Amazon and the Unwisdom of the Populist Crowd
I think this is all true. The problem lies somewhere else.<p>Companies like Amazon is what we want. Convenient, re-investing all profit to improve its services and lower its prices. They deliver beneficial goods and services to our society.<p>That&#x27;s great. The problem is in redistribution of wealth throughout our society.<p>As we optimize production and delivery. The inequality of wealth distribution widens, because less and less crums fall behind for the poor to pick up.<p>The pie gets bigger, but the portions most people are getting of it keeps getting smaller.<p>If it grew faster then the portions shrank, all would be good, but I believe we&#x27;re starting to see cases where it doesn&#x27;t, and some people reaching a point where they get none of the pie.<p>And this is not an Amazon&#x27;s problem, or an economic one. This is a societal problem we&#x27;ll have to address.<p>What if not everyone is needed? What if society can sustain itself with only a fraction of the population? Who gets chosen to remain, and who gets cut out?<p>Think of a dinner party. 10 people are invited. They form the party. How many of them are needed to cook? Not all 10, thats too many cook. It would actually be less efficient to have them all in the kitchen. So what if two of them cook? Do they only get to eat? Do they get more of the food? Maybe all 10 guests would have been able to cook, so who&#x27;s lucky enough to be the chef and eat?<p>This is now happening at the scale of our society. But we don&#x27;t treat each other like friends at a party. So when we get to cook, we don&#x27;t share. We should.