I know that he (and others in positions like CEO in such industries) cannot say it, but I would be glad to hear him say:
"Representatives, Amazon is a company focused on innovation, efficiency, and getting the best and most out of people, and giving the best and most to people, wherever it can.
Tech allows us to tap into economies of scale, create new products and give consumers choices never seen before, squeeze out waste in ways that were not possible up to now, and create net benefit for people in this country. Each one of you can probably personally think of how Amazon technology has improved the lives of yourselves and people you know.
We seek to do this as far as the law allows us to do, and other companies do that as well. We operate within the rules placed on us by the legislatures of this country and its states.
As you know, sometimes even under fair laws, some people will lose out compared to others. Innovation comes with risk and change -- that's an unavoidable consequence of progress. And technology has been doing this for hundreds of years. But that's what laws are meant to set the boundaries of, based on people like you determining how best to create those rules.
If this body is concerned with what we are doing within the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people. And Amazon will follow those laws.
We want that clarity, and want to follow our responsibilities under the law. It's your responsibility to set out those laws. Amazon welcomes performing our responsibilities to American consumers, and we invite you to do the same to the people you are responsible to."
"If this body is concerned with what we are doing with the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people;"
"however, this body should also note that Amazon will seek to exert control over the legislative process to ensure that Amazon's best interests are represented to the maximum extent that our influence and lobbying budget will allow,^1 even if those interests conflict with the best interests of this country and its people."
1. We spent $16,790,000 in 2019. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... I own the Washington Post. I am considered by Forbes, among others, to be the world's wealthiest billionaire. I am also a registered voter in this country.
The relevant part of the First Amendment states (emphasis mine):
"...OR the right of the people peaceably to assemble, AND to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
This is preceded by a semicolon, making this clause a compound clause. The right to petition the Government is conferred both on individuals and on assemblies (organizations), and has been since the nation was founded. And this principle has been taken as gospel in law as interpreted by our Courts since the nation's founding.
(*IAAL but this is not legal advice. Seek licensed counsel in your jurisdiction if you need legal advice.)
But the type of organization that is a corporation didn't exist when the constitution was written. Much like nuclear arms (and chemical, and biological) didn't exist when the constitution was written so we don't consider them covered by the second amendment.
It certainly did. Among others, the Virginia Company, the Plymouth Company, the British East India Company all featured tradeable shares, perpetual lifetime, limited liability and legal personhood.
What makes the modern economy so different is the democraticization of incorporation. Prior to the 19th century it took a specific legislative act to incorporate.
British East India company had its own army and literally did run a big part of society. Amazon doesn’t have an army at least. Maybe we are trending in the right direction.
We don't consider nuclear warheads to be covered under the second amendment because they are munitions, not arms. What you're saying is a little ridiculous - do you expect that something written on the Internet is not covered by the first amendment, simply because it didn't exist at the time the amendment was written? Of course not. Technological progress is easily covered by the Constitution.
The English East India Company was set up along lines pretty similar to today's corporations, and that happened almost 200 years before the constitution was written (1600, to be precise). By 1720 you definitely have bubbles involving corporate stocks (see South Sea Bubble).
By the time you get to the late 18th century (i.e. about when the Constitution was written) you have publications with titles like "A Treatise on the Law of Corporations"; just keep reading the Wikipedia entry above. That was published 7 years after the US Constitution was ratified, but of course the laws and corporations it was talking abot had been around for _quite_ a while at that point.
What happens when corporations have more practical daily influence over people's lives than the government? This is a problem. Is it our Achilles heel?
I see that as a good thing. Macy's can't force me to do anything. The federal government can. I'd prefer Macy's to have more influence in my day to day life than the business end of a gun.
> What happens when corporations have more practical daily influence over people's lives than the government?
Impossible, because while corporations are a vehicle through which private individuals act, they are a creation and extension of government power. While the power exerted through corporations is not proximately controlled by people who are particularly accountable to the public for their actions, it is nevertheless government power, and thus the power exerted by corporations can never be greater than that exerted by government, because the former is a subset of the latter.
You don't think that a corporation, even now, can exceed the ability of its employees to disagree with what it's doing?
Like lobby for legislation that protects (or makes paramount) the corporate interests, even though the people within the corporation might completely object to what is being lobbied for?
I think we underestimate how much people are willing to do what their employer requires to continue to be employed, and end up doing things that are totally legal, but not desireable in the long run.
The Supreme Court has determined that companies are granted some rights as citizens have. The first is one of the rights that is protected according to their rulings.
And it is widely believed to be a failure of the justice system. Companies are not expected to behave the same as individuals. They have different motivations and calculate risks differently. If it looks like a dog and barks like a dog, it isn’t a duck.
