Comment by boelboel
5 hours ago
The time of retailers being 'honest' is over. Scamming, bargaining and the likes were a big part of business. Bargaining was normal before certain religious beliefs (like the quakers and calvinists, similar religious beliefs were found with catholics), The fact it was more efficient with the industrial revolution not to do so helped it.
When you lose both those factors it's bound to come up again. People don't 'really' believe anymore in the west, doesn't bother me so much besides the fact that nothing better really replaced it. Better operation research/management/computers now allow for the bargaining to be done 'efficiently'.
Nobody in the US cares about this anyway, who cares if Zuckerberg makes billions scamming people. People were brought into passivity by the same culture industry and the politicians gain from these guys, they're cash cows for the US. I don't see how things could get better.
I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. Are you implying that secularism is the cause of counterfeit goods on Amazon? Or am I reading you wrong?
Secularism, changes in 'christianity' in the US. I'm not some christian nationalist but I do believe changes in values allowed Amazon to do this. Maybe I'm wrong and people will end up going against this in the long term. The 'christian' view of this behaviour didn't come from a vacuum. My biggest worry is the passivity/docile nature of people nowadays can't bring such change.
Looking at it through a religious lens is pretty narrow-minded. Secular people have values too. You're limiting your ability to understand the world around you.
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Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (John Adams)
Not seeing the connection.
In "non-secular times" people as a whole were far less mobile, so they grew up and built connections around the same people, and any connections to the wider world were very low-bandwidth if they existed at all. So they trusted the people they were near because they were around them constantly, and also tended to resist change.
I think you are conflating religious values with how things were when people mostly lived among the same people for most of their lives and didn't have modern communication methods that brought the whole world (or an appearance thereof which is what modern social media is) to their face.
> The time of retailers being 'honest' is over.
First, I'm not sure it ever started. Second, this article is about moving towards honesty.
After years of scamming customers, amazon has finally seen the light and won't be prioritizing shareholder returns (which they're legally required to do). In reality hey're just trying to tone down the scamming they've been doing ever so slightly because it's hurting revenue. 100% sure it will just end up at 2019 or 2021 amazon scam levels, Some sort of 'scamming optimum' for amazon.
If you think it never started try going to some third world country and compare, their people are used to the bargaining/scamming but nobody cares. Things will end up the same here at some point.