On Tech: Amazon is Jeff Bezos

Bezos built Amazon into a central force in the world. This week he'll have to answer for it.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story July 28, 2020 Amazon is Jeff Bezos Adam Maida By Shira Ovide A quarter-century ago, Jeff Bezos was a finance nerd with a tiny bookselling website. You know what happened next. Bezos’s career arc tracks the shift of technology from a relatively fringe industry into a central force in the world. And that’s exactly why Bezos and the chief executives of three other American tech stars will be testifying this week at a congressional panel investigating possible abuses of their power. The congressional hot seat shows how far the industry has come. I talked to Karen Weise, my colleague who covers Amazon, about how Bezos thinks and the meaning behind the scrutiny of Amazon. Shira: How much of Amazon is Jeff Bezos? Karen: He’s far less hands-on than most people realize, at least he was until recently. But Amazon is a reflection of Bezos. It’s built on his ideals and ideas, and Bezos has a clarity of thought about what the company should be. Amazon is also structured around a set of principles and mechanisms that Bezos created. These “Jeff-isms” can sound like meaningless corporate-speak to an outsider, but many employees completely buy into them, and the principles are infused into everything. Oh fun! What are some notable Jeff-isms? One is this idea of “one way” versus “two way” doors. The first are irreversible decisions that should be made with care, versus changeable choices that can be made fast. People who worked at Amazon said they used that framework to make life decisions, too. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Another Bezos principle is orienting every decision around what the customer wants. It’s an obsession that makes Amazon what it is. The downside is acting in the best interests of shoppers can sometimes justify actions that put pressure on Amazon’s workers or marketplace sellers. What’s the significance of Bezos and the other tech C.E.O.s testifying at the congressional hearing on potential abuses of power? For a long time these companies thought they didn’t need to concern themselves with policy, politics and regulation. Bezos certainly didn’t. That’s changing now because of the growing influence of technology everywhere. Several of the most valuable companies in the world are tech companies. Bezos is the world’s richest person. Amazon is the second largest corporate employer in the United States. My coverage of Amazon touches on retail, transportation, labor, economics, consumer electronics and the functioning of cities. Americans generally don’t trust technology companies, but Amazon has a good reputation. Yes, and the company has had a sense that customers’ love and trust would carry it through everything. But people can love shopping on Amazon and not love its record on politics, labor or the environment. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT We saw that in Amazon’s hometown, Seattle, where the company put a lot of money into City Council races last year, and it completely backfired. People felt that the company was trying to buy the vote. In New York City, there were people who believed that Amazon was trying to bully its way into building a big corporate campus. Does Amazon understand that people may love the product but mistrust the company? It understands it intellectually. I don’t think it does emotionally. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Coronavirus misinformation goes wild again In just a few hours yesterday, another video with false information about the coronavirus spread like wildfire on Facebook before the company started to stamp it out. The video — which I won’t link to here, but you can find on Breitbart News — showed a group of purported doctors touting unproven treatments. One of the videos racked up 14 million views in six hours, my colleague Kevin Roose tweeted. A few months ago, another video filled with coronavirus conspiracies, called “Plandemic,” was watched more than eight million times on YouTube, Facebook and other spots over multiple days. Some of you may be wondering why it’s so bad for people to watch a couple of videos that go against the consensus of health experts. After all, there’s a lot about the virus we don’t understand. The problem is that it’s not so easy to correct the record once someone sees bogus ideas. We’ve seen that good information doesn’t necessarily undo bad information. Doses of falsehoods can make people doubt the recommendations of proven health experts — or even, the validity of elections. That’s why Facebook, YouTube and other internet companies, which have highlighted coronavirus information from authoritative sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have said they also would be aggressive about deleting false information related to the virus. (On Tuesday, Twitter temporarily limited some functions of the account of Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, as punishment for posting the video with misleading information.) And yet, this latest bogus video went wild, again making me wonder whether Facebook and other popular internet sites are so sprawling that the companies can’t control even the most high-profile kinds of false information. Before we go … What to expect, and what’s the big deal: My colleagues explain why Congress is digging into how Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple use their influence, and the possible trouble areas for each company.A related article: One of the questions about Apple is whether it drives up what we pay for online services because it charges up to a 30 percent commission on many app transactions, and most app makers have little choice but to pay Apple. The company is now starting to apply those fees to apps that never had to pay the fee before. Is posting a glam selfie fun or activism? My colleague Taylor Lorenz has a thoughtful article about an Instagram trend of women challenging one another to post black-and-white self portraits as a celebration of female empowerment. To some participants this is lovely, but to others it’s a shallow form of activism or an excuse to post a fun photo that might otherwise seem tacky in tough times. Netflix made a hit (and some haters) on multiple continents: Netflix wants to be the first global television network, and one element of its strategy is to make series that appeal to people in many different countries. It seems to have done that with its reality show about Indian matchmakers set in India and the United States, Bloomberg News writes. Some South Asians love the series, “Indian Matchmaking,” while others believe it enforces outdated stereotypes. Either way, the attention is good for Netflix. Hugs to this Get prepped for Wednesday’s hearing by eyeballing a bag of sugar with a malicious glint in its eye and other delightfully weird drawings representing industrial monopolies that the U.S. government once broke apart. (Thanks to my colleague Cecilia Kang for sharing this document from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.) We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Tech with Shira Ovide from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

