Amazon Is Getting Too Big and the Government Is Talking About It (marketwatch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MarketWatch: Fresh off its biggest Prime Day yet, the Whole Foods Market bid, and a slew of announcements including Amazon Wardrobe, Amazon.com Inc. was the subject of two investor calls Thursday that raised concerns that it is getting too big. In one case, hedge-fund manager Douglas Kass said government intervention could be imminent. "I am shorting Amazon today because I have learned that there are currently early discussions and due diligence being considered in the legislative chambers in Washington DC with regard to possible antitrust opposition to Amazon's business practices, pricing strategy and expansion announcements already made (as well as being aimed at expansion strategies being considered in the future," wrote Kass, head of Seabreeze Partners Management. "My understanding is that certain Democrats in the Senate have instituted the very recent and preliminary investigation of Amazon's possible adverse impact on competition," he said. "But, in the Trump administration we also have a foe against Jeff Bezos, who not only runs Amazon but happens to own an editorially unfriendly (to President Trump) newspaper, The Washington Post."

Kass said he thinks the government "discussions may have just begun and may never result in any serious effort to limit Amazon's growth plans." But he has been writing a series of columns about whether we've reached "peak Amazon," and said in an earlier column that the Whole Foods deal puts "Amazon's vast power under the microscope." "Is Amazon a productive change agent and force for the good of the consumer by virtue of a reduction in product prices? Or is Amazon's disruption of the general retail business a destroyer of jobs, moving previously productively employed workers into the unemployment line?" he asked.

Comments

Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn looting government.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

The myth of Galt's Gulch is a fallacy based in the Great Man theory. The only thing that happens when inventors sit on their hands and refuse to invent is someone else comes along and produces the same invention anyway. All that are required are circumstance and motivation.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

John Galt is a fictitious character of a children's book. In the world created by the author, Ayn Rand, there are these worthwhile people who create by hard work, creativity, and just grit that they created for themselves by hard work and superior character - no help from ANYONE!!

In the Ayn Rand World, the genes and abilities that you inherited from your parents do not exist nor does their nurturing - the books, pre-school, music lessons, just being sober, not being impoverished, etc...

Nor does your race. Nor does our sex.

In her world, character matters most. In her World, Donald Trump is better than the guy who grew up in Louisiana as a poor kid and eventually busted his ass and became rich - and the Louisiana guy is the first person to admit he got some real LUCKY breaks.

Ayn Rand never understood the human condition. Her "love" life is testament to it. She was an abusive slut.

I wish I were in her circle so I could have fucked her every which way, gave her herpes, and said, "I'm following your rules. You never asked if I had Herpes."

Re:Who is John Galt?

[HornWumpus]

Got a credible cite for that?

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

The guberment paid for development of that magic electronical stuff that just let you send that message across the intertubes.

It's hard to tell the difference between free market idealists and meth heads sometimes.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

List of multiple discoveries throughout history.

Re: Who is John Galt?

[hackwrench]

I have many advantages. My work though needs help. My username on GitHub is the same as here.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

John Galt is fiction. Ayn Rand is *really bad* fiction. When corporations become too large they take on many characteristics of unaccountable government.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[lgw]

The only thing that happens when inventors sit on their hands and refuse to invent is someone else comes along and produces the same invention anyway. All that are required are circumstance and motivation.

Ah, the evil post-modernist idea that "competence is a myth". That anything could really be done by anyone, that there are no experts except by accident of work history, that no one really has more talent than anyone else. Total crock of shit, of course.

Creative output follows a Pareto Distribution. Whether it's papers published, points scored in professional sports, distribution of bestsellers among authors, or successful CEO founders, a tiny percentage of the people working at it are so far beyond the others in talent that they produce most of the output.

The pool of people able to both innovate and run a company is quite small. Sure, it's larger than the number of people currently doing it, but it's not that much larger.

Anyway, Rand's premise for the book was that all the top talent, all that limited pool conspired to go on strike. Not just the current CEOs, but the few smart people who actually mattered in the big companies too, wherever they were in the hierarchy. It would be a pretty lame labor action if only a few of the workers stopped working, wouldn't it? Not a very realistic premise, but the rest made sense if you granted that set-up.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the evil post-modernist idea that "competence is a myth". That anything could really be done by anyone, that there are no experts except by accident of work history, that no one really has more talent than anyone else. Total crock of shit, of course.

There's a difference between "someone else comes along" and "anyone else comes along". Of course competence matters.

Anyway, Rand's premise for the book was that all the top talent, all that limited pool conspired to go on strike. Not just the current CEOs, but the few smart people who actually mattered in the big companies too, wherever they were in the hierarchy. It would be a pretty lame labor action if only a few of the workers stopped working, wouldn't it? Not a very realistic premise, but the rest made sense if you granted that set-up.

See, that's a crock of shit. There's more talent in the pool which doesn't reach the top because the top is already filled. Top talent going on strike creates a talent vacuum and someone else steps up to fill the vacuum. If Linus Torvalds had decided to be lazy and never created Linux, we would still have something like Linux today. Either BSD or Hurd would have filled the void or someone else would have made something very much like Linux. Of course other competent experts who could have filled the role now held by Linus Torvalds didn't fill the role because Linus Torvalds didn't go on strike. But the man is not unique and if he never existed something like Linux would still exist without him.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, and if Linus never wrote Git there would still be version control systems too, and they would all suck, just like they did before Linus wrote Git.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without git we'd all be using mercurial instead.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[OrangeTide]

The arrogance of creative people is usually their downfall because they assume they are irreplaceable. I've had artists passionately explain to me why I couldn't possibly do the things that they do, and that they could easily do the things that I do. (sure I agree that most anyone could do kernel and microcode development with the appropriate education, but most people would hate that my job and wouldn't have the drive to excel at it.)

