
A ‘Grass-Roots’ Campaign to Take Down Amazon Is Funded By Its Biggest Rivals - bin0
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-grassroots-campaign-to-take-down-amazon-is-funded-by-amazons-biggest-rivals-11568989838?mod=rsswn
======
logicprog
Okay so wait, we have corporations trying to turn the public against a
competitor for being "too successful," in the hopes that it will let them use
the apparatus of government to hobble said competitor in any way without
repercussions, and no one is upset about this? Instead, we just go along with
this fake-grassroots idea of "oh yeah Amazon is an evil empire"? This doesn't
process for me.

I mean seriously, Amazon is so superior to the competition that they're left
trying to use institutionalized violence to stop them; that can only make
things worse on the economics side. Why are we forgetting that?

And before you talk about how Amazon acts monopolistically by promoting their
own or favorite products, it's _their_ platform, they have a right to do that
and they're not forcing sellers to use them. The sellers, if they really think
they have a better chance elsewhere, can leave. And Amazon doesn't owe them
the best possible service. It might make it worse for users, but again no one
is forcing you to use Amazon. Use Walmart all you want!

~~~
kerkeslager
> Okay so wait, we have corporations trying to turn the public against a
> competitor for being "too successful," in the hopes that it will let them
> use the apparatus of government to hobble said competitor in any way without
> repercussions, and no one is upset about this? Instead, we just go along
> with this fake-grassroots idea of "oh yeah Amazon is an evil empire"? This
> doesn't process for me.

Amazon can be an evil empire, AND their opposition can also be evil
corporations that do evil things like organize fake grassroots campaigns.
These are not mutually exclusive ideas.

> Amazon is so superior to the competition that they're left trying to use
> institutionalized violence to stop them

"Violence" is a word with a meaning, and it isn't happening here. No one has
been so much as bruised. If you have to resort to this sort of sophistry to
make your point, your point is probably not correct.

Amazon isn't winning because they're superior to the competition. Lots of
online sellers manage to not sell counterfeit goods, have better prices, and
give more of the profit to the people actually producing products. Amazon is
winning because of first-to-market advantages, pre-existing infrastructure,
and monopolistic practices.

> And before you talk about how Amazon acts monopolistically by promoting
> their own or favorite products, it's their platform, they have a right to do
> that and they're not forcing sellers to use them. The sellers, if they
> really think they have a better chance elsewhere, can leave. It might make
> it worse for users, but again no one is forcing you to use Amazon. Use
> Walmart all you want!

It's clear that you do not understand the concept of a monopoly.

~~~
logicprog
In addition to my other comment, I wanted to point out that you make it seem
as though Amazon being the first to market (which they weren't) would be
somehow something that wasn't due to their merit. If they had actually been
first to market, that would have been because they were good at what they did,
and the benefits that came with that (if they were significant at all), would
have been warranted.

You also make it seem like all the infrastructure that they use very
efficiently to their advantage is something that they just found in the woods
one day. They built all that, and are using the advantages gained from that,
which are, again, earned and a part of Amazon's merit.

And further, I don't think explaining away a corporation's dominance by using
monopolistic practices is very convincing when they rose to power so recently:
how did Amazon get so big in the first place? Also, most of the monopolistic
practices, of the kind that would allow a company to maintain dominance _in
spite_ of merit, are things Amazon is not doing. It's monopolistic practices
are limited to it's own platform.

~~~
kerkeslager
How does it benefit society (now) that Amazon was first to sell stuff online
at scale?

How does it benefit society that non-Amazon sellers have to either use their
competitor's infrastructure to compete with them on sales, or build their own
infrastructure while attempting to grow on an unknown platform? Amazon's
infrastructure may be meritable, but leveraging it to compete with their own
customers is not.

> And further, I don't think explaining away a corporation's dominance by
> using monopolistic practices is very convincing when they rose to power so
> recently: how did Amazon get so big in the first place?

So you think that 25-year-old companies can't be monopolies?

> Also, most of the monopolistic practices, of the kind that would allow a
> company to maintain dominance in spite of merit, are things Amazon is not
> doing.

Let's I produce and market a product, i.e. the Iron Gym pull up bar that goes
in your door frame. I start selling it on Amazon. Amazon then leverages their
platform to identify successful products, identifies my Iron Gym pull up bars
are successful, creates an Amazon Basics pull up bar that's identical, and
uses their platform to boost their pull up bar over mine. So I take all the
initiative, do all the work, and take all the risk, and once I show that I
have merit, Amazon swoops in and takes all the rewards. How is that not
maintaining dominance in spite of merit?

This is just one case. There are many.

> It's monopolistic practices are limited to it's own platform.

And what a limitation that is, being limited to the largest online sales
platform in the world!

