{"id":6012,"date":"2021-09-06T16:14:23","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T16:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6012"},"modified":"2021-09-06T16:14:23","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T16:14:23","slug":"aoc-says-amazon-abuses-market-power-ignores-fact-that-customers-shop-at-amazon-because-they-want-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6012","title":{"rendered":"AOC Says Amazon Abuses Market Power, Ignores Fact That Customers Shop at Amazon Because They Want To"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Ocasio-Cortez is wrong that Amazon\u2014and by extension, Bezos\u2014has profited primarily by abusing its market power or engaging in anti-competitive practices. Bezos is so wealthy because, over the better part of three decades, he built a company that could successfully deliver a wide array of consumer goods to customers in just a few days flat, serving 300 million people annually (with 150 million of those customers deciding Amazon’s services are so valuable that they choose to pay for an annual Prime membership). Bezos and other Amazon executives built a company that could survive the dot-com bubble, the subprime mortgage crisis, and a pandemic.”
…
“Amazon has about 40.4 percent<\/a> e-commerce retail market share. That’s a healthy chunk, but consumers have other choices: Walmart’s sales comprise 7.1 percent of total U.S. e-commerce retail; Target, Wish, and other big-box retailers also ship directly to consumers. More people choose Amazon over competitors because it has more stuff and its click-to-ship speeds<\/a> are half that of its competitors.”
…
“customers always have the option of seeking out brick-and-mortar retail equivalents\u2014it’s just that many of them choose not to, prioritizing convenience (and, in a pandemic, safety) over the fluorescent glory of in-person big-box shopping.”
…
“”The idea that consumers choose to use products not because they’re useful but because Big Tech companies have somehow tricked or pressured them into it is deeply embedded\u2026in the new antitrust crusade more generally,” she writes. “It’s a form of consumer false consciousness in which end users don’t know what they want (but members of Congress, of course, do).””
…
“Amazon warehouse working conditions are sometimes quite bad<\/a>, with employees getting so little time for breaks that they cannot use the restroom or take time off-task. Amazon workers have been denied pregnancy accommodations<\/a> and adequate sick leave<\/a>, and warehouses have been hit hard by the pandemic. However, her claims that Amazon engages in union-busting are unfounded (warehouse workers in Alabama actually voted<\/a>against <\/em>unionization), and the criticisms she leveled at Bezos yesterday have been par for the course for someone who calls Amazon’s lower-skilled jobs “scams<\/a>” while rabblerousing for the cause of wealth redistribution. What’s more, Bezos has acknowledged reports about warehouse working conditions and has pledged to make changes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of the pandemic, Bezos’ net worth has increased by about $70 billion. But despite Ocasio-Cortez’s objections, his vast increase in wealth has been the result of making millions of people better off.”
https:\/\/reason.com\/2021\/07\/21\/aoc-says-amazon-abuses-market-power-ignores-fact-that-customers-shop-at-amazon-because-they-want-to\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Ocasio-Cortez is wrong that Amazon\u2014and by extension, Bezos\u2014has profited primarily by abusing its market power or engaging in anti-competitive practices. Bezos is so wealthy because, over the better part of three decades, he built a company that could successfully deliver a wide array of consumer goods to customers in just a few days flat, serving 300 million people annually (with 150 million of those customers deciding Amazon’s services are so valuable that they choose to pay for an annual Prime membership). Bezos and other Amazon executives built a company that could survive the dot-com bubble, the subprime mortgage crisis, and a pandemic.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Amazon has about 40.4 percent e-commerce retail market share. That’s a healthy chunk, but consumers have other choices: Walmart’s sales comprise 7.1 percent of total U.S. e-commerce retail; Target, Wish, and other big-box retailers also ship directly to consumers. More people choose Amazon over competitors because it has more stuff and its click-to-ship speeds are half that of its competitors.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“customers always have the option of seeking out brick-and-mortar retail equivalents\u2014it’s just that many of them choose not to, prioritizing convenience (and, in a pandemic, safety) over the fluorescent glory of in-person big-box shopping.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“”The idea that consumers choose to use products not because they’re useful but because Big Tech companies have somehow tricked or pressured them into it is deeply embedded\u2026in the new antitrust crusade more generally,” she writes. “It’s a form of consumer false consciousness in which end users don’t know what they want (but members of Congress, of course, do).””<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Amazon warehouse working conditions are sometimes quite bad, with employees getting so little time for breaks that they cannot use the restroom or take time off-task. Amazon workers have been denied pregnancy accommodations and adequate sick leave, and warehouses have been hit hard by the pandemic. However, her claims that Amazon engages in union-busting are unfounded (warehouse workers in Alabama actually voted against unionization), and the criticisms she leveled at Bezos yesterday have been par for the course for someone who calls Amazon’s lower-skilled jobs “scams” while rabblerousing for the cause of wealth redistribution. What’s more, Bezos has acknowledged reports about warehouse working conditions and has pledged to make changes.
\nOver the course of the pandemic, Bezos’ net worth has increased by about $70 billion. But despite Ocasio-Cortez’s objections, his vast increase in wealth has been the result of making millions of people better off.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[453,217],"class_list":["post-6012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-amazon","tag-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6013,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6012\/revisions\/6013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}