Re:Who is John Galt?

[OrangeTide]

Right now the bets are being placed that this comes true for Detroit ranging from 5 to 10 years. Even suggesting that it is 15 or 20 years out now seems unreasonably optimistic. And I wonder if 5 years is even too far out, that would place it into Trump's second term and this really seems like something that has to happen during his first term.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[Beeftopia]

I've had artists passionately explain to me why I couldn't possibly do the things that they do, and that they could easily do the things that I do.

That is a statement from people who've never been challenged by their coursework. Have them take a compilers or algorithms course and then they can provide a informed opinion.

I think art is important, but IMO that statement arises out of ignorance.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[OrangeTide]

What if a low-budget science fiction film successfully predicts 30 years into the future? We may be only 3 years away from finding out for certain.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[HornWumpus]

I had a damn tech writer smugly inform me that their was 'now a creative person on the team'. I said: 'Fuck off, your job is writing an goddamn instruction manual for a system _created_ by the rest of the people in this room.'

Most 'creatives', aren't.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[getuid()]

Ah, the good old fairy tale of irreplaceable talent.

The graveyards are full of "irreplaceable" people.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[RabidReindeer]

There was quite a fight over who invented the telephone. When you get to television, it gets even murkier. And then again, surely you've seen those old films about all the different people trying to invent the airplane.

Rand's real failing (other than that she wrote a "30-minute" speech that can't even be read in 30 minutes and insulted the reader by assuming that he/she was too dim to have gotten the point by then) was the assumption that all creative people are conservative-types, when so many in real life are outspoken liberals.

But I enjoy the irony that the these ultra-capitalists ultimately win by essentially unionizing and going on strike.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[RabidReindeer]

"One share, one vote. The CEO has 50,000 shares and the board has a grant of another 20,000 that's virtually guaranteed even if he trashes the company. You have 100 and a bill for a kidney transplant. What could be more democratic than that?"

Re:Who is John Galt?

[ArmoredDragon]

Sure, art is important, but not the modern crap "weird for the sake of weird" art that we see today.

https://youtu.be/jHKW5AWLby0?t...

Re:Who is John Galt?

[rickb928]

HAD you read the book you would recognize three things:

0) The story is a stylized depiction of government run amok. Exmphasis on stylized. It shows a somewhat unrealistically extreme result.

1) Galt Gulch is similarly overstated. How much is in the opinion of the reader.

2) Rand has some interesting infatuations, such as absolute individual freedom, thin fit and successful people, and their personal pursuits. Skipping over that and a 60+ page soliloquy that makes Shakespeare read like a kindergarten primer, and you miss significant insights into her and her character. But that book is worth a read unless you're mired in the Left's soft core socialism promise, in which case you will simply not get it.

3) Objectivism is, like most philosophies, flawed. So are we. Take what you like and leave the rest, or adopt something else fully knowing you will have to compromise or live in a log shack in mid east Labrador. Arctic Manitoba is not inhospitable enough to escape the difficulties of others.

4) The premise of the book, overreach of government, argues that the Great Man Theory would succeed only in the nation so governed when the tide turned. No exploration in the book of emigration, nor secession,but that would just cloud the plot.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[rickb928]

Have them shepherd a change to the web site through diagnosis, analysis, funding, development, testing, redevelopment, release, fast follower fixing, user pushback, redesign, repeat.

They will be sitting in the bathroom in a puddle of tears. I'll gladly clean brushes twice a day and sell a tenth of what I make for the equivalent of $3.30/hr in wages, except my work in that would be worth $0.02.

Just like their work in my area without 40 years experience.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[rickb928]

Substitute 'art' with 'blogging'.

Works, doesn't it?

Re:Who is John Galt?

[rickb928]

Or, as one writer told me, 'restating reality'.

I was thinking more like 'restating failure', but that's only true 33% of the time around here, if you ignore sprints 20 through 86.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[rickb928]

"she wrote a "30-minute" speech that can't even be read in 30 minutes"

I can read as fast as I can talk.

Think it through.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[rickb928]

Without integrated circuits, cell phones would be virtually impossible. Without miniaturized microwave tech they would not be practical. Without DTMF they would be unusable. Without improved batteries they would be undesirable.

Claiming you invented cell phones is a lot like claiming 'you won' the Super Bowl. Your team did, built on the successes and failures of prior team mates, your coaches' experiences elsewhere and previously, and a generous dose of serendipity.

But inventions do in fact occur, and some merely show the way to the better thing. It's OK to be part of someone else's dream.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[rickb928]

"you should realize that as a company gets larger - it gets more average"

Not where I work. After 160+ years it is bigger and better by every measure. No surprise, it is also virtually devoid of sexist practices, covert corruption, and for the past 16 years devoid of overtly defrauding customers. Yeah, that happened. Not any more.

Re: Who is John Galt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Substitute art with k0ding.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[lgw]

Where did I say "irreplaceable". Oh, you made that up.

The point is that the pool of top talent - in any complex endeavor - is small. So, sure, you can replace a good CEO if you have a good selection process, but you can't keep doing that very long. If we're instead talking about, say, novel publishing, it's not so obvious who replaces the top talent. There are a handful of authors that sell very well indeed, and only some of that is marketing. At the extreme of the bell curve, you go centuries between William Shakespeare and Agatha Christi.

