Karl Marx talked about a world in which there would be no scarcity so we’d be able to transition from socialism to true communism. Maybe Amazon back by the Chinese factory state has finally delivered that world? See “A small leak in the Amazon pipeline: A true fable of the Internet.”
(Note that Henry Minsky, the author, is the son of Marvin Minsky, who was moderately successful as a futurist.)
I’ve seen a couple of articles in the press about this happening to other people as well. The best theory by ‘experts’ seems to be that this is a scam to pump up seller ratings; they open a new Amazon account, ship stuff to some random address, and then become ‘verified’ buyers and can add good reviews to their products on Amazon.
Amazon however, is conspicuously silent on the matter. Presumably because this would instill doubt in their customers about the veracity of the product reviews they are reading, and which are one of Amazon’s main competitive advantages.
https://www.geek.com/tech/amazon-scam-floods-couple-with-unwanted-packages-1730713/?source
http://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/ever-heard-of-a-scammer-practice-called-brushing/337178
Am I the only one who sees the irony of capitalism powering the socialist/communist dream? Using capitalism to gain enough power to destroy capitalism…… brilliant. How many more must die before these losing ideologies are discarded?
Paul: I think that you have good company… Karl Marx. Wasn’t his central thesis that capitalism laid the foundation for socialism and then communism? It was the manufacturing might of capitalism that generated enough resources to make it all work. Thus Marx would have been surprised to see socialism initially adopted in countries such as Russia and China that didn’t have a lot of manufacturing capacity compared to, say, England.
@Paul, actually I think the irony is that the ‘capitalist superstar’ of USA is the most deeply indebted to a ‘communist’ government. We borrow from communist China. And communist China is our biggest creditor!
@philg interesting!
btw- a lot of libertarians like to diss Karl Marx for proposing socialism/communism. But you gotta admit, his criticisms of capitalism were really on the mark. The problem is just that his solutions to capitalism were really bad. With unlimited energy and unlimited robots, maybe we will achieve ‘his dream’ 🙂
btw for anyone interest BBC had a nice three part series. Masters of Money.
here is the episode on Karl Marx:
They also cover Hayek and Keynes (which are the mainstream economists)