Zombies are stalking America’s unemployed

Things could be worse — and they’re about to get worse.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story July 28, 2020 Spencer Platt/Getty Images By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist The Social Security Act of 1935, which established the retirement system that to this day provides half of American seniors with a majority of their income, was originally called the “Economic Security Bill.” That’s because at the time the retirement program was widely seen as less important than the establishment of a national system (run through the states) of unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance was, however, deeply controversial; it faced bitter opposition from conservatives who claimed that it would discourage workers from seeking jobs. This was absurd given the circumstances. We were, after all, in the middle of the Great Depression, and there weren’t any jobs. But I guess we can cut the 1930s opponents of unemployment benefits some slack, since modern macroeconomics didn’t yet exist and there was still widespread confusion about what caused depressions. There was no comparable excuse when virulent opposition to unemployment benefits reappeared in 2009-2010. There was no mystery about the causes of the Great Recession and the reason so many Americans had lost their jobs: it was all about a financial crisis brought on by financial overreach. It certainly wasn’t about lack of motivation on the part of the unemployed: in early 2010 there were 15 million unemployed workers chasing fewer than 3 million job openings. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Yet much of the Republican Party went on the attack against the expanded unemployment benefits the Obama administration had put in place to cushion the blow of the crisis. For example, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona declared that unemployment insurance “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” Actually, unemployment compensation was creating jobs, by putting money in the hands of people likely to spend it, sustaining overall demand. But conservatives couldn’t see it. For the notion that unemployment happens because we make life too easy for the unemployed is a zombie idea — an idea that persists no matter how many times evidence should have killed it; it just keeps shambling along, eating politicians’ brains. And now here we are, in another crisis. This time the cause was the coronavirus, which forced much of the economy into lockdown, pushing tens of millions of workers into unemployment. Desperate times — but not as desperate as one might have imagined, largely thanks to a big expansion of unemployment benefits under the CARES Act, passed in late March. A key provision added $600 a week to standard unemployment benefits. Too many workers had a hard time accessing these benefits, largely because state unemployment offices were overwhelmed. Even so, there was much less misery than a depression-level unemployment rate would have generated without those benefits. Aid to workers also helped contain the slump, by sustaining consumer spending. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT But the expanded benefits expire this week, even though the virus-induced depression is still very much with us. Unless Congress acts, almost all unemployed workers have already seen their last check. And Congress is unlikely to act, because Senate Republicans’ brains have been eaten by the unemployment zombie. Worrying that aid to the unemployed will make them lazy seems absurd when there are more than 30 million unemployed workers receiving benefits and only 5 million job openings. Unemployment benefits also didn’t stop 7 million workers from accepting jobs during the aborted economic takeoff of May and June, an attempted recovery cut short by the resurgence of Covid-19. But zombie ideas never die. Republicans apparently think that they’re being generous by “only” proposing to cut supplemental benefits by two-thirds, from $600 a week to $200. In fact, that’s so cruel and inadequate that it’s hard to see how Democrats could go along. So we’re entering a new phase of the Covid-19 crisis, this time brought on by blinkered economic ideology. And it fits the pattern. Every time you look at the havoc wrought by the pandemic and think “Well, things could be worse,” America’s right takes action to ensure that things do, in fact, get worse. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Quick Hits How unemployment benefits helped sustain the economy, from the socialists at JPMorgan. Unemployment benefits don’t seem to have deterred workers from accepting jobs. No, really, they didn’t. We should give more honor to Frances Perkins, the mother of American unemployment insurance. Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at krugman-newsletter@nytimes.com. Facing the Music It’s a cruel, cruel summerYouTube This summer is ending on a grim note. May next summer be better. IN THE TIMES ‘That’s Ridiculous.’ How America’s Coronavirus Response Looks Abroad. From lockdowns to testing, we showed people around the world the facts and figures on how the U.S. has handled the pandemic. By Brendan Miller and Adam Westbrook How Local Covid Deaths Are Affecting Vote Choice A rise in coronavirus-related deaths in a given community tends to reduce support for Republicans. By Lynn Vavreck and Christopher Warshaw Italy Is Slowly Waking From the Nightmare This is a very strange, subdued summer for a country with an economy that relies heavily on tourism and merrymaking. But E.U. aid is on the way. By Beppe Severgnini ‘It’s Like Groundhog Day’: Coronavirus Testing Labs Again Lack Key Supplies Just weeks after resolving shortages in swabs, researchers are struggling to find the chemicals and plastic pieces they need to carry out coronavirus tests in the lab — leading to long waiting times. By Katherine J. Wu Read the full Opinion report here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Paul Krugman from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. 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