Scott Hanselman (shanselman) on Twitter: Scott Hanselman @shanselman �

The Amazon phone is a direct line from my wallet to Jeff Bezos' wallet.

That's exactly right!  So isn't that success for Amazon?  More importantly, isn't that a plus for us?

Look, even I wrote about the power of the store in your pocket as far back as 2008.  That's what's driving mobile sales.  That's what's driving Apple's stock price.  It's about a store where they know your name (maybe not you, but your name), have your credit line waiting, and match you with purchases as effortlessly as possible.

It's been painful, but one idea that has haunted me for over a decade, but that I finally accepted this year, is that the first world has too much disposable income.  Painful not because folks have extra cash, but because I'm slowly accepting that it's culturally and systematically okay, maybe even beneficial*, to spend cash on crud. Even traditionally "poor" folk have cable, a cell phone, a television, more than a single pair of shoes, often a decent car, and have eaten fast food in the last week.  That's not poor in the same way we used to think of poor, is it?  Should folks be saving?  Yes.  But is it really exploitation that these luxury^H^H^H discretionary items are affordable and accessible?

That is, the US is a nation replete of citizens with money to spend.  You don't have to have that much money to have a discretionary dollar today.  (Okay okay, yes, yes, I know.  But stay with me.)  If we stipulate that many of us are going to waste money (My $5 for Unread that I finally gave up on is an example, as is last night's $3 for Vesper, right?  Talk about discretionary spending...), isn't it better than we waste that money conveniently?  Isn't Fire's Shazam for books and movies then a benefit?

I don't understand the Fire phone pushback.  It's not iOS.  But in a world where anyone making more than $25k a year is buying a few songs and movies every year, Fire seems much better at putting that store in my pocket than anything to this point.  And that's the future in a first world economy.

(This disjointed post is why the good blogs edit, but I think you get my drift.)

Btw, this formatting issue with Blogger is killing me.  I think it's finally time to get a new blogging engine.

* You can tell I'm still resisting this one.  Big picture economic beneficial doesn't necessarily mean (nor not mean) ethically beneficial.

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