If Amazon Operated Like Government. Mayday!

Amazon has a major technical initiative planned for its new Kindle Fire tablets next month. It's called Mayday, and it's a little button on the screen you can press at any time to get live onscreen help with whatever it is you're trying to do on the Kindle. The operator can even take over your Kindle and demonstrate how to solve the task. It's absolutely critical to Amazon that this service delivers as promised. Otherwise people will walk away from it pretty quickly and buy other tablets.

Imagine, though, that Amazon ran like government.

• Nobody's job would depend on whether this thing worked. If it didn't work, nobody would be fired.
• If it weren't operable in time for holiday sales, Amazon would simply declare that Christmas will be postponed this year.
• Amazon would charge some people $500 for the Kindle Fire so that other could buy it for $5. 
• Amazon would charge everybody who didn't buy a Kindle $100.
• Jeff Bezos would call a press conference and surround himself with ten people who actually got Mayday to work. He would then proudly announce that when Mayday wasn't working you could still call Amazon's 800 number and speak to an operator.
• When confidence in Amazon crashed and sales plummeted, Amazon would simply issue more bonds that the Federal Reserve would buy from it. 
• The Board of Directors would reelect Bezos as CEO because, well, he's really a pretty cool dude and knows how to use a TelePrompter.