Minoosh
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At this I point I dislike Bezos almost as much as I do Trump.
Corporate Ethics
- Thread starter Minoosh
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At this I point I dislike Bezos almost as much as I do Trump.
acbytesla
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There are things I like about Bezos and things I hate. He's a mega-billionaire with an ego to match. He's a very shrewd businessman and takes no prisoners. But unlike Trump Bezos does have principles.
Everyone assumed Amazon was going to win the cloud contract. Their product is better than Microsoft's. Bezos is probably right that the reason Amazon lost this contract was because Trump put his thumb on the scale. But proving it is probably difficult. I expected Amazon to challenge this.
slyjoe
Illuminator
Any contract this big is going to get challenged. But if Amazon files within existing contracting procedures, the government would have to appoint a judge-like (master?) individual to hear both sides and make a ruling. There are certain procedures in place for things like this, but anyone can sue anyone at anytime. My experience? 6 months delay per billion.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
If Bill Gates still ran Microsoft, Trump would really be in trouble since Gates has said a lot of unkind things about Donnie.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
Just out of curiosity, what exactly is the reason for your dislike of Bezos?
Is it because of this particular court action (challenging the pentagon over the awarding of a contract to Microsoft rather than Amazon)? Well, given the size of the contract, as well as the personal attacks by Trump, I think his response is understandable (even if the chance of winning in court is slim).
Is it because of his other actions?
Yes, he can be rather ruthless as a businessman. (For example there have been issues, like possibly demanding too much to build a secondary headquarters.) But he has nowhere near the reputation of Donald "screw contractors via lawsuits and declare bankruptcy" Trump.
And he isn't quite as generous as, for example Bill Gates, But he has donated considerably to charity (with his own money too! Unlike Trump, who's charity foundation had to be closed because of illegal activity). Causes like same sex marriage, press freedom, education for undocumented immigrants, combatting global warming, and Veterans affairs.
And consider some of his other side businesses... space exploration, the Washington Post, both of which are (in my opinion) very worthwhile ventures for society in general. Compare that to Trump: outside of real estate and bankrupt casinos, he has invested in an airline, vodka, steaks, a magazine, a 'university', and mortgage financing, all of which either went out of business (at best) or were complete scams (at worst).
I'm not saying Bezos should be seen as some sort of saintly figure who should be winning the Nobel peace prize. But I just think that even with his flaws, he should not be compared in any way with Trump, who belongs in a whole special class of scum.
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Minoosh
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There are numerous reasons, but many of them were reinforced by a very recent "New Yorker" article. I'm on a tablet and have had no luck with copying and pasting links. One of these days I'll figure it out. If you're curious, you can probably find it pretty easily online.
But here are a few things:
- Guys who send dick pics do kind of bug me.
- He wouldn't sign the giving pledge.
- IMO, he treats his warehouse staff poorly.
- He is in some ways a libertarian ideologue.
I hadn't known his net worth was $114 *billion*, which affected my view of the last 3 items. He could afford to pay workers more and improve working conditions. Ideologically, he may be on firm enough ground, but emotionally, it turned me off.
I accidentally posted before I was finished, but this is a reasonable start.
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Fast Eddie B
Philosopher
Devil’s Advocate here, but as head of a publicly traded company, he has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits. I think he would have to make the case that higher pay would have long term positive effects on Amazon’s profitability. He - and his board - would need to link any raise to something more concrete than “fairness” or “charity”.
Disclaimer: I own some Amazon stock, am an Amazon Prime member and order things through them on a regular basis.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Amazon has a moral obligation to treat it's employees humanely. Bezos as a human being has moral obligations to his employees.
Perhaps, but if that runs counter to the fiduciary duty, he could find himself fired, sued and even banned from being a director.
Companies are not run for the benefit of their customers or their employees, they are run solely for the benefit of their shareholders.
And I wonder how many peoples' pension funds have investments in Amazon?
thaiboxerken
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Which is wrong. This rampant capitalism needs to stop.
Aridas
Crazy Little Green Dragon
Shareholder theory is a terrible thing and we would likely not suffer at all from it being removed from practice entirely.
ETA: Rather, as a whole, we would fairly certainly benefit from larger companies having less impetus to maximize profits by interfering with government rather than making productive investments and more jobs, as one simple example.
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thaiboxerken
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I agree. Businesses should be run to benefit stakeholders and society.
Minoosh
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And now I'll address things that aren't strictly his fault.
