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Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

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Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#261

Post by pitt1980 »

aezell wrote: post #136
phreeza wrote: post #21

Somewhat off topic, but I have had a weird thought circulating in my head (triggered by reading Red Plenty) that I wanted to put out there: What is the relationship between a centrally planned economy as for example Gosplan was trying to run in the USSR, and the presence of these huge market-like but centralized entities like Amazon and Wal-Mart inside a free-market economy? This becomes particularly interesting beca…

Ordered the book based on the fact that it helped you make these connections and hypotheses. Must be a good book.

fwiw, starslatecodex did a review of Red Plenty

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/

I'm sure reading the whole thing would be a useful exercise as well

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#262

Post by sjs382 »

dx034 wrote: post #178
lwlml wrote: post #153

Amazon is now (or more so now) like Evil Corp in the Mr. Robot kind of way. You can ship your Evil groceries via Evil Prime purchased via voice-command with your Evil assistant device paid for with your Evil credit-card. Evil. Frankly I don't buy as much from WF anymore considering that what they carry is much more like "organic junk-food" than actual food. If you really want to support the "cause", find yourself a l…

They don't offer bank accounts yet. Only then Mr Robot could come and change the world by hacking them /s

You can now deposit cash into your Amazon account via bank transfer (one-way transactions) for a 2% rewards benefit.

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-gives-2-rewards-back-pr...

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#263

Post by SmellTheGlove »

_7siz wrote: post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

If all of that stuff goes away from WF, it becomes any other supermarket. I think Amazon is smart enough to know that WF is fundamentally different from Amazon.com - the former is purposely niche, while the latter is purposely mass market.

I'd think Amazon would have bought another grocery chain if they fundamentally didn't want the WF business model. We'll see, though.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#264

Post by Chaebixi »

Fej wrote: post #253
_7siz wrote: post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

The problem with 'conscientious capitalism' is that a competitor will take the idea and run with it, save for the 'conscientious' elements, and push out the original from the market.

> The problem with 'conscientious capitalism' is that a competitor will take the idea and run with it, save for the 'conscientious' elements, and push out the original from the market.

That's not a problem with 'conscientious capitalism' itself, it's a problem with the monomania of the market and the loss of compensatory factors that could hold that monomania in check.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#265

Post by ice109 »

kesselvon wrote: post #200
emodendroket wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in. But probably more similar to most jobs in a grocery store than a software engineering position.

I mean keeping an ambulance outside the doors to a warehouse because its cheaper than cooling it is a tad inhumane.

source?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#266

Post by openmosix »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

Is it safe to assume Instacart will soon lose one of its strategic partners?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#267

Post by pc86 »

dx034 wrote: post #26
pc86 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to see non-union employees treated well and paid well, not because of any negative feelings toward unions or unionization, but because I think it shows that you can be a successful capitalist without trying to suck every ounce of productivity and profit out of your lowest-paid employees.

While I fully agree that it's great to see employees treated well, Whole Foods is not an example that you can be a successful capitalist this way. They worked well for a while but the reason they got bought now is because they struggled over the past years. Probably unrelated to their treatment of employees (US groceries is very competitive at the moment) but AMZN didn't buy a hugely successful company.

It's a $13 billion sale. I struggle to see the scenario under which that is considered a failure. Most start-ups that get $120k from YC are considered a success here. Someone selling their struggling CRUD app to Amazon for $13 million would probably be considered a success here.

But the $13 billion sale of a public company is a bunch of hemming and hawing about what the stock was worth a few years ago.

I'm not saying it couldn't have been more successful. I'm not saying Amazon won't completely destroy the culture (they may, they may just let it continue as is and use it as Amazon Fresh logistics hubs as some have speculated).

But I don't see how this isn't a great example of how you can treat your employees well - better than almost anyone else at the same level - and make a lot of money while doing it.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#268

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

kesselvon wrote: post #194
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good old investors, so short sighted, they only care about the next 3 months. Yeah, darn those investors. How dare people with pensions, 401k's, IRAs, and other investments expect some kind of return on their investment? It's disgraceful. /s EDIT: The sentiment against investors is rather ironic considering the amount of equity collectively held by HN readers.

short-term boosterism is the cause of more than a few problems in our economic system

There is always a need to balance both the short term and the long term. I rather doubt anyone who has retired and is drawing on their retirement investments will be thinking long term since, to be morbid, they simply aren't going to be around in the long term.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#270

Post by tedmiston »

mikelward wrote: post #203
tedmiston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue Apron is not a good company relative to the other meal kit delivery services anyway. Their recipes are overly simplistic and their whole experience using UX dark patterns limiting which meals one can get in combination turned me off, and misleading people regarding cancellation. The higher quality meal kits like Home Chef won't have this problem because they give you, for about the same price, more complex recip…

HelloFresh automatically re-activated my membership when I thought it was paused, with no notification until after they'd charged my card on file and shipped a week's worth of food. Never touching them again. Home Chef proactively emails you a week ahead of time telling you what the menu is. I've forgotten to customize my meal selection once or twice, but have been happy enough with the defaults for the "carb conscio…

That's exactly the experience I saw canceling Blue Apron. You request to cancel, they acknowledge your request and say okay but with a weasel word reply. Something like 4-6 weeks later a new shipment shows up unexpectedly and they purport that they can't refund because it's been delivered.

I even tweeted at their CEO about the company's use of questionable and shady growth tactics to no avail. That is the kind of move that makes me open a credit card dispute against the company and write them off for good.

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