Of course, you can also replace anyone easily - you just stop caring about how good the replacement is. That what normally happens.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[MercTech]

Any organization, once it get big enough, takes on the characteristics of a life form. Rather like a slime mold; the large organization wants to get into everything and only exists to grow larger.

A bit of a paraphrase of R.A.H. Large organizations need to be pruned before you need impact hammers and high temperature cutting torches to dislodge.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[laddiebuck]

You're misreading your source material. A Pareto distribution is a special case of a power law probability distribution, which were described by mathematician Derek Price. He was studying citations between scientific papers, which I'm glad you brought up. Scientific papers are the first published example of a scale-free network, the mathematics of which Price studied in detail. They are governed by preferential attachment, in other words, the rich get richer. A scientist who publishes cited papers gets more opportunities and more funds to publish more. A receiver who makes good catches plays more snaps and gets to catch more. A CEO who has proven they can lead a company has a better chance of getting another CEO job, even if they ran their last one into the ground. A wealthy person meets more wealthy people and has more capital to invest with.

This is the way the world works. Ayn Rand described the world as she wanted it to be: littered with a few rare geniuses, herself among them. A comforting but shallow worldview.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[RabidReindeer]

I can read much faster than I can talk. I still can't read that speech in 30 minutes or less. In fact, I did something I'd never done before, which is skipped over it after about 15 minutes or so.

In addition to being overly long-winded, like I said, you'd have to be a drooling idiot not to have gotten the point by that point in the book. She actually moved her credibility backwards by hammering it so hard.

At least I kept reading, though. I imagine that a lot of people threw the book against the wall and gave up.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[RabidReindeer]

Correction. Not 15 minutes. 45 minutes. 15 minutes would be a respectable chapter. 45 is more like a small book.

Re:Who is John Galt?

[not flu]

Anti intellectualism is rampant. Hell there was just a poll the other day that most republicans thought college was bad. That poll should have been more than a footnote in history. It indicates a terrible rot in society itself when the places we learn are considered the problem in our society.

Is it still anti-intellectualism when it's a professor saying it? The problem is that colleges are no longer the places we learn, they are places of neomarxist indoctrination.

Shorting Amazon today

[Anonymous Coward]

The balls on this guy, oh my. Can't wait to see how that one turns out.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[bill_mcgonigle]

The balls on this guy, oh my. Can't wait to see how that one turns out.

We can only hope he bought many, many puts on margin.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[jonsmirl]

He's going to get killed. Probably only shorted 100 shares.

Amazon is good for America and the other countries they operate in. Amazon is forcing retail to become more efficient. And when things become more efficient everyone wins. The smart move here is to figure out how to compete or partner with Amazon, not to try and hobble it. In the long run I suspect Alibaba is going to be Amazon's top competitor but I'm not ruling Walmart out. The really big competition arena is just getting started -- the build out of planetary logistic networks. My prediction is that one of these three will acquire a large logistics company like FedEx, DHL or UPS.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Hylandr]

This.

You don't strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[imgod2u]

That is, of course, barring government interference. Like border tariffs or import/export restrictions. A true planetary logistics and shipping network would be fantastic. Doubly so if it can be automated.

But the trend seems to be against efficiency in favor of "the good old times". Forgetting all the bad things about the "good old times"...

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Alain Williams]

You don't strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

But if you have a shark in your fish pond you control the shark otherwise,in the future, the only thing in the pond will be the shark. Then any new minnow that gets dropped into the pond will not be able to have a chance to live long enough to grow and become a fish.

In other words: to keep things competitive you need to ensure that there is enough business left for competitors. Even if Amazon kept good prices and service, would you like it if Amazon was the only retail outlet left ? We have seen many times that monopolies, like dictators, do not lead to good outcomes - no matter how much you welcome them to begin with.

Re: Shorting Amazon today

[hackwrench]

How is that what socialism does? i dnt even.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[iMadeGhostzilla]

And soon Amazon, embedded deeply in the American economy, will be too big too fail. I think we've seen how that worked out with the banks.

Anything very big, superstructured, superdominant, is in my opinion not good for the society.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[frank_adrian314159]

And when things become more efficient everyone wins.

Tell that to the buggy whip makers when the automobile came along. For almost every change (increases in efficiency among them), there are losers as well as winners.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[TechyImmigrant]

I think Amazon already has a logistics arm. The last mile will be handled by the local postal service unless the customer paid for better shipping.

To my house, Amazon shipments have been delivered by an Amazon employee in their own car for the past few months, sometimes the same day. For short distance delivery within a dense population when you have a lot of stuff to deliver, it's clearly cheaper to employ someone to deliver it than it is to use a postal service.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[kmahan]

And what did theGovernment do about these banks? NOTHING. It would be better if the government started with the banks rather than Amazon.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[lgw]

The pond is not small (and economics is not a zero sum game). Amazon is just reaching the size of Walmart. Two companies that size fighting each other is vastly better than one alone.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Hylandr]

Thank you for stating it so succinctly.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[jonsmirl]

You are also looking at the pond when the real fight is happening in the ocean. Over the next twenty to thirty years these companies are going to have global logistic networks that work in both directions. Companies in the US will be able to make their wares appear in Chinese websites similar to how Aliexpress works today. Now repeat that model in every country in the world.

So we need to feed our two sharks Amazon/Walmart and then let them loose into the ocean. Remember what Microsoft did to the software industry in the rest of the world during the 80's and 90's?

