Why is that? Because the inside of an Amazon warehouse is
upsetting, even disturbing. Unsafe working conditions? Nope. Abuse
of employees as per the New York Times article?^89 No. What’s
disturbing is the absence of abuse, or more specifically, the absence of
people. The reason Jeff Bezos is advocating a guaranteed income for
Americans is he has seen the future of work and, at least in his vision,
it doesn’t involve jobs for human beings. At least not enough of them
to sustain the current workforce. Increasingly, robots will perform
many of the functions of human employees, almost as well (and
sometimes a lot better), without annoying requests to leave early to
pick up their kid from karate.
Amazon doesn’t talk publicly about robotics, one of its core
competencies, as it realizes it would soon be fodder for late-night hosts
and blustery political candidates. In 2012, Amazon quietly acquired
Kiva Systems, a sophisticated warehouse robotics firm, for $775
million.^90 In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi feels a dramatic disturbance
in the force when the Imperial Army turns the Death Star on Alderaan
and destroys the planet. When the acquisition of Kiva closed, every
union member should have felt a similar disturbance. Entrepreneurs
create jobs, right? No, they don’t. Most entrepreneurs, at least in tech,
leverage processing power and bandwidth to destroy jobs by offering
more for less.
Amazon grew its revenues $28 billion in 2016 in a retail
environment where growth is essentially flat.^91 If you take the number
of people Amazon needs to do one million dollars in revenue vs. the
number of people Macy’s would need, as Macy’s is a decent proxy for
retail productivity across the sector (it is, in fact, more productive than
most retailers), then it’s reasonable to say that Amazon’s growth will
result in the destruction of 76,000 retail jobs this year. Imagine filling
up the largest stadium in the NFL (Cowboy Stadium) with
merchandisers, cashiers, sales associates, e-commerce managers,
security guards and letting them know that, courtesy of Amazon, their
services are no longer needed. Then, be sure to reserve Cowboy
Stadium and Madison Square Garden next year, as it’s only going to
get worse (or better, if you are Amazon shareholders).
Amazon isn’t unique among the Four in this regard: all do more
with less, and all put people out of work.