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Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

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Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#21

Post by rootusrootus »

daft_pink wrote: post #5

To be honest the Roomba sucked and got eaten alive by better chinese competitors. I bought a top of the line expensive Roomba years ago and ended up switching to neato a year later, because I would just come home and it would be stuck on something.

That's a good reminder I need to go track down my roborock, it got stuck somewhere again. There's a map thankfully which helps me figure out where to look.

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#23

Post by bryanlarsen »

monero-xmr wrote: post #8

Hard for me to understand how the consumer was protected by preventing Amazon from acquiring them. Only for Chinese firm to get for cheap in bankruptcy. But maybe I’m not educated enough in socialism to understand the nuances

At the time the former was a known bad, and the latter was a potential bad.

The FTC properly weighted known bads more highly than potential bads.

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#24

Post by lotsofpulp »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #20
lotsofpulp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were getting paid enough for defense work and research, then they would not have gutted it. But the government should do R&D itself anyway.

You should try reading the article, it mentions that too.

It only mentions a one sided view presuming an investor’s intentions. There is no numerical analysis on whether or not iRobot’s spending on various efforts was yielding or likely to yield a return.

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#25

Post by csb6 »

monero-xmr wrote: post #8

Hard for me to understand how the consumer was protected by preventing Amazon from acquiring them. Only for Chinese firm to get for cheap in bankruptcy. But maybe I’m not educated enough in socialism to understand the nuances

Not sure how you could construe U.S. anti-trust actions as socialist. They prevented Amazon from acquiring iRobot. That is government intervention in the free market, but that is not the same thing as socialism. In fact you could argue a socialist administration would have wanted the merger (large firms tend to make labor organizing more tractable since there is only one employer to negotiate with).

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#26

Post by NietzscheanNull »

monero-xmr wrote: post #8

Hard for me to understand how the consumer was protected by preventing Amazon from acquiring them. Only for Chinese firm to get for cheap in bankruptcy. But maybe I’m not educated enough in socialism to understand the nuances

Did you read the article? Amazon wasn't "prevented" from acquiring, they decided against proceeding:

> The FTC didn’t bring a challenge, but nevertheless, in 2024, Amazon and iRobot called off the deal.

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#28

Post by adamsb6 »

KerrAvon wrote: post #11
caesil wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not let Amazon take a stab at turning things around, then? It's better that they fail? I don't get it.

couple things - tbh, I think the Amazon deal doesn't matter much in the long run. The damage had been done earlier. - why give Bezos any more free money? He's already rich enough.

They'll just hire the engineers they need out of the failed iRobot and not compensate the investors / founders for building something worth acqui-hiring.

The existing Roomba revenue stream probably doesn't matter. The expertise or maybe the brand (not a great brand imho) aligns with some company priority.

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#30

Post by km144 »

> “In my trips to Wall Street,” Dyer told the panel, “one of my analyst friends took me to lunch one day and said, ‘Joe, you have to get iRobot out of the defense business. It’s killing your stock price.’ And I countered by saying ‘Well, what about the importance of DARPA and leading-edge technology? What about the stability that sometimes comes from the defense industry? What about patriotism?’ And his response was, ‘Joe, what is it about capitalism you don’t understand?’”

I find this article a pretty compelling critique of the extractive incentives of Wall Street and a good argument for government stepping in from time to time to adjust those incentives. Where is the societal good in the engine of capitalism prioritizing short-term extraction over long-term value creation?

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