You can't say that the first amendment doesn't apply to companies when the law has found that it does. You can say that you believe it shouldn't, but legally today it does.
The issue is that the first amendment isn't absolute, there are in fact limits, those limits however have been effectively rescinded when it comes to corporations but are still in place for individuals. The disparity of power this affords in our democracy is destined to erode what is left of it.
Congress has some power to outlaw corruption (or the perception thereof), but not lobbying per se. Restrictions on donations to political campaigns have been upheld in the past, but those tend to be direct money donations to candidates.
Handing over money directly to a candidate is one thing, but the Courts have been a little more hesitant to uphold restrictions on lobbying or political speech -- and the spending of money to do it -- if it's being spent by or given to a third party not directly connected to the Government. The hesitancy is most recently exemplified in the Citizen's United case that is of significant controversy.
Sometimes I think that Congress had better think ahead to save its own skin, propose amendments to the Constitution about limits on corporations, before they lose all power to them and can no longer escape their grasp.
What does it matter that Amazon in particular is the one buying out these politicians? Someone would do it. They're a big enough company that the left hand probably doesn't know what the right hand is doing anyway.
And the most evil company in the world telling you to regulate it ought to give you some pause that maybe you really should think about doing that, don't you think?
How do you figure that Amazon is the most evil company in the world? Like, more than companies whose main products literally kill the users (Altria/Phillip Morris)? The companies that develop ICBMs? Or energy companies that create false narratives to confuse the conversation around climate change? Which frankly has a non-zero chance of being the cause of a new dark age.
I'm just using that word as hyperbole. If the person above thinks that Amazon is so bad for lobbying congresspeople, wouldn't Amazon itself saying it needs to be regulated deserve some serious consideration?
Isn't it hypocritical to make a comment like this while also lobbying the government for laws that favor your business? "I'm just playing by the rules" shouldn't be a valid defense when you are actively taking a role in deciding those rules.
He's basically saying there's profit-maximizing loopholes all over the place, and it's not his fault they exist...which is true.
The real issue is that politicians are shooting themselves in the foot career-wise if they try to close these loopholes. We need to reduce the incentives politicians get from action or inaction depending on chummy relationships with big business. A good start would be more rules around lobbyist relationships, and figuring out how to close the revolving door where politicians are given lucrative jobs/consultancies/speaking-fees/etc by these businesses after leaving office.
I have the idea that if the money = free speech route is closed off to being solved by SCOTUS, the next best thing we could advocate for happening is to have limits on the number and size of corporations. There's nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of that. And Congress should do it before corporations are so powerful they can no longer escape their grasp.
but maybe problem here is in that corrupted thing called lobbying is allowed in the very first place.. I don't see how legal buying politicians this way is different from illegal corruption.
Yeah, as an immigrant in the US, I still can't wrap my head around it. I originate from a country with rampant corruption amongst beauracrats and politician. The most common, that's always in the news, is one where the wealthy pay off political leaders to influence policies. But in the US, it's just legal!
Pick something you’re knowledgeable about. Uniquely knowledgeable. Now imagine the Congress is writing legislation on it. Would you think your views might be helpful?
Let’s say you and a few other people are in the same position. Travelling to D.C. isn’t free, so you decide to--as a group--reimburse the expenses of the person who travels. Would this be unfair?
Scale that up to a full-time job, as an explainer of specific things to lawmakers, and lobbying makes sense. Barring lobbying would mean barring people knowledgeable about specific topics from organising to inform lawmakers. That applies to large companies as much as to the Sierra Club.
The trouble is in campaign contributions, post-service jobs and e.g. fancy dinners. These are closer to, or overtly, bribery. Democracy can’t exist without organisation and education of lawmakers, and that means it requires lobbying. Democracy also cannot survive in the presence of chronic bribery. These aims aren't mutually exclusive.
Lobbying, for its many faults, helps lawmakers (who are understaffed and generally underresourced) filter and figure out which opinions are worth listening to. Even the most well-intentioned / good ideas have trouble being advocated by one smart person in this system. You need an organization to attach to that gives you credibility.
Not saying that this is the right way -- and certainly often the less privileged opinions get short shrift in this system. A good government/political structure would give lawmakers effective ways to not have to have to rely on lobbyists.
But it is the system that has arisen in the absence of that.
It's not legal to pay off political leaders in the U.S. You can spend nearly as much as you want on lobbyists and campaigning, but the money has to stay with the lobbyists and the campaign organizations. And direct contributions by individuals are capped at relatively low levels.
In fact, the law is so strict in the U.S. that you can't even bribe foreign leaders either (see the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).