Over the next few decades the national boundaries of retail are going to disappear. Everyone will be able to sell to anyone via these global store fronts and the big logistics platforms will deliver anything anywhere in two days. You don't really think those fleets of planes Amazon and Alibaba are buying will stay in just one country, right? Alibaba just bought an entire airport in Spain.

Logistics is the key to making a global market place. These companies are going to build massive, world-wide distribution and warehousing systems and wring every last efficiency out of them. At most there will be five competitors at this scale. Two unknowns plus Amazon, Walmart and Alibaba.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Bartles]

If the only thing in the pond is a shark, the shark dies of starvation.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Bartles]

Where are the buggy whip makers now?

Re: Shorting Amazon today

[Bartles]

Not to mention if you use prime two day shipping, you pay for prime as well as the prime shipping markup to cover two day shipping costs.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[DigiShaman]

It's called the "Wal-Mart effect", and it was coined back in 1990. In addition, Walmart has been responsible for sucking the wind out of small towns and communities to the point of leaving them as ghost towns.

Re: Shorting Amazon today

[Bartles]

And then Walmart closes their store, and loses revenue. They aren't doing so great today, are they?

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[dwillden]

Doing decent business in Amish country. Not great but still making and selling buggy whips. Amazon carries them too. https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=western+whip&tag=mh0b-20&index=aps&hvadid=78134050391013&hvqmt=b&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7auow6z7yd_b

Re: Shorting Amazon today

[DigiShaman]

I'm not so sure the problem is as pronounced today as it was back then. When small towns dried up, and depending on how quickly, the ROI might not have paid off. Meaning Walmart had losses too.

Today, Walmart is probably more thorough in their financial risk assessments. Though still you're right, in the grand scheme of things, they've been very profitable in major cities and around the suburbs.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[RabidReindeer]

Two companies that size are just as likely to announce a merger, followed by share price increases and layoffs. And massive bonuses in the C-suite.

In the mean time, ask all those mom-and-pop businesses on Main Street how healthy competion is - when the competitor is a 900-lb gorilla and has the leverage to negotiate extra-favorable bulk pricing from its suppliers.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Dripdry]

Maybe.... that's not so bad?
One could argue America is WAY too spread out anyway. All that extra land isn't getting used, per se.
If efficiencies get wrung all the way out, who's to say that the consolidation of towns into larger towns isn't a good thing? All the tiny 200-person towns I go through on a drive through America don't need to exist anymore. It's inefficient, and there's a lot of poverty there anyway (though who's to say it gets better with bigger towns....) With some consolidation into cities I'd argue that the environment will actually be allowed to flourish again, perhaps, also.

America was inefficient by design in the first place. All we're doing is correcting that right now, and while that may sound heartless it's likely to happen somehow eventually.
Eventually people could spread back out as prices drop further and people can buy WalMazon and resell out in the boonies?

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Hylandr]

An imaginary scenario is still imaginary.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[DigiShaman]

Cities are targeted by nuclear weaponry. As I understand it, back in the old days, cities were targeted with non-programmable "hard card" logic boards. To retarget an ICBM of that vintage, you simple swapped out the card. Best to have diversification in a nation ;). You want both rural and urban as a hedge. The cities would fall, but at least there's something left salvageable in the aftermath.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[micahraleigh]

FWIW I don't think their workers would describe them that way (See the WaPo expose)

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[micahraleigh]

The problem wasn't that AT&T was making money (don't you want to do that?). The problem was the government gave them exclusive access to telephone related resources and no one could compete. Back then the government was OK giving up power when it made sense.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[dywolf]

oh what utter bullshit.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[RabidReindeer]

You mean that mega-companies don't like to merge to form even larger companies? Because if there isn't at least one pending mega-merger being worked on in the airline, telecom, or consumables industries right now, we're in an unusual state of affairs.

Or did you mean that merger announcements don't usually boost stock prices or trigger layoffs due to consolidation?

Or maybe it's that the top-level execs don't get big rewards, because after all, it's what they're paid to do just like the guy on the assembly line producing the widgets that the newly-merged company sells. Assuming it's not in one of the now-redundant plants that will be closing.

Or maybe you mean that Main Street hasn't been devastated by the big chain stores who can actually dictate prices to many of their suppliers?

Because none of that is imaginary unless history is imaginary.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[Hylandr]

Individually we all know these things happen.

Though, it doesn't mean you need to be paranoid about it happening with Amazon.

With the number of people on this Earth it's going to be natural for companies with a global reach to appear to be growing into a giant like you describe. But lets face it. Amazon's spending and internal balance sheet proves that it's not 'Rockefeller big'.

Wal Mart and whole foods will have a valid business model if the power goes out, or the Internet is turned off. Think about that for a bit.

Re:Shorting Amazon today

[RabidReindeer]

This isn't paranoia - it's Big Business since maybe 1950 or earlier. Companies grow. Companies merge. Layoffs ensue, Bonuses are paid. Companies divest. Rinse, repeat.

There's no Dark Conspiracy here, at least unless you're a rabid Communist. It's not productive, but the people who get paid to facilitate M&A and divestiture get a nice chunk of change every time companies go through this cycle and that's all that really matters to them.

Some would say it's not True Capitalism when the buying and selling of corporations is more important than using capital as a means of producing and selling actual products, but there are plenty who'll say that whatever makes you money is Capitalism. Just as the stock market was originally developed for the simple transfer of capital assets, but has since developed a significant side in abstract instruments. Some of which - like mortgage-backed securities - have enough clout to bring about a Great Recession.

