The popular caricature of the 19th-century robber baron financier in the pulp press of the day was a well-dressed fat guy with a leering avaricious expression. Not so Jeff Bezos, who is usually clad in comfortable jeans and loose-fitting shirt, presenting himself as the epitome of cool – slim and smirkingly self-confident. After all, those bad old days of narrow-minded evil capitalism are a thing of the past, right? Bezos is a visionary of the future, generous with his advice and cheque book – for appropriate causes. He is poised to lead us in finding high-tech (and profitable) solutions to the many dire problems facing humanity. And why not? Bezos has a net worth higher than the individual GDPs of 141 of the world’s countries.
So goes the script from the vast public relations team behind the megacorporation Amazon and its founder. The truth is, sadly, more mundane. Central to Bezos’ corporate mission is the human being as a customer, a simple buying machine – no longer a multi-dimensional citizen. Customer-satisfaction babble emanates from every pore of Amazon’s being.
