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Comment by retailengineer | Hacker News Reader

22 days ago, you commented:

"For a 25-30 year time frame AMZN will beat S&P and Walmart by several X. AMZN, GOOG are companies which will have a huge impact on how we live. I have put some money into them. They are Berkshire Hathaways of our time."

So you seem fine with whatever (exaggerated and imaginary) evil things the execs are up to, as long as you profit from that as well.

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Thanks for bringing this up. I want Amazon to take better care of employees precisely because I have money invested in them; because I believe in a knowledge economy, the greatest asset a company has is its people, and in the long-term this will matter. Amazon can be a lot more valuable, if employees can build long-term careers there and are better cared for.

I am rational. I want my money to work hard for my family. If I believe, I can provide a secure future for my family by investing in AMZN then I will do that. Through all the mutual/index funds, I am probably invested in a lot of companies whose practices I disagree with. Examples: Avoiding taxes (double irish with a dutch sandwich), super low minimum wages and expecting public to pay for their care (walmart and food stamps use of their employees), abysmal working conditions (foxconn deaths/suicides), shipping manufacturing jobs to China/Malaysia/Philippines and exploiting low-wage workers there, advertising and selling unhealthy/processed and getting kids hooked to high-{sugar,salt,bad fat} diet. We have practically proved that the best engine to create wealth is capitalism. The dichotomy you have provided is a false one. I love all the good properties of capitalism but I am also aware of its acute shortcomings, if there is no government or regulation. This doesn't mean that I will stop being a rational economic actor.

Things I mentioned are what I heard from current/ex Amazon employees. What I wrote about benefits are facts (else people would have refuted them right away). Only exaggeration was about Execs laughing their asses off; I was just making a point.

You really should look at the PE and grwoth of Amazon vs BH.

Amazon is a shell game, it is not really growing. It's a boring retailer... yet it is using PR to pump up its stock.

No way to know how long it can do this, except to know it can't do it forever.

Meanwhile Berkshire is a well managed company that actually turns an operating profit.

This seems like a common misconception. Amazon's PE (and earnings in general) are terrible because they don't care about earnings at this point in their life; they are growing far too quickly in far too big a market to stop to take earnings. Slides 45-47 from this A16Z presentation illustrate this pretty well: http://www.slideshare.net/a16z/mew-a16z

Also, your assertion that Amazon is 'not really growing' doesn't really make sense or fit with any publicly-available data I can think of.

Considering the expectations implied by Amazon's stock price, are you sure it's a common misconception? Surely if the misconception was common, the valuation metrics would be much lower?

Amazon will never have the same impact on our lives like Walmart did. Simply because retail won't grow as much anymore as it did when walmart became big. We're moving into a digital economy (ironically to a small extent thanks to amazon and their elastic cloud) and there simply isn't as much revenue in a digital economy as there was in the traditional (physical) consumer goods economy. people earn less nowadays and consume less. walmart rode the heydays of consumerism in the US and I doubt retail spending will ever return to those heights: http://wallstreetexaminer.com/wp-content/gallery/economic-ch... amazon seems to me like the emerging, dominant player in a shrinking market. furthermore - looking at the digital consumer goods market - we see that in this market amazon is again playing second fiddle. this market is dominated by Google and Apple (which have much better offerings with respect to apps, music, etc.) and maybe EA and Valve for games (origin and steam respectively).

All companies are 'evil' in that they extract value for themselves at the expense of others. Amazon is probably less evil than Walmart though, since they are doing much more to reduce labor costs to distribute goods. Not that Walmart is necessarily evil either. Usually entirely a matter of perspective since large businesses have a huge effect on the ecosystem and have internal ecosystems there will always be many that see them positively and negatively.

Would you say Amazon is more Berkshire Hathaway or more Carnegie Steel, at a time intensely innovative with extreme work expectations?

"Reducing labor costs" is what is making them evil, in part

>So you seem fine with whatever (exaggerated and imaginary) evil things the execs are up to, as long as you profit from that as well.

As long as the evil is easy to ignore and the profit large enough, I would dare say this is common among most people. Especially if you don't have to admit it (and thus take the hit to social reputation).

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