Amazon is neither more nor less likely to play the game than any other company. After all, "Don't be Evil" isn't their motto.

Disruption

[GLMDesigns]

Or is Amazon's disruption of the general retail business a destroyer of jobs, moving previously productively employed workers into the unemployment line?

Yup. Same as xerox copying machines moved previously employed secretaries (see the massive secretarial pools in older movies) to the unemployment lines.
And how cranes and bulldozers put laborers out of business.
And how container ships put dockworkers out of business.
And ...

The real concern is not Amazon being more efficient and more fun to use than a mom-and-pop bookstore, music store, etc... but what happens when automation in Amazon's warehouses replace 90% of their employees.

Re:Disruption

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we increase taxes on amazon, use the windfall to introduce basic income, reduce working week to 30 hours and live the dream.

Re:Disruption

[imgod2u]

If history is any indicator, there will be a period of time when those displaced workers are unemployed and on welfare. But they will represent a smaller and smaller proportion of the population due to population increase. So their welfare burden will be mitigated. Then they'll die/retire and the new generation that springs up will be more capable and skilled, having gone through better education systems born out of a need to produce employable people. And new categories of jobs will spring up as new services are created by said skilled and capable young people.

That's of course, assuming a lot of key systems are in place. Amongst the most important is an ever-improving education system that produces skilled and employable young people....

I see Germany, China, Canada and possibly Mexico/Latin America (if they can get their shit together) as part of that future. I don't see the US, the UK or Japan as part of that.

If only there were a pool of highly educated, motivated and eager-to-work young people out there that those countries can draw from since they've kinda dropped that ball producing that domestically.....

Re:Disruption

[sabri]

Same as xerox copying machines moved previously employed secretaries (see the massive secretarial pools in older movies) to the unemployment lines.

But employed massive amounts of people at Xerox, opened up an entire new market.

How many people does Amazon employ? How many people does Amazon indirectly employ (think Ontrac, UPS, Fedex etc)?

I'm sure that thanks to Google, a lot of Encyclopedia salesmen are out of a job too. Would you like to ban Google?

Re:Disruption

[rogoshen1]

I'm sure that thanks to Google, a lot of Encyclopedia salesmen are out of a job too. Would you like to ban Google?

Yes I would, but not for that (implied) reason.

Re:Disruption

[rholtzjr]

I was kind of wondering where your comment was going.... until the second paragraph kicked in. Yea, I believe you are correct that our public education system has become something other than what most desire. We have seen where the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality will lead us. We have seen where the "No one left behind" will lead us. It did nothing to prepare the next generation for the realities of life.

As for the US, UK, Japan not being there in the future. I will disagree with that statement. We wouldn't have been in existence if we continued down the path we were headed. Over 70 % of the voting population did not seem to like the path we were heading and are thoroughly fed up with the way our government is handling things and hasn't been listening to us for quite a few decades. We hope to correct that in the coming years and get rid of the rest of the useless politicians (and they are making it very obvious who they are this year).

I ignored your attempt to promote your globalist ideals on open borders in your last statement as that is not a solution, but a patch. I would prefer that we correct our own problems and then maybe we can come out and play with the rest of the kids.

On another note, I am agnostic.

Re:Disruption

[Altrag]

But they will represent a smaller and smaller proportion of the population due to population increase

That might be a problem since population is currently decreasing. That would be fine if you offset it with increased immigration, but we all know how the current administration feels about that..

Re:Disruption

[Ryanrule]

Frankly, I think automated meeting scheduling killed admin staff. Can you imagine setting up a 10 person meeting in the 80s? Fuck.

Re:Disruption

[Bartles]

So Amazon increases prices to compensate for the taxes, and then the UBI becomes ineffective because prices have risen and negated the UBI. You can't eat your arm to keep yourself from starving.

Re:Disruption

[swb]

I started work at the IT department of a large ad agency in 1993. When I started we had an ancient and rudimentary version of cc:Mail which nobody really used -- I found out by sending email to a coworker, who didn't read it for 3 days.

We also had a large secretarial staff, probably 30-odd people for a company of around 400, and a big task for them was scheduling meetings and printing memos.

By 98 or so, we had a full email/calendaring system installed and I'd say by about 2000 we only had 1/4 of the secretarial staff left.

I even used it as an argument with the CFO about obtaining upgrade money.

Re:Disruption

[GLMDesigns]

World population may be on downward slope regarding births. It's still going upward as far as absolute numbers are concerned.

As far as the US is concerned - our population is exploding. At the current pace we'll be at about three quarters of a billion people at the turn of the century.

We were at
130 million in 1940 and
200 million in 1970 and
310 million in 2010
Form 1970 to 2010 (40 years) we had a 50% increase in population.

At that rate it will be at about 450 million in 2050 and 700 in 2090.

Re:Disruption

[GLMDesigns]

Oh. I wasn't supporting the OP. I was pointing out to him that disruptions such as this have occurred numerous times.

I am slightly concerned about the disruption coming from automated cars, trucks and warehouses.

We have millions of taxi drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, and stock clerks. These jobs will go the way of the horse shoe. Long term that's good. Short term. There may be issues.

Re:Disruption

[dywolf]

the replacement jobs rarely fully compensate for the lost ones.

Re:Disruption

[GLMDesigns]

What dream is that?

Barely getting by on handouts? No thanks.

For as long as we're limited to this planet we need less people, not more.

just like Microsoft

[turkeydance]

then MS increased campaign contributions.

