My (Fake) Interview With Jeff Bezos

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01/5129303018/">jurvetson/Flickr</a>

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If you missed Wired‘s recent cover interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, you should check it out. Reading it on a plane recently, I was interested in a) knowing how thoroughly he controls important internet things (and possibly soon space travel) and will eventually be low-paying abusive overlord of us all, and b) being reminded why people do not assign me things like interviews with Jeff Bezos. Interviewer Stephen Levy is an old pro, and handled Bezos’ comments with a good deal more class than I would have mustered. Below, some of Bezos’ quotes to Wired and the responses I was hollering in my head while reading them:

Bezos: For your typical consumer book—I’m not talking about textbooks or anything specialized—$9.99 is really the highest price that’s reasonable for customers to pay.

McClelland: A good sandwich costs $7.99. Don’t you think my deli puts considerably less skill, time, and resources into making egg salad and prosciutto than an author puts into a decent book?

Bezos: We like [Zappos’] unique culture [of “happiness and customer service”], but we don’t want that culture at Amazon. We like our culture, too. Our version of a perfect customer experience is one in which our customer doesn’t want to talk to us. Every time a customer contacts us, we see it as a defect.

McClelland: That makes you sound like a total sociopath.

Bezos, on why he aggressively opposes state sales tax: There are five states where we collect sales tax. We do great in those states. That’s not what this is about. We want federal legislation. That’s what we’ve been working on. And I think we can get that done this year.

McClelland: Oh good. We definitely need more CEOs posting billions in profits and not contributing to the societies that help them make it in any way, except donating $42 million to a foundation building a clock that will last for 10,000 years.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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