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 ...
‘Make no mistake about it, what we are seeing in this nation and around the world is a resurgence of the Aristocracy system, with the Billionaires becoming defacto “Lords.”’
Sure, ping us all when Jeff Bezos has a private army, is delegated to administer the law in his own little corner of the country, and has his own seat in a special house of Congress that the people don’t have a voice in.
>>Lots of room to improve service beyond 24x7. I mean that, right now, I have to sometimes wait 48 hours for my good to be delivered! That is so unacceptable. I want it NOW!<<
Just as computer technology was pushed by gaming, so too might delivery push the creation of transporter/teleporters.
I purposefully avoided Amazon with my last online purchase and went with what was reported to be a reputable business. My purchase arrived in an Amazon box sealed with Amazon tape.
Amazon has for some time now been working on and developing its own shipping service. No more UPS, USPS, or even Fed Ex.
Amazon deliveries will soon be done within hours by its own trucks, drones and drivers.
yeah, let’s get the government more involved!!
That’s what conservatives love, right?
“I don’t care how liberal Bezos is. I love Amazon”
Amazon is a stasi state’s dream. Your real name & address associated with everything you buy-read.
All natural monopolies are earned. Companies that fail to innovate and no longer serve their market’s interest perish.
Examples of former monopolies: Xerox, Kodak, MySpace, Pan Am, US Steel, etc. History is littered with these examples.
The reason they don’t “make a profit” is they reinvest everything. They actually make quite a bit of profit, they just don’t believe money in the bank is worth anything, so it doesn’t sit there and book as profit, it all goes into expansion.
I mention it constantly. It dominates my conversations on virtually every website on which I post. The current liberal media monopoly is a threat to the nation, and it needs to be broken apart.
We need to destroy liberal control of the broadcasting system in America.
Maybe because neither of those companies has anywhere near the same level of control of distribution as the companies in your example? With the architecture of the internet, even achieving that level of control is basically impossible.
Amazon gets huge amounts of government money. He was started from the CIA investment firm.
If he was truly private then yes. He isn’t. He uses government to protect his business in many ways.
He is a government created and enforced monopoly.
I agree. People should read some Adam Smith. He saw this stuff over 200 years ago.
So would I.
Which is why it is a good idea to reduce Congressmen's power even further by requiring term limits.
Seemed to work well with that AT&T company.
Congress SEEMS to be a “monopoly” these days
This is the fool who God is going to use to usher in the antichrist! ... I believe we are rapidly heading towards the latter days which the Bible speaks of! Come quickly Lord Jesus and do not forsake your children who are called by your name!
You can expand hourly. Amazon is looking at ways to get your order to you in three hours or less after you order it. Obviously, it's unlikely this will apply to some obscure novel but for most common grocery items, it's doable.
These two power systems are mutually reinforcing. As I said earlier in the thread, people need to look at the economic model of Nazi Germany. It featured Huge corporations in league with the Government. Each had their hands in the pockets of the other.
It was an evil system capable of horrible wrongs.
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