I see them lending before doing funds. Buy x for y per month, etc. Also, possibly lending to suppliers.
How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
21–30 of 101 posts
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#22Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
>Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
And so does Alibaba, except for it is in China and is outside of US IP enforcement regime. If Amazon were not to do a great pivot towards 3rd party sellers back in 2012-2014 and do the same thing Alibaba does, we could have been talking about Alibaba swallowing Amazon's online retail business by now. Alibaba is a type of company you can do nothing about, yet it can do a lot of things about you, and I can throw a couple examples for you:
Paypal - they used to have a "partner agreement" with Alibaba, but the moment they began to carve into eBay's domain, Paypal's board was foolish enough to antagonise them.
Alipay was the result of all of above, as well as Paypal's almost complete loss of Chinese market, and few others where Alipay made inroads.
Apple - they had pretty much to bribe Alibaba along with Sony to have their products delisted and prohibit trade in refurbished electronics on their platform (which was also eating into Apple's sales big big time).
Also, Alibaba strongarmed Apple into letting them send payments and selling virtual goods without paying "Apple tax." Knowing that, Tencent and few other big Chinese dotcoms followed the suit, which gave them enormous commercial advantage against foreign competitors for in-app payments.
And all of above is on a minute scale of societal impact in comparison how Aliexpress singlehandedly nuked a big big chunk of the brick and store retail industry in the former bloc countries. (Alibaba makes more profit in Russia than in all other foreign markets combined)
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#23Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
Or quite the reverse, such as the last set of "Panasonic" batteries I bought off Amazon. After about 3 months all 12 had leaked and were dead. I'm damn sure they were not Panasonic. The reputation damage was to amazon, not Panasonic, and I resolved not to buy batteries from Amazon ever again.
No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt.
Know what's ridiculous? I trust Poundland more than I trust Amazon to supply genuine goods.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
so, I trust amazon too (at least the 'shipped and sold by amazon' brand... I consider everything else to be more like ebay) But... I just don't see how amazon would get me away, say, from vanguard. There are already good retail brokerages, and I don't see why I'd want to go through amazon instead of another company.
There are lots of ways, of course: A. Going global: a lot of those "good retail brokers" are US-only. Sometimes it's dumb - I already have an ETrade account & signed all the paperwork including stuff relevant for my foreigner status... But ETrade will only let me trade my employer's stock, nothing else. B. Bundle stuff that others can't match - e.g. Prime C. One account, with good actual security (few appreciate that…
Brokers are often limited in which countries they'll accept clients from, but that's to avoid all the overhead of filling the appropriate tax forms to each government (and maintaining the knowledge of what the rules in each country are).
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#25Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
> At a fraction of the cost
That’s exactly the problem. Brands can be held accountable. Unbranded goods can’t. Me personally, I don’t want to live in a world, where all standards are given up just to have the lowest price.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#26Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
The solution to fake reviews is simple. Just ignore all reviews that aren’t verified purchase. Still leaves some room for manipulation but much less.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#27Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
Probably not the best example.
Maybe you're talking about a different kind of shirt, but I tried Amazon's brand of collared long-sleeve button-up shirts and found the quality so low that I'd consider them unwearable.
The material was very thin, extremely wrinkle-prone, the collars were wilted and didn't keep their shape at all, and the cut wasn't very good.
I'm not the type to be easily fooled by marketing/branding psychological tricks, quite the opposite. But every off-brand collared shirt I've ever bought in my life has been a cheap unwearable disheveled mess.
I know designer brands are just cranking these things out of Cambodia for $3/unit, but no-name brands still just can't seem to compete at all on quality. They're not even trying as far as I can tell.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#28Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…
The solution to fake reviews is simple. Just ignore all reviews that aren’t verified purchase. Still leaves some room for manipulation but much less.
Unfortunately the value of a fake review is so high no ML will ever be able to defeat it. The only way to fix it is with trusted reviewers but there a lot of products on there and only so many trusted reviewers.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
Or quite the reverse, such as the last set of "Panasonic" batteries I bought off Amazon. After about 3 months all 12 had leaked and were dead. I'm damn sure they were not Panasonic. The reputation damage was to amazon, not Panasonic, and I resolved not to buy batteries from Amazon ever again. No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt. Know what's ridiculous? I trust Pound…
> No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt.
Such a statement has no grounds to stand on. There are non-genuine items which are of the same or better quality than the genuine ones. You cannot just put them all in one bin.
Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution to fake reviews is simple. Just ignore all reviews that aren’t verified purchase. Still leaves some room for manipulation but much less.
Unfortunately the value of a fake review is so high no ML will ever be able to defeat it. The only way to fix it is with trusted reviewers but there a lot of products on there and only so many trusted reviewers.
But amazon could hide by default reviews where no purchase has been made through amazon.