Ok...I’m done laughing. I went back and read your meandering comments.
Between insults you’re setting up a straw man by essentially saying that Jeff Bezos and Amazon are the same, just as the “robber barons” and their industries are the same.
If you’re saying that Jeff Bezos has a responsibility to humankind just like we all do, I would agree.
When you say AMAZON has a responsibility to humankind is where we part company. Amazon is a collection of investors who have exchanged their money for a share of the profits of the company. Nothing more, nothing less.
What you’re saying is this: Business requires “virtue, which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions.”
Uh, you just provided the definition of Social Justice according to The Association for Business Communication.
I have a personal and moral responsibility to help people whenever I can (which I do). As a CEO (which I am), it is not appropriate for me to spend other people’s money on social issues, regardless of how worthwhile they are.
The Board of Directors of my company may decide to set up a foundation to give money to worthwhile causes, which means the shareholders’ representatives have approved the spending.
When the Target CEO decides that men can go into women’s bathrooms and causes a boycott, or the Dick’s CEO flushes millions down the toilet by stopping the sale of guns, they are abdicating their responsibility to the shareholders of the company, for which they should be removed.
So stop mixing up personal responsibility with corporate responsibility.
Set up your own foundation and put some of your PERSONAL money into it (I have). Put your money where your mouth is, or STFU.
As an aside, my company is not responsible for ensuring welfare payments, paying social costs or school costs for for emergency rooms. I think that falls under the “common welfare” which is political, not business-related — personal, not corporate.
I pay an ENORMOUS amount in taxes. According to you Social Justice Warriors, that goes toward the common welfare.
If you want to argue the concept, dig up Aristotle and Plato. Don’t bother me.
That is the legal fiction.
You're emphasizing the legal.
You've forgotten the fiction part of it.
What you’re saying is this: Business requires “virtue, which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions.”
Uh, you just provided the definition of Social Justice according to The Association for Business Communication.
Nope. YOU just put words in my mouth, and then played with your own strawman.
I have a personal and moral responsibility to help people whenever I can (which I do). As a CEO (which I am), it is not appropriate for me to spend other people’s money on social issues, regardless of how worthwhile they are.
Uh huh. Tell that to the wokescolds who took over Chik-Fil-A.
(I do note that your response mentioned women's bathrooms at Target: on which we agree.)
As you said,
As an aside, my company is not responsible for ensuring welfare payments, paying social costs or school costs for for emergency rooms. I think that falls under the “common welfare” which is political, not business-related — personal, not corporate.
But that isn't accurately describing my point.
In fact, you're switching black and white. Since you're only used to dealing with other businessmen, who tend to be sociopathic herd creatures anyway, you think that by jumping up and down and spitting wooden nickels, you'll intimidate me.
What happens is, modern corporations have changed the rules of the social contract, in midstream. In multiple ways.
Most of them are complete parasites.
Look for example at the merger of Cabela's / Bass Pro shops. Done by corporate raiders who got (I think) at 10% stake in the voting stock, and forced the companies to merge, eliminating around 2000 jobs in a small town without any major employers.
I think the raider company arranging the merger walked off with $90 million.
But the people left behind -- their lives are in ruins.
They may need public assistance, social services, the gamut.
None of that would have been necessary, if the corporate raider hadn't found a way to make themselves rich with other peoples' money:
the companies were NOT failing, it was not "rescue of distressed assets"
Merely naked, inexcusable greed, from outside, unasked.
In other words, the company is not responsible for "paying" the social welfare costs.
But by their actions, they CREATED the social welfare costs, where there didn't used to be any.
The people were honestly, happily, productively working.
Until someone like you came along.
Notice how President Trump *created* jobs and prosperity, he didn't just suction OFF wealth, and blame the people robbed for deserving it?
That's why he's popular.
I agree wholeheartedly, MDCato. I too have been a CEO. I also think the CEOs of Target and Dicks should be cashiered for their Social Justice misuse of their positions that have lost value for their stockholders.
Grey_Whiskers, as a matter of fact, Amazon does provide health care for its employees starting on their first day of work include part-time employees, something easily discovered with a simple Duck, Duck, Go search, as do the VAST MAJORITY of major corporations in the US.
In fact, almost 60% of the population in the US is covered by private health insurance provided by their employers, that portion who are working. One company I managed until retirement, a small one with only 14-15 employees, which found the company provided health plan became completely unaffordable (the cost quintupled, and the co-pays and deductibles useless for their employees) when ObamaCare went into effect, now provides an additional stipend each month that covers the minimum cost of an Obamacare Health Insurance policy for each employee who is not covered by a spouses’ employee provided corporate insurance. As a small corporation, they also pay up to $5000, per employee, of each employee’s student loan payments who has one each year. So, to put it mildly, you don’t have a clue what you are talking about in this area.
Facts should not be played fast and loose to make political points. Bezos has enough bad ideas without blaming him for something he is not doing.
I am more concerned about when his Amazon retail Ponzi scheme business will finally come crashing down. Bezos essentially took the low markup business model of quick-turnover groceries which turnover generates profits and applied it to all retail products. His basic idea was that it would work so long as he can operate on the float of money flowing through it, generating very little profits from actual sales, but generate profits from money earned on the money itself as it passes through on the delay between receiving it from retail buyers and paying suppliers. Volume is king. Move enough money and that delay can generate lots of money, even at low interest rates, so long as interest is high. . . Or, alternately one is doing instant institutional trades on the stock exchange using very fast computerized algorithms which is very likely.
Although, I think I lately have noticed Amazon prices have slowly started being increased toward normal retail. That would essentially solve the problem, moving Amazon into a normal retail mode, taking it away from paying Peter what Paul paid, to keep the money flowing. . . and eventually moving Amazon into a normal business model.