Amazon Begins Moving Warehouses Into Malls It Helped Put Out of Business (inc.com) 220
"It's easy to think of Amazon executives going home every night and bathing in their cynicism," writes Inc. columnist Chris Matyszczyk:
It's often contended that Amazon has put an enormous amount of pressure on shopping malls. So much so that many of those malls are shutting their doors. Yet, as the Wall Street Journal reports, Amazon is now moving into precisely those derelict malls. Why? To use the space for its vast and, some might say heartless, fulfillment centers...
It's the perfect way to ramp up Amazon's promise to make one-day delivery the norm. The malls were specifically built to give access to large urban swathes. To make that even easier, they were built with good access to highways. Amazon's avowed intention to offer free one-day delivery for Prime members involves creating the reverse flow. Where hordes once flowed toward the malls, now convoys of vans carrying packages will flow from the malls to the malls' former customers... Meanwhile, we sit back, mourn the death of malls and can't wait to get our new underwear delivered just that little bit more quickly.
The article concludes that Amazon's move "would delight the most Machiavellian of cynics with its sheer beautiful gall."
It's the perfect way to ramp up Amazon's promise to make one-day delivery the norm. The malls were specifically built to give access to large urban swathes. To make that even easier, they were built with good access to highways. Amazon's avowed intention to offer free one-day delivery for Prime members involves creating the reverse flow. Where hordes once flowed toward the malls, now convoys of vans carrying packages will flow from the malls to the malls' former customers... Meanwhile, we sit back, mourn the death of malls and can't wait to get our new underwear delivered just that little bit more quickly.
The article concludes that Amazon's move "would delight the most Machiavellian of cynics with its sheer beautiful gall."
Recycling (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
If the fulfillment center is heartless, so was the mall.
Not only are they recycling the buildings, they're even recycling the heartlessness!
There is a lot of things I dislike about Amazon, but "they're bad for malls" isn't one of them.
Mail order and malls are equally bad for independent stores, which are the thing of value that is being lost.
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So what? (Score:2)
You won't get me shedding a tear for shopping malls, full of over priced, high margin products.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
You won't get me shedding a tear for shopping malls, full of over priced, high margin products.
And full of entry level jobs, upward mobility to better jobs, etc.
And full of employees that you could talk to to get advice and info about your purchase.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
And full of employees that you could talk to to get advice and info about your purchase.
Literally WUT?
Most mall employees are clueless as to whatever the fuck they sell, with very limited exceptions.
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And full of employees that you could talk to to get advice and info about your purchase.
Literally WUT? Most mall employees are clueless as to whatever the fuck they sell, with very limited exceptions.
New hires, but someone who has been there for a little while was often useful. And there was usually such a more experienced person on the floor. Sorry grew up in the days where you could ask the dork with a tie in the radio shack a question about a TRS-80 and they could usually answer.
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News flash, the TRS-80, Radio Shack, and knowledgeable mall shop employees are things of the distant past.
The false claims I responded to included the past. There are also examples in recent times. I went to a mall department store that sold a brand of watch that I had, I needed a new battery. The clerk said they don't do it on site and have to send it out. She asked if I snorkeled or scuba dived with the watch. After I responded yes she said that there are two processes, one more expensive that maintains the 100M water resistance of the watch, the less expensive that does not. She made sure I got the right one
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
And full of entry level jobs, upward mobility to better jobs, etc.
Upward mobility to what? Store manager? Pfft! Another shit job with no benefits or health insurance.
Now, if you implying that one could start there and be CEO one day - never happen. Seriously, a 45 year old CEO started off as a minimum wage clerk in a retail store?
Here's how it works: they recruit these people from Ivy League schools - sorry State grads, you're stuck in the bottom rungs of white collar cubicle Hell.
Those Ivy grads are then placed in "fast track" programs - or whatever - and then at 24 they are in management. We peons MAY get there when we are 40 years old.
Then they move up - just because they were able to get an Ivy league education: which is NO better than state.
Now, do you understand why people of means pay $500K+ to get their kid into good schools?