I’m also from a country where corruption is common. There, it means giving some official money to exercise discretion in your favor. “Lobbying,“ for the most part, means giving some staffer a PowerPoint presentation.
IMO the problem is that the government meddles with the market to begin with. I know I'm in the minority, but I believe a clean separation of government and market would remove the incentive for regulatory capture without damaging free speech rights.
> I know I'm in the minority, but I believe a clean separation of government and market would remove the incentive for regulatory capture without damaging free speech rights.
That's myopic though. It's true your "clean separation" would "solve" the problem of regulatory capture, but it would simultaneously re-introduce the problems that regulation has successfully solved [1]. Society is a dynamic system of tradeoffs; solutions to societal problems that are tidy, good, and stable are ever-tempting chimeras.
> If the lobbying they do is unfair, then they should change the rules around lobbying
Who is "they"? Plenty of people do want to reduce the amount of money in US politics, but they come up against the same money that's behind the lobbying in the first place.
This is a bit like the "stop hitting yourself" game that kids play. If you ask voters whether they think there is too much money in politics, they overwhelming say there is[1].
That sounds like it's going to get really messy really fast, especially with the 1st amendment in play. (Not that we shouldn't try, mind, just that it's not an easy thing to fix)
It has nothing to do with the first amendment. Money isn't actually speech -- bribery is illegal, after all.
The legislators who have the ability to change the rules around lobbying are at the receiving end of millions of lobbying dollars, and they don't want the money firehose to stop.
I'd say no because lobbying the government for laws that favor you is within the laws. When one of the rules says you get to bribe those who make up the rules of course you'll get some messed up rules. But it isn't hypocritical.
No. Amazon has a view of what it thinks is best for the US. That view is informed by its own self interest. Others have a view of what they think is best for the US. Their views are informed by their own self interest. Ultimately when a view does not align with the law of the land, the holder of the view can a) comply, b) comply and seek to redress their issues, or c) fail to comply. Amazon, in the speech above, says it will comply. There is nothing hypocritical in wanting a voice in a policy decision.
>Amazon has a view of what it thinks is best for the US. That view is informed by its own self interest.
This doesn't follow. The argument above is that Amazon is a amoral corporation that seeks to make money to the extent that the law allows. Amazon is not considering what is in the best interest of the country. It is acting in the best interest of Amazon.
> If this body is concerned with what we are doing within the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people. And Amazon will follow those laws.
Left unsaid here would be: "We will quietly but effectively work behind the scenes to prevent them from ever becoming laws."
> We seek to do this as far as the law allows us to do, and other companies do that as well. We operate within the rules placed on us by the legislatures of this country and its states.
Sure, but this is an antitrust hearing and trusts aren't really legal in the US.
It's hard to penalize them for that without also meriting them for the benefits directly related to the actions they took to achieve those deductions and credits. Paywall, but I didn't see any of those mentioned in the summary, which makes me question the balance of the article.
Also, any single out Amazon here? The entire corporate tax rate in the US is extremely low. It's part of what makes it a business friendly country.
> It’s not a coincidence that Amazon was born in this country. More than any other place on Earth, new companies can start, grow, and thrive here in the U.S. Our country embraces resourcefulness and self-reliance, and it embraces builders who start from scratch. We nurture entrepreneurs and start-ups with stable rule of law, the finest university system in the world, the freedom of democracy, and a deeply accepted culture of risk-taking
I don't disagree, but in my opinion, many of these things are actively under attack. We used to have stable rule of law, but since the protests I'm not so sure now. We used to value self-reliance and risk taking, but a growing chunk of America now wants a more risk-averse government-reliant (in the form of guaranteed pensions, etc) European style society.
> We used to have stable rule of law, but since the protests I'm not so sure now.
The protests are not dismantling the rule of law. There is a small subset where there is destruction and violence. Many people are expressing their constitutional rights. Some are actually having them violated by the state.
> We used to value self-reliance and risk taking, but a growing chunk of America now wants a more risk-averse government-reliant (in the form of guaranteed pensions, etc) European style society.
I don’t think people have admonished self-reliance or risk. The reality is many people fall through the cracks, and we should tend to their most basic needs the best we can to reduce suffering and allow people to keep being able to contribute to society, rather than leave them alienated and unable to get back on their feet. We’re the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and have massive wealth inequality. Large corporations and donors are able to control politicians. People are losing their jobs by the millions, and by proxy lose their healthcare (in the middle of a global pandemic). Workers productivity has gone up, but wages have not followed. It’s not about entirely destroying American society as we know it, but rather providing for our fellow Americans people claim to care so patriotically about.
The federal forces entering the cities are concerning.
