1. Value created for other shareholders is a good thing

2. $ "value" directly translates to actual resources or services

3. These employees and customers would not get the same or more value elsewhere if Amazon did not exist

4. This "value" created by Amazon is better compared to the alternative (such as more resources used locally instead of global trade)

What is the logic?

AI can calculate stuff that can be measured and calculated.

But investing (in stocks or otherwise) is not that. Investing is about the phychology of the people (all other investors). If investors as a whole make stupid decisions, the market movements make their decisions correct (like the incredibly stupid drop in Nvidia's stock due to release of Deepseek). AI can be more objective and better at calculating facts, but it doesn't matter if the market is driven by emotions and people.

It's not a given that this will remain true forever, although I don't think it's tied to AGI. One could argue that AGI push is the trigger for a massive increase in compute capacity and corresponding decrease in price that might make this kind of thing viable, but that's just wishful thinking, not a fact.

The poster is suggesting there is some _true_ value separate from what these customers who know their own situations best think. That they are secretly being fleeced and a central planner will somehow better allocate the resources.

Not at all. What if it were an employee co-op?

"The ultra-wealthy should have less power" != "We should implement a five-year plan for our command economy as thought up by glorious and correct Party."

Not generally. Window repairmen get higher incomes, but the rest of the economy has less consumption and investment.

I don't believe that's true. I believe that's called the "Broken Window Fallacy" in Economics.

Folks that own a vast amount of stock do not pay taxes on that stock. They own the shares, and they take out loans against those shares. At some point they rollover or pay off those loans by selling some shares, but the shares have increased in value significantly in that time, or they’ve been granted new shares.

When we say “<business> has created value for shareholders”, it’s said in a way that implies that somehow that wealth creation makes its way into the tax system by virtue of the fact the wealth was ‘created’. It does not.

This is all aside from the fact that increased shareholder value means a more abundance society regardless of the increase in taxes. We could quibble over the exact distribution of who gains from the enlarged pie but it's certainly not the case the 100% of it goes to capitalists so consumers and employees also benefit.

Almost no one in the US pays the estate tax. It only applies to estates over $14MM and most large estates get reorganized into trusts with estate tax avoidance as a primary motive.

Yes this entire conversation is about the ultra wealthy not paying their "fair share". A $14MM exemption is practically irrelevant here.

> most large estates get reorganized into trusts with estate tax avoidance

This isn't so simple. Transfers to a irrevocable trust count against your lifetime 14mm estate and gift tax exemption and a trust in excess of the 14M exemption is subject to gift tax.

Also, this discussion was about "Buy Borrow Die" strategy. Irrevocable trusts don't make much sense in this context because trusts aren't subject to stepped up basis.

That's not Bezos' doing alone, that's Bezos plus over a million workers that did that. If Bezos never existed in history, someone else would have filled in that market. We need to stop this myth that a few men alone create all this value and that without them we'd still be dragging plows through the mud for our farms.

On the other side, Jeff Bezos is clearly an outlier. Even if we agree that ecommerce would have existed without him, we don’t know whether someone else would have created the same scale of value.

I think it's pretty clear Amazon is quite a positive given by how many people like using it so much for it's convenient 1-stop shop, quick shipping, and hassle-free return process.

Are you saying it would be better to have to shop at 1000 different little websites with probably crappy or at least inconsistent return processes?

There is such a wide variety of products that people go to Amazon for. I know I do. So many things are niche I can't see how any local stores could exist to stock things like that in even a 1 hour range from a majority of the population.

How many people are going to drive hours to go to a special boutique that has this random thing they want or need?

Maybe people use Amazon to buy routine things that could easily be stocked locally. But I guess I use Amazon to get things that I can't really get or even usually find anywhere else for that matter. Most come from small operations using Amazon as their sales platform. Amazon is providing a lot of discoverability and logistics to them and I am not sure I would even stumble across the seller if I had to find some tiny website that they operated themselves.

I am not sure most people would prefer to shop locally, most people don't seem to even go to the store anymore and instead use delivery services for everything. This saves so much time to allow us to do other things that we enjoy in our lives. I don't think small shops would be able to offer this level of convenience.

Are you serious? I live in country where we are not using Amazon.

And if not, you are saying you have a similar availability of such a vast network of goods, almost anything you might want and the convenience of fast delivery and simple returns via local shops or something?

I guess I’m not sure what you are suggesting. I personally find that shopping and finding and acquiring the products I want is vastly more convenient and easier with Amazon than before we had Amazon and yes I was around back then too. I’d never want to go back personally. Most family and friend I know seem to feel the same.