This idea that we're a meritocracy is just a myth. A con to get us lower class people to devote our resources and go into debt (to billionaires). Sure, we can get some OK Middle class six figure job (Six figures is needed to live a truly middle class life of supporting a family of four, a house, a car, HEALTH insurance, DENTAL, VISION, and other things that the poor DO NOT have.).
The median income in the USA is about $60K. NOT Middle class.
And all it takes is your job being sent overseas to be screwed. "If you don't have a job, then you're no good!": unemployed, old, minorities, name it....
Labor laws? EEO? ADA? Ahahahahhahaha - "You just don't have the skills! YOU PROVE that I'm breaking laws!" (Enjoy the legal expenses...and good luck getting compensated for them IF you win! Thanks Republicans!!)
So, suck it peasants! Oh, several thousand more engineers are going to be laid off at the end of the Summer - for some BS reason. Enjoy!
And I'm shutting upnow.
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Sorry. The USA is one of the places where upward mobility based upon talent happens. I realize the liberal arts professor at the liberal art college where you paid $50K per year told you differently but they are full of shit.
Well America is slightly better then the UK and better then most third world countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Same with social mobility, the leading factor where you end up is where your parents are, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And of course, with the higher income inequality, even those who do move up, don't move very far now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The good news is, if born rich, you have less chance then ever of becoming poor, so that part of economic mobility is unlikely in tod
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Sorry. The USA is one of the places where upward mobility based upon talent happens. I realize the liberal arts professor at the liberal art college where you paid $50K per year told you differently but they are full of shit.
Well America is slightly better then the UK and better then most third world countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Same with social mobility, the leading factor where you end up is where your parents are, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] And of course, with the higher income inequality, even those who do move up, don't move very far now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] The good news is, if born rich, you have less chance then ever of becoming poor, so that part of economic mobility is unlikely in today's America.
Work on your reading comprehension, note "based upon talent" in "upward mobility based upon talent". Recent generations have more of an entitlement attitude than a work hard attitude. Entitlement only works if you are super rich, not middle class. Previous generations took school more seriously, worked harder, etc. Better upward mobility stats as a result. To be clear there are plenty of hard workers today, they were just more common in the past. Parents being a leading factor, income inequality, etc are t
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Even talented people have a harder time in the States relative to other western countries. Lots of places with shitty schools, expensive post secondary education where you're competing with the lying rich and so on.
This isn't too say that with talent, and luck, you can't move up, it's just harder, especially if starting from a low point
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Even talented people have a harder time in the States relative to other western countries. Lots of places with shitty schools, expensive post secondary education where you're competing with the lying rich and so on. This isn't too say that with talent, and luck, you can't move up, it's just harder, especially if starting from a low point
That's your opinion, which is not backed up by your data. Your data does not consider factors such as working hard, getting out what you put in. Contrary to the claims of many, the USA does have very inexpensive, nearly free, post secondary education. Our community colleges. Community colleges often have two roles. 1. Inexpensive and highly transferable 4 year university classes. 2. Vocational training. Both are underused, especially (2), which gets to a generational behavioral difference that is underminin
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And full of entry level jobs, upward mobility to better jobs, etc.
And full of employees that you could talk to to get advice and info about your purchase.
Yeah. The alternative of independent shops that provide the same service while paying their staff more is so horrible. Yay malls full of the same trash companies that pay the bare minimum wage and invest any additional capital in ensuring the minimum wage stays low. Such fantastic mobility. Yay malls.
Also advice and info about your purchase? May I interest you in a bridge? It's not just any bridge like all those other people who have bridges to sell you, this is a special one for the incredible gullible. An
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And full of entry level jobs, upward mobility to better jobs, etc. And full of employees that you could talk to to get advice and info about your purchase.
Yeah. The alternative of independent shops that provide the same service while paying their staff more is so horrible.