When I think of rule of law issues I think of the AG freeing friends of the president (Stone, Flynn) and punishing enemies (Cohen). I think of the Trump administration choosing Microsoft over Amazon for the Jedi contract for political reasons. Also the lies about Berman 'stepping down', firing Comey and attempting to fire/discredit Mueller, the characterization of the report with a misleading summary, current investigations into the origins of the report, targeting political enemies, seeking international assistance in taking out political rivals etc.
Rule of law definitely seems to have weakened under Barr.
Anyway, this is a really well written opening statement. I know Amazon is known for having a great culture of writing internally, but it's always nice to see it in public. I wish tech companies wrote more about themselves in public, what they get from the press is a disservice - it's a lot more interesting to hear directly from the companies.
I'd be curious what he thinks about the counterfeit items given the 'customer-centric' view. One of the main reasons I didn't by Amazon stock earlier was I thought that would be a problem. In hindsight I realized even though it is a problem, there isn't really a better non-amazon alternative in most cases and I ended up buying stock anyway. If I was there, I'd figure out how to fix that issue - some way to hold sellers to a higher quality bar.
> When I think of rule of law issues I think of the AG freeing friends of the president (Stone, Flynn) and punishing enemies (Cohen). I think of the Trump administration choosing Microsoft over Amazon for the Jedi contract for political reasons. Also the lies about Berman 'stepping down', firing Comey and attempting to fire/discredit Mueller, the characterization of the report with a misleading summary, current investigations into the origins of the report, targeting political enemies, seeking international assistance in taking out political rivals etc.
Rule of law definitely seems to have weakened under Barr.
Very well said, I think these attacks on the rule of law are much more concerning given they come from positions of power.
I used to think Jedi was political, but I'm not so sure now. AWS is the superior pure cloud play, but Microsoft may have been able to make a better case for supporting a hybrid cloud. It makes sense that the DoD would want to keep parts of the system in-house. Also, if large parts of the existing system are Windows-based, that's another fair reason to consider MS. And continuing to put more power, in terms of hypothetical access to data, in the hands of one man who is already perhaps the most powerful in America, could be considered a dangerous idea.
Nobody is having there constitutional rights violated by the state. The states are letting violent extremists violate the rights of other citizens and the federal government is having to step in to protect those citizens and federal property.
There are a small subset of violent rioters and looters destroying property, absolutely. If you think that the federal and state responses, including violent beatings of peaceful protestors, are not meant to intimidate peaceful protestors then i’m afraid we’ll never agree. We’ve seen countless escalations from the police and feds.
> We used to value self-reliance and risk taking, but a growing chunk of America now wants a more risk-averse government-reliant (in the form of guaranteed pensions, etc) European style society.
As I see it, a government that ensures basic necessities will allow more people to take more risks. As it is, the privilege to take risks is limited to a select few in the upper and upper-middle classes, and those below don't have the chance to take a risk without it ruining their life.
If that's the case, why aren't more Amazons emerging from Europe where more basic necessities are being met and therefore more people could be taking risks?
Couldn't it also be that having the government take care of people actually reduces their desire to take risks and move up socio economic ladder? In Germany, for example you don't see a lot of middle class people moving into upper class like you do in America.
You don't see a middle class people moving into the upper class here either. Social mobility is higher in Europe than in the US, and economic mobility is higher in Europe as well, excluding the UK.
For your first question, Europe has stronger protections for workers than the US, so Amazon would need to pay it's employees more and have more of them. This in general results in less centralized profiting. Bezos would make less but his median employee would make more, meaning as I said before, more social mobility for lower and middle class people like Amazon factory workers, at the cost of not having as many billionaires.
Sure you do - there is an entire generation of middle class people in America who started off lower middle class in the 80s and retired millionaires in the 2010s thanks to investments, promotions, increased education, real estate, etc. Not to mention immigrants who came to America as low middle class, worked their butts off in medical/dental/engineering school and are now upper middle class.
Such mobility is not as common in Germany or Italy, for example (I keep bringing up Germany because I lived there for 4 years). In Germany you tend to get boxed into your career fairly early and after that you kind of just coast to the end of your life. You don't see aggressive job switching to try to get the highest salary and you don't see 40 year old Germans deciding they want to go to dental school like you do in America (for example). In Germany your future career is pretty much set by your mid-20s depending on how you did in school/exams.
Europe tends to look down on risk taking/failure as well which is another reason you don't see many Amazons sprouting from there.
> Such mobility is not as common in Germany or Italy, for example (I keep bringing up Germany because I lived there for 4 years). In Germany you tend to get boxed into your career fairly early and after that you kind of just coast to the end of your life.
I'm sorry to say it, but the actual data disagrees with you.
