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Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#11

Post by kmeisthax »

I'm starting to think the reason why tech companies are so well-valued is purely due to regulatory evasion skills and a dash of political engineering. Effectively, every tech company has been given a pass on something. Facebook doesn't have to worry about defamation lawsuits. Google doesn't have to worry (as much) about copyright. Amazon built it's business on evading sales tax. Uber broke the back of your local city's taxi medallion scheme. And so on and so forth. All of those are things their legacy competitors have had to spend millions of dollars on compliance for, but tech companies don't.

Here's the thing: the market really does not give two shits about "smarts". You can engineer the best mousetrap in the world and get it into everyone's homes, but the market won't care about the company that makes them... as much as they will care about a company that's found a way to break the rules. That's what they really want. People in tech are being paid massively not because they're postdocs with good credentials and amazing skills, but because they know how to bend governments to their will.

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#12

Post by throwaw4ybio »

ipsocannibal wrote: post #8

Yet more evidence to be used in the eventual US anti-trust case demonstrating a pattern of anti-competitive behavior. Prefering big sellers and lying about it is not "customer centric" in any market. Actions like this are going to eventually crush the stock value. When that happens senior employees will cash out and retail will be sold off to the highest bidding hedge fund. AWS is the money maker anyway and that will…

They should be careful not to cross into Icarus territory.

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#13

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

newbie578 wrote: post #4

It disturbs me that with each day, it seems like the Great Chinese Firewall was a good solution. You keep out the foreign competition letting internal competition foster and you stop a capital drain. Imagine if the EU had it’s own Alibaba, Baidu or WeChat... That is a lot of taxpaying money...

This article focuses on Amazon, but the Indian native company Flipkart is facing the same challenges. As the article hints at, these regulations are set up specifically to prevent internal competition; the Indian government wants to protect traditional retail networks against competition from online stores.

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#14

Post by lupire »

kmeisthax wrote: post #11

I'm starting to think the reason why tech companies are so well-valued is purely due to regulatory evasion skills and a dash of political engineering. Effectively, every tech company has been given a pass on something . Facebook doesn't have to worry about defamation lawsuits. Google doesn't have to worry (as much) about copyright. Amazon built it's business on evading sales tax. Uber broke the back of your local cit…

This isn't a webtech thing. Look at Superfund as one of many examples of the conventional wisdom that business winnby cheating. Most theft in USA is wage theft by employers. Corporations are constantly getting caught breaking the law and not getting punished, defrauding customers or polluting the environment. Sports stadiums being built my governments and given away to corporations.

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#15

Post by missedthecue »

lupire wrote: post #14
kmeisthax wrote: post #11

I'm starting to think the reason why tech companies are so well-valued is purely due to regulatory evasion skills and a dash of political engineering. Effectively, every tech company has been given a pass on something . Facebook doesn't have to worry about defamation lawsuits. Google doesn't have to worry (as much) about copyright. Amazon built it's business on evading sales tax. Uber broke the back of your local cit…

This isn't a webtech thing. Look at Superfund as one of many examples of the conventional wisdom that business winnby cheating. Most theft in USA is wage theft by employers. Corporations are constantly getting caught breaking the law and not getting punished, defrauding customers or polluting the environment. Sports stadiums being built my governments and given away to corporations.

"Most theft in USA is wage theft by employers"

This is something I hear repeated ad infinitum on the net, but has a calculation ever been done the other way? That is, workers stealing from employers by deliberately clocking out early/late, or by goofing off on HN while on the clock. I would hazard a guess that this number is an order of magnitude greater than seedy business owners short changing their staff.

