The idea of regulating on a hypothetical is insane to me. If Amazon becomes abusive, the US Government will still be able to take them. Let's not start prosecuting pre-crime because Bezos is super rich.

Also, if the company that runs the sweatshop is in fact making huge profit margins from it (I assume that's one thing "exploitation" implies), and if the company isn't especially unusual, then that suggests there's a lot of room for some other company to set up another factory, offer a slightly higher wage or better conditions to attract workers away from the first one, and still make great profits. If there are no artificial barriers to this, then foreign companies competing for workers may end up really improving matters after a while. Contrariwise, if there are significant risks to setting up more sweatshops—e.g. suffering bad PR, running afoul of new or newly interpreted legislation—then the few sweatshops will tend to remain few and miserable, and be run by companies that are more immune to the above dangers (probably large, with good legal departments and/or political pull, and those that don't depend as much on a good reputation).

This implies that people who manage to cause serious problems for companies by protesting their use of sweatshops are probably making things worse for the workers. It is interesting to reflect on.

What do you mean by this?

I agree that we shouldn't preemptively act, that "but what if they attack us first" mentality, but I contest the accuracy of that statement.

Amazon has the resources to entrench themselves into the political system and are surely already doing so in ways we cannot yet see.

That isn't an Amazon problem though, that's a "the smart guys are on the wrong side of the table" problem, big business pays better than government.

And all my Amazon packages to London had Luxembourg return addresses.

Sorry, Europeans, you can blame big American tech companies for dodging taxes all you want, but it's hypocritical when you legally allowed the conditions for them to do so.

There are a dozen nations in Europe that are notorious for intentionally encouraging tax shenannigans. What are you planning to do to the nice people of Ireland and Switzerland to correct that situation? Their extraordinary GDP per capita figures are directly related to said tax conditions.

Traditionally, the market has not supported this. Government parties need funding now not some time in future. That said I do not know about the US. I think if you run a big business, you need to keep everyone happy which includes investors and governments for that you need money today. The easiest way always has been to extract more money from customers.

Bezos obviously has an incredible nose for business, but he's mainly shown that he's not incompetent and just by being that he's run circles around others.

I've had too many bad experiences with Amazon that it tells me that his genius businessman mythology doesn't extend to the details. Went searching for a new smartphone recently. Was seconds away from spending $300 for what seemed like a new device only to see review after review from people who had been shipped poorly refurbished phones (shipped by Amazon) that would break a few months later.

There's too much stuff like that. That's their own damn site, an Apple product, and it shows that people are getting regularly ripped off and they are powerless to stop it (or won't). I see that and I see them getting into groceries and healthcare and it scares me. How can they possibly keep quality up?

There's too much mythology there, too much obvious greed, and not enough care that they appear to be building the world's greatest monopoly and we're patting them on the back.

Except Bezos provided an extremely logical explanation for that. He transformed himself physically because he wants to live as long as possible and be physically fit enough to travel into space when it becomes possible. Bezos is 54, which means his window is closing physically, he's attempting to delay that as long as possible.

Cutthroat, with what? The way he's taking on Walmart? The way he's taking on Apple? The way he's taking on Google? The way Amazon routinely gets voted as one of the best customer service companies?

Their customer service ratings might be high, but those ratings are inflated by the same people who, if they managed to notice that their new phone was actually refurbished will get a quick turn around on it, nevermind that they shouldn't have to deal with that at all.

The customer service is also inflated because they'll screw over sellers to do that. Maybe I'm too vindictive over my really negative experience, but there's plenty of stories of them screwing over sellers. It's also a notoriously bad place to work (friends and HN stories attest to that).

That stuff combined suggests a company that will do what it wants to win, cracked eggs be damned. It's admirable in a way, but it doesn't seem there's much in that company except a desire to dominate.

EDIT: Typo fixed. And full disclosure, I host reviews of my products on my own site.

Edit: I’m not an amazon fan. I’ve had issues with their delivery and I would definitely prefer ups or fedex to them in that area. I also prefer Apple products to kindle fire series, and so on. I’m not against intelligent regulation either. I’m really against a rush to regulate or calls to regulate in the absence evidence.