He who smelt it dealt it on a planetary scale!
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Not sure where else to put this, so here it isā¦
Seems kind of bullshit to meā¦ 
the idea that amazon is āpostā captialist?
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I mean, if anything itās hyper-Capitalist, isnāt it? Purified, clarified Capitalist.
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Thatās how I see itā¦ itās also how Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin describes it in Chokepoint Capitalismā¦ It strikes me as one of those arguments that rests on the idea that there is an idealized form of capitalism, and if we could just get to that, it would all work outā¦ but all the really exists is the reality of capitalism and itās many faces.
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Itās all fun and games, until the next pandemic is armed.
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As far as I have understood capitalism the end game is feudalism/fascism.
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So, working as intended thenā¦
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The feudalism thing seems kinda apt when talking about Amazon in particular. A few months back I checked out one of those stores where people can dig through a big pile of third party Amazon returns for stuff you can buy at a flat rate. I donāt see how Amazonās business model can be sustainable in the long run without significant governmental support. I usually try to avoid buying stuff there unless itās things I canāt find in a physical store (I think my last purchase was back in the fall last year).
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Sure, but the question is whether or not what Amazon is doing is part of capitalism, and Iād argue that it is. I reject the idea that there is some pure form of capitalism/market-based society that exists in a vacuum somewhere that we just need to get toā¦ capitalism is an amorphous system that exists all around us, not something weāre trying to reach. 
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Capitalism is about the systems that interact with each other whether it be between businesses to customers, businesses to businesses and customer to customer at the base level. Amazon has been doing things that has denied such thinking. Burning through mountains of cash with Alexa, consistently breaking even with Twitch even though rival social media companies arenāt afraid to turn themselves into dried husks of their former selves (cough cough what ever the eff when into selling twitter to Elon), environmental vulnerabilities that can seriously mess up Whole Foodās business, a completely busted returns policy for Amazon that eats away a significant chunk of itās profits and itās many failed attempts to get into the gaming space that failed except for bringing a single mmo to the international market.
The only thing that really keeping them going is web architecture. The āmove fast and break thingsā mantra could end up breaking the company possibly creating an Evergrande-level disaster for the US government to figure out in the future. Bezos giving his small ā2 pizzaā teams a lot of power and leeway to try stuff had worked in the past but I have no clue if he could keep up with much more nimble companies who arenāt being watched by hawks by the EU and US governments (regardless of which party is running the show in Washington)
(Sorry if this sounds like rambling and tangents. Itās hard to organize my thoughts about Amazon and your question lol)
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Iād argue itās about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few via the mass production of goodsā¦ that is, if itās about any particular thing vs. being the existing, ubiquitous economic system that everything is forced into. Whatever achieves that goal (concentrating wealth via the extraction of value from labor) in the hands of a few, qualifies.
One thing that makes Marxās work so powerful is that he was describing a system unfolding in front of him, rather than coming up with a framework and trying to shoe horn what he saw into it. I think thatās the most effective means of understanding the capitalist system still today, too. Describing reality, vs. coming up with an idealized system and expecting reality to fit into it, and rejecting all the things that donāt as ātruly capitalist.ā Thatās precisely what Chokepoint Capitalism did, and why itās a great book that is helpful in understanding how companies like Amazon fit into the framework of capitalism. As long as people like Bezos are animated by the underlying ideology of capitalism (TINA, wealth hoarding, extracting value, etc), Iād argue it fits within that framework.
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Systems of exploitation, they are.
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Rich people trying to impress each other with how big their yachts are a part of the process regardless of how dumb and self destructive it is. Main character syndrome. Restorative justice as advocated by many modern day western socialists bring this sort of thing up and how to address this. āHate the game, not the playerā sort of speak. The thing is that politicians arenāt afraid to try to humiliate these folks to make themselves look appealing to voters going against this idea. A wounded egomaniac would lose their mind and lash out even if they got a slap on the wrist (which can started to be seen right now with how Elon is messing up even in areas where he was or still is the market leader).
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From what Iāve gleaned, the post-capitalist part comes from them owning the platform where people sell, sort of like a feudal lord who owns the land, and charges people rent to use it, as well as takes a large cut of what they earn, dictates pricing, where and what they can sell, and so on.
The parallels between a feudal lord and Amazon are many, monopoly fits well too though, but I guess that doesnāt have the same scary overtones?
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Again, thatās just part of the capitalist system, because thatās how things are under the capitalist system. Greed is part of the ideology and thatās in part how its enactedā¦
Yes, I understood the argument. I disagree with it. Itās still capitalism, Iām arguing. There isnāt some pure system of capitalism that exists in some idealized form, with the markets making everything great. Capitalism is what it is. Thatās inline with a materialist view of historyā¦
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So then were company towns also somehow post-capitalist?
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Possibly, I still think feudal capitalism fits better than post-capitalist, but in the end both factory towns and feudal manors are better described as monopolies obtained through different means, instead of some entirely different style of economy (but what do I know)ā¦
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I guess weād have to buy Technofeudalism to find out (available from all good bookshops and Amazon).
But I have to applaud the illustration that accompanies the article.
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This seems like it will fit in hereā¦
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