Deep Background with Noah Feldman Pushkin Industries

Overall, I love Deep Background. So much of our daily news diet is superficial, and Noah Feldman really digs into a topic and asks very insightful questions of his guests. His multi-part episode series “Deep Bench” on the rise of the Federalist Society was fascinating and revealing.

The rest of this review is feedback on a specific episode.

Because the overall quality is so high, that’s why I was disappointed in his recent episode on “Amazon and Inequality”. I’ll bring up two examples of why this episode left me feeling uninformed. Amazon is many businesses: a retailer; an advertising agency (one of the 5 largest in the world); a cloud hosting provider (AWS); and a logistics provider.

Most of the focus of the episode was on the last, emphasizing the dehumanizing nature of the work. But when talking about alternatives, the suggestion was buying from other vendors such as local physical bookstores. Those books aren’t walking to those bookstores by themselves; there are logistics networks of warehouses and trucks that provide fulfillment to all those stores too. Are the workers in those warehouses notably better off than Amazon warehouse workers? I don’t know, and the show didn’t explore that at all. So I’m left wondering is Amazon being used as a way to explain a broader problem (logistics industry mistreats workers), or is it really just Amazon? Is it the nature of highly vertically integrated businesses to be like this? What about Walmart, another large, vertically integrated retailer?

The second thesis is that Amazon (and tech companies in general) are increasing regional inequality by where they choose to locate their operations. Amazon doesn’t see like an ideal candidate for making this argument: even though they have a large tech workforce, that must be dwarfed by the number of employees in their logistics operations (warehouses, delivery). Hasn’t Amazon been building and opening warehouses all over the country to be closer to their customers to reduce delivery times? Wouldn’t that actually be creating new employment opportunities in many more places?

Similarly, the pandemic has resulted in many tech and other knowledge workers who can work from home to relocate from expensive, crowded centers like Silicon Valley or Seattle and move to other areas of the country, including the midwest. How would that trend affect the author’s thesis?

I haven’t read the book so perhaps author Alec MacGillis makes this all clear. But the interview left me more confused than informed.

Trying to get my head around Bitcoin, blockchain and all that. I’m a definitely a tiny step closer but what stood out to me was Noah’s thoughtful and persistent pushback regarding the opportunity (?), responsibility (?), these “smart” people are averting their gaze from when it comes to energy usage. He wasn’t having any of the guest’s excuses and rationalizations. Bravo, Noah!

Thanks for this sad and revealing discussion. I believe things have become so intolerable in college athletics simply because of the Dunning Kruger effect. Regardless of how this has come about and maintained, it is high time this information is shed more broadly on the disparities.