Comment of the Week
Reflecting on the Bezos Economy
Marker readers weigh in on the career of Amazon’s relentless founder
After Jeff Bezos announced his plans earlier this week to step down as Amazon’s CEO and hand the reins over to longtime Amazon Web Services leader Andy Jassy, Medium Editor at Large Steve LeVine wrote about how Bezos is the ultimate daredevil capitalist, driven by a seemingly insatiable desire to dominate one market after the next. “Why spring across one industry boundary after another, watch as blood flows on Main Street, the middle class is hollowed out, and workers teem into cavernous warehouses to work like ants and be managed by algorithms?” LeVine asks. And now Bezos, he argues, is shrewdly stepping down while the e-commerce behemoth is at the peak of its power: Last quarter, the company reached $125 billion in revenue, the first time it passed triple digits. As Levine asks, “Do we really want a single store to be in a very real sense the whole economy, the Bezos Economy?”
Marker readers had a lot to say about whether Bezos’ actions should be lauded or reviled. Robert Schnitzer argued that this is what disruption looks like: “What is the suggested path for a company that is able to disrupt other industries with a much cheaper, safer, faster and simply superior venue for consumers? ” asks…
