News about Amazon seems to read like something straight out of a classic American novel and now makes me wonder if the company name is related, as I wrote here in 2015 about that book.

…when you talk to the platform engineers behind closed doors you will often find a modern version of Sinclair’s 1906 novel “The Jungle”; history has some very important lessons to be remembered…

Founder Jeff Bezos was reported to say competing with Bernie Madoff in hedge money made him feel like a loser.

Bezos reportedly confided to former AOL president Ted Leonsis that he quit his job at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw because Bernie Madoff “was kicking my ass.” The Amazon idea came to Bezos as he was researching online business opportunities for the hedge fund.

Madoff was later sentenced to 150 years in jail for crimes, what Bezos credited as “kicking”.

Bezos meanwhile gave up because too jealous of Madoff’s ill-gotten wealth; allegedly he thought a better get-rich strategy for a wealthy hedge gambler was to plunge his millions into gaming a vulnerable market into a forced monopoly (initially books). This was basically creating a tech platform for rent seeking (coerced trade that benefits only one side), which today we call Amazon.

Fast forward and we are now being told Bezos isn’t even close to jail for a cruel headline that reads like Sinclair reporting American life in 1906:

Amazon Warehouse Employee Designated To Improperly Test Workers For COVID-19, Dies And The Media Isn’t Talking About It

Easy to see why people describe Amazon having “blatant disregard of human life” yet hard to see why it is legal.