The main story today is about a poor
Amazon worker in Ohio who dropped dead of a heart attack and wasn't
found for 20 minutes. During that time he could probably been saved.
Bezos issued a statement that he was found quickly and taken to the
hospital. The surveillance tape disputes that statement. Someone
watched those cameras so the question I ask is, did they think the
employee was taking a nap on the floor? Does this happen so regularly
they ignore it? Are they really working their employees to death for
minimum wage? Keep in mind around a half dozen employees have died
on the job at Amazon this year.
The real question is what to do about
behemoth companies that don't give a damn about their employees and
are perfectly willing to work them death so the owners can put a few
more dollars in a bloated pocket. The answer is not as simple as you
think and legislation and taxation is not going to solve the problem.
You see, they all think they are self
made men that didn't need anyone but themselves, a garage and the
willingness to work 24 hours without sleep and not mentioned, a
degree in computer science. I would really love to kick them in the
Twinkies because that is not how it happened. How it happened is the
key to fixing the problem once and for all, so pay attention.
Some dude got the brilliant idea that
if people loved auctions and paid exorbitant prices for junk they
didn't need in a room for of other idiots trying win a prize they
were paying for that they would love it on the internet and Ebay was
born. Around the same time someone noticed college students were
getting ripped off buying text books and not every professor in every
school was updating the textbook every year so if the students at
universities could buy from students at other universities, he had a
winner. Half was born.
Let me point out that the difference
between a merchant starting this and the people who did was that the
people who started these companies were programmers creating a one of
a kind online platform not some guy moving into a building with some
shelves and cash register. Ebay was the place to sell the crap in
your garage and half quickly became an online platform for small
bookstores because you did not pay to list books and you only paid a
commission when the book sold. Your shipping was a fixed price. Ebay
noticed some people liked Half and they expanded their platform to
small stores for merchants to list new products without the auction
process. It was a success and they tried to entice the Half merchants
who noticed right off that Ebay was way more expensive. Ebay acquired
Half. If you can't beat them, buy them. Ebay acquired PayPal. Ebay
soon noticed what all computer platforms notice, you can't have dead
wood because space is money and they set about to get rid of the
small merchants and the Half platform. As is the customary in the
industry, you make it hard for the small merchants to sell on your
platform and they start going out of business. Since the American
people are dumbed down, particularly in the areas that have to buy
online they didn't notice that a book selling for 2.00 with 2.33
shipping and handling was actually cheaper than the same book selling
for 1.00 with 5.00 shipping and handling. Half merchants started
migrating to Ebay and losing money because now they not only had to
pay a commission when they sold but a listing fee and store front
fee. Ebay in the mean time was moving to large merchants and giving
them all sorts of breaks while bankrupting the small merchants and
legislating them off the platform.
The big publishers had gone into
selling directly to the customers at a discount and they were putting
the small bookstores out of business. Now they were finding it was
more trouble than it was worth and Ebay was there with waiting
compatibility to take their inventory into their waiting gigabytes.
Ebay began to close Half down. Most small merchants had already had
the Ebay treatment and were looking for another platform.
This is the point at which if you
believe him, an oblivious Bezos started Amazon in his garage offering
lower rates to liquidate the big publishers inventories of left over
books which had been created by the giant book chains overbuying and
then taking advantage of the publishers' return policies. When the
publishers put the small book stores out of business they killed the
stores that bought the overruns and returns from jobbers. All of this
blew up at once and Jeff just happened to be sitting in his garage
with an online platform at the right time to scoop them up. It wasn't
hard work and foresight it was simply luck. Etsy did the same thing
with the artisans Ebay was putting out of business. Now Bezos is
trying to put Etsy out of business with his new artisan division
offering better visibility, at a higher price.
It wasn't foresight, luck and hard work
as much as being able to do something you and I, as merchants,
can't; write a program for an online platform. It was filling a niche
that be it on the Internet or in the neighborhood exists; creating a
space for small merchants to sell their products be it a bazaar or
flea market. Most neighborhood governments limit garage sales to one
or two a year.
As each of these behemoths rises to
suck the wealth from you and I, they carefully close the door to the
people under them by paying less and less and demanding more work or
money upfront for their products and services.
Bezos had a garage. How many 20 year
olds have a garage or are most of them living in their parents
garage? As these greedy dragons increase prices and decrease wages
they make it impossible for anyone else to do what they did.
So instead of making it impossible for
someone to start a business without a 60,000.00 investment (it is
probably 100,000.00 plus now because that figure was over 30 years
ago), we need small enterprise flea market zones that require the
investment of time more than money from people. That is how we can
keep the wealth shifted to the middle class and the poor can lift
themselves out of poverty. That is the only solution to automation
and constant job loss whether it be in the neighborhoods or online.
Give the small guy a place to showcase their work and a way to sell
it.
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