We weren't discussing that alternative. We are discussing the alternative of Amazon, which is inferior to malls in this regard.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? Advice from a mall clock puncher? You obviously never shopped in one>
Not only had I asked such questions in various stores, I had been a clock punching punk teenager who could answer customer questions and help them once I had a few months on the job and I started developing a clue. As the typical idiotic teenagers some of my fellow workers and I were, as much beer and pot we consumed after hours, as miraculous it is we never saw a jail cell in those days, we weren't out to screw with regular folks coming in looking for something. "Oh your kid joined scouts and needs a backpack, well there are several options, rucksack style with no frame, internal frame and external frame, the pros and cons are ... I'd go with the external frame for scouts." Yep even an idiot teenager can learn to accomplish such retail feats in a few months, been there, done that.
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This is what we have Amazon reviews for. Except they are by people who actually own these products (rather than just saw them on a shelf), possibly have experience in the specific product field and do not have a vested commercial interest in making a sale.
I'll take that over a pothead teenager who hung around the store for 3 months any day.
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This is what we have Amazon reviews for. Except they are by people who actually own these products (rather than just saw them on a shelf), possibly have experience in the specific product field and do not have a vested commercial interest in making a sale.
I'll take that over a pothead teenager who hung around the store for 3 months any day.
The pot smoking teenager that knew about backpacks grew up hiking and camping. This teenager learned about boogey boards and swim fins from his teenage coworker who was an avid surfer. This teenager learned about the different types of fishing reels from the teenage coworker whose dad took him fishing a lot growing up.
Amazon reviews tell you if someone liked this purchase or not. They rarely if ever list the pros and cons of this choice and the various choices not made. And a customer happy with their pu
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That's been completely subverted now.
Either the retail assistant is trained in the art of bullshitting you into spending more money than you need to, or they are on a zero hour contract and have no knowledge or devotion to the job.
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Oblig. (Score:2)
"It's the Ciiiircle of Liiiiife...
And it moooves us aaaaaaallllllll..."
Re:Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
Mufasa: Look, Simba. Everything the light touches is our kingdom.
Simba: But what about that shadowy place?
Mufasa: That's the realm of the Dark Lord Bezos. You must never go there.
If isn't as if shopping malls are innocent either (Score:3)
They forced thousands of small local stores out of business, not because of price, much more about the convenience of one-stop shopping. Think of them as the Wal-Marts of the 1970's-2000s.
Very often stores in malls wouldn't have exactly what you wanted in stock, so they would usually order the item(s) for you to be delivered to the store, for pickup, which could take a week or so.
Amazon cleaned their clocks with 2 day delivery.
Oh and most malls were never in urban areas, they were in the suburbs, for convenience and easy access and free parking,
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They forced thousands of small local stores out of business, not because of price, much more about the convenience of one-stop shopping. Think of them as the Wal-Marts of the 1970's-2000s.
True. It sucked going from owner of a small shop on main street to manager of a store in the mall. You know what sucks worse? Stuffing boxes at the Amazon fulfillment center. At least you only have to do it until robotics advances.
Re:If isn't as if shopping malls are innocent eith (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, I say this as one who worked in malls and saw this happen, Tacoma, as an early example, was absolutely devastated economically when the Mall moved in on south 38th. It took over 25 years for the central core to get itself revitalized. The same exact thing happened in Bremerton, but as a smaller city it died harder and has never really recovered. I worked at B Dalton at the Macon Mall (minimum wage) as the businesses downtown, including a marvelous bookstore, died. The irony here is that Amazon gets blamed for killing the local bookstore. But it wasn't Amazon. It was B Dalton and Walden and later Barnes & Noble and Borders, that offered deep discounts off MSRP that the local stores could not offer. Plus, they shipped the profits out of state, My minimum wage job did not contribute a whole lot to the local economy. In a similar fashion, the high rents went to the mall owners, also out of state. Malls, by and large, suck money out of the local economy.
Notice that one dimple in the Amazon logo (Score:2)
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BFA (Score:2)
Here's a better article from CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/3... [cnbc.com]
Sounds about right (Score:3)
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Amazon may be the face of change but it was never the core. The internet, combined with big-box stores, have been taking the market from malls and small businesses everywhere.
But it's just a business pressure that most shops are feeling, and those shops either need to evolve or die. Some make good changes, some make bad changes, and the rest just try to continue along with business-as-usual and live in the denial that somehow their house will be spared from the flood.