~~~
logicprog
> How does it benefit society

In general I don't give a rat's ass about the greater good. I'm far more
concerned with what's earned and what's right, since I don't have a crystal
ball and I'm not a Culture Mind. But for the sake of civil argument and all
that, let's talk about the greater good...

> (now) that Amazon was first to sell stuff online at scale?

You mean letting people reap the rewards of being first, if they can get them,
doesn't motivate them to innovate further? Doesn't motivate others to
innovate? Doesn't indicate a stable market and encourage investment?

> So you think that 25-year-old companies can't be monopolies?

That's not my point at all! I'm also hard pressed to imagine how you thought
it was, but I'll try to be more clear. As I understood it, you were saying
that essentially the _only_ reason Amazon is as powerful as it is now is
because it acted monopolistically. But to act in such a way, you already have
to be in a position of wealth and power, to throw your weight around like
that. So my question is, how did Amazon get that powerful originally, so that
it could become monopolistic (assuming that it is, now)? My answer is, because
it was really good at what it did.

> Let's I produce and market a product, i.e. the Iron Gym pull up bar that
> goes in your door frame. I start selling it on Amazon. Amazon then leverages
> their platform to identify successful products, identifies my Iron Gym pull
> up bars are successful, creates an Amazon Basics pull up bar that's
> identical, and uses their platform to boost their pull up bar over mine. So
> I take all the initiative, do all the work, and take all the risk, and once
> I show that I have merit, Amazon swoops in and takes all the rewards.

Now I'm confused. First, you talk about the greater good and dismiss my
comments by saying _that 's what really matters_. Now, all of the sudden, when
it comes to companies that aren't Amazon, it's about merit and what you've
earned again? How does it serve the good of society (now) for Iron Gym to reap
the benefits of being first, to paraphrase a man I met once?

And then, you talk about how they should get the benefits of being first to
market--- why should they, but not Amazon? Because Amazon is too successful
now?

> How is that not maintaining dominance in spite of merit?

Because the only reason someone would choose Amazon's product instead of
theirs is because it's better. Either A) it's cheaper, B) it gets faster
shipping, C) it's easier to find, or D) some combination of the three. It's
_better_.

> And what a limitation that is, being limited to the largest online sales
> platform in the world!

Ha ha. But seriously, my point is that they aren't using the government to
crush competitors, or anything of the sort. They are influencing _their own
product, which they maintain and own._

~~~
kerkeslager
> In general I don't give a rat's ass about the greater good.

Well, there ya go.

~~~
logicprog
> Well, there ya go.

Really? That's it? You're not going to actually engage with what I have to
say? Not going to defend your mutually contradictory statements? I'm not sure,
but the fact that you're left doing another ad homenim and appeal to emotion
leaves me thinking that I might have won this argument...

~~~
kerkeslager
> You're not going to actually engage with what I have to say?

There are well-intentioned people with opinions similar to yours, and I'm
happy to engage with those people, because we want the same things--our
disagreement is about how to get those things.

But you aren't well-intentioned. You said, "In general I don't give a rat's
ass about the greater good." There isn't any logic that's going to make you
care about something you don't care about. You're beyond reasoning with. So
no, I'm not going to engage what you've said.

> I'm not sure, but the fact that you're left doing another ad homenim and
> appeal to emotion leaves me thinking that I might have won this argument...

If quoting you makes you look so bad that you consider quoting you to be an ad
hominem attack, maybe say better things?

------
Porthos9K
I'm surprised more cyberpunk authors didn't anticipate that wars between
corporations wouldn't be fought using hackers or "street samurai", but with
teams of propagandists competing to do a better job of bullshitting the
general public.

Yes, I'm calling marketers and advertisers propagandists. As far as I'm
concerned, marketing and advertising are nothing but private-sector psyops.

