than handing over physical cash or chatting with "friends" on Facebook rather than having people over for dinner. In many ways the world is getting more and more convenient, better and better in objective terms, and all the while the brick-and-mortar interactions that make us human are silently slipping away.
That is a wonderful perspective. That is something we are missing. I never have to leave my house to get anything. But I lose all that human interaction even if it's with strangers I may never see again. The chance of instantiating a positive butterfly effect with a simple smile is gone.
I am glad that Amazon is here. But my personal, anecdotal, and completely unscientific “feeling” is that storm clouds are on the horizon.
I use Amazon only for things I cannot buy in stores, weird odds and ends, and only a few times a year. That’s it. Beyond that, Amazon offers no benefit. It does not have lower prices and (citing The Paradox of Choice here) I find the number of options to be overwhelming to the point that shopping there is a miserable experience.
On Amazon, weeding through the knockoffs, fake reviews, and sheer number of selections is a chore, not a joy. There needs to be a better means of countering fake reviews, bad products, and misleading prices like phony discounts.
I cannot imagine I am the only one who feels that the website has become noticeably worse in the past few years.
I think an issue is that when you aren't in it too often it would be overwhelming. Kind of like going to Costco once a year. But once you get used to the shit, just like social media, you find you can avoid the issues. I've only rarely been dissatisfied with a product and then I can return it no issues.
We use it a lot but we also end up getting a lot of stuff you can't find in a store or off line. I just bought tractor parts from a small store in Missouri who had a marketplace on Amazon because my local parts store couldn't get it for 6 weeks. I still bought from a physical small business.
I live in a small town in the Yorkshire Dales, thirty or forty miles from any substantial tools dealers.
On Friday afternoon I suddenly required a longer than standard Allen key for a special job.
Less than half a dozen mouse clicks, I had it in my hand by noon on Saturday, and as I have a Prime account, free delivery.
It cost far less than the fuel cost to travel to the nearest dealership that might have stocked one, this is a single example of an event that happens two or three times per week, sometimes I've ordered Saturday evening and the item has been delivered before Sunday lunch time.
I can't understand your difficulties with the site, I can invariably find what I'm looking for in two or three minutes at the outside, and generally have a good choice of items.
Same thing for me. I'm 20 miles from anything and 40 miles from most things. The other day I drove in to get a fuse for my car and... no one had it. I drove home, ordered it on Amazon and got it in 2 days (longer than normal but a hard part to find) Oh, it was sold by a small business in a different state.
I order a ton on Amazon, but I also have the feeling the quality of the website has degraded over time, and I’m “pushed” towards higher priced products.
Ten years ago I would often filter from lowest to highest price. Nowadays, because Amazon is making so much money on advertising, they have pretty much hidden that filter, and it’s also almost entirely useless -- most vendors give an unrealistic price range for their products such that the lowest priced items are not what I’m looking for. I basically end up buying sponsored products.
I often go back in my shopping history and find that a product I’m buying again has increased in price by much more than the headline CPI (which is even worse than it sounds given the price of goods was mostly flat throughout the 2010’s). IIRC Amazon is preventing sellers from selling at a lower price on other platforms.
Amazon is an amazingly business and I am happy someone is writing something positive about them. The hand ringing in the press over the size of Amazon is overblown. Their size is a benefit to every consumer...which is 100% of the population.
Same with the old panic about Walmart. I remember my mom darning socks because they were expensive. When Walmart came in, she could just replace them because they were cheap enough.
There's a lot of issue in Chicago too. And yet they then complain about 'food deserts' and the high cost of living. Want to know what life without Walmart looks like? It's expensive! My standard of living quantifiabily increased when we got a nearby Walmart growing up. We didn't have much money back then.
"Those who think Amazon is conducting anti-competitive practices, need to recognize that Amazon hosts the world’s largest consortium of small business owners in their marketplace. This means that the Amazon Basic USB cable sets alongside offerings from around the world which may even be cheaper or higher quality."
do you know what amazon does when they notice that a product is selling well? they copy it and undersell the small businesses until they go bankrupt.
also, on a more philosophical note, does the logistics miracle of amazon that led to one day and two day shipping really help our society that is already addicted to instant gratification?
The underselling has been accused and yet my friend who runs the electronics business just pivots, because he does a lot of drop shipments anyway, and waits for the price to balance again and goes back. What ends up happening is that Amazon ends up doing a bunch of loss leaders that don't actually result in profit for them. Agile small business just pivot.
I can't get my independent bookstore to carry my book fairly. Their offer would have cost me money on each sale. Barnes and Noble actually did me a fair one. Amazon is the one where all my profit comes in from. But if you don't like Amazon you can get the book on a lot of other sources as well.
The instant gratification is certainly an issue to address. However, getting it quickly means I'm not driving all over down burning CO2 so I can get a part to fix my car. I can be patient, wait two days, and then fix it. It's a bit of a Catch-22.
