Your phraseology of “extract” suffers from the same problem as AOC’s. You’re conflating value creation with value extraction.

The problem with AOC’s argument is she’s recycling a 2008 talking point into a context where it doesn’t make sense. Financial entities making trillions moving money around raises questions about whether value is really being created. When I get three Amazon packages delivered to my house every day, there’s no question about value creation.

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lkjdsklf 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You’ve entirely misunderstood her point.

Her point isn’t that Amazon is bad because it’s a trillion dollar company

Her point is that Bezos is bad because he and Amazon could have paid that driver 10x what they make and still had more money than they could spend in 100 lifetimes

The distribution of the gains is absurdly weighted towards the top

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rayiner 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> still had more money than they could spend in 100 lifetimes

How is that relevant to anything? There are intelligent criticisms of Amazon. But this is just a non-sequitur.

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lkjdsklf an hour ago | parent [-]

It’s absolutely not a non-sequitur.

The point is that his wealth is from exploiting labor out of greed.

He could take a smaller share and still be plenty rich and many more people would be much better off than they are today.

But he doesn’t. The disparity is so vast that it is arguably immoral or unethical. That’s AOCs point

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rayiner an hour ago | parent [-]

If you want to make a point about exploitive labor practices, that’s totally valid. Explain how Amazon’s labor practices are exploitive. But Bezos having more money than he can spend in a lifetime is totally irrelevant to that. It’s not relevant to anything.

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lkjdsklf 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's entirely relevant.

The entire point is that the riches borne of the success of amazon could have been shared more equally while not actually making a different in Bezos' or his families life.

The only difference would have been that his score on the billionaire leader board would have been slightly lower.

That fact is not only relevant, it's a central pillar of the point.

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rayiner 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

> The entire point is that the riches borne of the success of amazon could have been shared more equally while not actually making a different in Bezos' or his families life.

Why does that matter? What is the universal principle that’s at play here? Does this principle apply to everyone? Does it apply to you? People in my dad’s village in Bangladesh survive on $5/day. Under your principle, why do you get to spend 1,000x that on a vacation?

Can you also explain your math? You said above that Amazon could pay its workers 10x as much as they do now. Bezos’s share of Amazon’s net profit last year was about $6.9 billion. Amazon has 1.1 million delivery drivers and warehouse workers. So if Bezos’s share was nothing, those workers could earn about $6,300 more. That’s like 10-15% more, not 10 times more as you incorrectly said.

	▲	lkjdsklf 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Bezos’s share of Amazon’s net profit last year was about $6.9 billion We're not talking about Bezos's profit share for one year. We're talking about giving the workers a bigger share of the profit. Ideally, there would have been a workers union that owned a significant number of amazon shares or some other similar structure. Then all workers benefit from the compounding growth pg is talking about in the article. However that didn't happen, because Bezos didn't want it to happen.

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hollerith 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And I suppose these jobs that pays 10x would go to people that AOC approves of, i.e., preferably no Republicans?

	▲	lkjdsklf an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What in the world are you talking about It very obviously goes to the people working at Amazon. Political party has nothing to do with anything
	▲	ryan_n 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Why do you suppose that? Did she say that?