~~~
reilly3000
As a recovering marketer I take no offense to that statement. I started my
exit from the field when I was working with a PR firm that was running a
"behavior modification" campaign. Psyops presumably has regulations and
oversight; marketing has nothing of the sort. Want to convince a billion
people to drink an addictive chemical known to cause colon cancer? Classic.

~~~
Liquix
Was that a hypothetical..? If not, are you at liberty to share which chemical?

~~~
reilly3000
I was referring to Coca-cola, consistently among the top advertisers in the
world. Often things that are so large and commonplace, its difficult for us to
see them as anything but 'normal'.

~~~
mabbo
I thought to myself "that's a bit much, like advertising could trick me into
drinking a dangerous beverage" then read your follow-up comment and realized
_I 'm holding a coke in my other hand_.

~~~
Porthos9K
Insidious, isn't it? It's moments like this that I wish to all the devils ever
worshiped by man that the left had jumped on the "red pill" metaphor from _The
Matrix_ instead of leaving it for misogynists and reactionaries to
appropriate.

Because until the Wachowski sisters brought in the "Neo is the One" plotline
with the attendant messianic tropes, the relationship between Morpheus and
Thomas Anderson/Neo was one of a union organizer showing a worker blinded by
false consciousness exactly how he allowed himself to be conned by his bosses.

------
wongarsu
"Campaign against Amazon funded by those that are against Amazon" might be
burying the lede.

Far more interesting imho:

>The grass-roots support cited by the group was also not what it appeared to
be. The labor union says it was listed as a member of the group without
permission and says a document purporting to show that it gave permission has
a forged signature. The Boston professor says the group, with his permission,
ghost-wrote an op-ed for him about Amazon but that he didn’t know he would be
named as a member. The California businessman was dead for months before his
name was removed from the group’s website this year.

~~~
haroldp
And if you make it all the way to the bottom of the article, there's this gem:

> Service Employees International ... was named as a member [of the fake grass
> roots org] without permission...Marathon [PR firm for the fake grass roots
> org] emailed to the Journal a membership agreement that the agency said had
> been signed by Gilda Valdez, the chief of staff for the union local, dated
> July 23, 2018. But Ms. Valdez said that the signature on the documents
> provided by Marathon was not hers.

And the article shows Ms. Valdez' real signature and the one on the document
for comparison, and one is clearly a clumsy copy of the other. IANAL, but
isn't this fraud?

------
benologist
I think the takeaway is companies should compete on ethics but be transparent
about it. If corporations openly call out each other's malignant actions
that's a huge win for us all in holding them to a higher standard.

I don't believe the "poor Amazon" angle for a moment though. A lot of the
"campaign" against Amazon takes place in EU courtrooms where no rival company
is focusing our attention on their transgressions. A lot of stuff Amazon
chooses to do is morally unjust and should be illegal - they _choose_ to
include bathroom break time with productivity calculations that determines who
gets fired. Bezoz just clawed back 1900 workers' healthcare to
indistinguishably enrich himself.

France fined them for abusing vendors -

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/04/france-fines-
ama...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/04/france-fines-
amazon-4-million-imposing-abusive-conditions-vendors/)

EU is investigating them to see if they abuse vendors with the vendors' own
sales data -

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/eu-probing-amazons-use-of-
da...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/eu-probing-amazons-use-of-data-on-
third-party-merchants.html)

Reversing corrupt tax deals -

[https://www.newsmax.com/Finance/StreetTalk/amazon-apple-
tax-...](https://www.newsmax.com/Finance/StreetTalk/amazon-apple-tax-
eu/2017/10/04/id/817521/)

