For me, this suggests a high level of dysfunction in the Government if people asking for things from the Government do so using the biases of the people in power as the basis for their argument rather than reasoning to it by some set of principles. I don't know how much of this article was inferred by the person writing it and how much accurately reflects Amazon's position, so I can't draw strong conclusions from it but it's an interesting reflection on the extreme 'buyer beware' attitude of cut throat businesses that take no responsibility for the harms they inflict on their own customers.
The closest thing you get to principles are civil servants, who are hired for their domain expertise. But voters grumble because those civil servants aren't elected; they are basically self propagating by hiring their successors.
That actually used to kinda work. There was enough inertia to keep elections from making everything about people's moods, and enough input from Congress, SCOTUS, and POTUS to keep it competent.
But the mood has shifted to extreme distrust of those institutions. So they're getting wiped out in one fell swoop. There is a principle in place, but it's the principle that the government itself is irreparable.
There was a time when I thought this. Some observations cast strong doubt on it. Primarily:
how close congressional votes track with major campaign contributions and
the revolving door where major donors later reward officials who voted for their interests
Elected officials do what their corporate contributors want. They then convince a small minority of voters that that's what they want and then their party redraws voting districts to ensure that their votes have a disproportionate effect on the outcome of the next election.
It’s a principle-agent problem. Civil servants have principles and act on them, but they’re not necessarily the principles voters share.
This is a good summary of the book: https://sppe.lse.ac.uk/articles/52
So elected officials also need to be able to manage their constituents, push back on the masses, and explain why compromise / commitment to values / etc are important in society. As you say, this requires some level of trust in officials which sadly has deteriorated.
Congress will never stop talking about Sec230. Early on it was because 230 hampered thin-skinned congress people from disappearing speech they didn't like.
ref:https://www.techdirt.com/2019/03/19/rep-devin-nunes-sues-int...
Modern attacks on 230 are more likely to enabled by major platforms, who are the only ones who can afford to defend legal attacks on user speech.
ref: https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
So these other companies only pay Amazon for the shipping and nothing else, do they?
Just like Target, Walmart and other physical retailers often work with recalls on products sold through their stores.
You could make an argument that Facebook doesn't really sort or categorise products by their properties, but eBay definitely does. You could also make an argument that Facebook isn't a middle man in the transaction because payment doesn't go through Facebook (unless you pick a payment option that does, of course).
I think you can defend Facebook Marketplace, but not eBay. When I use eBay, I don't wire money to John Stevens, I pay eBay directly.
eBay wants a cut, that means eBay gets part of the responsibilities too. Not for everything, of course, and they can always hold the seller accountable when those responsibilities become a problem.
They become much less popular when people are faced with the realities, like if Facebook marketplace sellers were required to collect your information and register you as the buyer (can’t have anonymous sales if they have to track buyers), higher prices, and overall reduced availability of things for sale because it’s increasingly painful for anyone to sell or buy on these marketplaces.
Maybe Amazon can compromise. They can stop selling their own things on their platform.
With Facebook Marketplace Facebook just provides a way to bring buyers and sellers together and provides payment processing. The product is shipped by the seller from someplace that is not Facebook. If you return the product you send it back to the seller, and the seller handles issuing refunds.
Those are two very different arrangements.
Whenever i interviewed there, i felt they actually abide by these and somehow this move seems to contradict their top one: Customer Obsession.
I don’t see a contradiction at all. Their customers want to consume cheap products and get those products instantly if possible. If removing regulation lets them sell those products cheaper, ship them faster, that’s pretty aligned with the leadership principle it seems.
Customer will continue to “trust” Amazon because that trust isn’t that the product will be good. It’ll just be that Amazon will take it back and dispose it for them and send them something different.
And meanwhile it's gotten harder to find good products on Amazon, while goods there have become more expensive, and Amazon uses its might to force sellers into exclusivity deals where they can't charge lower prices elsewhere.
Amazon lobbying the government to abolish a consumer rights law, or a few, seems consistent with past behavior.
In most companies with shareholders, public or private, that's a written rule, right in the corporate founding documents.
Some might care about safety and recall notices, others just want things as cheap and fast as possible (as a sibling comment explains).
There are probably product categories that Amazon would rather not bother with (because of high return rates or low margin or what have you) but they keep it around in order to attract and retain customers who are overall more profitable.
Damn, we all knew that modern free egalitarian society stands on rather weak legs, 7 days to the wolves and all, but to see it happening in real time is quite something. Like traveling and overall security before 9/11 and after.
I'll tell my kids about these times, in Switzerland we are pretty well shielded from current US madness but no shield is strong enough, US became simply too central, about time to shift balance. I realize bipolar orange man is probably trying to keep the balance in favor of US in upcoming future, but that elephant in porcelain shop approach is just speeding up things against what US should want for itself as a global player. But what do I know, maybe fascist oligarchy dictatorship is a good way for US long term.
Maybe losing freedoms in US will shift things in US favor as a country overall in future. But common men like we all here will suffer in some ways, thats inevitable, in US and elsewhere.
https://populistpolicy.org/doge-analysis-of-the-consumer-pro...
It's much like the Wall Street Journal, which is a highly regarded source of information packaged with an editorial page that reads like 4chan.
Otherwise it can do sly things like sell things to itself for distribution and then not be responsible.
Is "Amazon Resale" then not responsible for recalls?
One thing about Walmart, if there's a recall for an item they sold, you just bring it back to their customer service desk and they do a full refund. There was a DVD player I had bought a decade earlier that was apparently bursting into flames for some people so recalled, I just brought it back there used and worn out and full refund.
Of course if Amazon wins this, well Walmart is going to also stop doing it.
Usually in the event of recalls, the store gets 100% credit back when we ship the item. I'm not sure how it goes at a company level, but if the store is getting full credit, then usually that means the company isn't footing the bill, and probably the manufacturer is.
The only thing that'd come of Walmart stopping it would be bad press.
According to the fundamental dictates of capitalism, you have this backwards.
And what's that? vertical integration? that's hardly a "fundamental dictate". A few decades ago vertically integrated conglomerates (think GE) were going the way of the dodo, with "core competency" being the new MBA buzzword.
I’ve never heard of them, but I guess they are doing good work.
One of my favorite business managers managed this and she would scan reviews for potential dangerous products even if CPSC has not issued any recalls.
The real problem is why do you do with the recalled products. If it is expensive enough, the seller will take it back. With the flood of really cheap goods, they need to be destroyed and it is expensive. A lot of overseas sellers will just ghost Amazon since the cost of recall might be larger than their profits from that account. The
As in, amazingly and horrifically awful behavior.
How about this: Dont think this is constitutional? How about every profit derived from the sale of anything dangerous be put in escrow until the litigation is over? Many states do this with traffic tickets.