Re:just like Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon greatly increased its political spending in 2016. Walmart (3x the revenue of Amazon) has been spending big since 2002.

Re:just like Microsoft

[Spy Handler]

MS didn't just "increase campaign contributions", that doesn't accurately describe how things went down.

MS had *zero* lobbyists and made *zero* political contributions. Bill Gates was a naive computer nerd who thought corruption and shakedowns only happened in poor countries. Then when his company started making too much money in the 90's, suddenly it started getting all kinds of government trouble.

Bill, being a quick learner, rectified the situation and now MS has an army of full time lobbyists in Washington and a whole department dedicated to disbursing large sums of money as "contributions". And yes, their government problems went away.

Re:just like Microsoft

[DanielRavenNest]

Microsoft now has a Senator, who previously was in the House of Representatives, and whose district included Redmond, WA. Many years ago, one of the politicians from that state was referred to as the "Senator from Boeing". When you get really big, your politicians take care of you, but you have to get big first.

Re:just like Microsoft

[yodleboy]

exactly... MS didn't invent the game and actually got burned by it. Don't blame them for learning to play instead of standing in the fire...

Re:just like Microsoft

[Bartles]

Microsoft's government problems went away, because they became a dinosaur and the market created other solutions. Windows just isn't as important as it used to be.

Doug Kass? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doug Kass is a fearmonger. One of those people who focuses on the one in a hundred times he is right, and ignores all the times he is just trying to cause panic. I'm not saying this couldnt happen, not in the slightest. But Doug Kass is far from a reliable source.

This story smells

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are some early talks that aren't public knowledge, wouldn't shorting be insider trading.
If there are and it is public, shouldn't we have a corroborating source?

If there aren't talks, and he knows it, isn't that some sort of illegal market manipulation as well?
If there aren't talks, but he thinks there is, then wouldn't anyone following his advice be the picture of foolishness?

Something is off here.

Re:This story smells

[sexconker]

Yes x 4

Re:This story smells

[Tailhook]

Something is off here.

If you're looking for some "too big" to get worked up about.... 2016: Amazon revenue: $136 billion. Walmart revenue: $486 billion.

The latter has been wiping out competitors and distorting the wholesale and retail supply chain of the US for decades. Amazon has a looong way to go before they approach the damage of Walmart.

There are a lot of things "off" here.

Amazon has made a mistake. They disturbed the US professional class when they dared touch one of its refuges by grabbing Whole Foods. So yeah, sic the government ban hammer on them. Completely in character.

Re:This story smells

[rtb61]

Now you hit the nail right on it's head. Amazon has become threatening to Walmart the true destroyer of communities and Walmart's lobbyists are now out to get Amazon. Amazon is a logistics company with a retail arm and any logistics company can compete with them on the same basis. From the producers production lines to an Amazon warehouse to be picked and delivered to your home. Of course instant gratification does require click and mortar elements.

Basically apart from a period of bullshit lobbyiest crap, Walmart are screwed, first Amazon and than other logistics companies will join in and pick apart Walmart. Oddly enough Amazon can actually bring mom and pop stores into the fold as sort of franchises, providing neighbourhood stores, that provide pick up services a huge range of products to offer. So Amazon could actually create that Mom and Pop experience to out compete Walmart.

Walmart is in real trouble, than can not expand into other countries with unions because of ideological fervour on their board, seriously, religous level nut baggery ie they were looking to buy Coles Myer in Australia, which raised the price enormously but it all died when Walmart management found they would not be able to force a union free business no matter how many bribes they paid or what kind of animals their lawyers were and they had to give up.

Amazon will expand globally because it accepts unions, Walmart is crippled because of ideological fervour and can not expand into countries with unions, so in order to block Amazon, they most work the corrupt lobbyist route. For Amazon of course the USA is not the globe so they can cut back US development to focus in global development and still wipe out Walmart.

Re:This story smells

[mr.mctibbs]

No, it's not insider trading. Liability for trading on material non-public information attaches only on violation of a duty to abstain or disclose, or from violation of SEC Rule 10b-5, which covers fraud. If he's lying to lower the stock price, that's a 10b-5 violation. If he was given the information by somebody who was violating a fiduciary duty *to* amazon, he could be liable, but since this is information about a government intervention that is extremely unlikely.

(IANAL, but I am a law student and studying this exact material for my corporations law final in a couple weeks)

How the Government Works

[JBMcB]

"Hi there. Oh I'm just your friendly local congressman. I notice you haven't been doing a lot of lobbying lately. You know, campaign funding, that sort of thing. Say, that's a really nice business model you got going on there. Boy it looks really successful. I'm really happy for you. But, I'm worried about this legislation that's knocking around in congress that might affect it..."

There's a This American Life episode where a congresswoman left, pretty much, that message on someone's answering machine. "I notice your in the construction business and I'm on the panel for construction spending so..."

Re:How the Government Works

[squiggleslash]

This isn't about Congress, it's about the US government itself. And, frankly, with Bezos and Trump being fairly open about their outright hostility to one another, this story doesn't surprise me.

Re:How the Government Works

[Ichijo]

And here's a vice mayor trying to shakedown the owner of a small grocery store for campaign contributions. It's pretty egregious.

Government is a protection racket?

[sehlat]

"That's a nice business you got. Be a shame if anything happened to it."

At least, that's what I'm hearing.

Re:Government is a protection racket?

