Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by shakezula on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:42PM
(#28011568)
Lol, no a startup can't replace Amazon without themselves having all of those rents, and insurances, and reporting accountants and lawyers. Amazon has a logistics network that rivals the U.S. military's right now. You can't just "displace & disrupt" that with a trendy San Francisco office.
Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by jefftk on Friday July 30, 2021 @04:05PM
(#28011820)
Why wouldn't you have said the same about Amazon and B&N in 1994?
Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by PaulDavisThe1st on Friday July 30, 2021 @04:11PM
(#28011865)
Amazon wasn't competing with B&N in 1994. B&N however (and Borders, and so many others) were.
Amazon in the 90s wasn't about "getting a book" but "getting a book via a computer, from a place with "all the books" and I don't have to drive".
B&N could have competed with that if they had understand what was happening, but I don't think they did.
bookshop.org appears to do so, but may be 20 years too late.
Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by tshaddox on Friday July 30, 2021 @04:39PM
(#28012100)
I don’t think the previous commenter was saying that no startup could disrupt Amazon, but that no startup could disrupt Amazon simply by spending less time on tax paperwork.
Amazon didn’t disrupt B&N by spending less time on tax paperwork. They disrupted them by changing essentially every fundamental piece of how they conducted their business.
Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by HWR_14 on Saturday July 31, 2021 @07:01AM
(#28017026)
Amazon's original pitch was not selling you the latest Stephen King novel. B&N was going to beat them there. But they were going to own the long tail of books you cannot stock a cache of every few miles in suburbia.
Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by fridif on Friday July 30, 2021 @04:08PM
(#28011839)
I second this comment 1000x. Amazon beat Barnes, and then Walmart, and then Jet tried to beat Amazon. If the average Joe was able to give it a shot instead of just the Harvard elite, then we'd have many more chances
Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by robocat on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:44PM
(#28011604)
> burdensome and arbitrary, like rent + insurance + tax reporting + legal.
If "rent + insurance" are unnecessary overheads, you might as well say employee protections are completely useless regulations too.
Re:1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee
by krapp on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:47PM
(#28011635)
You expect a scrappy startup which has few or no regulations to comply with to treat their employees better than Amazon, which only treats their employees as well as they do because regulations force them to?
Lower the barriers to entry for business. It is not easy to comply with regulations and reporting.
A scrappy startup can replace Amazon if they can focus on things that are not burdensome and arbitrary, like rent + insurance + tax reporting + legal.