You are assuming:

1. Value created for other shareholders is a good thing

2. $ "value" directly translates to actual resources or services

3. These employees and customers would not get the same or more value elsewhere if Amazon did not exist

4. This "value" created by Amazon is better compared to the alternative (such as more resources used locally instead of global trade)

One thing to point out that is lost in these arguments of “they create value for the shareholders”.

Folks that own a vast amount of stock do not pay taxes on that stock. They own the shares, and they take out loans against those shares. At some point they rollover or pay off those loans by selling some shares, but the shares have increased in value significantly in that time, or they’ve been granted new shares.

When we say “<business> has created value for shareholders”, it’s said in a way that implies that somehow that wealth creation makes its way into the tax system by virtue of the fact the wealth was ‘created’. It does not.

> That's $2.4 trillion of value created for other shareholders plus trillions more for employees, customers, suppliers, governments, and other stakeholders.

That's not Bezos' doing alone, that's Bezos plus over a million workers that did that. If Bezos never existed in history, someone else would have filled in that market. We need to stop this myth that a few men alone create all this value and that without them we'd still be dragging plows through the mud for our farms.

I would say they dont contribute. I don't think Jeff Bezos has contributed anything positive, at all. He's managed to become insanely rich in a system that rewards bad behavior, so what? All that value isnt doing anything.