Do we have an objective set of morals that are above the law? Was the Soviet government evil? What about any corporation that is not carbon negative?
But Amazon and companies like them are absolutely held accountable for legal breaches all the time. Here's just one recent example: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2017/05/...
Companies are under constant scrutiny by various bodies and agents including regulators, consumer protection groups, media outlets, unions, review sites, consumer word of mouth - not to the simple market reality that if too many customers feel defrauded, they'll soon stop being customers.
It's a huge leap to argue that since some counterfeit goods have been sold via their platform, blatant theft from them or other companies is therefore justifiable, particularly when you don't mention that those counterfeit goods were sold by third parties, and that Amazon has a formal process to refund customers who have been sold counterfeit goods and to bar such sellers from their platform: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/201165970
We all learned as children that theft and dishonesty is wrong, because in families and societies alike, things quickly break down if it becomes widespread.
It's pretty simple.
You are giving Amazon a pass to engage in unethical behavior. Whether or not the products are sold from a third party is entirely irrelevant; Amazon is profiting from defrauding shoppers, plain and simple. And in spite of their meager penalties, they continue to do it. Why? Because they make money from it.
>We all learned as children that theft and dishonesty is wrong, because in families and societies alike, things quickly break down if it becomes widespread.
This is a platitude that people here are saying to make themselves look good. If they are not enforcing their morals among all members of our group equally, then I do not believe that they care about their system of ethics as much as they let on; they are virtue signalling.
There exist a different set of morals in our society depending on whether you run a business or not. Everyone decided to fixate on the shoplifting aspect of my comment and intentionally avoid the thrust of my point. I don't actually want people to shoplift; I am calling out the hypocrites who shrug at behavior like Amazon's then proceed to hop on a soapbox about shoplifting. It's disgusting.
Here's another comical example from recent:
Facebook is fined $5B for privacy violations. Their stock goes up for the day.
The point was that none of this justifies property theft from other big companies, and that we all learned this as children.
But sure, petty theft can be a powerful form of protest I guess, so if that's important to you, knock yourself out.
You've now updated your argument to Big Tech may be evil but that doesn't mean we should assume Big Grocery is too. That could be right, but if we look closely I'm sure we could find some tremendously nasty things happening there too. The incentives are making Big Money, not doing good. This is an issue of our (Post-)Industrial society.
For what it's worth, I don't think "big tech" or "big grocery" is "evil" or "not evil" in any binary sense. People and organisations respond to incentives and societal standards. Sometimes those incentives and standards are healthy and lead to broadly beneficial outcomes and sometimes they are perverse and lead to negative outcomes. Countless economists over several centuries have explored these topics far more deeply than I can in an HN comment late on a Sunday evening.
For some people it's really important to think that the big tech companies are evil and to blame for all society's ills, and now people are claiming that means it's really important to go easy on people who shoplift. OK then, they're welcome to that view.
I still think society is better if people - both individuals and corporates of all sizes - act ethically and morally and don't steal or defraud, and I don't think individuals can expect politicians and corporations to act ethically if we're not willing to act ethically in our personal lives.
That said, I'm not a law-and-order hardliner, and I have actually shoplifted in my life, at a young age, though not for any reasons to do with waging any just war against supposedly evil corporations. I was just in a bad place in life. So I have plenty of compassion for people who end up doing wrong due to being in bad circumstances.
Anyway, like I said, it's late on a pleasant Sunday evening and life is too short to spend any more time talking about this, so I'm out.
My partner is of half-Italian background, and today was the first time she used the chitarra [1] she recently received as a gift from her family.
So yep, making the dough, waiting for it to rise, making the sauce, then pushing the dough through the chitarra to make the spaghetti all takes a bit of time.
It's not an every-day thing, but as a couple's thing to do on a quiet Sunday afternoon, it was great.
And it tasted incredible. Worth every second.
If Amazon is not held accountable for fraudulent business practices should I then steal? No. They've no relevance to each other, I am responsible for my actions.