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#16

Post by loceng »

kmeisthax wrote: post #11

I'm starting to think the reason why tech companies are so well-valued is purely due to regulatory evasion skills and a dash of political engineering. Effectively, every tech company has been given a pass on something . Facebook doesn't have to worry about defamation lawsuits. Google doesn't have to worry (as much) about copyright. Amazon built it's business on evading sales tax. Uber broke the back of your local cit…

Regulatory evasion and/or regulatory capture - I never thought about it being called evasion but it certainly fits: get big enough with a large amount of the population now depending/relying/using the service, and then it causes a problem for policy makers - who aren't skilled or knowledgable enough to understand the intricacies of the business models in order to safely adjust policy to benefit society, society more than the profits of the business anyhow - that business who is lobbying and manipulating regulators as well to get policy to fit their needs, and coining the narrative for the users who benefit from the lack of regulations as well (e.g. Airbnb hosts who side-step worrying or dealing about the externalities on society of rents going up further due to higher pressure and less supply).

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#17

Post by throwaway20875 »

ipsocannibal wrote: post #8

Yet more evidence to be used in the eventual US anti-trust case demonstrating a pattern of anti-competitive behavior. Prefering big sellers and lying about it is not "customer centric" in any market. Actions like this are going to eventually crush the stock value. When that happens senior employees will cash out and retail will be sold off to the highest bidding hedge fund. AWS is the money maker anyway and that will…

>Yet more evidence to be used in the eventual US anti-trust case demonstrating a pattern of anti-competitive behavior

Little chance. Bezos has purchased his way into the class of decision makers in this country through acquisitions of media and integrating into the military industrial complex (in numerous ways). Amazon embodies the privatization of a centralized economy more than anything else. Needless to say: this is not good.

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#18

Post by evnix »

neither_color wrote: post #7
newbie578 wrote: post #4

It disturbs me that with each day, it seems like the Great Chinese Firewall was a good solution. You keep out the foreign competition letting internal competition foster and you stop a capital drain. Imagine if the EU had it’s own Alibaba, Baidu or WeChat... That is a lot of taxpaying money...

I wonder about this. China has its own app ecosystem, as does Russia. India is pushing towards having its own as well. What about Europe? Is it harder because you have to localize to so many languages?

no that doesn't seem like the reason, India has more languages than Europe and Europe has mainly two writing systems Cyrillic and Latin while India has a lot more. If India can do it with such low resources, so can Europe.

In my opinion, China and Russia have their own ecosystems because of the language barrier and the physical firewall that their respective governments have put in. India is able to build its own eco system because it has got the fundamentals right, it probably is the only country which broke the Master Card and Visa duopoly allowing local vendors to slash costs by a good margin. I already see a lot of Apps which might pose a threat to the likes of Google in the coming decade(if they are not bought over) but in the long run, I don't see India having a separate ecosystem, India and it's way of thinking is more like the west than it seems to be and it will eventually merge in with larger western ecosystem.

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#19

Post by bruceb »

Anyone who has purchased an electronic or smaller household appliance on Amazon.in would know Cloudtail made up a significant portion of over all sales.

The Govt didn’t needed a multi year report to know it wasn’t small sellers making most sales. Some in position of power benefited.

Side note, Even with Walmart’s purchase of Flipkart a couple years ago, Amazon.in always seems to be cheaper. Also there is huge gap in reviews and review quality between the sites. Walmart still playing catch up 3 years later

Re: Amazon documents reveal company’s strategy to dodge India’s regulators

#20

Post by mangatmodi »

evnix wrote: post #18
neither_color wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about this. China has its own app ecosystem, as does Russia. India is pushing towards having its own as well. What about Europe? Is it harder because you have to localize to so many languages?

no that doesn't seem like the reason, India has more languages than Europe and Europe has mainly two writing systems Cyrillic and Latin while India has a lot more. If India can do it with such low resources, so can Europe. In my opinion, China and Russia have their own ecosystems because of the language barrier and the physical firewall that their respective governments have put in. India is able to build its own eco…

Actually English is the most common language across India. Majority of the app ecosystem in India is English only.

In Europe, majority of people can't read English at all. I mean atleast people from Germany, Spain, Italy and France.

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