> You don't see aggressive job switching to try to get the highest salary and you don't see 40 year old Germans deciding they want to go to dental school like you do in America (for example). In Germany your future career is pretty much set by your mid-20s depending on how you did in school/exams.
You only see those things in already upper-middle or upper class environments in the US. An amazon warehouse worker doesn't aggressively switch jobs to maximize salary. They suffer in a shitty job because they need to to survive.
If you ignore the existence of the least economically mobile when discussing class mobility, of course you'll see greater than average class mobility. There are more working and lower class people in the US than upper-middle class people, and those people have less mobility than their European counterparts, and data on social and economic mobility backs this up. Stop wearing rose-colored glasses and looking only at the social mobility of your peers. Look at everyone, and look at data.
> Sure you do - there is an entire generation of middle class people in America who started off lower middle class in the 80s and retired millionaires in the 2010s thanks to investments, promotions, increased education, real estate, etc.
I don't think that's true. There are some, perhaps, but what you're claiming is that there's an entire generation of blue and pink-collar workers who retired with six-figure incomes. That's not true.
Yet highly socialist countries never seem to have a culture of risk taking/startups/disruption/innovation/etc. I'd love to be proven wrong with an example.
> We used to value self-reliance and risk taking, but a growing chunk of America now wants a more risk-averse government-reliant (in the form of guaranteed pensions, etc) European style society.
I’d be happy if that’s all they wanted. Some people want to “dismantl[e] White Supremacy, Patriarchy, Capitalism, Imperialism and the role the state plays in supporting them.” And instead of saying “hey, one of those things is not like the other” I now drive past a street in DC every day named after an organization that has this quote on their DC chapter’s front page. (Technically, it’s an honorary name, but DC streets have proper street signs for those.) Meanwhile, the Smithsonian is publishing materials condemning “objective, rational linear thinking” and “progress” and “competition.”
I get that these are fringe academic ideas that fringe people have injected into an otherwise really important conversation. But I’m pretty alarmed about the degree to which mainstream sources are implicitly sanctioning these kinds of assertions. Silicon Valley as we know it can’t exist within this intellectual framework.
Why are you alarmed by this, when all the available evidence suggests that the mainstream of America is receptive to the obvious parts of these ideas ("stop killing unarmed black people") and not at all receptive to the rest ("seize the means of production")? Look at who won the nomination.
I mean that’s fair. To calm myself down I listen to Keisha Lance Bottoms talk about public private partnerships. But, I do need that talking down because:
1) I don’t trust academics and I think they have outsized influence on culture. I think, for example, academics destroyed the original understanding of the Establishment Clause, and thereby hastened the decline of organized religion as one of the institutions of civil society. I think that is a bad thing. I worry about what’s next on the chopping block. For example, while I don’t think the government is going to seize the means of production, I worry “life, liberty, and property” doesn’t have the cachet it used to. Many people don’t really believe the constitution protects economic rights.
2) Related to (1), I’m worried some well-meaning teacher will tell my brown daughter that “rational linear thinking” is “white culture.” (That would result in a lawsuit.)
3) I know few people my age and economic/educational class who actually wanted Biden to win. The “wonk” set seems to be much more amenable to these fringe ideas. And because we’ve sanctioned an unconstitutional administrative state where unelected wonks wield great power, I worry.
4) There is a disconnect between what I consider mainstream sources out of historical inertia, and maybe what they are now. I have a hard time reading the NYT these days. But I also recognize that, due to massive declines in readership, the NYT is more of a niche source than it used to be. But who still reads it? See (3).
By all the accounts I've read, what we're looking at right now is nothing even close to the Long Hot Summer. You'd have to know where to look to find evidence of protests in Chicago.
It's tough to metabolize not knowing anyone who wanted Biden to win, because he won the primary overwhelmingly; compare the map in Michigan in 2016 to 2020. Biden won Washtenaw County! Single-payer health care polls well in the abstract, but failed as an actual ballot measure in Colorado and Vermont; people support all sorts of things in the abstract, but in reality don't support radical change.
I have the same contempt you do for the "rational linear thinking" thing and haven't shut up about it for weeks. But then, the Black History Museum took down the poster; it looks like it survived as long as it did because nobody was paying attention to it. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post ran reviews tearing down _White Fragility_; when people actually read the book, rather than nodding their head to the title (it's a great title! admit it!), the scales from their eyes.
If anything, I think the most reasonable concern is that we won't change enough. The police violence and accountability problem is very real and very serious.
> If anything, I think the most reasonable concern is that we won't change enough. The police violence and accountability problem is very real and very serious.
That’s reasonable, but there is also another possibility: we’ll make changes in form but not substance. There are attempts underway to rename the high school I attended (named after Thomas Jefferson). Those efforts arose as a result of the fact that this year no African Americans were admitted in a class of about 450. At the moment it seems like changing the name is a lot more likely than changing admissions or recruiting policies.
