This is one reason why Amazon is winning

[Rmay635703]

Yes!

Yes! Crony Capitalism.

If anything Amazon is a policy mistake
100% of their profit is government funded
Whether it’s their warehouses built using government grants, their initial technology loans, or the Fed and DOD paying to use their servers even their shipping is government subsidized and many of their employees get government insurance.

Perhaps Amazon is a good example of communism but nothing they do makes profit without government assistance

Even their delivery fleet, self driving, drone ,EV or otherwise is due to government handouts. If the post office would get the same government investment they give Amazon we might have world class equipment buzzing around

 

[WylieCoyote]

Amazon didn't win this weekend. Ordered 4 new TPMS sensors from RockAuto. Same "claimed" delivery date, but were cheaper for the exact same sensors. Kinda surprised me.

 

[Leo99]

If anything Amazon is a policy mistake
100% of their profit is government funded
Whether it’s their warehouses built using government grants, their initial technology loans, or the Fed and DOD paying to use their servers even their shipping is government subsidized and many of their employees get government insurance.

Perhaps Amazon is a good example of communism but nothing they do makes profit without government assistance

Even their delivery fleet, self driving, drone ,EV or otherwise is due to government handouts. If the post office would get the same government investment they give Amazon we might have world class equipment buzzing around

As a capitalist, I think government should stay out of business as much as possible. The biggest difference that I see as a customer between Amazon and USPS is the employee attitude. Amazon wants happy customers. USPS doesn't care. And it's the USPS's own bureaucracy that hurts them. Amazon rolling out new delivery vehicles isn't news. USPS acts like they're the Army choosing a new battle rifle when they roll out a new truck.

 

[philipp10]

Capitalism for the WIN! Yes!
But what we have today is a deviant predatory capitalism which has very little in common with the original idea. The competition and free market is practically dead. Glad you made some money off of exploited workers who are treated like a modern slaves.

Today we have monopolies that destroy and absorb rivals, oppose free market and billionaires control the state by buying our public servants with promise of post government lobbying and consulting jobs.

No....what we have today has ALWAYS been there. Look back at Standard Oil. Look back at GM. Amazon has plenty of competition but unfortunately it is weak right now. But that will change....it always does. Think back, once Sears ruled the land, now gone.

And exploiting workers? No such thing. I make 100k....a man that makes 1 million a year would think I am "exploited". But I think a man making 10K in Bangledesh is "exploited". Exploitation is all relative. Do I feel bad for workers who are struggling? Hell yeah, but there is nothing we can do to change that. The best thing an Amazon worker can do is save some money and invest in....Amazon.

Purposely making your buys from the Mom and Pop corner store does nothing to help people in general. The Mom and Pop corner store is inefficient and all the extra money you spend is only to help cover those inefficiencies and not to the bottom line.

Life is not fair, get past that.

 

[GON]

Not going to blame Amazon for storefront retailers failure.

Most major retailers sold out to leveraged buyouts. Took out huge debt, and now can't stock much of anything, and if they do it is just Chinese crap in a really nice box. No need to go out of my way for Chinese crap in a nice box from a local major retailer.

Local independent retailers may not be doing themselves many favors either. When I was a kid, the owner was always at the store. Always. Not sure that is the case anymore. In Heber City, UT the just opened a massive Ace Hardware. I wanted to support them, went their at 5pm the day before Thanksgiving. They closed early for Thanksgiving. Never returned to that Ace. I just head to Home Depot in Park City, extra 20 minute drive but I don't have to worry about if they are open or not.

Finally, I think the biggest thing that has killed local business is health insurance, not Amazon. In the 1970s a person could run a local business and get health insurance at a affordable rate. And if he/ she couldn't they could pay for the procedure and it was often affordable.

The person that today runs a pizza shop or other local small business has to have a second job that has insurance. He/she can't afford to run a business and pay for health insurance. Would love to see free market return to healthcare in the USA. It would start a new dawn of small business startups, where the owner goes all in and can compete with Amazon, Dominoes, anyone.

 

[wag123]

If you pull up their website on your smart phone it'll tell you what aisle/ shelf the things are in, too.

Not Home Depot. I have a serious bone to pick with their website... it is VERY inaccurate! I can't tell you how many times I have spotted something that I needed, showing as in-stock on their website, only to go there and they didn't have the item. This is unforgivable given the fact that they use a fully computerised inventory control system. It infuriates me when this happens, so much so that if I can wait a couple of days for the item, I just go ahead and order it from Amazon. I have complained to Home Depot about this on several occasions, their response? Crickets! I have finally given up on running around for hours going to several stores trying to find something when Amazon has it for a good price and I can have it in my hands in a couple of days.