Radio Shack is the poster child for "h
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Don't forget those HDMI cables! They had an amazing number of $35 6-foot HDMI cables in the final clearance sales. When HDMI was new, the cables probably would sell for that much, but when Wal-Mart sells them for under ten bucks, you do not continue to pad your shelves with them. By the time RS died, Wal-Mart was selling a bunch of commodity cables and parts, and they had late night hours too.
And from what I read, it wasn't so much the cell-phone accessories as it was an upper management obsessed with cell
Bible quote (Score:2)
Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.
William Gibson novel Virtual Light predicted! (Score:2)
For those that look at science fiction for prophetic images in the future, Virtual Light, predicted the deathnell of modern shopping malls at the time. That prediction pre-dates Amazon for the most part or e-commerce as we know it today.
Originally published: September 6, 1993
So there you go as we transform into yet another novel or movie or even song.
Red Barchetta
Song by Rush
My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And
Phony drama (Score:3)
We're supposed to mourn the loss of the malls. But not really mourn, pretend to mourn. Because there's a story to be told about the sad, dramatic death of the malls. And we must play our parts in the story as the mourners for our beloved malls.
But we never loved the malls. The drama in the story is fictional. The villainy of the malls' opponent is fictional. Malls were okay, never great, sometimes liked, sometimes hated, very rarely loved.
Phony drama is a product worthy of being sold in in one of these failed malls. We're not going there. We're not buying it.
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We did love one mall... Eden Prairie Center in Eden Prairie, MN. The one where Mallrats was filmed :)
And? (Score:2)
Many people like malls (Score:3)
Not a big fan of Amazon, but what the fuck would you miss about malls?
I actually quite like them. You may not enjoy shopping but I find it a nice way to spend some time now and then. Personal preference obviously. I enjoy walking through them with my wife and daughter and we have some fairly nice ones near where I live. Basically my point is that obviously a lot of people do enjoy going to them for various reasons. You don't have to join them if it isn't your thing.
That said, I do a LOT of online shopping these days. Going to the mall is more for entertainment than to a
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Not a big fan of Amazon, but what the fuck would you miss about malls?
I miss the fountains. Malls don't have those anymore so I won't miss malls when the last one dies.
Ford Motor Co moves into former stable building (Score:5, Funny)
Critics upset that after putting stablehands, farriers, saddle-makers and hay-turners out of business, they had the temerity to repurpose the old stable building as a car dealership.
As a gesture of good faith, Ford is offering all the stablehands an opportunity to try out as used car salesmen, betting that they are already adept at slinging pure horseshit.
Article misunderstands cynics (Score:2)
Cynics are never delighted about anything.
Good (Score:2)
On the flipside, it remains to be seen just how long America's "service based economy" is going to sail along before unemployment starts becoming a serious issue. I really, really wish both sides of the aisle would start talking about replacing minimum wage with something that doesn't punish employers for h
I'm not sure Amazon really killed the malls (Score:2)
It sure seemed like the big anchor retailers were already circling the drain long before Amazon became a credible threat - mostly due to short-term profit taking and good old-fashioned mismanagement on the part of their own leadership groups.
But yeah, I'm in agreement with most of the comments already posted here. I was never a fan of malls, and I grew up in their heyday.
Amazon didn't put malls out of business (Score:2)
What killed malls is a shrinking middle class. There's fewer people to buy $50-$100 shirts and $10 orange juice. Same thing happened to Mervyns. They were replaced by Walmart as incomes dropped and the percentage of folks in the middle class ("middle class" not being the literal numeric definition but defined as people with significant disposable i
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When I was a kid, a two-car family was upper middle class. Now, I walk my dog through a middle-class neighborhood, and notice how few houses have only two cars in the driveways.
And then there's the computers (which didn't exist when I was a kid). But as a young adult, a lot of families had one. Now, one (or more) per person living in a typical middle-class area. Plus the cellphones (one per person), which have more computing power than the first three compu
Better use for malls - incubators? (Score:2)
Malls that failed LONG before Amazon (Score:3)
It's often contended that Amazon has put an enormous amount of pressure on shopping malls. So much so that many of those malls are shutting their doors.
