> Bezos cheerleaders and their ilk never seem to be willing to acknowledge that creating wealth is much harder than extracting it
I am utterly confused by this statement. Are you implying that Bezos isn't one of the largest creators of wealth in the history of the world?
When I think of all the time and money hundreds of millions of people have saved by the revolution in online shopping and shipping, not to mention AWS, my mind boggles.
As you say, you can also generate wealth my extracting it (e.g., mining) but Amazon has not done that at all. The entirety of the wealth they've generated comes from increasing efficiency and productivity. That is, to go from trees and dyes to a book in my hand used to cost $Y and now costs $X. $Y - $X is the wealth created by the efficiency gains in those processes.
I am utterly confused by this statement. Are you implying that Bezos isn't one of the largest creators of wealth in the history of the world?
When I think of all the time and money hundreds of millions of people have saved by the revolution in online shopping and shipping, not to mention AWS, my mind boggles.
As you say, you can also generate wealth my extracting it (e.g., mining) but Amazon has not done that at all. The entirety of the wealth they've generated comes from increasing efficiency and productivity. That is, to go from trees and dyes to a book in my hand used to cost $Y and now costs $X. $Y - $X is the wealth created by the efficiency gains in those processes.