 

[JeffKeryk]

As a capitalist, I think government should stay out of business as much as possible. The biggest difference that I see as a customer between Amazon and USPS is the employee attitude. Amazon wants happy customers. USPS doesn't care. And it's the USPS's own bureaucracy that hurts them. Amazon rolling out new delivery vehicles isn't news. USPS acts like they're the Army choosing a new battle rifle when they roll out a new truck.

The USPS comparison is apples to oranges. Amazon gets to pick its customers and set prices. USPA has to deliver a letter anywhere in the US for the same price. Crazy rules have been set for USPS to operate; not so with Amazon.

 

[PandaBear]

People's over-reliance on Amazon needs to be broken. They have destroyed small businesses in favor or allowing shady resellers to sell box store clearance items, they allow the selling of obvious counterfeits on their website (even under their own Amazon Basics brand) destroying livelihoods and being disrespectful, contributed to creating anti-social and lazy people, and they have no legitimate competition - they are a monopoly.

Yes, I buy from Amazon. But I purposefully get off my ass and go to stores as much as I can. I choose to not be yet another lazy American holed up in his house ordering stuff from one company, making a single man so rich that he can give half is net worth to his ex-wife and still be in the top 3 richest people in the word (and the wife is amongst women). Amazon is an amazing company. It doesn't mean they should end up the only marketplace, which is where we're headed very quickly. First it was Walmart and Target, now it's Amazon... but since Amazon controls distribution, too, it's going to be very hard to compete with them. Likely only the Chinese will be able to fund a competitive online reseller.

You can buy from Walmart.

 

[PandaBear]

I do not intentionally go shop on Amazon, I typically do Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and Walmart if possible because they have longer return period (90 days instead of 30 days).

However, there really are a lot of things that they don't carry locally with free shipping, similar price (doesn't have to be cheaper, but within 15% would be ok for small items), and free return if I don't like it. Ebay would be ok but there are iffy deals that is hard to return if things went wrong. You know you can return most things to UPS free if you buy from Amazon.

I don't need it in 2 days, I just need to know if things do not work I can return it without paying shipping.

 

[PandaBear]

Capitalism for the WIN! Yes!
But what we have today is a deviant predatory capitalism which has very little in common with the original idea. The competition and free market is practically dead. Glad you made some money off of exploited workers who are treated like a modern slaves.

Today we have monopolies that destroy and absorb rivals, oppose free market and billionaires control the state by buying our public servants with promise of post government lobbying and consulting jobs.

I'll try not to get into the political side of things.

There is no ideology in the world that works as is in the "original idea". They ALL need to adapt to work or loopholes reveals and patched, otherwise they went corrupted and die off, driven out by other competing ideology.

 

[PandaBear]

anyone who tells you how good they did with XYZ stock isn't telling you how much they lost with ZYX stock!

I do have about 20 years of track record that I "make money" in almost all my trade except about 5 of them, for less than $5k loss out of about 400k gain. How?

I left a lot of money on the table, never get in too early or leave too late. If I am more aggressive I probably would make 5x that but that's just not me, so yeah, I left money on the table so I feel secure and my result show. Of course with that much money left on the table there's nothing to brag about.

Ebay could have been what Amazon market place is today, except Meg Whitman got greedy and she milked the company and the sellers dry, mandating Paypal payment, high fees, no logistical support, no customer service (I can never get anyone to chat with or call if things go south, and you can bet it always go south once in a while). Now she is off to destroy HPE.

 

[PandaBear]

In 1994 Jeff Bezos left his Wall Street job and moved to the Great State of Washington to work on a business plan. That plan was realized in his garage. He decided on selling books on-line. Bezos had studied reports forecasting annual web commerce growth at 2,300%.

So Jeff Bezos leveraged Apple, Microsoft and the Internet. Now Amazon does about 50% of on-line sales. Yup.

That's just part of the story. The other part is the "leadership principles" and how he ruthlessly keeping only his better minions and recycle the worst with the rest of the industry. Which is why Amazon don't hire in low cost area and move his people there, but only open in big tech hub with lots of other competitors and labor pool, almost always high cost of living.

10% pip (performance improvement plan) target of any org above 50 people on every single level, means 5 people are constantly at the edge of being fired, and new hire to replace them. Once you do that enough with the rest of the "talent pool" you get above average team in the industry.