~~~
WillPostForFood
_A lot of the "campaign" against Amazon takes place in EU courtrooms where no
rival company is focusing our attention on their transgressions._

It seems unlikely that competitors have no influence on what the EU chooses to
pursue in courts.

~~~
flixic
Being from EU with decent contact to EU parliament... EU officials really
don’t need much encouragement. The passion to regulate everything burns
deeply.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Like with law enforcement, it is a target rich environment. There are many
more possible cases to litigate than time or personnel to do it. So cases get
chosen for a variety of reasons. Public good, self promotion, lobbying by
competitors, etc...

~~~
benologist
The most likely way it happened was a multitude of complaints received in
workers-rights or competition institutions because that's a formal way to
complain about companies doing unfair stuff, and when Amazon abuses their
workforce or vendors it affects a LOT of people with the right to turn to
these institutions. These institutions will default to having paperwork
supporting their process and decisions as they routinely need to use the legal
system to solve problems. I think it is very unlikely a competitor could
orchestrate these consequences for Amazon's actions.

------
lemm
Grassroots organizing is dead. Nowadays you have a bunch of groups funded by
ridiculously wealthy foundations and donors who are chasing the ghost of
grassroots organizing which has been dead for years.

I work for a small nonprofit which claims to run grassroots advocacy
campaigns. We are in the environmental sector, but I'm sure it is similar in
other areas. A solid 70% of our funding comes from large foundations. We pick
an issue, get people fired up on social media about it, then call it
grassroots just because a bunch of people supported it.

------
SmirkingRevenge
This is why I tend to try to keep a healthy skepticism about a great deal of
the negative press on Amazon's warehouse working conditions, pushes to
unionize, etc. So much of it lacks real context needed to actually inform, and
just looks like click-bait or campaigns to drive negative sentiment, or to
inhibit their ability to perform.

And really, that should I guess be the default way one consume's news in
general, no matter what its about. (Even the parent article!)

~~~
hrktb
While skeptism is always healthy, a lot of the flack Amazon is getting seems
pretty legit.

Competitors might be piling in it and pushing it under the spotlight、even
exaggerate parts of it, but of lot of Amazon’s operations is still provably
shitty.

For instance what part of the warehouse working condition do you think is
completely fabricated ?

~~~
prepend
The part where somehow that’s abnormal for warehouse workers.

Warehouse work is hard and low paid. Working for Amazon is working for one of
the best warehouse jobs but that doesn’t make it easy work. I’ve seen article
about long days and injuries and such and they never bring up industry hours
or wages or injury rates. So I suspect they are negative PR.

So I don’t think they are fabricated, but they are misleading.

~~~
guerrilla
That it is not abnormal doesn't make it okay. Just because something is normal
doesn't mean something should be normal. Further, people don't think it should
be this way there and how it is elsewhere has no bearing on that fact. This is
whataboutism.

~~~
SmirkingRevenge
The point is, if you don't have the context, you are operating from a position
of ignorance. What if conditions do suck and are terribly miserable at
Amazon's warehouses? But... what if, despite that, the conditions are actually
better than typical warehouse jobs? In that case, by singling out Amazon, you
are actually punishing them for having better warehouse conditions than
anyone, and helping their competitors where the workers are worse off.

~~~
guerrilla
No context is needed to want conditions to change: conditions at amazon aren't
the way people want them to be, regardless of any context.

~~~
prepend
Context is absolutely needed. How can I possibly want a particular condition
at Amazon if I don’t understand it. For example, is $18 too low? Is 8-10 hour
manual labor days bad? I can’t say I’m against the working conditions unless I
know what typical working conditions are. And if Amazon is the best of all
possible conditions for unskilled warehouse work then me calling for change at
Amazon is way less effective than for some other place where my attention will
have more impact.

