221–230 of 255 posts
How many industries can a single company operate in and dominate? If Walmart had done this in the 2000's, the DOJ would have stopped them.
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I have mixed feelings about this one because rightsholders essentially have a monopoly on their content. 5+ video streaming platforms is bad for consumers, and this exists because rightsholders are allowed to control their content. It doesn't happen in the music space because Spotify was there first, had everything, record labels had a stake, and record labels were desperate post-Napster, so the Warner Music App woul…
Spotify killed music piracy and Netflix did it for video content. Now that copyright holders got greedy and there’s 5+ services, none as good as Netflix, none have all the shows anyone wants people are turning back to piracy in a big way and services like plex and Emby make sharing easy, people even setup serves and sell access! It’s their content and they can do what they want; but you can’t stop piracy
And Amazon Prime Video is quite good. Certainly HBO stuff was never available elsewhere (except for purchase or physical rental). Yes, Disney siphoned some stuff off the other services, but again much of that wasn't available for subscription streaming pre-Disney+ (which at current pricing is actually a pretty good deal).
I really can't be bothered with piracy unless I really want to see something and just can't find it elsewhere.
Is the SEC and FTC ever going to do their job? They have failed us in the 21st century. Shareholder value over everything else. It would be nice for some regulation to attack all this rent seeking.
With respect to Amazon in general?
There reality of current equity valuations is such that, if sustained, there is some some pretty savage consolidation to come. The only limit is antitrust, or fear of. $9bn is 0.5% of AMZN's current market cap, so $9bn represents a daily price fluctuation. They also have $45bn in cash reserves, so amazon could buy 5 MGMs without borrowing or issuing stock. That's not even a lot! Apple, Google & FB have $200bn, $140bn…
> That's not even a lot! Apple, Google & FB have $200bn, $140bn & $65bn respectively. Dividends don't seem to be a thing, and it's basically impossible to invest this much cash internally. These companies don't have factories to build, or any kind of hard capital investments to make. What about data centers?
How many industries can a single company operate in and dominate? If Walmart had done this in the 2000's, the DOJ would have stopped them.
God forbid Amazon bring fresh and invigorating competition into legacy industries. Whatever will the consumer do??
I hope biden's new anti trust person does something about this.
There reality of current equity valuations is such that, if sustained, there is some some pretty savage consolidation to come. The only limit is antitrust, or fear of. $9bn is 0.5% of AMZN's current market cap, so $9bn represents a daily price fluctuation. They also have $45bn in cash reserves, so amazon could buy 5 MGMs without borrowing or issuing stock. That's not even a lot! Apple, Google & FB have $200bn, $140bn…
> That's not even a lot! Apple, Google & FB have $200bn, $140bn & $65bn respectively. Dividends don't seem to be a thing, and it's basically impossible to invest this much cash internally. These companies don't have factories to build, or any kind of hard capital investments to make. Apple arguably does have factories to build, given how utterly dependent on China it is.
Unlike most if not all other companies that outsource manufacturing. Apple still has the known how and detail view in not only the factory but the whole supply chain. They could, should they choose to, instantly assemble everything by themselves.
Compared to other companies, they are making design changes and working with contract manufacture, but they have no idea how those machines in production actually works.
Buying Semi or Fabs also doesn't make sense unless they intend to Fab for others.
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Eastern companies like yamaha and hyaundai. dirtbikes to pianos, cars to housing
Good point. The Korean Chaebol [1] is all about the conglomerate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
That is the exact problem Steve Yegge described [1]. Americans has a world view that equals to America. Amazon doesn't even compare with Samsung in vertical integration.
And in terms of diversity, it doesn't even need to be Korea Chaebol, dozens of other East Asia conglomerate are way more diverse than Amazon.
[1] https://steve-yegge.medium.com/hurricane-china-how-to-prepar...
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They will not "bully you every inch of the way". Go ahead, start a competitor. Here's how it will go: First they will ignore you. You are so small they will not even know you exist. Then when you start getting some noticeable but still insignificant volume of marketshare, they will laugh at you. Then when you actually start getting too much market share they will actually do something and fight you. If you survive th…
>If you survive that you will either win or they will buy you. That's the problem though. No one in the modern age has traditionally won against these companies, they just get happily bought. It's very arbitrary and sure, it's not breaking any laws, but it's also doing absolutely nothing for promoting a healthy industry. Is this the best "free" market we can muster?