Keeping stocks vesting to 3 and 4 years means you always have some carrots out in the future you cannot get and have to stick around, otherwise you just get cash. (The plus side is you likely will get your stock amplified with gain and make you very rich if you survive).

Double down on investment that didn't win immediately, and come out ahead, instead of paying bonus and cashing out selling the company and stocks. You need a very determined leader to resist instant gratification of cashing out and selling out.

Promote people only when they can reach above median of the next level. This avoid the "Peter's principle" when everyone gets eventually promoted to the level they underperform at. You won't get promoted and then immediately fail to deliver and quit / got fired.

I don't think I have seen too many companies use them all, so you can pretty much expect the result. The cost is you need to have the stock and company keeps growing or else people will leave and the company falls apart, like Cisco did after the dot com bust (Cisco used to do this too).

 

[PandaBear]

I've said it a million times. If local stores had employees that could or even able to help customers, maybe more stores would be still open for business today. I gave up on the ignorance and simply order what I want and need from Amazon 90% of the time.

This is the fundamental problem of economy of scale. Back in the days you have to rely on local because you cannot just ride your horse all over the place to buy every tiny thing you can get. Your selection has to be small because you won't be able to keep the inventory large and sell at a reasonable margin, and of course you have the store selling at high margin because it is hard to move a lot of items with idle labor most of the time.

Back in the days sea faring merchants make somewhere between 10X to 13X of the price they pay, because it is hard to DIY. Today's local big box stores make 20-25% margin and 3-6% profit.

Logistics improvement means you can do a lot more for a lot less. You need to specialize to get the scale so you can be both good and big volume. This means you either have to focus on 1) low margin large volume local sales, 2) low margin low volume online sales, 3) high margin low volume local sales with good service.

It is really not anyone's fault but how the world has change, made easier to move things around to solve problems. It is finally getting to a point where we can all do this anywhere with internet.

 

[PandaBear]

If anything Amazon is a policy mistake
100% of their profit is government funded
Whether it’s their warehouses built using government grants, their initial technology loans, or the Fed and DOD paying to use their servers even their shipping is government subsidized and many of their employees get government insurance.

Perhaps Amazon is a good example of communism but nothing they do makes profit without government assistance

Even their delivery fleet, self driving, drone ,EV or otherwise is due to government handouts. If the post office would get the same government investment they give Amazon we might have world class equipment buzzing around

Where did you get that 100% from? or is it just your opinion.

How come other companies like Boeing, Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, Cisco, Archer Daniel Midland, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Northrop, General Atomic, Tyson, Purdue, Alcoa, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Ford, GM, etc etc are not targeted but only Amazon? How come the entire US economy is not?

Seriously, of all the companies out there Amazon is probably the least profit funded by government. The build their own data centers (most regions are non-gov), they hire their own employees, run their own warehouses, build their own servers or buy from other companies, have most of the cloud businesses from small med and large non competitors in private sectors, run their own private delivery services, fly their own planes and run their own trucks, pay their own employees.

Name one other similar company that has less government involvement. I can name you 10x more military and aviation companies, agricultural companies, drug companies, telecom companies, internet service providers, that have 10x more government involvement than Amazon.

 

[PWMDMD]

People's over-reliance on Amazon needs to be broken. They have destroyed small businesses in favor or allowing shady resellers to sell box store clearance items, they allow the selling of obvious counterfeits on their website (even under their own Amazon Basics brand) destroying livelihoods and being disrespectful, contributed to creating anti-social and lazy people, and they have no legitimate competition - they are a monopoly.

Yes, I buy from Amazon. But I purposefully get off my ass and go to stores as much as I can. I choose to not be yet another lazy American holed up in his house ordering stuff from one company, making a single man so rich that he can give half is net worth to his ex-wife and still be in the top 3 richest people in the word (and the wife is amongst women). Amazon is an amazing company. It doesn't mean they should end up the only marketplace, which is where we're headed very quickly. First it was Walmart and Target, now it's Amazon... but since Amazon controls distribution, too, it's going to be very hard to compete with them. Likely only the Chinese will be able to fund a competitive online reseller.

I try and buy most things locally, preferably from small businesses, but I'm forced at times to buy from Amazon because they have things I can't find locally. I had an Insinkertor garbage disposal and the stupid magnetic stopper broke and the magnets came out. It's probably 8 years old and I spent 3 hours looking from store to store because why would they not have it? Ended up at home online and it came next day from Amazon. Or, all things equal, if it means buying from another gigantic business like Walmart and Amazon is cheaper I buy from Amazon. If Walmart is cheaper I'll take a drive. Almost all my oil comes from Walmart because no one comes close to their price.

