You mean Alex Jones frothing at the mouth that chemicals are turning the frogs gay?
It's an interesting phrase, there's some nuance behind it actually:
The reaction clip, of course, is just mimetic gold; but it's based on a true story, of suppressed science, distilled over the years through a conspiracy-theoretic lens, down to the simplest possible description. They're not "gay" of course, that's an abuse of language, but hermaphroditic deformities -- intersex is the proper term(?) -- were found; the effects were causally proven; and the science was discredited by big agro as well as they could muster, because obviously, they have a financial stake in this.
So it's interesting to see the phrase used here, understanding how it came to be. It's the perfect case of a phrase that sounds like a joke, while hinting at a dark, disturbing situation.
Another, albeit less extreme, statement comes to mind: "the solution to pollution is dilution". Now, it's perfectly true -- see, it's easy to laugh at this statement, or question it morally -- and rightly so; but it works because it works. The problem is not that
a company is releasing toxic chemicals
per se, it's that enough of them are doing it, in great enough quantities, that, over anything from local areas to entire ecosystems, concentrations rise to dangerous levels. And often those levels are unimaginably small (~ppb, even ppt for PFAS, dioxins, etc.), and the effects on various species are unpredictable.
It's not that a resource is being exploited, it's that it's being exploited too aggressively for the number of users of that resource -- it's the tragedy of the commons, and the only solution is through cooperation, whether as a self-regulating industry, or by government action.
So, even outside of pesticides (and their production byproducts, or of myriad other chemical products), just say, the sheer disposal of plastic waste is troubling (e.g. microplastics entering food chains). Never mind the sheer amount of greenhouse and other gasses fed into the atmosphere. It's not about whether we are making an impact, it's absolutely the case that we do; the question is, are we using up the resource faster than it cleans itself, or than we can clean it? And wasteful practices such as highlighted in this thread, clearly aren't helping in that regard. It's a problem consisting of myriad actors, subject to diverse externalities; it's not a problem that can be solved by the individual, or a company necessarily, or even a country; it requires massive and effective cooperation by all stakeholders of the respective resource, of whatever size that resource is.
Amazon often is grouped with companies like Google, Apple, and the likes. But Amazon isn't exactly a high profit company. Amazon's on-line sales and fulfilment operates on much thinner margin than say Google's ad sale and Apple's HW/SW (apps) lines. They don't have as much room to maneuver as you imagined.
I mean, it's not like Bezos is exactly strapped for cash or anything. He could float them personally for years with his war chest.
Anyway, that doesn't matter -- they can raise prices to compensate. Note this is only possible when regulations are applied uniformly across the market, where everyone is required to incur the same added cost. Making adjustments for barriers-to-entry or weighting judiciously by company size, or impact or overhead or whatever.
It would be ludicrous of course to single out just one company. Again, it's not just one, there are many actors to blame!
Heh, a possible consequence might be making brick-and-mortar stores relatively more profitable; that would seem to hint at the tradeoff of local supply versus delivery, under such a [environmentally responsible regulatory] regime. I mean, if it worked out that way, I can't say I'd be disappointed! But it may well be the case that delivery is better, I don't know.
But anyway, I'm not a policy wonk, I don't know what's being discussed, if anything like this, right now. There's probably something. I'd suggest go reading about that directly, to see some better circumscribed, actually studied, proposals.
This is probably shocking to many: Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has generated during its lifetime!
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/11/apple-made-more-profit-in-three-months-than-amazon-has-generated-during-its-lifetime.html
I agree wholeheartedly, they need to be regulated as well! They're aggressively anti-repair, as are many other manufacturers that are dependent on a captive-service or recurring-sales model.
Tim