[imgod2u]

I suspect it's a bit less sinister. The old saying of never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

The "corporations are bad, up there in their corporate tower being all corporation-y" wing of the American leftists seem to be gaining momentum in much the same way the Tea-baggers did after Obama won in 2008.

Expect a lot of screaming and crying about how people shouldn't make money and stuff...

Re:Government is a protection racket?

[sexconker]

I suspect it's a bit less sinister. The old saying of never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

The "corporations are bad, up there in their corporate tower being all corporation-y" wing of the American leftists seem to be gaining momentum in much the same way the Tea-baggers did after Obama won in 2008.

Expect a lot of screaming and crying about how people shouldn't make money and stuff...

That old saying is retarded.

1: That's just what a malicious actor would want you to think.

2: If someone does some shit, why would you care about whether it was due to stupidity or maliciousness? The response shouldn't be more lenient if it was due to stupidity. That only enables stupidity AND malice. The stupid aren't punished and weeded out, and the malicious feign stupidity and aren't weeded out at the malicious actor rate. Instead, they get the stupid actor discount.

In the US, maybe

[fermion]

Whole foods has perhaps US$4 billion a year in sales. Amazon has been steadily growing and has perhaps US$130 billion a year in sales. Walmart also has US$130 a year in sale.

On the other hand Aldi and Trader Joe's bring in about half that world wide. It seems to me that we still need to be concerned about Wal Mart and their domination. Amazon is about the only venture that is going provide any real competition to Wal Mart, with discounted Amazon Prime to low income families, and the promise of affordable fresh vegetables and fruit through the Amazon Fresh program. In my town a family making three trips a month on the bus pays for the fresh membership.

I think the government may now be prioritizing east coast conservative corporate interests over the interests of voters, in the same way they prioritize legacy coal over the health interests of inner cities where the coal is burned.

Re:In the US, maybe

[turp182]

I was wondering why Walmart wasn't targeted while they decimated small companies in the 80s/90s/00s.

There is actually a bit of free market going on here as far as I can tell.

Disclosure: I had two Amazon packages by my front door when I got home today... I can't get replacement side mirror glass for my wife's car from Walmart.

Full Disclosure: I bought a crapton of soda and snacks (for kids' lunches) at Walmart over lunch today.

Take my disclosures as you will...

Government is getting too big...

[erapert]

but how come nobody wants to trim it?

Re:Government is getting too big...

[magusxxx]

Cutting 2% from a budget is trimming. Having an empty office which used to house six scientists isn't.

Re:Government is getting too big...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that science advisory board enacted by Obama for a limited timeframe that has lapsed which got yearly salaries despite meeting only a few times over the last two years?

I wish I could go to an afternoon meeting every five months, make a recommendation for someone else to do something, and collect $70k for my trip to DC.

There are plenty of good examples out there. This is not among them. The outrage over the advisory committee was pure politics. We are better off without it.

Re:Government is getting too big...

[Ryanrule]

nope

I bet he didn't short

[bobm]

Since people like this seem to always lie I"m guessing he didn't short and just trying to make some quick money.

It would be interesting to see who is really pushing this since politicians never do anything without someone pushing them to.

I suspect that it's Walmart who can't seem to get any real traction and aren't able to counter the shift away from the giant stores filled with crap.

There is no law against large corporations

[JoeyRox]

Antitrust laws forbid monopolistic behavior. A very large corporation by itself does not represent monopolistic behavior.

Dunno About Govt - Except Bailout

[al0ha]

Ever since attending the AWS conference, I have been wondering if the reason AMZN is not concerned about still hemorrhaging money and not making a profit after 20 years now is because the end game is becoming To Big To Fail.

I think Bezos et. al. learned a valuable lesson from 2008 and applied it as part of their business strategy.

Re:Dunno About Govt - Except Bailout

[Gilgaron]

Using your profit to grow the business is the old fashioned cartoon version of capitalism we learned in grade school. It also has tax benefits since you don't have a profit to bother with hiding in Ireland as I imagine the textbooks explain to do now.

Walmart

[hackwrench]

Amazon competes with Walmart. If only Sears and JC Penny's would merge and compete. K-Marts are a real mess. Morale is low there.

Re:Walmart

[DanielRavenNest]

Sears has been dying since 2000. I learned it was dying back then because my girlfriend worked there, and I got the inside scoop on how messed up things were. The sad thing about that is they could have become Amazon. Sears had been doing catalog sales since forever, and they could have jumped into online sales, but they were too slow.

Re:Walmart

[WindBourne]

exactly right.
They STILL could survive, but they will not. To survive they need to get rid of the MBA's they keep hiring and focus on getting new customers and new products. The best way for them to do that, is go after Small American start-ups.
But, they will not.

Simple solution

[Subm]

Simple solution: Amazon should just call itself a bank or an agri-business and the government will fund it getting bigger.

Yes/No/Whatever

[markdavis]

>"Is Amazon a productive change agent and force for the good of the consumer by virtue of a reduction in product prices? Or is Amazon's disruption of the general retail business a destroyer of jobs, moving previously productively employed workers into the unemployment line?"

Neither and yet both and yet that isn't what matters. I love Amazon. Most of us do. But what I do not like is that there is no real/viable OTHER "Amazon". That makes Amazon a type of monopoly in their own playground. Monopolies are rarely good for society or consumers in the long term. So I would certainly examine them, continuously, making sure they do not use their vast power to destroy or prevent competition. Competition and choice is what ultimately keeps prices down and forces companies to be responsive and offer good services, products, and selections.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. As Amazon gets bigger and bigger and flexes its muscles, none of us should be surprised by rising prices, bundling, lock-in, less-friendly terms for using their services, steering consumers to their own brands, undermining competition, undercutting, etc.