I love capitalism. It's the best of all the available systems, because it's the most conducive to personal liberty. But let's not pretend it doesn't have a long, shared history with imperialism.
India, the jewel in the British crown, was originally conquered by a private corporation. Ditto for Indonesia and the Dutch. Capitalism's other greatest hits include the transatlantic slave trade, Belgian rubber farms in Congo, blood diamonds, and modern factory farming. Sure it was great for Europeans to have cheap sugar from the Caribbean, and the traders and planters became very prosperous. But at what cost?
Capitalism needs laws, regulations, and guardrails. Capitalism didn't voluntarily renounce slavery, or child labor. It didn't provide worker safety protections or overtime or other important labor protections. It would never have done, left to its own devices. It required "intrusive government regulation" and activism.
> I love capitalism. It's the best of all the available systems, because it's the most conducive to personal liberty. But let's not pretend it doesn't have a long, shared history with imperialism.
It doesn’t! What we understand as “capitalism” (free market economies based on voluntary transactions) is incompatible with imperialism. Britain used its military power to ensure that India would sell commodities to Britain while buying finished goods back from Britain. That’s not capitalism. We had a perfectly good word for it when I was in K-12: mercantilism.
We have different words for mercantilism and capitalism because they’re different. You know they’re different because people decry the WTO as a destructive capitalist vehicle for facilitating exactly the thing (free trade) that mercantilism prohibited.
Words matter! Definitions matter! There are things you can fairly pin on unregulated capitalism. For example, the requirement that transactions be voluntary doesn’t rule out child labor (in many but not all cases), below minimum wage labor, or labor in unsafe workplaces, insofar as all are voluntary. But it does rule out slavery, which isn’t a voluntary transaction. It also rules out mercantilism, which isn’t based on voluntary free trade, and Belgian rubber farms, which weren’t based on free exchange either of labor or of resources.
Sure, you can redefine “capitalism” to make “something other than what people today understand as capitalism” but you can play stupid semantic games like that with anything.
Britain maintained it's imperialist reach well into the "capitalist" age (into the 20th century!). The US maintains limited imperialism to this day, although less so than in the Cold War era.
If you're going to argue that capitalism is incompatible with imperialism, then sure you can be pedantically correct, but then you're arguing about capitalism as a macro-economic policy and not a micro-economic policy, in which case capitalism has nothing to do with personal liberty whatsoever, it has to do with tariffs (and we still aren't doing a good job of it).
That's not usually an interesting discussion to have. And if you're going to make that argument, you sort of also have to accept that Socialism has never been tried (and that it might result in greater personal liberty).
Capitalist economies can invade other countries and take their resources just like socialist economies can. That doesn’t say anything about those economic systems.
I agree, but you appeared to cla that capitalist economics were incompatible with imperialism by definition and that any such economy would really he mercantilist. You seem to have changed your mind. There original statement was (I believe) that capitalisrlt economies have a history of imposing imperialism on other nations. Do you agree with that, or not?
> There original statement was (I believe) that capitalisrlt economies have a history of imposing imperialism on other nations. Do you agree with that, or not?
I agree with that. But that’s not how I read the OP’s statement, and not how the links between capitalism and imperialism are developed in the relevant literature. That appeared to go further to imply that imperialism is itself a manifestation of capitalism, rather than something that’s simply compatible with capitalism.
It’s the difference between saying that Democratic countries have a history of imperialism (Britain, Rome) and saying that imperialism is a manifestation of or structurally linked to democracy.
The voluntary (not violently coerced) nature of transactions is an indispensable part of capitalism. Adam Smith emphasized this voluntary aspect in the Wealth of Nations, which criticized Mercantilism.
This is like the game conservatives play where they say “considering race in solving problems is itself racist.” You can define terms however you want, but if you choose a definition that doesn’t actually match what other people are using, you’re engaged in demagoguery, not debate.
One can not try to peddle "non-voluntary" as something exclusively directly violently coerced and ignore all the in-direct aspects of coercion set up by the same system. This does not constitute a voluntary exchange.
Your definition is a good one: the “voluntary exchange” in capitalism is narrow—it refers to exchange that is not “directly violently coerced.” Most people advocating capitalism would agree that this is what they mean by “voluntary exchange.” And you can make a perfectly good argument that this notion of what’s “voluntary” is inadequate.
But in mercantilism and slavery, transactions are “directly violently coerced.” So they’re not examples of capitalism even by your own definition of what constitutes “voluntary.
