Has the Everything Store become a dangerous monopoly threatening the U.S. economy?
Some time later this year, Amazon could become the first trillion-dollar company in American history. Its valuation has already doubled in the last 14 months to about $800 billion, and Jeff Bezos, its founder and CEO, is officially the richest man on the planet.
There are ways in which Amazon seems to be the greatest company in American history. It’s revolutionized the global shopping experience and expanded into media and hardware, while operating on razor-thin margins that have astonished critics. But some now consider it the modern incarnation of a railroad monopoly, a logistics behemoth using its scale to destroy competition.
So what is Amazon: brilliant, dangerous, or both? That’s the subject of the latest episode of Crazy/Genius, our new podcast on technology and culture.
To build the case for breaking up the Everything Store, I talk to Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at NYU and an outspoken critic of big tech, and Lina Khan, a researcher at the Open Markets Institute and a leading expert on antitrust policy. Both of them encourage me to see how a company famous for low prices can still behave in an anticompetitive manner. Making the case against heavy regulation for Amazon are Rob Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech think tank, and Michael Mandel, an economist with the Progressive Policy Institute who researches technology and e-commerce. Both encourage me to focus not only on the hidden costs of Amazon’s largeness, but also on the hidden benefits.
Tag: Amazon
👓 ‘It’s Like Amazon, But for Preschool’ | Hack Education
A year ago, the richest man in the world asked Twitter for suggestions on how he should most efficiently and charitably spend his wealth. And today, Jeff Bezos unveiled a few details about his plan...
👓 This beautiful map shows everything that powers an Amazon Echo, from data mines to lakes of lithium | The Verge
Welcome to the ‘Anatomy of an AI System’
👓 ‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’ | The Atlantic
How online shopping and cheap prices are turning Americans into hoarders
People keep fettering while I’m always unfettering….
👓 Amazon Isn’t Paying Its Electric Bills. You Might Be | Bloomberg
The company’s rate discounts have pushed up utility costs for everyone else.
Just as people are woefully inept at mentally handling probability theory in their daily lives, they’re also apparently horrifically terrible at handling marginal costs for things and where the flows of those streams end up. Governments shouldn’t be forced to compete against themselves to benefit the Amazons of the world.
In cases like this, the marginal cost to power consumers gets passed along by state governments which don’t have much if any transparency. The average consumer sees a small rise in their bill over time and doesn’t think too much of it while potentially millions or hundreds of millions are siphoned off of society and are lining the pockets of the already ultra-rich.
I’m reminded of the scheme proposed by Richard Pryor’s character in the movie Superman III or by the group of programmers in Mike Judge’s Office Space. In small bank transactions, just round off fractions of a penny in one way or another to benefit yourself and dump it into a side account. It’s all so small, no one will notice. Except that in aggregate, it is noticeable–eventually. Our representative government shouldn’t be involved in these sorts of transactions, or if they are they should be working in the opposite direction.
It’s one thing if we decide as a government that there should be universal health care and the tax base for it is spread out equally and equitably. And by this I don’t mean allowing loopholes and tax dodges like the recent one mentioned in which Betsy DeVos registers her mega-yacht overseas as a means of dodging not only taxes, but also in paying her crew less, which is yet another form of this type of scheme in which small perks are created for the already privileged.
Another example of this type of issue is the recent Trump tax cuts. The complexity of the system makes it very near to opaque and the long term effects aren’t realized soon enough to catch the cheat. It’s now been long enough since they were enacted that the effect on the overall economy has been generally gauged as minimal and the general populace hasn’t benefited much in comparison to the ultra-rich which have benefitted incredibly handsomely.
I’m curious if there’s a word or phrase that is generally used to describe this sort of system to cheat the broader populace while benefiting a privileged class? If not, I’m going to suggest marginal theft.
❤️ ClintSmithIII tweet about philanthropy
❤️ xanalter tweet
Michael Lewis is leaving Vanity Fair, where he's been a contributing writer for a decade, and moving to Audible. It's the latest sign that audiobooks have become a creative medium in their own right rather than just an appendage of print. https://t.co/1OWtCSLF01
— Alexandra Alter (@xanalter) June 3, 2018
👓 How to listen to what Amazon Alexa has recorded in your home | USA Today
If you're worried about what exactly Amazon's Echo-connected speaker has been recording in your home, there's an easy way to find out. Amazon makes all recent recordings available for listening in the companion Alexa app for iOS and Android.
👓 Invisible asymptotes | Remains of the Day
My first job at Amazon was as the first analyst in strategic planning, the forward-looking counterpart to accounting, which records what already happened. We maintained several time horizons for our forward forecasts, from granular monthly forecasts to quarterly and annual forecasts to even five and ten year forecasts for the purposes of fund-raising and, well, strategic planning.
🔖 camelcamelcamel for Amazon Price tracking
Amazon price tracker, Amazon price history charts, price watches, and price drop alerts.
👓 Amazon flaw costs Apple accessory maker nearly $100k as counterfeiter takes over legitimate listing | 9to5Mac
Amazon has come under fire in the past for its lackluster approach to handling counterfeit products. Now, the online retailer is facing a broader problem, with counterfeiters going as far as to take over a company’s legitimate product listing… BuzzFeed News highlights the problem in a report, explaining how a counterfeit maker of the popular from Elevation Labs overtook the company’s own Amazon listing.
👓 What Amazon does to wages | The Economist
WHEN Amazon announced in 2010 that it would build a distribution centre in Lexington County, South Carolina, the decision was hailed as a victory for the Palmetto State. Today the e-commerce giant employs thousands of workers at the centre. Just 3.5% of the local workforce is out of work.
👓 Amazon patents wristband that tracks warehouse workers’ movements | The Guardian
Amazon has patented designs for a wristband that can precisely track where warehouse employees are placing their hands and use vibrations to nudge them in a different direction.
👓 Introduce a new way to retain knowledge from Kindle books | Diigo
Diigo provides a 2 step method to help you make the best use of your kindle highlights. Step 1: Import your kindle highlights to your Diigo library. Step 2: Organize highlights from a book in your own knowledge structure.
👓 Amazon Key is a new service that lets couriers unlock your front door | The Verge
The service is called Amazon Key, and it relies on a Amazon’s new Cloud Cam and compatible smart lock. The camera is the hub, connected to the internet via your home Wi-Fi. The camera talks to the lock over Zigbee, a wireless protocol utilized by many smart home devices. When a courier arrives with a package for in-home delivery, they scan the barcode, sending a request to Amazon’s cloud. If everything checks out, the cloud grants permission by sending a message back to the camera, which starts recording. The courier then gets a prompt on their app, swipes the screen, and voilà, your door unlocks. They drop off the package, relock the door with another swipe, and are on their way. The customer will get a notification that their delivery has arrived, along with a short video showing the drop-off to confirm everything was done properly.
I’m probably more concerned about the flimsy lack of security in the area of internet of things (IoT) which could dip into these though than I am about what Amazon would/could do with them.