Re:Yes/No/Whatever

[Gilgaron]

One thing interesting with Amazon, is that while everybody is on there at least via third party, you don't necessarily have to buy through them. For specialty hobby items you can use it like a search engine and then search for the seller's eBay or regular ol' HTML store and buy more directly for cheaper.

simple solution for bezo

[WindBourne]

Seriously, the smart move would be for bezo to create 3-5 VERTICAL companies from amazon. Give them all the same equipment, robotics, etc, and then let them compete against each other.
With that, trump/GOP could do nothing, except get mad that Amazon 1-5 are slowly throttling companies like walmart, target, etc all who bought GOP politicians have been throttling America.

Too big, eh?

[hrieke]

Me thinks that there are enough other targets to go after than Amazon if you're going by size alone.
Wonder if Washington Post being a thorn in Trump's side has anything to do with this?

Re: Who is Karl Marx ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's because people confuse her fiction with reality.

Never mind that the foundation for knowledge and tools for technology in the past century was paid for by the evil communist government.

I'm sure companies were real eager to burn their own money on R&D that wouldn't see fruition in the consumer segment (and bence finally profits) 40-50 years down tge road.

Queue influx of lobbying cash to Dems

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

I expect this is really a plea for lobbying cash by whoever the supposed Dems are, just in time for the 2018 election season

Re: all hale gubermint

[Bartles]

Our parents did.

Re:I don't get it

[Bartles]

Amazon (Bezos) does run the Washington Post.

Prime Day?

[jandersen]

I had to look up what Prime Day is - I thought it might be something like Pi Day, which would have been cool, in a way. Somewhere along the same off-topic, tangent, I'd like to suggest 2nd of August (or 8th of February, depending on whether you're American) as Perfect Day, since 28 is a perfect number. Sorry, slow moving day at work.

Re:1 line 2 errors

[gnick]

He was showing off that grammar can be creative. Theirs no raisin too bicker.

Re:Can John galt root a kindle fire?

[rickb928]

"What id like is a way to run something like pixel or even just program them like an arduino"

For that you need to pay more than $25. A Mega or RasPi, touchscreen, and battery will cost more, case optional.

Sorry, what I meant to say was 'you're comparing different fruit.'

1st Amendment Issue

[quantaman]

If the Trump administration seems to be a driving force behind the regulation it would be pretty easy to draw a link between that and the threats Trump made to punish Amazon for negative coverage from the Washington Post.

That would seem to be good application of the 1st amendment, I wonder if Amazon would have a good shot at prevailing in a court case.

Do an Alphabet

[GameboyRMH]

It didn't work for Google with the EU, but it's worth a try. Break up Amazon into different companies under a new parent company. They could call it Buy N Large.

Just trying to make money

[SoftwareArtist]

I mean the guy posting this, not Amazon. He shorts a stock, then writes an article telling everyone they ought to sell that stock. He hopes some people will listen to him, in which case the price goes down, he immediately covers his short, and makes money. Nothing to do with Amazon really. It's a standard trick you can do with any stock. But only if you can get enough people to listen to you so it affects the stock price.

How is Amazon too big, but...

[ZZZaphod]

How Is Amazon too big but TimeWarner/Comcast not ? How is Amazon too big but ABC/Disney is not? How is Amazon too big but Google not? How is Amazon too big but Monsanto not? How is Amazon too big but Pepsico not? How is Amazon too big but Microsoft not? How is Amazon too big but Facebook, Inc. not? How is Amazon too big but Unilever not?

Kraft, Coke, Kellogs, General Mills, Mars, Unilever, P&G and Johnson & Johnson and Nestle - control the vast majority of prepared food in the US.
90% of American Media is owned by 6. GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, TimeWarner and CBS
Walmart has more market share than Target, Homedepot, McDonalds, and Costco combined. Their owners are worth $148 Billion, and many of their employees need public assistance.

If we are to clean house, let's not leave some doors unopened.

Anonymous Spam

[Tenebrousedge]

Weren't you responsible for both of those first two things? Aren't you basically complaining about your own behavior?

Re:Anonymous Spam

[sexconker]

No, I was not.

I copied the moo/cows troll a few times, because I enjoyed it. I was not the original creator and I didn't post it as AC.
I do the bolding for luddites and apps occasionally in reference to that particular troll, but again, I was not the originator and I didn't go around posting it as AC. (I don't think I've ever copy-pastad this one like I have occasionally for the moo/cows one.)

I wish I had the legacy of some of those classic troll posts.

I used to go post this whenever someone mentioned zero kelvin or absolute zero or some such. But I haven't done it in a while (in part because I can't be assed to search for it each time an opportunity comes up). I am the original creator of that. (And yes, I realize the type of "last rights" - it has been corrected in later postings of it.)

Re:1 line 2 errors

[HornWumpus]

That one was fucking useless, couldn't fix the english and spelling without mangling the meaning. Just too dumb.

The basic problem was: He had no clue, but wasn't sharp enough to realize it. His draft was a disaster. Out the door he went. I guess we made use of a few screenshots he took, but aside from that it was back to the engineer written rough draft. Which the customers, being engineers themselves, were able to use.

It's always a good idea to bring in tech writers, they are cheap, _much_ cheaper than technical people. But you want to make sure they produce a draft during their probation period. Not many smart ones, lots of attitude.