Posted on 06/20/2017 6:59:59 AM PDT by Callahan
“Amazon just bought Whole Foods,” my friend texted me seconds after the announcement of the proposed acquisition. “It’s over. The world.”
This unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for breaking up Jeff Bezos’s impending monopoly by force. Surely the company, which now generates 30% of all online and offline retail sales growth in the United States, and already controls 40% of internet cloud services, has reached too far. The 3% hike in Amazon’s share price since the announcement—which would alone more than pay for the acquisition—may attest less to the deal’s appropriateness than to investors’ growing fear that missing out on Amazon means missing out on the future of the economy.
Whatever you may think of Jeff Bezos, and whether or not antitrust regulations can justifiably be applied to a company whose expansion doesn’t raise but actually lowers costs for end consumers, may be beside the point. Many of us get that something is amiss, but are ourselves so deeply enmeshed in the logic of last century’s version of free-market industrial capitalism that we can’t quite bring ourselves to call this out for the threat it poses to our markets, our economy, and even our planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at fastcompany.com ...
I agree. At some point in time someone will come up with a better/different business model that will eventually replace Amazon.
Right. How did Amazon even get started in business, if the scenario you described here is exactly what happened with Wal-Mart in the 1990s? /sarcasm off/
Thank you. Yes, they all put on their smiley face when they are gaining power. You don't feel the whip until they have secured their power.
Bust them all up. Especially Amazon.
The level of panic on this is retarded. Really, it’s just Whole Foods, they’re a minuscule part of the grocery market. If they’d bought Safeway/ Albertons maybe this reaction would be warranted, but the didn’t. They aren’t a monopoly folks, get over it already.
Yes...I’m starting to use Walmart instead of A Prime too...like another Freeper said...Amazon is a great “catalog”
More than just Amazon needs to be broken up. They really need to break up Comcast (force Comcast to sell off NBC Universal), AT&T must sell off Time Warner, Disney to split into three (one with Disney’s own properties plus the theme parks, one with Lucasfilm and Marvel Entertainment, and one with ABC and ESPN).
Good post. Do you have any sense of why Amazon would buy such a small (and expensive) player in the grocery business?
Nothing like the power concentrated in the US Government. And most of that is held and exercised in direct violation of the US Constitution. The current US Government is far more illegal than any private sector monopoly.
“What I don’t get was how Amazon was able to operate for 20 years without making a profit in a supposed free market.”
In a free market, venture capitalists and stock speculators are free to subsidize a non-profitable company that they believe will be profitable in the future.
Amazon's revenue in 2016: $136B. Global retail e-commerce in 2016: $1100B.
I don’t care how liberal Bezos is. I love Amazon.
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I hate Bezos and the WaPo. Amazon, however, is a lifesaver for the rural population. Especially Amazon Prime. For a little over $9/month, I get 2-day free shipping (or a compensatory point award if I delay to 4-day shipping),video streaming, access to flash sales and with an Amazon awards card, 5% cash back in points.
Appliance or vehicle needs a part? Amazon has it. Supplies not available within 50 miles, if that? Amazon has it. Free or discount Kindle books? Amazon has it. Upload an ebook for sale or schedule a promotion for free? Amazon. Bad weather, busy schedule, ill or in an isolated area and need an ingredient? Amazon has it.
My most conservative friends just signed up for Prime and have already saved the cost in shipping.
We never click on WaPo, though.
So. Amazon is going to destroy our planet.
Oh. The Humanity!
Monopolies are bad.
However, if Amazon conducts online business better than anyone else and grows and grows and makes customers and investors happy, this is not a monopoly. There is nothing to “fix” here.
Yes, don’t punish those who use the real free market not the markets controlled by the Deep state, big companies and the so called main street businesses dependent on lobbying and buying business shares at the local level to the state level, to the national and international levels.
So, because Amazon has a business model that everyone loves, and they've grown their business, now they need to distribute their earnings?
At what point do they become to big? Who decides that? The free market should decide how big a company gets, and the company is free to do as they wish with regard to profits, etc. IMHO.
You’re worried about Media services because they own so much? Maybe you should worry about the banks they get their funds from to do their work.
At the end of 2015, the too-big-to-fail banks, instead of getting smaller, are pretty much taking over the financial universe. The largest five banks in the U.S. now control nearly 45 percent of the industry’s total assets, according to an analysis from SNL Financial that comes amid an earnings season that has been generally positive for the largest institutions.
In total, the five institutions—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and U.S. Bancorp—had just under $7 trillion in total assets as of the end of 2014. That’s good for 44.61 percent of the industry total. It also leaves the other 55.4 percent of the assets to be divided up among 6,504 other institutions. Banks had total assets of just over $15 trillion at year’s end, a number that has grown to about $15.3 trillion in 2015, according to the Federal Reserve. The asset total for the five institutions in 2015 represents a 2.3 percent gain from the previous year. And the 2016 gains should be just as good if not better toward control of the finances for everyone.
As an industry, banks made $36.9 billion in the year, Though the total profits declined, the number of banks that operated at a loss dropped to 9.4 percent from 12.7 percent in 2013. So even though they control a vast majority of the worth, they still have to have more.
JPMorgan showed the biggest growth in terms of its share of assets, increasing 13.3 percent on a quarterly basis and 6.7 percent annualized, SNL reported. BofA and Wells Fargo saw modest increases in their share.
Without these types of funding facilities, the media would never get the capital to do what they are doing. And these guys are as thick as thieves with the media. Otherwise the ability to monopolize wouldn’t be possible. And then consider who the national debt is owed to.
rwood
“When a corporation gets too big, they become the ones who are in charge of the “Jack booted thugs.””
Hmm, what corporations are sending these “jack booted thugs” to kick in peoples’ doors and deprive them of their liberties?
“I urge you to examine the economic model that was Nazi Germany. It featured a system based on this sort of crony capitalism between huge corporations and Government.”
Sorry, but a company expanding market share because they are able to deliver better products and services at better prices is not fascism, or whatever cute phrase you want to substitute for fascism.
Well then, they are definitely beating out the US Post Office when it comes to customer service. On another note, I had a couple items to return that I didn't need and were worth about a hundred bucks each, and Amazon told me to keep them since I was a Prime member and never had any returns to date.
And a month later they have competition. The barriers to entry in online retail are very low. Anyone can sell online and can scale their operation from small to large with little difficulty. A little guy can't do same-day delivery but almost any traditional retailer can.
Movie studios were forced to divest themselves of their theater chains,
because they controlled too much of the product distribution.
Why shouldn’t Google and Microsoft be forced into the same kind of
divestment, and for the same reason?
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