Well it's not very difficult to emphasize the convenience ceeated by this giant. Of course it's a massive accomplishment. The perspective is not nearly wide enough though to see where it all leads. Darning socks made of local wool is better for our grandchildren. I am unable to calculate the difference between that and replacing them with the help of modern production methods and supply chains but it must be chilling. Add to that a mountain of crap with one day delivery nobody really needs and a long shadow slides over the lighthearted version of the improved marketplace. We will see where it leads..... I don't have answers but by God i hope it's not Amazon....
I guess I'd ask why darning socks made of local wool would be better for our grandchildren? I'm not a big fan of mega businesses as with all things, power corrupts, but I can say that when my mother could stop darning socks, she certainly didn't mind being able to do something more productive.
Not your usual dictionary...sort of a non linear deep dive, just start reading, follow your nose and see where it leads you. David wrote with humour, erudition and a fresh perspective on many basic thought patterns, a big section on fallacies....
Standard size shipping containers that worked for trains, ships, trucks, etc.are an example of a historical service system innovation that changed the world. Shipping containers connect Amazon today, with the history of places in the world like Singapore - which loads and unloads tremendous numbers of shipping containers every day.
Yeah, we did a case study on that for systems engineering looking at the modular design capabilities. Even 80 years ago everything was crates, hand loaded, and took forever. The containers are incredible. I'll have to grab this book!
This is a much needed pushback, but of course there are plenty of "yes, but..."s available. The trade-off of democratizing business is that since there is very little barrier to entry, the share of the pie available for an individual business owner is much, much lower today than it was 20 years ago.
My perspective here is unique, for what it's worth: I was selling stuff online 20+ years ago, poorly but better than most. The easier it has gotten, the worse the opportunity to sell has become and the tougher it has become to make a profit. If you had published a book even 10 years ago, you might be much, much better off due to far less competition in the space... but on the other OTHER hand, maybe you would never have published at all.
On the third or fourth hand, the customer experience with Amazon is nothing short of incredible, and anyone who says they don't think so doesn't remember how things used to be.
Spot-on about their logistics business being paramount. I might include cloud computing here as well, and point out that they're slowly becoming an advertising business, further shifting away as a mere retailer.
Yeah, the nostalgia for times past ignores the reality of times past. My dad will always share the car he bought back in the day for like $2800 off the lot. But inflation adjusted it was $15,000 today. And it didn't have a radio, or AC, and it had vinyl seats, and the windows were manual, and it was a 2 door, and it didn't last 60K miles. Now for $15K I can buy a car that will last for 150K miles with Android auto and AC.
Don't get me started on computers!
No crap there! My cellphone is now more powerful that the custom computer I built my freshman year in college.... year 2000.
Dude, I think your cell phone might be more powerful than Deep Blue was in '97.
Amazon is a little evil but not because it's a monopoly. It's evil because, unlike those small stores of yesterday that never had exactly what us shoppers wanted, it's not a physical place: we don't GO there. In some ways Amazon is an abstraction. It's like pulling out a credit card rather than handing over physical cash or chatting with "friends" on Facebook rather than having people over for dinner. In many ways the world is getting more and more convenient, better and better in objective terms, and all the while the brick-and-mortar interactions that make us human are silently slipping away.
That is a wonderful perspective. That is something we are missing. I never have to leave my house to get anything. But I lose all that human interaction even if it's with strangers I may never see again. The chance of instantiating a positive butterfly effect with a simple smile is gone.
I am glad that Amazon is here. But my personal, anecdotal, and completely unscientific “feeling” is that storm clouds are on the horizon.
I use Amazon only for things I cannot buy in stores, weird odds and ends, and only a few times a year. That’s it. Beyond that, Amazon offers no benefit. It does not have lower prices and (citing The Paradox of Choice here) I find the number of options to be overwhelming to the point that shopping there is a miserable experience.
On Amazon, weeding through the knockoffs, fake reviews, and sheer number of selections is a chore, not a joy. There needs to be a better means of countering fake reviews, bad products, and misleading prices like phony discounts.
I cannot imagine I am the only one who feels that the website has become noticeably worse in the past few years.
I think an issue is that when you aren't in it too often it would be overwhelming. Kind of like going to Costco once a year. But once you get used to the shit, just like social media, you find you can avoid the issues. I've only rarely been dissatisfied with a product and then I can return it no issues.
We use it a lot but we also end up getting a lot of stuff you can't find in a store or off line. I just bought tractor parts from a small store in Missouri who had a marketplace on Amazon because my local parts store couldn't get it for 6 weeks. I still bought from a physical small business.
I live in a small town in the Yorkshire Dales, thirty or forty miles from any substantial tools dealers.
On Friday afternoon I suddenly required a longer than standard Allen key for a special job.
Less than half a dozen mouse clicks, I had it in my hand by noon on Saturday, and as I have a Prime account, free delivery.
It cost far less than the fuel cost to travel to the nearest dealership that might have stocked one, this is a single example of an event that happens two or three times per week, sometimes I've ordered Saturday evening and the item has been delivered before Sunday lunch time.
I can't understand your difficulties with the site, I can invariably find what I'm looking for in two or three minutes at the outside, and generally have a good choice of items.
I love Amazon!
