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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.
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.
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.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
then MS increased campaign contributions.
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.
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.
"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..."
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
"That's a nice business you got. Be a shame if anything happened to it."
At least, that's what I'm hearing.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
but how come nobody wants to trim it?
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.
This.
You don't strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
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.
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."
Got a credible cite for that?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Antitrust laws forbid monopolistic behavior. A very large corporation by itself does not represent monopolistic behavior.
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.
John Galt is fiction. Ayn Rand is *really bad* fiction. When corporations become too large they take on many characteristics of unaccountable government.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
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.
Without git we'd all be using mercurial instead.
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If the only thing in the pond is a shark, the shark dies of starvation.
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.
Life is not for the lazy.
He was showing off that grammar can be creative. Theirs no raisin too bicker.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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...
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Substitute 'art' with 'blogging'.
Works, doesn't it?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.