Should Amazon directly employ more delivery drivers?

Well, I mean, this is a practice that's widespread. It's not focused on New York. I think Amazon's been using these networks of independent contractors as drivers for a while. And what they say is that if you deny them the ability to use these independent contractors, it will raise delivery costs. And there was a study that showed that the average household could pay hundreds of dollars extra. If you change this, it would slow down service. It would put thousands of jobs at risk at small contractor businesses. And Amazon says that it could lead them to shift operations outside the city. Also, one thing that this DSP model does is it enables rapid scaling for peaks. So holiday surges, dense urban routing, lower costs. It's a much more flexible arrangement than if everyone was just an Amazon employee. So, this is how the market has evolved is, I think maybe when they started, Amazon probably was doing everything themselves and they started to decentralize it to these networks of small businesses, these contractors. It actually ends up creating more jobs. It creates more entrepreneurship. I think these DSPs employ thousands of people in New York City. Those jobs will be threatened if you basically made them illegal. So, I think this is a case where they should just let-

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I would just let freedom of contract and volunteer exchange prevail here. And look, this market structure evolved for a reason. The workers liked it, the DSP owners liked it, Amazon liked it. These are mutually beneficial arrangements. I don't see the reason why Mamdani has to insert the city in the middle of this. Gavin, do you have a take here?

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If you look at what Starbucks did when Schultz was running it, he gave people a job worth having. And he took pride in taking the lowest paid people in the organization and giving them a living wage. And that living wage is somewhere around 20 bucks, 22 bucks in these cities. These DSP drivers are actually paid quite well. 18 bucks, 19 bucks, 20 bucks. But this was not created in the free market, as you're sort of saying, Sacks, and it was just what everybody wanted. No, this was created explicitly to benefit Amazon and to take the burden of these employees and put it onto the American taxpayer. And they are getting called out on it, rightfully so, by New Jersey and New York. And I believe, you know, and I'm a long-term Amazon customer. I've been a prime subscriber since the beginning. It would be a de minimis cost for them to make these employees full-time employees, and you'd still have some DSPs to scale up and down, sure. But this is an opportunity for them to make those frontline workers part of the Amazon family. It would cost but 25 cents per delivery in New York to move them from this $18, $19 an hour to give them a slightly higher pay raise, maybe $21, $22, and give them benefits. This is an easy thing to do. And what our industry has a crazy blind spot for is that they look for efficiencies and Amazon is the most efficient company in the world to the point of it being abusive to the most vulnerable members of our society and for being against the esprit de corps of capitalism. This is a level of capitalism that needs to be self-corrected for. And I think the government's going to have very valid arguments here. I think it would be amazing for Amazon to get ahead of this because this will be what the democratic socialists, also known as socialist communists in my mind. This is a very valid argument that will sell with Americans who believe that this group of people is being taken advantage of and that we can easily afford to pay 25 cents more per package delivery. Yeah, Sacks, you're right. It might add $100.

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And I think there's a compromise here, which is there are DSPs to scale up when there's demand during the holidays. Seems like a great idea. But I think he should get ahead of it.

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