Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 126 posts

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#71

Post by onion2k »

ams6110 wrote: post #17
kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

For me, Amazon is a long way off from threatening my local supermarket and other local retailers. Would I buy clothes from Amazon? No, I like to try them on first. Returning stuff by mail is a pain. Would I buy expensive home furnishings from Amazon? No, I like to see, touch, try these things before I spend a lot of money. Would I buy perishable groceries from Amazon? No, because deliveries happen when I'm at work an…

The margins on retail goods are tiny. If your local shop loses 20% of its business to a competitor it closes (or pivots). This isn't about whether or not you shop on Amazon; it's about whether or not you have any choice if enough other people shop there.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#72

Post by badestrand »

quadrangle wrote: post #70
refurb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the _best case scenario_ for this economic model leads to a terrible status quo Terrible status quo? You realize that competitive pressure is what drives progress right?

> competitive pressure is what drives progress Except when it doesn't. It's perfectly possible to have, for example, a bunch of scientists crazy motivated to learn the answers to their questions and all collaborate as cooperatively as possible toward that end. Adding competition could result in duplicated effort, secrecy… or to added pressure and motivation… I mean the one thing we can say is that there's no guarante…

It would be fascinating to know which factors make cooperations and which competition strive. Families and circles of friends quite likely work better on cooperation, large amount of anonymous actors like our economy probably with competition. Countries utilize both. In Star Trek on the Enterprise there seems to be mostly cooperation happening and it is very believable to me. Very interesting topic. Does anyone have good resources about this?

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#73

Post by earlybike »

kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

OT: Is ‘fathom’ a common word in written and spoken American English (parent used it two times)?

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#74

Post by patkai »

refurb wrote: post #38
rtpg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the dangers of monopoly, but I wish there was a stronger argument here. We've seen this sort of thing happen before, with Walmart. And none of these arguments worked! Walmart is big and dominant. It killed off smaller places, but people don't care because it has mostly everything and is cheap. "This convenient good thing is actually bad!" isn't super convincing I guess.... EDIT: the ultimate irony being…

the _best case scenario_ for this economic model leads to a terrible status quo Terrible status quo? You realize that competitive pressure is what drives progress right?

> competitive pressure is what drives progress

Up to a point. E.g. in non-equilibrium thermodynamics systems can change from negative feedback and stability to positive feedback - finally they explode and reorganise themselves. Like society or the market. Nice model, as long as we are not in the middle of such an explosion.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#75

Post by earlybike »

It’s not about Amazon, it’s about the tendency that most online-based consumer businesses evolve into monopolies. Mostly through network effects paired with smart M&A.

So, the question is not if anyone can beat Bezos but rather beat online monopolies in general.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#76

Post by trhway »

quadrangle wrote: post #70
refurb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the _best case scenario_ for this economic model leads to a terrible status quo Terrible status quo? You realize that competitive pressure is what drives progress right?

> competitive pressure is what drives progress Except when it doesn't. It's perfectly possible to have, for example, a bunch of scientists crazy motivated to learn the answers to their questions and all collaborate as cooperatively as possible toward that end. Adding competition could result in duplicated effort, secrecy… or to added pressure and motivation… I mean the one thing we can say is that there's no guarante…

>> competitive pressure is what drives progress

>You can reasonably say that competition can drive progress. Your sentence implies that it is the primary (or sole??) driver of progress, and that's nonsense.

actually competitive pressure is the primary driver of evolution. Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress.

>There are tons of cases where reduced competition and increased cooperation can provide more progress.

cooperative behavior in a group evolves when it helps the group to compete, and thus it may result in increased competition between the groups. Organized human society would be an obvious example of cooperative behavior. Massive battles and wars and other atrocities inflicted by the human societies upon each other, and overall effect of the human society upon the rest of the Earth species doesn't seem to qualify as reduced competition. If anything, increased competition between organized human societies, like wars for example, has significantly sped up the tech progress as a result of the need for weapons development.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#77

Post by RestlessMind »

"Your margin is my opportunity" - with that kind of attitude, Bezos is indeed a tough competitor.

However, what puzzles me the most is the fact that investors are letting Amazon chug along with barely any profits. Can someone please explain to me how Bezos is able to pull off a P/E of 240 for AMZN, when the company has been around for 20+ years and no longer considered a startup (i.e. no more hyper growth phase)? For comparison, other tech titans have P/E numbers as: FB (37), GOOG (36), MSFT (27), AAPL (17). Only NFLX (216) is in the same league as AMZN.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#78

Post by seagullz »

saryant wrote: post #67
seagullz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T and DARPA were monopolies when transistor, the Internet were invented, no? My doubt is about these economic theories. I worry about the many dangers with Amazon's burgeoning monopoly.

DARPA is a government agency.

sure, that makes it state-managed monopoly or whatever else you call it; keeping to the topic, any competition?

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#79

Post by tr1ck5t3r »

rtpg wrote: post #13
kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

I understand the dangers of monopoly, but I wish there was a stronger argument here. We've seen this sort of thing happen before, with Walmart. And none of these arguments worked! Walmart is big and dominant. It killed off smaller places, but people don't care because it has mostly everything and is cheap. "This convenient good thing is actually bad!" isn't super convincing I guess.... EDIT: the ultimate irony being…

Because anyone can setup on Amazon in the marketplace these traders benefit from the association of being in a location (all be it virtual) and due to the limitations of photos at being able to convey the metrics we consciously and unconsciously perceive when looking for goods in the real world, like touch, weight etc, these traders can exploit people's ignorance, which when coupled with oversea's trader's who are not bound by the same legal constraints to protect consumers can get away with very poor quality. This quality is traditionally what the buyer(s) working for the shop/store would undertake in order to not trash their reputation or brand names. In todays world where's its easy to start up and fail, arguably the brand & reputation is less important when you realise how easy it is to game the Amazon review's, but ultimately it demonstrates how price rules over everything else. So whilst the West has offshored its manufacturing pollution to China, China has sold us our landfill dumps.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#80

Post by fouc »

trhway wrote: post #76
quadrangle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> competitive pressure is what drives progress Except when it doesn't. It's perfectly possible to have, for example, a bunch of scientists crazy motivated to learn the answers to their questions and all collaborate as cooperatively as possible toward that end. Adding competition could result in duplicated effort, secrecy… or to added pressure and motivation… I mean the one thing we can say is that there's no guarante…

>> competitive pressure is what drives progress >You can reasonably say that competition can drive progress. Your sentence implies that it is the primary (or sole??) driver of progress, and that's nonsense. actually competitive pressure is the primary driver of evolution. Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress. >There are tons of cases where reduced competition and increased cooperation can…

Sounds a bit circular, are you somehow saying the definition of "the primary driver of evolution" is "competitive pressure"?
Post reply on HN