Put differently, when folks criticize capitalism for having an insufficient notion of “voluntary exchange” that only focuses on “violent coercion” (and there is a huge amount of literature on that) they’re acknowledging that capitalism excludes violent coercion. But then they turn around and apply the “capitalism” label to mercantilism and slavery, which are based on violent coercion!
My point is not to broaden the definition of voluntary, but to emphasize that voluntary exchange itself has never been a crucial part of Capitalism. So both slavery and Imperialism can not be discarded from the incentive structure set up by Capitalism. Capitalism will simply exploit whatever there currently is to be exploited, without any ethics. The historical record, both past and present, is very clear on this.
> What we understand as “capitalism” (free market economies based on voluntary transactions) is incompatible with imperialism
That sounds like a No True Scotsman fallacy. "It's not voluntary? By jove, then it's not capitalism!" Is every person in a market economy that hates their job and does it solely for food, shelter, and clothing, living under not-capitalism? How "voluntary" does a transaction have to be, exactly?
Mercantilism was proto-capitalism. It had all the features - "property rights, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets." - on a smaller scale. Wikipedia mentions it as an earlier form of capitalism[1]. British merchants and industry still enjoyed the benefits of the free market - within the empire - but Indians and other subjects did not. And when Britain made a pivot to free trade in the 1840s[2], they still didn't let India participate. And even capitalist economies have trade barriers or tariffs today. Other than the focus on gold and balance of trade and payments, there isn't that much of a hard-line between capitalism and mercantilism. They're on the same spectrum.
Belgian colonization of the Congo and the rubber farm atrocities happened in the late 19th-early 20th century[3] when Belgium was pretty well capitalist, not mercantilist. Blood diamonds were/are traded in modern capitalist systems.[4] The participation of every actor in the chain of capitalism is successively less and less "voluntary". In some markets and industries, things are pretty good for everyone and even the person on the lowest rung does pretty well. In others...it's not so great.
> That sounds like a No True Scotsman fallacy. "It's not voluntary? By jove, then it's not capitalism!"
The Wikipedia article you link to contradicts your premise:
> Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.[1][2][3][4] Central characteristics of capitalism include private property and the recognition of property rights, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets
It’s one thing to complain about imperfect implementations of capitalism. For example, observing that economic duress makes some labor transactions only nominally voluntary. But voluntary exchange is a definitional aspect of capitalism. It’s the underlying assumption behind much of the economic theory of capitalism. Criticizing capitalism by pointing to mercantilism and slavery—which are based on precisely the opposite of voluntary exchange—is nothing more than a rhetorical slight of hand.
Mercantilism had "recognition of property rights, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets" too; just not for all the actors. That's why I called it "proto-capitalism".
What about when violent coercion happens under a capitalist system, like with Belgium and Congo, or blood diamonds? That makes it suddenly "not-capitalism"? You might be technically correct but it's semantic handwashing. If those atrocities due to the incentives in a capitalist system, it's entirely fair to pin them on capitalism. Otherwise it's no different than communism apologists claiming true communism has never been tried and therefore, things like the Holodomor shouldn't count against it - which is equally bad.
> What about when violent coercion happens under a capitalist system, like with Belgium and Congo, or blood diamonds? That makes it suddenly "not-capitalism"?
Are those things happening “under a capitalist system?” It seems to me like a situation where companies have to leave a capitalist country (Belgium) to take advantage of people in a country that doesn’t have a capitalist system and didn’t protect property rights and the voluntariness if exchange (the Congo). Is the Belgian Congo a manifestation of capitalism? By the same token, could you say it’s a manifestation of “parliamentary democracy?” I don’t think either makes sense, because the whole point is that capitalism/parliamentary Democracy aren’t operative in the Congo.
> You might be technically correct but it's semantic handwashing. If those atrocities due to the incentives in a capitalist system, it's entirely fair to pin them on capitalism.
“People want to steal other people’s resources and labor” is an incentive that exists in every system. It’s not unique to capitalism. Non-capitalist nations have been invading places and taking their resources for millennia.
> Otherwise it's no different than communism apologists claiming true communism has never been tried and therefore, things like the Holodomor shouldn't count against it - which is equally bad.
The Holdomor was a famine that was the result of a failure of central planning, which is a logical part of communism. Similarly, you could fairly blame say income inequality on capitalism. Or sweatshop labor, or unsafe workplaces.
But Belgian Congo is more like the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. That’s not a failure of communism just because a communist state was involved.
> “People want to steal other people’s resources and labor” is an incentive that exists in every system. It’s not unique to capitalism.
I never said it was. But you were claiming that capitalism and imperialism are "incompatible". The Belgian Congo (which is one example among many) shows that this is clearly not the case.
