Bezos was a hedge fund manager. This should surprise nobody.
Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
Can openers is what did it for me.
In 2015 I needed a new manual can opener. The local big-box stores had two basic styles. A cheap, all metal one that was just stamped from a single sheet, and a more expensive one with better handles.
The more expensive one had previously rusted and began to look nasty within a few years.
Amazon had a bunch of different styles at less than the price point of the more expensive one.
I bought one. It was fine. I didn’t love the operation. It cut the whole top off from the side, rather than from the top in a downwards cut. The sharp edges were on the can rather than on the lid. It would catch the paper labels and sometimes wad them up into the can while you cut. Cans with no air space would leak when opened.
Anyway. Replaced it in 2019. Amazon still had a broad selection, but all except for obvious crap was as expensive as the local big box store’s expensive option. Wound up going to a smaller local(ish) bulk foods store and bought a cheapo restaurant one for less than Amazon’s/the big box store’s similar offerings. Minimal rusting to date.
I would read your review of various day to day items.
well they also see what products are doing well on their site, then making exact copies to sell at a loss to kill the original maker, then once the captured competition is killed take their place and inflate the price
Meanwhile in Canada, if something falls into a niche good luck finding it in person. It's getting beyond frustrating trying to buy in person to avoid Amazon, then finding out that nowhere carries it and having to order from Amazon anyway.
That's what we get when Canada is a handful of monopolies in a trenchcoat instead of a country.
The only time that I use Amazon now is when I cannot get the item that I need either in the city that I live in first or another online retailer. My Amazon spending as decreased significantly since I left prime in January of 2025.
Holy shit guys! S-so, if you have a monopoly, it's like, you can do whatever the fuck you want? So it's like in THE FUCKING GAME OF MONOPOLY? Jee, we are learning something new every day
In the game, you have to improve your properties to charge more rent. In reality, the monopoly can reduce quality and raise price at the same time.
Easy solution: don't use Amazon.
You lived without it before. You can do it again.
That's like saying the simple solution to global warming is for people to not burn fossil fuels. It ignores the conditions that led to this becoming a problem in the first place; and it ignores the power of entrenched industry to protect their own interest.
What we need is political reform. so that the bodies that are supposed regulate industry and serve the public are empowered to make the necessary reforms. Lina Kahn was doing just that (before Trump got elected again in 2024)
I'm not trying to diminish the importance and role of personal accountability and individual action, but as a solution to affect meaningful change it falls well short.