 

[Job]

I prefer the second down monopoly to buy from, Walmart. Get free shipping all the time with right amount, and they do have totally free with some kind of Amazon like membership deal. I still go to the store once in a while, and their prices on my items can't be beat anywhere. While there I return what I bought directly. I like looking at the options in person. They have a grocery store too.

 

[Dave Hess]

If I was working for Amazon (not a contractor) I would definitely buy as much stock as possible in my 401K.

 

[Rmay635703]

Where did you get that 100% from? or is it just your opinion.

The amount of government money Amazon receives each year from local and federal governments dwarfs any company that isn’t also government controlled by IP cross sharing.

Amazon does not make profit on sales, it’s their mission statement.
Amazon does not spend “their” money on infrastructure either, they have Uncle Sam for that.
Amazon designed their infrastructure but didn’t pay for the equipment or its cost of operations.
Amazon doesn’t spend money on insurance or benefits Uncle Sam does that for half its workforce
On a dollar basis Amazon is much more skilled than any other company at milking government grant guarantees on building, vehicles and operating in a particular community within each state. In many areas ALL corporate government grants have gone to Amazon.

The other companies you list do actually make some margin on whatever it is they hawk, Amazon is much more Black Water than GM if that is the comparison your making.

The difference is that Amazon has remained mostly independent of government bureaucracy /IP sharing while still getting free government money for use of their infrastructure.

Amazon's business model is built upon government handouts | Opinion

Tennessee lawmakers must think long and hard before giving another penny to the third-richest company in the world.

www.google.com

Amazon Gets Billions While State And Local Government Budgets Collapse

Amazon and other companies get billions in largely wasted tax subsidies while state and local governments are starved for revenue.

www.google.com

 

[PandaBear]

The amount of government money Amazon receives each year from local and federal governments dwarfs any company that isn’t also government controlled by IP cross sharing.

Amazon does not make profit on sales, it’s their mission statement.
Amazon does not spend “their” money on infrastructure either, they have Uncle Sam for that.
Amazon designed their infrastructure but didn’t pay for the equipment or its cost of operations.
Amazon doesn’t spend money on insurance or benefits Uncle Sam does that for half its workforce
On a dollar basis Amazon is much more skilled than any other company at milking government grant guarantees on building, vehicles and operating in a particular community within each state. In many areas ALL corporate government grants have gone to Amazon.

The other companies you list do actually make some margin on whatever it is they hawk, Amazon is much more Black Water than GM if that is the comparison your making.

The difference is that Amazon has remained mostly independent of government bureaucracy /IP sharing while still getting free government money for use of their infrastructure.

Amazon's business model is built upon government handouts | Opinion

Tennessee lawmakers must think long and hard before giving another penny to the third-richest company in the world.

www.google.com

Amazon Gets Billions While State And Local Government Budgets Collapse

Amazon and other companies get billions in largely wasted tax subsidies while state and local governments are starved for revenue.

www.google.com

1) They make most of their profit from web service, and they make money on prime membership and without it they will lose money slightly on the web store.

2) Uncle Sam paying for their infra is laughable, this does not happen. https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/canalys-worldwide-cloud-infrastructure-Q4-2019-and-full-year-2019 Show me the stats that say uncle sam pay $9.8B in Q4 2019 to AWS to build the infra for them. That's one quarter, not one year.

3) Where did you get the idea that Gov pays for Amazon's infra, that's totally wrong (hint: amazon alone use up 10% of all nand chip output of the entire world for AWS. That's basically the entire output of SK Hynix or Intel). You call that not spending money on infra?

4) I had Amazon insurance when I work there, like any other company, where did you get that from. If you are only talking about the part time warehouse worker they are identical to all other warehouse worker I know of, nothing more and nothing less than others.

5) Every company milk and let locals and states compete with each other, states and local gov competing with each other is not "uncle sam", they need to do their own math, and you are welcome to vote them out if you don't like them competing your area vs others. You know what this is? This is a stadium construction deal. How come I do not hear you complain about a new football stadium paying out of your own local tax?

You need to use real stats from 10k report not some cherry picked numbers off some propaganda opinion article.

p.s. Do you even know what "cloud" computing is? You basically rent a computer by the amount you use (hours, speed, amount of data you store, amount you transfer) instead of buying them out right. That's rental and lease right there.

 

[Hermann]

and deal with the crowds of nasty Walmart shoppers.

I resemble that remark