You can argue about that not being "true" capitalism because there wasn't voluntary exchange but that's just circular reasoning - "it wasn't capitalism because it wasn't capitalism". Capitalism in Belgium incentivized invading Congo. Offshoring the involuntary part of the exchange doesn't exonerate it. And capitalism or parliamentary democracy in Congo wouldn't have been much use without the military force to resist King Leopold's thugs.
They're all deeply interconnected. Read a book. All of those systems involve hierarchies that are more or less flexible. Capitalism has been highly productive as an economic system, but it still is deeply undemocratic and could safely be called tyrannical as it has few if any democratic features below the level of the wealthy shareholders.
EDIT: In the case of many of our tech giant friends, the trend in the mid-2000s to late 2010s was to create different tiers of stock so that the founders would have near absolute authority over the company. This is like a private monarchy and is even more authoritarian than the previous generation of companies.
EDIT2: The funny thing is, because we distrusted the financial system so thoroughly in the early 2000s, cutting out the influence of institutional finance was seen as liberating while in actuality we were merely constructing an even more hierarchical and conservative system.
Information and perspectives that challenge your view on the world aren’t fiction. They force you to reckon with the blindspots created by your experience in the world.
Booking all four on the same day was a genius move by some lobbyist. It dilutes the unique issues that each tech giant presents, and makes scrutiny look like sour grapes.
I watched Barr’s hearing. It was mostly elected officials ranting and sermonizing. Barr came out of that looking like the only sane person in the room, and I say this as... not a Trump fan.
It doesn’t take much to outmatch the House or the Senate these days. I expect this to be nothing but a bunch of virtue signaling. Nothing will come of it which is a real shame.
I doubt it. This is his job, and it seems like something he'd want full oversight and control of. This isn't a press release about another warehouse opening
No, this is the kind of thing that CEOs take for themselves and cancel meetings that teams have spent 3 months preparing for. Of course he will have asked each team to deliver him draft language but I'm sure the final language is his.
If you have read Bezos' shareholder letters, you will recognize his writing style in this piece. I'm sure there is some text authorship software that you could use to verify this as well. I'll give that lawyers probably supplied the statistics used here; they are very misleading at times.
Am I the only one who thinks that Bezos gives the same generic statements everywhere. I have heard all of these before in an interview with David Rubinstein and other interviews before that.
You know it's 2020 when a judiciary committee address begins with a billionaire attempting to cloak himself in a victim narrative.
I can't wait for the world to go back to normal, so it once again becomes shameful to show any weakness and immorality, so we can deal with people's actions rather than their position on the victimhood totem pole.
I hate to say it friend but 2016 was no black swan. This is the new normal. The tech landscape we built has completely destroyed a sense of shared narrative, at least in the US. With rhetoric being more effective for building political capital than sane policy, there is no one to call out the smarm.
Lays on the schmaltz pretty thick in the beginning. In fact I couldn't even get past all the schmaltz. Then I remembered he has warehouses where underpaid workers pass out from exhaustion and I stopped reading.
> Amazon employees make a minimum of $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum wage (which we have urged Congress to increase). We’ve challenged other large retailers to match our $15 minimum wage. Target did so recently, and just last week so did Best Buy. We welcome them, and they remain the only ones to have done so. We do not skimp on benefits, either. Our full-time hourly employees receive the same benefits as our salaried headquarters employees, including comprehensive health insurance starting on the first day of employment, a 401(k) retirement plan, and parental leave, including 20 weeks of paid maternity leave. I encourage you to benchmark our pay and benefits against any of our retail competitors.
They might still be ‘underpaid’, but maybe they’re less underpaid than other similar businesses? Could it be true to say that all entry-level jobs suck, but maybe working for Amazon sucks slightly less than some others?
"Representatives, Amazon is a company focused on innovation, efficiency, and getting the best and most out of people, and giving the best and most to people, wherever it can.
Tech allows us to tap into economies of scale, create new products and give consumers choices never seen before, squeeze out waste in ways that were not possible up to now, and create net benefit for people in this country. Each one of you can probably personally think of how Amazon technology has improved the lives of yourselves and people you know.
We seek to do this as far as the law allows us to do, and other companies do that as well. We operate within the rules placed on us by the legislatures of this country and its states.
As you know, sometimes even under fair laws, some people will lose out compared to others. Innovation comes with risk and change -- that's an unavoidable consequence of progress. And technology has been doing this for hundreds of years. But that's what laws are meant to set the boundaries of, based on people like you determining how best to create those rules.
If this body is concerned with what we are doing within the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people. And Amazon will follow those laws.
We want that clarity, and want to follow our responsibilities under the law. It's your responsibility to set out those laws. Amazon welcomes performing our responsibilities to American consumers, and we invite you to do the same to the people you are responsible to."