This idea of “any change is good” is dangerous because it ignores opportunity
cost. An example is that it can actually be bad to raise awareness for a rare
disease if it takes away donations from a common disease. It can cost lives
and do harm because dollars become less effective.

Focusing on the wrong thing can be worse than apathy and it seems really weird
that people can form opinions without data and facts. Especially in a world
where PR bullshit can form such emotional reactions.

~~~
guerrilla
One can understand whether a group of people's needs are met or not without
further context, pretty trivial.

~~~
prepend
How is understanding someone’s needs trivial? There are so many factors that
determine need. Many that I would never reveal to a stranger. Needs vary
substantially just based on demographics. A 60 year old needs more than an 18
year old. A single parent with two kids needs less than two parents with two
kids. A family of 8 needs more than a family of 3. A short person needs fewer
calories than a tall person. Etc etc.

But I may be rare in my inability to understand people’s needs without any
data. I don’t know much about warehouse workers. I need much more information
than an astroturf ad on Instagram/new outlet tells me.

~~~
guerrilla
They've communicated their needs. Look there for more information.

~~~
prepend
Right, that’s kind of the point of the thread. That is one side and not based
on facts. It’s important to consider those communications with reality to
assess what change should be made.

Only considering my needs as I say them without any further context will
likely lead to inefficient decisions.

------
prepend
Does Oracle really think they are competing with Amazon over a $10B government
contract? That’s like Peugeot thinking they are competing with Volvo for a
shipping fleet or something.

~~~
arkitaip
Yes they are absolutely delusional when it comes to their competitiveness.

------
mudil
Most of the grassroot campaigns, if not all, are organized and financed by
individuals and companies for their benefit or for political benefit. In the
olden days, loyalty would organize a distant revolt so the king would be
forced to march to a distant land. In the meantime, benefits will accumulate,
either by making king poorer, distracting him, or by coup d'etat. Same thing
here. I don't believe for a moment that any of the grassroot campaigns, either
political or business, are spontaneous nowadays. Maybe 0.001% are, but that's
it.

~~~
wolco
Most are spontaneous started out with ideals and outrage but those die unless
they meet money..

So the campaigns are real but the scale is faked.

------
rdtwo
Idk why they don’t just slam them on lead paint and fake products. You could
make a fucking Super Bowl level ad and do serious damage to amazon on real
issues.

~~~
bin0
Because they would have to spend years in court litigating whether or not that
was slander. Consumers have also been shown to respond better to positive
causes than negative ones, and a non-profit funded by these guys is better
equipped to spin it as a positive "working for a better future" type thing
than them all running "Amazon bad" ads.

~~~
rdtwo
Just think of the press that an ad slamming amazon for that stuff would get.
Plus you can avoid slander by either doing a real test or just by not naming
amazon and implying it’s them.

------
rhinoceraptor
Bezos vs Ellison, now that is a good supervillain showdown.

------
koboll
It's a safe bet that any organization with a name like "Free and Fair Markets
Initiative" is corporate astroturfing.

------
kiallmacinnes
I whole heartedly tried to read this. I couldn't. The constant updates of the
stock symbol numbers, grabbing my attention every time, and causing reflows
most of the time made it impossible.

------
opportune
It’s funny because the whole “Amazon ambassador” thing is just Amazon doing
the same thing in reverse.

What I hate most about the 21st century is how almost nothing feels genuine
anymore. The news, any sort of campaign, even “science” in a lot of cases are
just people using money to tell us what to think. Maybe it’s been like this
for decades and we’re just now waking up to it, but regardless it just makes
it all feel hollow

~~~
high_5
That's what postmodern era is. End of belief. IMO that's the fruit of
scepticism as a way of life which has become well entrenched in the modern,
well educated societies. As if we're in another stage of consequences of
eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (as a society).

~~~
mikelyons
The big problem is that it's not true skepticism, it's false skepticism:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4)

~~~
dredmorbius
Actualised really needs to distill its message to 10-20 minutes max.

I see 1h 16m and close tab.

I've tried watching in the past: tediously repetitious.

