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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

#71

Post by omginternets »

908B64B197 wrote: post #68
isoskeles wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent-seeking means, roughly, trying to extract wealth without creating any wealth. Creating and maintaining software that connects a person with a device to a driver with a device and routes them from point A (driver) => A' (person) => B (destination) isn't some trivial nothing that you can just rent-seek into existence. I believe 'wealth' was added to the economy that did not previously exist when people had to deal…

And payment processing. Remember the sign on cabs that said they accept all major cards, only to find out the "card reader doesn't work?".

>Remember the sign on cabs that said they accept all major cards, only to find out the "card reader doesn't work?".

Do I?! It's still commonplace! I have lost every ounce of sympathy I ever held for taxi drivers.

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

#72

Post by eropple »

908B64B197 wrote: post #55
lucideer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the old system was pretty bad, but also sounds like you're looking at Uber through extremely rose-tinted lenses. > a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air In what way is Uber not a rent-seeker taking advantage of often poor new immigrants? The fact that the old system was so poor just lowers our standards for…

> In what way is Uber not a rent-seeker taking advantage of often poor new immigrants? Doesn't trap them. Used cars are a liquid market (with a lot of transactions) with well established pricing. It's easy to buy and sell at the blue book's price and get cheap financing. This makes it easy to get into Ubering and out of it, as at any point you know exactly how much money the car is still worth. Compare that to a taxi…

If it's so cheap and easy to enter and exit, why is Uber also in the (predatory) leasing game?

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

teatree wrote: post #45

This article looks at data without understanding the reason behind it. Many educated Indians choose to buy from these 33 Amazon owned / equity linked sellers because of the experience they offer - odds of receiving wrong/damaged product is low, and in case where that happens the return / replacement process is hassle free. Amazon has brought price discovery to many product categories in India. For expensive products…

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by toast0 »

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...

Setting up economic protectionism props up the local industry, which usually results in consumers paying more for lower quality products.

If done well, protectionism can get a local industry started, and be relaxed over time as the local industry starts to become competitive with global industry.

Done poorly, protectionism results in a local market that is a decade behind the state of the art (like Brazil's video game industry was)

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

#75

Post by judge2020 »

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…

So the 'cheating' isn't cheating, but simply lobbying to maintain power. None of the points you made are inherit to illegal or even immortal acts, rather it's an issue of regulators and politicians not update all of the existing laws to account for the internet.

- Facebook doesn't have to deal with defamation lawsuits because they're not the ones making those defaming claims - it's the users posting them. With the scale of the world it literally isn't possible to have an anyone-can-post site that has to screen what its users write for legally risky text. That's bad for commerce and why section 230 exists.

- Google doesn't have to worry about copyright because businesses love to be able to take down content ID-detected content without involving legal resources.

- Amazon built its business on evading sales tax because sales tax didn't affect internet businesses for some reason. Governments had years to change their laws and impose it on them.

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

#76

Post by thethought »

teatree wrote: post #45

This article looks at data without understanding the reason behind it. Many educated Indians choose to buy from these 33 Amazon owned / equity linked sellers because of the experience they offer - odds of receiving wrong/damaged product is low, and in case where that happens the return / replacement process is hassle free. Amazon has brought price discovery to many product categories in India. For expensive products…

I unerstood your frustration. But can bribe be fair based on it’s potential to offer better experience — just for educated people ?

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

#77

Post by resonantjacket5 »

cccc4alll wrote: post #47
908B64B197 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber broke the back of your local city's taxi medallion scheme. Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it a…

Uber and Lyft reworked the medallion system into mobile apps. Instead of a physical medallion bolted on the car, it's a verified driver ID and rating in Uber/Lyft app. Uber/Lyft are now collecting what the medallion owners were collecting previously from the drivers. The apps are more convenient for riders and there are more efficiencies in the routes. But, it's still the same system. Meet the new boss, same as the o…

that not a good analogy or apt at all. The medallion system was basically a local monopoly or like a guild that only allowed themselves to say make candles in the city. It really didn't make any sense whether with uber or not why the cities should be restricting or handing out the medallions in the first place.

Sure perhaps there could have been a national taxi license like how truck drivers receive it if one is talking about safety and other regulations but per city never made any sense beyond rent-seeking by both the city and the taxi companies

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

#78

Post by Bayart »

dexen wrote: post #37
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…

>defamation lawsuits >copyright >local city's taxi medallion scheme Arguably the three areas of law where special protections & privilleges got expended so far, repeatedly and over decades, as to create ample opportunity for easy arbitration. Especially in case of copyright and taxi medallions, mafia-like structures were created through very one-sided markets; the only distinction from mafia being that those were gra…

More tax revenue ? Anything's more than 0.

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

#79

Post by PoignardAzur »

c22 wrote: post #46
908B64B197 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber broke the back of your local city's taxi medallion scheme. Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it a…

Uber is just a different rent seeker, though. Over time the situation will likely just keep getting worse until it is as bad as the system it is replacing (many things about the ride-sharing ecosystem are already not great...) While it's always nice to see a broken rent-seeking system in our world become eroded we should not laude the transfer to another fiat regency.

Even if we accept that claim, at least Uber has to compete with other VTC apps, which limits its rent-extracting capacity.

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

#80

Post by teatree »

thethought wrote: post #76
teatree wrote: post #45

This article looks at data without understanding the reason behind it. Many educated Indians choose to buy from these 33 Amazon owned / equity linked sellers because of the experience they offer - odds of receiving wrong/damaged product is low, and in case where that happens the return / replacement process is hassle free. Amazon has brought price discovery to many product categories in India. For expensive products…

I unerstood your frustration. But can bribe be fair based on it’s potential to offer better experience — just for educated people ?

The poor get swindled most by retailers. Small and large retailers bribe too, but with cartels, vote bank politics and threats of violence.

Should the end customer eternally pay for these middle men because they bribe politicians and use emotional language to hide their willful incompetence ?

Retail sells 10x Amazon yet refuse to organize or make use of efficiencies of scale.

India is a poor country yet pay more than many developed countries for the same products because of dumb short term policies and protectionism. Creative destruction is important.

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