I compare his actions to Wal-Mart. Many people thought it was just great being able to buy lots of cheap Chinese manufactured goods. (Though Wal-mart tried to brag about "Made in the USA," they got in trouble for this. ) Then some time later noticing that American manufacturing was hurting, and that big-box stores were crowding out local businesses. I felt that some of their practices were anti-competitive and socially irresponsible. Now, not everyone agrees that businesses have any duty to communities; that their highest moral calling to maximize value for shareholders. The Walton family holds the majority of Wal-Mart stock, Bezos does not command that share of Amazon, so my criticism for him is more muted.
But: it's going to function like a monopoly as much as it possibly can. It is going to integrate vertically. It will operate at a loss to consolidate market share. I'm typing this on an Amazon tablet: I buy a fair number of ebooks from them and pay no separate sales tax. So, I'm hurting locally owned bricks and mortar bookstores solely for convenience. My fault, not Amazon's. Maybe Amazon has some kind of deal with states to reimburse for some taxes; I'm not up for researching that right now. But if not, I'm hurting local people. Schools. Retail staffers. Road repairs. Etc.
And finally, I have some distaste for the trend of having everything delivered to your home. I'd be curious if that affects our carbon footprint.
And a thing I just remembered: The promise of immediate delivery was creating possible safety problems in the fullfilment/delivery chain. And a lot of stress.
This is kind of off off-topic in this thread and I'll admit, not rigorously researched. So I'm sure I've left myself open to justifiable criticism. This could be its own thread.
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Interesting sentiments, but right now a company director could, at worst, find themselves jailed for failing to put shareholders' interest first.
Seems to make sense to me to have a single vehicle make a trip to deliver to multiple customers from a central distribution facility than to have those customers drive all over the place to pick up items individually.
Same goes for home delivery on grocery shopping, better for one van to deliver to 20 customers than 20 customers drive to the shop.
Fast Eddie B
Philosopher
At first glance, it sure seems like one truck making 50 deliveries would be more “green” than 50 consumers each making trips to the store.
bonzombiekitty
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Maybe in suburban/rural areas. In dense urban areas, the math starts to change. More people walk to stores, and if they do drive, they are driving a short distance, and delivery trucks tend to increase traffic as they block roads for longer while making deliveries.
thaiboxerken
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Under what laws?
ponderingturtle
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It depends on how many are making trips in cars vs taking public transport and many factors, like is there good allowances for making deliveries without double parking and messing up traffic. It could be highly efficient in a city but you have to get the pubic off the roads and have reasonable space for them to make deliveries.
UK corporate laws, I presume that US laws are similar.
When I became a director of a publicly quoted company (at the time it was AIM, now it's on the main market), my responsibilities to the shareholders and (possible maximum) penalties for failing to deliver were made very clear to me.
Indeed. Even if one dislikes Bezos, putting in the same league as Trump is absurd. Minoosh is inadvertently normalizing Trump.
Belz...
Fiend God
Which is why I find publicly-traded companies morally suspect.
The point of a business is to make a living for offering goods and services. If making money is the ONLY point, then one's missing the point.
In similar conversations here it's been pointed out that aggressive tax avoidance is actually a fiduciary responsibility in order to maximise profits. I find that stance pretty hard to stomach.
Does any US or UK law actually state that the responsibility is solely towards bottom-line profit? Does shareholder benefit include, for example, not having the company be associated with sweatshop labour?
The same duty to the shareholders applies to privately owned companies as well.
Isn't "making a living" the same as making money ?
If providing a service, or making stakeholders happy is important (for reasons other than making money), then operate as a non-profit or charity and accept the resulting economic inefficiencies of running a company less than optimally.
If the shareholders deem it to be the case, then yes, but something like that should be agreed at the AGM. There are many companies which operate ethical policies when it comes to sourcing, employment and so on at the expense of profitability but those policies are clearly stated so that shareholder expectations are managed. Any such policy can be reversed if enough shareholders vote for change.
thaiboxerken
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I don't think so, not in the US. I think it depends on contracts. Also, I disagree that not running a company solely for profit makes it run less than optimally.
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*shrugs* I'm not going to worry about the big company that actually provides an understandable product/service until after we deal with all the ones who don't.
I'm... complicated in my feelings about big business but I'm certainly a Lewis Black-ian when it comes to "Here's a rule. If you have a company and can't describe in one sentence... what... it... does... then it's illegal."
And I get the feeling that if Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg had made their billions in oil or futures trading or whatever and not "that internet thing and electric cars that those millennials are all on about" they wouldn't have the public personas they do now.
There are a lot of perfectly valid criticism to throw against tech sector billionaires, but all to often they come wrapped up in that "I just cast them as the villain in my Black Mirror fan fiction" mentality.