~~~
mikelyons
This attitude that dumbed-down, 10 second sound-bytes can suffice to examine
and grok the nuance and existential dimensionality of the deep topics that he
covers is what has lead to such pervading pollution of the information
ecology. I would posit to you that you don't have time for shorter videos on
these topics, and if you believe that, you will waste your life at a very low-
level of communication and awareness around these topics in your attempts at a
shortcut to wisdom. Does that sound wise? If it seems repetitious I would see
if you can find the subtle differences between what occurs to you as mere
repetition.

Or am I just witnessing the damage to attention-span of modern living?

There's lots wrong with this attitude IMHO, even though I am guilty of it in
many ways I think that you should be able to see the quality of the messages
and place them higher than a lot of other information sources that are
blasting at you.

~~~
dredmorbius
I watch and listen to plenty of good long-form audio/video.

This ain't it.

10 minutes is 60x 10 seconds.

And if you can't get the meat of your argument out in a few minutes, there's
something wrong with it.

(And that's windbag-me saying this.)

You're also going a bit overboard with the Actualized videos of late. Might
want to give it a break.

------
deogeo
Enemy of my enemy...

~~~
dredmorbius
... is probably still your enemy, but may be useful.

------
ptah
they are using amazon's own tactics:
[https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/8/20726863/amazon-pays-
war...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/8/20726863/amazon-pays-warehouse-
employees-twitter-fc-ambassadors-quillette)

~~~
jacknews
exactly, a den of thieves:

[https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-21/amazon-hires-
army-...](https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-21/amazon-hires-army-
lobbyists-political-spending-outpaces-walmart-exxonmobil)

------
Grimm1
Quelle suprise!

------
_verandaguy
I'm skeptical of the substance of this article because WSJ and Amazon share an
owner.

I typically like the WSJ's reporting, but this honestly feels like a topic
they should be recusing themselves from.

~~~
shartshooter
Do you mean WaPo? Bezos owns the Washington Post but WSJ is owned by Murdoch
via NewsCorp[1] unless I’m mistaken.

[1] - [https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/112615/wall-
street-...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/112615/wall-street-
journal-considered-be-conservative-publisher.asp)

------
pm24601
Poor, Poor Amazon. Amazon is run by the richest person in the entire world who
will come to the oligarch's aid?

Amazon paid NO income taxes last year. I am against Amazon for that reason
alone.

~~~
cameronbrown
Don't be angry at Amazon (and the others) - campaign to change the law.

Fixating on massive corporations not paying tax is actually making the problem
worse, because it takes attention away from the only thing that can fix the
problem which is _changing the law_. Anything less is just asking companies to
hurt themselves for no reason.

Just like how most people would pay lower taxes if it was legal, the same goes
for companies. That's not saying I don't completely agree they need to pay
their fair share - I do!

~~~
deogeo
Absolutely the campaign should be to change the law, but if you're looking to
also assign blame, massive corporations had a hand in writing the tax code.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
Those poor politicians, we can't expect them to read laws before voting on
them. They must of gotten confused because they have so many checks to cash
and speaking gigs to preform.

~~~
organsnyder
The way the system is set up, most politicians don't think they have an
alternative. Unless you're a standout star in a high-profile race, your
election prospects are inexorably linked with your ability to fundraise (as
well as your party affiliation, if you survive the primary). If you're not
cashing checks, your opponents will.

It's the same argument you hear from businesses and affluent individuals: "If
I don't [pay my employees as little as possible | take advantage of every tax
loophole I can find | spend thousands of dollars lobbying congress | pollute
the environment], my competitors will."

Of course, those excuses ring hollow when those same individuals aren't in
favor of changing a broken system. Any politician that complains about
fundraising but is not in favor of campaign finance reform is a hypocrite,
IMHO.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
>The way the system is set up, most politicians don't think they have an
alternative

Who's in charge of setting up the system again?

