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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

> I’m going to tacitly accept some of Bezos’ underlying assumptions [...] I’m just meeting the claims on their own terms [...]

> In a typical transaction, no value is created. If I give you an apple and you give me an orange, the total amount of fruit in the economy remains constant.

Right here he has already failed to abide by his assertions in the previous paragraph. The transaction in fruit does create value because it transfers fruit from people who want it less to people who want it more. Improving the distribution of fruit in the world is valuable even when the total amount of fruit does not change.

The value Bezos is talking about is not the same idea of "value" that this guy has in his head. Sure, maybe Bezos is overcounting his value. But arguments like the above are just missing the point.

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I think that you did not grasp the concept of "value" that is used in the article.

There is a difference between the general "value" and an amount of money that pre-exist anyway. In the same way, the "monay value you give to something" is not the "value" of the thing.

For example, if you buy 10$ a stock that has a financial value of 100$, you had a good deal btut the stock value is still 100$.

In the case of the apple transaction, if the price you got the apple is 10$, and now the product and conditions are the same, but because of the demand some people are ready to buy it 20$ from you. It was not 10$ of value created but just transferred. Someone got a bigger part of money and the other one has less money remaining. But the total amount of money stays the same globally.

I think that you did not grasp my point, which is that the article claimed to be making a good faith argument accepting Bezos's assumptions, but then in the very next paragraph started using different assumptions about the definition of value.

I thought Bezos was attaching a monetary amount ($) to that value though — so pointing out that a fruit swap is zero-sum, monetarily, seems on point.

It's common to quantify value in units of dollars. It doesn't literally mean that money was printed.

Using Amazon's analogy, they exchanged an apple for an orange and are claiming they created an apple + orange worth of value. Really the value created is (1) the profit, which goes to their shareholders and (2) the benefit to their customer of having an orange instead of an apple, which is probably measurable but not quite as much as what they are claiming.

> ... having an orange instead of an apple, which is probably measurable ...

No, it is absolutely not measurable. We have known since time immemorial that you can't compare apples and oranges.

And now if we unanalogize the argument, ceteris paribus, we clearly see that it is similarly impossible to compare the value of an employee's wages with the value they provide to their employer. Cogito, ergo sum.

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