271–280 of 344 posts
Perfect. Amazon is a leech.
Amazon is a huge bureaucracy. Some parts of it (FBA, AWS) have done wonders for democratising access to cutting edge business tools. Other parts of it are rent-seeking.
AWS = An implementation toolkit for cobbling together and paying rent on an ESB.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Loss Leader" is the term and the problem. A wholesaler sells to a reseller at their usual price. Reseller deliberately sells less than RRP & sometimes less than their buy price. It's a good way to guarantee the reseller "owns" the market. Then, if the reseller is big enough and has captured the market, has the leverage to tell the wholesaler to lower the wholesale price and/or the reseller gets it made elsewhere and…
There used to be a restaurant chain called "Boston Market" (there are a few left). One of their signature products was cooked rotisserie chickens. What killed them was not a direct competitor, but the fact that Costco did, and still sells a similar product at a one dollar loss per chicken. The loss leader is going on forever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our system is not a totally free market, we have consumer protection and antitrust regulations to avoid some of the possible negative outcomes there.
I don't really buy that consumer protection and antitrust regulations actually result in a better free market. I think the market is better off doing it's thing rather than a bunch of politicians trying to make it more efficient.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really buy that consumer protection and antitrust regulations actually result in a better free market. I think the market is better off doing it's thing rather than a bunch of politicians trying to make it more efficient.
Do you want a single megacorp ruling the world? Because this is how you get a single megacorp ruling the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well then, hopefully you dont want IP laws either.
The funny thing is IP laws are by definition monopolies protected by government. Every one of the big tech "quasi-monopolies" are sitting on a mountain of it.
To pick one: trade secrets are not a monopoly. If you figure out the secret ingredient in Coca Cola (by legal means), you are free to use that knowledge and even publish it.
Similarly, I have my reservations about whether patents are a good idea; but I don't mind trademarks nearly as much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also why you viciously respond with a follow up message saying "You would like to "discuss in a non-recorded/discoverable medium?" Yes. I've seen that tactic before, and it is very easy to counter with the pre-message and a post-summary message with CC and BCC. The fun part is dropping in statutory and case law citations. Nobody expects actual well formed legal research, and it makes it more difficult for leg…
If you don't want to keep your job, you can just quit, you know? Annoying your bosses too much doesn't sound like it would help your career. (And if you want to be a whistleblower, I'd recommend being a bit sneakier, so that you can collect more information.)
>If you don't want to keep your job, you can just quit, you know?
Nope. I want to work in an ethical marketplace where the biggest scumbags don't set the rules for everyone else. I can also only be in one place at a time; so as a manager and delegator of work, I'm doing my part to be as shining an example to my employees of the level of professionalism I expect them to aspire to in the doing of the work I delegate to them, as I can expect no more from them than I live up to myself. The important part is holding the bar high. If my boss doesn't like the way I do things, that's cool. I regularly loop them in on roadmap, and let them know what I'm up to so they can leverage their right to modify, halt, or start a discussion on an exit; but they have no right to be left unburdened with the eventual consequences and legal compliance risks of their own decision making as allocators of capital. Heavy is the head, as it were, and when it isn't is when things start going to hell real quick.
This is called managing/delegating up, and maintaining your own integrity. Part of this is also being open and plain with superiors about what you're going to do up front, and following through with it to the letter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 to this My friends and I all bought fake Bose headphones from a shady dealer in China (in person), and the $50 knockoffs sounded exactly as good as the real $600 ones. The only way to tell there was anything wrong was by the fact that they all broke down within a few months.
So one thing to keep in mind is there is a lot of “leakage” out of genuine products manufacturer in China and SE Asia. Workers will “divert” product from factories (or almost) finished product and sell on the side. I’ve heard this is a big issue with clothing manufacturers. Of course determining whether it’s actually counterfeit or just diverted product is likely impossible at the point of purchase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sold by Amazon and Fulfilled by Amazon seem to come out of the same box at the warehouse. Unfortunately if you really need genuine products you simply cannot buy things off Amazon anymore.
I've used Amazon all of once so I don't know anything. What do you mean really need genuine? Let's say you wanted to buy an iPhone or a Canon SLR camera or a Lenovo laptop. You can't buy these from Amazon? What happens if you try? Will they ship you a block of wood in a box, or a myPhone? And won't refund it?
They might come without packaging, but then so do the geniune ones sometimes. They look normal to non-expert eye, but then when you use them they either break quickly, or whilst functiontal are not as effective as a genuine item(worse sound quality, slower charging, slower transfer speed etc.).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It would be like if Costco instead of buying 1000 legos, just stocked legos in it's warehouse, then paid Lego company everytime a single unit sold. For some reason I was under the impression that this is exactly how it works at some physical retailers? Can someone confirm that this is not the case? Does Costco/Walmart/CVS/etc. eat the cost if the items don’t sell?
Depending on the retailer, yes. There are a few different models. What you're describing (stocking a product owned by another entity and giving them a cut of the sale price) is frequently known as consignment. It has minimal risk for the retailer, and typically involves non-perishable goods (clothes, electronics, etc). Other retailers purchase the product at a discounted price from another entity and then sell it at…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why the all-caps brands for these? Is there some belief that it stands out more or something? In some cases it may be the only thing the person knows how to do. When I texted something to the person who recorded my electricity meter in Shanghai, I got back the response "哈哈，THANKS".
They are most likely not switching language in their phone - you can see it with the full width punctuation. In Chinese mode, typing English is a little annoying to get case right. A lot of Chinese people don’t differentiate between case also.
But other than that, yeah, I came to basically the same conclusion that you give here.