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Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

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Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#111

Post by cpr »

earlybike wrote: post #73
kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

OT: Is ‘fathom’ a common word in written and spoken American English (parent used it two times)?

"can fathom" is a common English (American, too) phrase.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#112

Post by rtpg »

danenania wrote: post #100
rtpg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I like that I can start a company if I think I can do better than some other company. There are capital issues and incumbency issues, but in a lot of smaller industries you can "make the world a better place". But on an ethical level we have to acknowledge that "letting the markets do their thing" doesn't automatically reach the best result. Me having all the money and you having none is a Pareto optimum, after…

The tricky part is who defines what is 'better' or 'best'? You? Me? A 50.1% majority? The word 'progress' is infected by the same arbitrary nature. The free market is an equilibrium that represents an average of all of our subjective needs, wants, and judgments. No individual will ever see all of its outcomes as ideal, but any attempt to 'correct' it will necessarily favor one person's values at the expense of someon…

One person having all the money and no one else having any money is a Pareto optimum. It's an equilibrium in a purely mathematical sense, but not the equilibrium we aim for as a society.

A change might come at the expense of one person, but can potentially help many more.

A 50.1% majority does seem to be what we use to decide things (with some edge cases meaning sometimes you need more , but rarely do you need less). One person, one vote and all that. Systems not perfect but it's a lot better than restricting to property owners

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#113

Post by mgoetzke »

rtpg wrote: post #13
kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

I understand the dangers of monopoly, but I wish there was a stronger argument here. We've seen this sort of thing happen before, with Walmart. And none of these arguments worked! Walmart is big and dominant. It killed off smaller places, but people don't care because it has mostly everything and is cheap. "This convenient good thing is actually bad!" isn't super convincing I guess.... EDIT: the ultimate irony being…

which is why btw why Adam Smith (yes that Adam Smith) wanted a strong government to balance these interests out against agreed upon social standards.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#114

Post by Spivak »

bhollander823 wrote: post #57
Osmium wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Netflix is no great shakes either And this is mostly because Netflix wants to hide the true extent of their library. Hulu just had a recent, awful re-design too. They cover in-active thumbnails with gradients, you can barely see anything. Apple TV (which I like as among the best) also has a ridiculously unergonomic remote and very confusing UI (do I want to press "menu" or "home"? And now the TV app is 'home' b…

What do you mean by "Netflix wants to hide the true extent of their library"? Why would they intentionally create a worse user experience?

Because Netflix, unlike say HBO, bills themselves as a general source of entertainment, a place you can always go when you're bored to find new content. While somewhat true in the beginning Netflix today is increasingly leaning on original content because most other big players realized that they could cut out the middle man and still be profitable. Netflix's library today is basically their original content along with things you could find in the bargain bin at your local Best Buy which is a much worse value proposition than "your one stop shop for movies and TV". So their UI is designed to make their library appear larger than it really is.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#116

Post by saosebastiao »

sah2ed wrote: post #90
RestlessMind wrote: post #77

"Your margin is my opportunity" - with that kind of attitude, Bezos is indeed a tough competitor. However, what puzzles me the most is the fact that investors are letting Amazon chug along with barely any profits. Can someone please explain to me how Bezos is able to pull off a P/E of 240 for AMZN, when the company has been around for 20+ years and no longer considered a startup (i.e. no more hyper growth phase)? For…

My layman understanding is that investors think Amazon still has enormous room to grow because Amazon's current market share of the entire US retail industry (online + offline retail) is about 7%. The one thing that will make online shopping appealing to far more consumers is same-day and eventually 1-hr deliveries, irrespective of your location in the continental US and the only way to do this reliably is when fulfi…

I can guarantee you that the Day 1 phrase at Amazon has exactly 0% to do with driverless cars.

And it is foolish to ascribe any singular viewpoint to investors in general. While some investors may hold the views you do, you’re likely suffering from a false consensus bias if you think your views are shared by anything more than a single digit percentage of investors in general or even specifically Amazon’s investors.

As for the rest of your theory, I also think it is complete rubbish, but feel free to do with your money as you please.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#117

Post by contingencies »

rtpg wrote: post #13
kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

I understand the dangers of monopoly, but I wish there was a stronger argument here. We've seen this sort of thing happen before, with Walmart. And none of these arguments worked! Walmart is big and dominant. It killed off smaller places, but people don't care because it has mostly everything and is cheap. "This convenient good thing is actually bad!" isn't super convincing I guess.... EDIT: the ultimate irony being…

ideal endgame

It doesn't make it the ultimate endgame though. For example, Marx would say then the workers rise up, institute a state with differing priorities and either provide guiding regulation or take over Amazon and increase wages. We shall see!

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#118

Post by charlesdm »

rtpg wrote: post #13
kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

I understand the dangers of monopoly, but I wish there was a stronger argument here. We've seen this sort of thing happen before, with Walmart. And none of these arguments worked! Walmart is big and dominant. It killed off smaller places, but people don't care because it has mostly everything and is cheap. "This convenient good thing is actually bad!" isn't super convincing I guess.... EDIT: the ultimate irony being…

I think Amazon has one major advantage over Walmart: they don't care about profits and generally run things at break even. This in itself is super powerful, b/c Amazon investors can take their profits by selling the stock (e.g. capital gains) whereas Walmart needs to pay dividends from profits.

A decline in profit will lead to a significant hit in the stock price for Walmart.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#119

Post by quadrangle »

trhway wrote: post #76
quadrangle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> competitive pressure is what drives progress Except when it doesn't. It's perfectly possible to have, for example, a bunch of scientists crazy motivated to learn the answers to their questions and all collaborate as cooperatively as possible toward that end. Adding competition could result in duplicated effort, secrecy… or to added pressure and motivation… I mean the one thing we can say is that there's no guarante…

>> competitive pressure is what drives progress >You can reasonably say that competition can drive progress. Your sentence implies that it is the primary (or sole??) driver of progress, and that's nonsense. actually competitive pressure is the primary driver of evolution. Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress. >There are tons of cases where reduced competition and increased cooperation can…

> Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress.

And that is key. Indeed, competitive pressure drives evolution (but isn't the strictly sole driver or the mechanism of evolution itself). The most important point is: evolution only values survival/reproduction, it doesn't value "progress".

There's a very strong argument that humans now understand evolution enough to make conscious decisions not to just play the natural competitive game. We can actually make a better world by refusing to follow that natural game. Life in competitive natural circumstances is brutal, painful, and short. We value progress as in human (and non-human even) flourishing, happiness, scientific progress, etc. and we get those things best by refusing to just act like competitive evolution but instead by rising above that. For example. we have no evolutionary benefit in caring for the least among us as an entire global human society but when we do so, it's because we recognize the ethical value.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#120

Post by davidf18 »

New York State (and some other states) are helping Amazon to replace brick and mortar stores by having unreasonable minimum wage levels. The level in NYS is $11 (I think) going to $13 and then $15. There have already been significant increases in the cost of food in grocery stores, but that is probably true of much of retail.
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