Same thing for me. I'm 20 miles from anything and 40 miles from most things. The other day I drove in to get a fuse for my car and... no one had it. I drove home, ordered it on Amazon and got it in 2 days (longer than normal but a hard part to find) Oh, it was sold by a small business in a different state.
I order a ton on Amazon, but I also have the feeling the quality of the website has degraded over time, and I’m “pushed” towards higher priced products.
Ten years ago I would often filter from lowest to highest price. Nowadays, because Amazon is making so much money on advertising, they have pretty much hidden that filter, and it’s also almost entirely useless -- most vendors give an unrealistic price range for their products such that the lowest priced items are not what I’m looking for. I basically end up buying sponsored products.
I often go back in my shopping history and find that a product I’m buying again has increased in price by much more than the headline CPI (which is even worse than it sounds given the price of goods was mostly flat throughout the 2010’s). IIRC Amazon is preventing sellers from selling at a lower price on other platforms.
Amazon is an amazingly business and I am happy someone is writing something positive about them. The hand ringing in the press over the size of Amazon is overblown. Their size is a benefit to every consumer...which is 100% of the population.
Same with the old panic about Walmart. I remember my mom darning socks because they were expensive. When Walmart came in, she could just replace them because they were cheap enough.
There is still no Walmart store in New York City due to local opposition.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/business/a-respite-in-efforts-by-wal-mart-in-new-york.html
There's a lot of issue in Chicago too. And yet they then complain about 'food deserts' and the high cost of living. Want to know what life without Walmart looks like? It's expensive! My standard of living quantifiabily increased when we got a nearby Walmart growing up. We didn't have much money back then.
"Those who think Amazon is conducting anti-competitive practices, need to recognize that Amazon hosts the world’s largest consortium of small business owners in their marketplace. This means that the Amazon Basic USB cable sets alongside offerings from around the world which may even be cheaper or higher quality."
do you know what amazon does when they notice that a product is selling well? they copy it and undersell the small businesses until they go bankrupt.
also, on a more philosophical note, does the logistics miracle of amazon that led to one day and two day shipping really help our society that is already addicted to instant gratification?
disclaimer: i am on a amazon detox this year (already started it back in Fall 2023). also, as a book lover i can't support amazon... https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-resist-amazon-and-why-the-fight-for-local-economics-data-privacy-fair-labor-independent-bookstores-and-a-people-powered-future-danny-caine/15217857?gclid=CjwKCAiAqNSsBhAvEiwAn_tmxToA9kNNtuWz5DZ86rguRRc6ITSH_dDMR6xMYaD9xdh4_UmqJ4abSRoCs20QAvD_BwE
The underselling has been accused and yet my friend who runs the electronics business just pivots, because he does a lot of drop shipments anyway, and waits for the price to balance again and goes back. What ends up happening is that Amazon ends up doing a bunch of loss leaders that don't actually result in profit for them. Agile small business just pivot.
I can't get my independent bookstore to carry my book fairly. Their offer would have cost me money on each sale. Barnes and Noble actually did me a fair one. Amazon is the one where all my profit comes in from. But if you don't like Amazon you can get the book on a lot of other sources as well.
The instant gratification is certainly an issue to address. However, getting it quickly means I'm not driving all over down burning CO2 so I can get a part to fix my car. I can be patient, wait two days, and then fix it. It's a bit of a Catch-22.
Well it's not very difficult to emphasize the convenience ceeated by this giant. Of course it's a massive accomplishment. The perspective is not nearly wide enough though to see where it all leads. Darning socks made of local wool is better for our grandchildren. I am unable to calculate the difference between that and replacing them with the help of modern production methods and supply chains but it must be chilling. Add to that a mountain of crap with one day delivery nobody really needs and a long shadow slides over the lighthearted version of the improved marketplace. We will see where it leads..... I don't have answers but by God i hope it's not Amazon....
I guess I'd ask why darning socks made of local wool would be better for our grandchildren? I'm not a big fan of mega businesses as with all things, power corrupts, but I can say that when my mother could stop darning socks, she certainly didn't mind being able to do something more productive.
Better not ask then...;)
Are you familiar with David Fleming's book Lean Logic? I think you might like it. Definitely a polymath too. There is an online version.
Not that one specifically. Do you have the link to the online version?
https://leanlogic.online/
OK, same one I found. Thanks! Is it literally just a dictionary? I haven't seen this one yet. I'll have to read up on it.
Not your usual dictionary...sort of a non linear deep dive, just start reading, follow your nose and see where it leads you. David wrote with humour, erudition and a fresh perspective on many basic thought patterns, a big section on fallacies....
Marc Levinson's book "The Box" has additional historical perspective on shipping containers:
https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691170819
Standard size shipping containers that worked for trains, ships, trucks, etc.are an example of a historical service system innovation that changed the world. Shipping containers connect Amazon today, with the history of places in the world like Singapore - which loads and unloads tremendous numbers of shipping containers every day.
Yeah, we did a case study on that for systems engineering looking at the modular design capabilities. Even 80 years ago everything was crates, hand loaded, and took forever. The containers are incredible. I'll have to grab this book!