I can't speak for every mall being acquired by Amazon but I can talk about two in particular. Amazon has taken over two malls in northeast Ohio (Randall Park and Euclid Square) both of which failed. These malls failed for reasons that had NOTHING at all to do with Amazon and their decline was well under way looooong before Amazon became a serious retail force. I grew up near these malls and was in both during the 1980s and 1990s. They were already in steep decline during the 1990s primarily for demographic reasons as well as some retail consolidations. When they were built their locations made sense but over time the local economies of each shifted in ways making them impossible to remain profitable.
Euclid Square Mall [wikipedia.org] was largely vacant by 2006. Most of the anchor tenants were already leaving in the late 1990s.
Randall Park Mall [wikipedia.org] started its decline in the early 1990s when the mall's owner died and anchor tenants started leaving throughout the 90s. Basically all the retail had left the mall by 2008.
Hmmmmm (Score:2)
The Sears nearest to me went out of business a while a go, and I'm wondering if it's going to be converted to an Amazon shipping point or warehouse. Someone is doing something with it but we can't see inside or get near enough to tell what's going on with it.
If so, that would give me a 15 minute delivery time for Amazon orders, lol.
death to the malls (Score:2)
and the malls were the death of our local, small business stores and they moved the community to their soulless spaces.
Pre-built Order Fulfilment Centers. (Score:2)
Fleets of brightly coloured delivery drones all charging in designated areas of the parking fields.
Roof lined with solar collection grids to offset the cost of electric power consumption.
Internal sections separated into content categories.
Walk-through access for people that actually want to do some eyes-on shopping, and drive-up pickup for discounted orders.
All that, with picker-bots scurrying around from department to department, shunting collected orders to the delivery department for drone dispatch (road
Malls were doomed before Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon was just the final nail in the coffin of the American mall, not the primary cause of its demise. Malls have been in decline for decades, they grew up in one of the heydays of the nation when people had plenty of disposable income and limited retail options. They were also the economic development sinks of their day, drawing in massive tax breaks that brought plenty of investors. Most of those tax breaks have since moved on to other sectors. Then the low price mega-stores (Walmart, Costco, etc) started expanding their selection while maintaining low(er) costs, finally online retail began consuming much of the remaining specialty item market.
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Disposable income is not the reason for the decline of malls; the actual reason is product choice. In the last 20 years I went to malls less frequently because they had very little to appeals to men. I stopped buying clothes there because they were inferior products. It was blatantly obvious that there were 5x the choice in clothing for women. T
You'd have to be Alex Jones... (Score:3)
...to think that decades ago now, Amazon decided to hollow out shopping malls to place fulfillment centers in them.
I never Used Malls (Score:2)
Buggy whips (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
Those malls put the mom & pop stores out of business and largely killed small town commercial centers entirely.
We're supposed to feel sorry for them as their fate is dealt by Amazon?
Malls have to change their business focus. (Score:3)
In fact they often supply the presale customer service for an online retailer, at their own expense.
But you can't generally move serivices online.
Try getting haircut, manicure, and restaurant meal from Amazon.
This is the transformation that we're seeing in malls. It means that there's fewer customers for the space, which means they have to be less selective with renters, which in turn affects their marjin one way or another.
But, as at the moment, you can still survive as a mall.
OK (Score:2)
In other news, WalMart said ... (Score:2)
Wal-Mart: We have successfully driven out all of the mom-and-pop retail stores. There is nothing left to do but revel in our victory and count our money!
Amazon: Hold by beer...
Good (Score:2)
Better to re-use vacant space than to tear it down and build new.
Shopping malls are a thing of the past - many will survive, but many more will fail, better to find new purpose than to rot on the side of the road.
Mourn?? (Score:2)
Re:Amazon is cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also funny that the article refers to these malls as becoming heartless fulfillment centers. I recall similar sentiments about malls when they replaced smaller mom and pop shops, but no one seems to be in a hurry to go back to that model.
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That's an Ed Abbey quote!
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Try navigating the Internet with a firewall that blocks every call to AWS or a related amazon service [gizmodo.com]. You'll pretty quickly see how much you depend on Amazon.
