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 jarring sudden impact.
In tech, Amazon has tremendous power to put anyone they want out of business. AWS puts them in the enviable position of understanding all sorts of intimate details of everyone else’s business models. Again, they are too smart to do it too quickly.
It pains me that my generation, a generation of people who dream of being makers and business owners, don’t see the irony of the convenience of having toilet paper delivered and lower prices at Whole Foods for what they really are - a trick and a trap that strengthens a company that can and will have a real tangible negative impact on everyone’s employment and business prospects in the future if hasn’t already.