The entire economy almost collapsed a few years back because of bunch of billionaries went broke buying and selling money that didn't exist until the whole system collapsed. At least electric cars and ebook readers and social media can be useful and positive in theory and... you know actually exist.
I'm... complicated in my feelings about big business but I'm certainly a Lewis Black-ian when it comes to "Here's a rule. If you have a company and can't describe in one sentence... what... it... does... then it's illegal."
And I get the feeling that if Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg had made their billions in oil or futures trading or whatever and not "that internet thing and electric cars that those millennials are all on about" they wouldn't have the public personas they do now.
There are a lot of perfectly valid criticism to throw against tech sector billionaires, but all to often they come wrapped up in that "I just cast them as the villain in my Black Mirror fan fiction" mentality.
The entire economy almost collapsed a few years back because of bunch of billionaries went broke buying and selling money that didn't exist until the whole system collapsed. At least electric cars and ebook readers and social media can be useful and positive in theory and... you know actually exist.
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Belz...
Fiend God
No, if I have a business I'm not obliged to maximise profits to the exclusion of everything else.
Yes it is. It's the rest of the sentence that was important, though.
So it must be all one or all the other? What a strange thing to say.
Distracted1
Philosopher
Worth consideration.
When My SO and I go shopping, we typically purchase multiple items- often filling up a shopping cart with various things.
When she orders things online, the things frequently arrive in dribs and drabs- necessitating multiple delivery trips. Further, returns require separate trips that would normally have waited until the next time we went out if they were to be taken to a "brick and mortar" establishment.
It is my suspicion that the "direct to your home" model that seems to be taking over is exceptionally wasteful.
Only if the shareholders allow it. Paying low-level staff members more than necessary doesn't seem to sit well with shareholders.
The rest of which sentence ?
For the shareholders of most businesses, if you fail to maximise shareholder return, you'll be out on your ear.
Belz...
Fiend God
Only if shareholders exist.
The point is that in a publicly-traded company profit is the ONLY measure. In a privately-owned one where the owners can meet and discuss or where it's a family business or owned by a single individual, it's easier to take other things into consideration; not that everyone does.
The one you quoted and responded to!
How strange, I order all the items that I need from a particular supplier for delivery at the same time to minimise shipping costs.
Chacun a son gout I suppose
For example I tend to buy my guitars one at a time, but I will then bundle it with other equipment if I require it. I suppose you and your SO buy half a dozen at a time.
If it is, the businesses following that model will attempt to reduce waste by incentivising people to make as few deliveries as possible.
Belz...
Fiend God
As a French speaker I'd suggest "À chacun son gout" as a better way to phrase this, though yours is also fine.
And for anyone else, "gout" means "taste", not gout.
They do for all privately owned companies.
Utter rubbish, as the existence of various publicly-traded companies with "ethical" policies shows.
Public or private, they still have shareholders and the process is the same. Heck with a small number of private shareholders, convincing them to focus on anything other than the bottom line can be more difficult because there's less risk of public scrutiny.
The Koch and Trump families are hardly poster boys for ethical business practices.
Belz...
Fiend God
I think you misunderstand my point. I'm not saying that public companies are never ethical. I'm saying that the measure for success is profit. The two are not mutually-exclusive, but the incentive to drive for profit at the expence of employees and customers is there.
Anyway, this is turning into a derail, so if you want to continue we should create a thread for it.
The version I used is the one colloquially used in the UK - which likely accounts for a lot
It's there for all companies, whatever the ownership model.
There are also a lot of charities and non-profits which exploit employees for the benefit of other stakeholders.
You're the one who seems to be suggesting that publicly traded companies are somehow inherently evil and should be done away with. I have no desire to discuss such a ridiculous notion.
How strange, I order all the items that I need from a particular supplier for delivery at the same time to minimise shipping costs.
Chacun a son gout I suppose
For example I tend to buy my guitars one at a time, but I will then bundle it with other equipment if I require it. I suppose you and your SO buy half a dozen at a time.
If it is, the businesses following that model will attempt to reduce waste by incentivising people to make as few deliveries as possible.
In “regular” Amazon you need to buy a minimum value of products to get free shipping, which already reduces the incentive to buy cheap products individually. But in Amazon prime most items come with free shipping, presumably to encourage people to join prime. But changing the free shipping polices in both to further encourage consolidating shipments would help in this issue. Or present it as a discount if the customer lumped items together.
This all assume all items come from same warehouse. This may not always be true even for items shipped from Amazon.