Re:The public spoke. (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't Amazon's "fault". They provided a service that by simple definition the public preferred to what the malls were providing. If it had been the other way, the malls would be flourishing and Amazon would have gone bust.
They are doing what people want, and the malls aren't. It's that simple. People voted with their wallets.
Yes, people voted with their wallets, but don't sit here and paint that story with extra layers of fluff. Amazon thrived and destroyed everyone else for one reason and one reason only; price.
Buying clothing in person has a painfully obvious advantage, so don't give me that Amazon is doing what malls aren't crap. They're offering the lowest price, which is the only thing that matters now. Quality went out the window long ago. People don't even care if what they buy is a fake, which is also why that problem also thrives very well on Amazon too.
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Price is not the primary reason I buy from Amazon; it is selection. Amazon sells many items that my local stores do not stock. Some are niche items, but most are out of necessity. A good example is talc powder. I use it as foot powder to minimize fungi growth, it works much better that Scholls or other inferior "foot powders". Only one local pharmacy stocked talc powder; then they replaced the bottle with one half the
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Yes, people voted with their wallets, but don't sit here and paint that story with extra layers of fluff. Amazon thrived and destroyed everyone else for one reason and one reason only; price.
Uhm... of course? That means people can achieve a higher standard of living for the same income. If you can purchase 2X goods for what it used to cost to get 1X goods, your standard of living is improved.
Improved? Guess that depends if that Chinese knock off phone charger you bought on Amazon to save $3 caught your house on fire or not.
You speak of "standards" when quality, safety, and authenticity are no longer relevant with consumers.
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Where are you getting chargers that aren't made in China?
Apple gets some chargers and puts some white plastic around it, and you think you have a quality product? Most of the "cheap Chinese crap" I've come across in the past few years is of equal or better quality than the name-brand item.
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Yes, people voted with their wallets, but don't sit here and paint that story with extra layers of fluff. Amazon thrived and destroyed everyone else for one reason and one reason only; price.
Not quite - value is what made Amazon thrive, not price.
Really? Let's break down the Amazon of today, not the Amazon of 10 years ago.
Two-day shipping...
If you're lucky enough to find Amazon not blatantly lying about that two-day shipping, or the 3rd party reseller throwing in some fine print about 2-day shipping only counting after they've taken four more days to source and box up your order.
...user reviews to guarantee you aren't buying junk...
Wow, this is just laughable right here. There is NO guarantee you're not buying counterfeit junk on Amazon. And there's nothing more to say about the review-bots fueled by caffeine and bull
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Without a free market, you can't know what people want. In the USA, we heavily subsidize driving and we force retailers to provide more parking than the market wants, so there was never a free market to begin with.
And then guess who pays the cost of all that "free" parking? The retailers, who then pass the cost onto their customers, a cost that Amazon's customers don't have to pay. (And until recently, A
Re:Mourn the death? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a fair amount about malls to dislike I suppose, but the basic idea of a bunch of vendors in a single climate-controlled environment doesn't seem like a bad idea.
While there's much to criticize about suburban, car-focused urban planning (or not planning as the case may be), in some respects a conventional enclosed mall reduces vehicle traffic by eliminating multiple trips.
I'll grant that mixed-used, low-to-medium rise mixed zoning that combines residences, retail and dining into an easily-walkable environment is better because it can eliminate the need for a vehicle, it's not an easy state to transition to, and even if you get there it can slip into Urban Hell pretty easily.
What kind of surprises me is that malls never managed to merge in connected residences. This might have made them more financially sustainable by providing more recurring business.
What seems just as bad for malls as Amazon was the shift to free-standing big box stores, which also seemed to promote strip malls who used the big boxes as anchor tenants. Now you have fewer vendors and more car trips involved.
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Amazon didn't do shit to malls. Malls put themselves out of business marking up $20 trinkets to $400.
F* Malls.
Splitting 1 check among many isn't good (Score:2)
You make like Uganda or somewhere it takes dozens of people to run one small farm, since they don't have the machinery. The $100,000 of production is split between the 50 workers.
Personally, I prefer MORE production per person, giving me an income more than 20 times higher than the worldwide average.
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Why isn't it?
