>But, if society doesn't find a way to retrain(invest in) those people that were replaced we lose all the potential they had to offer.

Since this article is specifically about amazon and FC employees, I think it's relevant to point out they have a program to do just that. Career Choice pre-pays up to $12k in tuition towards degrees/certificates for an in-demand trade/field, and up to 95% reimbursement on books: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/fsp92a2bhozr3wj

Retail jobs are growing, not disappearing, and they're expected to continue to grow.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm

Not sure where their going to be working:

http://clark.com/shopping-retail/major-retailers-closing-201...

Maybe Amazon's new retail stores.

I'm guessing maybe minor retailers? Some small store close to your house/school/office when you can't be bothered to wait for shipping.

I would not dare to try and open some small store and gamble on people not wanting to wait for Amazon. If you think that's still something that can be done, try it.

Better still, get a business loan to launch something like that. I'll wait. It's hard to even think of a thing more self-evidently doomed.

The last sentence is just not true. More doomed would be to invest a lot in infrastructure and economies of scale and try to beat Amazon at their own game.

So don't do that, open a small convenience store instead. Where else are all those retail jobs coming from? Not a rhetorical question, I really don't know.

Aren't retail jobs, with few exceptions, the definition of low skill, low wage labor?