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Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

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Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#111

Post by vacri »

wott wrote: post #105
benologist wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos is a much more accomplished business man - Tesla has ~3,000 employees SpaceX has ~5,000 Solar City has ~13,000 PayPal has ~13,000 Total: 34,000 as they stand today which is a very generous measure since it's years after Musk left PayPal and he doesn't even work at Solar City afaik. Amazon has ~222,000 employees, roughly 8x larger than all of those companies combined, not even counting Blue Origin, WaPo, or w/e…

> PayPal has ~13,000 What do these people do? I mean, for the other companies you quoted, there are physical products to be designed, manufactured, mounted or moved, I get it. But Paypal?

Customer complaints don't just ignore themselves!

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#112

Post by brightball »

rgbrgb wrote: post #88
brightball wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employee count should get some heavy value since the real benefit to society from most companies comes from payouts to the rest of the economy via payroll and stock. Unless we're enabling larger ecosystems around what they've done that creates even more. So far I'm seeing very little in terms of ecosystem around Musk's companies. On the contrary, he seems more focussed on doing exactly the opposite (like Tesla's focu…

That's kind of a 0-sum outlook on the role of businesses in society (gather wealth to distribute to employees). Most of the businesses we're talking about are benefiting society not through job creation but through technology creation. Google is not important because they employ tens of thousands of engineers, they're important because Search benefits general knowledge and decision making of everyone with an internet…

Much technology creation results in a surrounding ecosystem.

Google search enables the people and ideas that are found on the other end of it. People pay for ads to help their businesses to be found which provides value for them and helps those other business to create jobs as well as profits to investors.

Amazon also enables the people selling good through it. AWS enables a lot of people via technology and resulted in an entire ecosystem around what it does.

Tesla is making electric cars, which is great. They're employing fewer people and doing very little in the way of surrounding ecosystem. The closest thing happening there is the Powerwall home batteries that create some opportunities for electricians. They did open up the specs for batteries though and that definitely could create some type of ecosystem, but that remains to be seen.

SpaceX won't be creating an ecosystem anytime soon. Maybe one day and it's certainly worthwhile R&D but the value to society is harder to find.

I'm sure it will happen eventually, but where things stand now Bezos stands as much more accomplished.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#113

Post by shrewduser »

TimPrice wrote: post #91
pbreit wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos is in it for the long haul. He's probably the most impressive business person there is right now. Buffett and Musk are impressive in different ways.

How is Bezos more impressive than Jack Ma?

how is Jack Ma more impressive than bezos?

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#114

Post by bsder »

rdli wrote: post #44

Amazon's fundamental source of competitive advantage is rarely talked about, but I think this is a great example of what that is -- they have built a company that succeeds in very low margin businesses. So they started in online retail with < 10% gross margin. With AWS with its ~40% GM they have INCREASED the GM of the company. Contrast this with Microsoft and Google which sell software at 80%+ GM. When they do Azure…

> So they started in online retail with They succeeded there because they didn't pay sales tax so they had a 5-10% advantage over brick and mortar.

Now that that advantage is gone, they are finding that retail isn't so nice anymore.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#115

Post by wycx »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #110
Spooky23 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the things that Henry Ford got right. If nobody can afford to buy anything, you don't need any engineers.

Multiple mistakes in your comment: It is not possible to be making things that nobody can afford to buy. This is because consuming or otherwise using something that already exists has no real cost. This is Say's Law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say's_law ). And Henry Ford paid his workers a high wage because he tried a low wage and had massive, business-crippling problems with employee turnover. Working on an asse…

I note the following from the reference you provide:

Today, most mainstream economists reject Say's law.

...and it would be hard to accuse mainstream economists today of all being Keynesians.

edit: to asterisk

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#117

Post by sixQuarks »

ncallaway wrote: post #52
sixQuarks wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but Bezos and Buffet are not even in the same league as Elon Musk.

Who, then, would you say is in Mr. Musk's league?

Musk is in a league of his own. This is based on my own research and comparison. I believe I've watched every interview he's given, read his biography, read the in-depth profile on waitbutwhy.com, and followed his companies fairly closely. I've done the same with Bezos, since the day Amazon went public. While I highly respect Bezos, I believe if you did the same, you would come to the same conclusion.

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#118

Post by backtoyoujim »

dexterdog wrote: post #103
backtoyoujim wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Bezos can't get a crappy USPS delivery person off of a shift that affects a bunch of his customers.

But he does get crappy USPS delivery people to my house on Sunday which they never did before.

But left to their own devices they wouldn't even deliver on Saturyday

http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/management/agen...

Re: Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?

#119

Post by ncallaway »

sixQuarks wrote: post #117
ncallaway wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who, then, would you say is in Mr. Musk's league?

Musk is in a league of his own. This is based on my own research and comparison. I believe I've watched every interview he's given, read his biography, read the in-depth profile on waitbutwhy.com, and followed his companies fairly closely. I've done the same with Bezos, since the day Amazon went public. While I highly respect Bezos, I believe if you did the same, you would come to the same conclusion.

I guess we just have a fundamental disagreement over the definition of the term "league".
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