Capitalism, that's why.
Along with the vast horde of "labor non-participants" also caused by Capitalism, the cause of most famines in 19th, 20th and 21st Century.
I am leaving out the Great Famine, but including the literally hundreds of market caused famines in India, China, Yemen, Chad, Uganda etc..
Ever seen buy one get one at a doctor? (Score:2)
Capitalism is when sellers offer different products at different prices and consumers choose what they wantt to buy. Producers produce more of whatever people choose to buy.
Socialism is a (normally government) bureacracy deciding what products will be offered, at what prices.
What was the total price of your last doctor appointment, not your co-pays, but the total price? What product (model number aka procedure code) did you buy?
If you didn't choose what to buy and weren't even allowed to know the price, t
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Health care more affordable.
Why isn't it?
Capitalism, that's why.
How much did an MRI cost in 1950? A CAT scan? A PET scan? I'll take capitalism, with all its lovely inventions.
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You'll need to explain why. Capitalism has some inherent benefits. One of those is the drive to invent something new in order to make a profit. In exchange for the profit, you've made a better world. That is not even possible under socialism, unless you can convince a bureaucrat that your idea has merit.
So, where is the dichotomy, and why is it false?
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How does capitalism have anything to do with healthcare when the government pays for half of it, and very few patients know what they're buying or how much it costs?
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This is laughably untrue. Go visit Joe Sixpack. Then go visit the home of a former robber baron. Compare and contrast. Let us know what you learn. Just because Joe has a TV doesn't mean he's living the life of Reilly.
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Joe Sixpack has air conditioning.
Joe Sixpack has a refrigerator.
Joe Sixpack has central heating.
Joe Sixpack can have a maid come by once a week.
Joe Sixpack can always have fresh food.
Joe Sixpack has a closet so full of clothes he has to rent more space.
Joe Sixpack doesn't work on the weekends.
Joe Sixpack can watch a Broadway quality show on his TV EVERY night.
I'd say Joe Sixpack has Reilly beat by a large margin.
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Basically I've got two options, and you can optionally take one of those options to the extreme.
A. 20 people produce $10,000 / month in the factory, almost nobody is (officially) unemployed. That's $500/month per person.
B. One person uses machinery to produce $10,000 / month in the factory. Two other people write and maintain the software for the machines, earning $12,000. Another two people build the machines (there is always a newer, better model, this time for a customer in France). The contract for the
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Nowadays, people barely let their kids out of their sight. Online news has convinced an entire generation that rapists and kidnappers lurk behind every corner. Yet, according to the FBI (fbi.gov), out of the 80,000 kidnappings in 2017, only 80 of them were strangers. Every single other kidnapping was someone the child knew.. Estranged parent, creepy uncle, next door neighbor, etc..
It's funny, practically every day I see a similar comment. Always expressed to indicate that people are being overly protective. I never see anyone say that perhaps the helicopter over protective parenting is the reason for the incredible reduction in stranger abduction of children.
It's like people arguing that we don't need to vaccinate our children as the statistics show almost no one has those diseases anymore....
(note: I am not saying helicopter parenting is good, just that it quite obviously equates
Re:Mourn the death? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you still think that work ennobles us, you are behind the times. The problem we have is not that we need more ways to waste our lives in useless toil. It is that the fruits of the labor that must be done to sustain our society is so unevenly distributed that some people get paid enough to live on for a year from an hours work, and others get paid enough to live on for a half hour on an hours work. The way to solve this is not to give those people more work. It is to pay them more.
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. It is that the fruits of the labor that must be done to sustain our society is so unevenly distributed that some people get paid enough to live on for a year from an hours work, and others get paid enough to live on for a half hour on an hours work.
Go peddle you Marxism elsewhere. Do the rich eat so much food there's none left for you? On the whole, they eat less. Do the rich drive so many cars there's none left for you? Hard to drive more than one car at a time. Do the rich own so much land there's none left for you? Most of the land in the US is now owned by the government.
You're confusing money with "the fruits of the labor". Actual goods and services are reasonably evenly distributed. If one person in a million has 100 times as much as you
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An American mall used to employ hundreds of American workers.
An Amazon warehouse might employ tens of American workers.
You've clearly never been in an Amazon distribution center! Which do you think takes more employees: a central location where your customers each drive to get their stuff, or paying employees to drive to each customer's house?
Re:Mourn the death? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a lovely sentiment, but it only works if the worker reaps the benefits of their increased productivity. If that benefit is siphoned off to the owners of capital, then what you have is fewer jobs that pay the same, and more impoverished former workers. In order for efficiency to make things better, the fruit of the improvements have to be more evenly distributed. And that's a hard problem to solve with unregulated capitalism.
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Are you really that short sighted?
First, what "good paying" job did ANYONE ever get at a mall? It was nothing but minimum wage cashier jobs.
Second, if I can get the things I want at a cheaper price, that is just as valuable as getting a bigger paycheck.
The problem you have with "unregulated capitalism" is that you feel a need to control things, even if they are too big for your limited intellect. The capitalist system works, because it uses greed to force providers to provide goods and services, with the
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Because we haven't seen it scale for the past 200 years?
You are utterly and completely wrong. In fact, it has scaled much better with technology, as people have had mobility and access to more alternatives. Your claims are not supported by any historical fact.
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As to my other point, the British East Indies company [yourstory.com], killed more people with famine [bbc.com] then any other famine. The Irish potatoe famine was based on capitalism.
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SJWs don't give a shit about malls. We see them as a plague on downtowns. :)
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I'm taking you didn't hear how AOC got Amazon's plans for a New York headquarters cancelled. There are plenty of people willing to talk against Amazon.
Re:Economics (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just prices that caused the problem, we know humans will pay for convenience.
Once stores like Borders, Barnes and Noble, Sears, etc. started carrying only the popular stuff, we started to hear the line "I'll order that for you and call you when it gets here."
Well, if it's getting ordered and I have to wait I may as well pay as little as possible and order it myself. That's how malls died.
Re:Gotta love the stupid socialist (Score:5, Insightful)
Socialism and Communism are NOT the same you ignorant lout. And your examples of totalitarian regimes as socialist are beyond the pale. The failure of education with you is incredible.
NO true ideology works.
There are no fully Capitalist, Communist, Socialist etc governments above the tribal level and never has been.
All are a blending of ideologies. Some work better than others. None are immune to corruption. (your examples are all examples of corruption, not ideologies)
Capitalism is a blend and has plenty of socialist programs. Democratic Socialism as practiced in the Nordic countries is also a blend but leans more towards benefiting the populous over businesses as a government OF the people should.
You just fear a word you don't fully understand.
Those of you trying to containerize governments with ideological labels are the fucking worst of the worst. Be honest with yourself. You just don't give a fuck about anyone under your social class and you want the government to reflect your twisted ideologies.
So it is you who should fuck off for having no fucking clue. But greedy bastards gotta be greedy bastards.
Oh, and fuck you for dishonestly using the deaths of millions under authoritarian rule to push you twisted worldview by equating it to an ideology that never was part of the equation.
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Wow, what an arrogant, ignorant rant.
Socialism and Communism are NOT the same you ignorant lout. And your examples of totalitarian regimes as socialist are beyond the pale. The failure of education with you is incredible.
And your failure to see what is plopped down right in front of your eyes is staggering. You can call it socialism, communism, democratic socialism, or any other damn thing you want. Leftist like to believe that if they change the name of something, it changes its nature. But, it don't work that way buffoon.
Q: What is the problem with your collective mindset? A:Who gets to decide how resources are allocated.
In a proper capitalistic structure, I have to produce a good or service to convince someone to gi
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Was listening to a guy on Rogan talking about the ripple effects of self driving trucks. Not just the drivers, but the hotels, the diners, the satellite radio, all affected. The guys list was longer, but it was a good point. The alternative: taxing Amazon to level the playing field is straight up cheating.
Oh, so taxing Amazon is cheating now?
And we're just going to continue with the "welllll, technically" delusional bullshit that Amazon somehow isn't a monopoly? Yes, tell me more about who's "cheating" here as we talk about the trillion-dollar company that received a fucking $130 million dollar tax refund...