Amazon should be nationalized.
All these 3rd party companies want is a "farmers market", a stall to sell their wares. Give them the municipal software infrastructure they need to do so and maintain it as a public good.
All these 3rd party companies want is a "farmers market", a stall to sell their wares. Give them the municipal software infrastructure they need to do so and maintain it as a public good.
At what point do you nationalise? Is there a next technology which will be stifled if it was nationalise?
Does nationalisation sttifle innovation?
I've been wrestling with these questions as I actually don't like Amazon for all the reasons that have been well publicised ... but their customer service is excellent.
Which sets me against a string of recent bad experiences with local suppliers, getting stung, and thinking ... well, if Amazon treat me better, why shouldn't I move away from local suppliers and stick with the monopoly? Which goes against a lot I believe in.
I guess the problem is it's putting a lot of trust in Amazon. Which is itself an argument for nationalisation. I don't know.
The "Amazon pays no taxes" meme is a false one.
I'm no fan of Amazon, but you have to admit there is a pretty large distance between "Amazon pays no tax" and "Amazon pays billions in tax, but they didn't pay this one specific kind of tax a couple years ago".
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/amazon-had-to-pay-federal-in...
The fact that Amazon just this year after not paying for 2 years had to pay a measly 1.6% in taxes does not really negate the argument.
Edit: 4 years -> 2 years
Amazon went 2 years without paying _income_ tax, not 4.
Amazon paid $3.5 billion in taxes in 2019 (some of which was differed, but still owed). That is over 25% of their income that year. Their federal income tax rate came out to 1.6%, but its borderline lying to say "they paid a measly 1.6% in taxes".
Amazon is an awful company. There is no reason to bend the truth to try and show how awful they are. Being disingenuous only makes your argument weaker.
Income is income though, not sales or payroll which are the expected and manageable operating costs of overhead and human resources.
If I win the lottery, almost 50% of my winnings go back to the state, and I haven't even bought anything with those winnings. What's different about Amazon having a banner year?
Both are windfalls, one gets taxed immediately, the other gets taxed if they don't use up all their profits reinvesting in themselves by the end of the year.
The big difference is that Amazon is a company.
If Amazon decides to pay out large bonuses or dividends with its surplus, that gets taxed at the same rate as your lottery winnings. Before that happens, the income is Amazon's and not an individual's. There is no reason to expect the corporate income tax to behave the same way as individual's income tax.
I would certainly not make the claim "I paid no taxes this year" if I managed to skirt only federal income tax.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-major...
also, if the company has profits there is some tax on that (well, my little C-corp did)
(numbers are made up to show process)
It has little to do with technological innovation.
Not any more, USPS was only used for shipping anyway.
Amazon has shifted to vertical integration wherever they can - they run everything they can, from air freight (with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Air) over their infamous warehouses to last-mile delivery with either in-house staff or "contractor" schemes set up to avoid labor regulations.
Nonetheless as a semi-monopoly you are rarely compelled to innovate like a smaller company is.
I heard similar excuses back in the IE6 heyday for how improving the browser was "hard". Realistically 94% market share just meant that it wasn't broken from Microsoft's perspective.
Amazon does not do business in US only
These two statements contradict each other. The thing that Amazon does extremely well is logistics and that is core to their marketplace, not something else to the side.
Amazon.com in my opinion is a logistics company who happens to have a Website that sells products.
Amazon moves an item from point a to point b, and they do it fast and efficient enough that people go back to them again and again.
Last month, I ordered two pairs of jeans and a t-shirt from Eddie Bauer. They arrived in three different packages after about 10 days. With Amazon, it would have been 1 package that arrives the next morning or the following day.
If Amazon is abusing its position, substantial fines or regulations are the right solution in my opinion. I’m absolutely not in favor of nationalization. Any kind of government run facility, in my experience, is mind mumbling horrible at their job. They have no incentive to compete - which might eliminate bad behavior but it also makes for a terrible customer experience. Nationalizing Amazon is no different than just killing the company entirely.
I would argue that it does not. We have a lot of innovations from the last 100 years that have come from state-run projects / endeavors.
The more I think about it the more it looks as though private ownership stifles innovation if there isn't a direct profit motive for it.
It's often better for the state to react to private monopolies/oligopolies by entering the space and competing with a bare bones service. This has worked in banking, telecoms, land development, housing, etc. It often works better than taking over the monopoly directly. It's one of the reasons (IMHO) Singapore has such an effective private market.
Often private companies lobby for laws restricting the level that they can compete - this is a signal that it's an effective tactic.
If USPS were given a mandate and the cash it could absolutely build a marketplace that could compete and it would probably kick start Amazon into being a better and cheaper retailer. Unfortunately it's being whittled down to a husk of its former self.
https://stallman.org/amazon.html
> We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any market. If in a certain field a single dominant company is beneficial for society, that means it is a natural monopoly, and should be served by a regulated utility.
If a company was already at said 10% limit and you wanted to buy something out of them because to you their offer is by far so much better than any of the alternatives, in your opinion what should happen?
On what basis are you making a claim like that? Toyota sells roughly as may vehicles in the US a Ford and more than the other manufacturers. Their cars are in many ways better than their competitors qualitatively and often cheaper. Do you think they are exploiting people?
I could keep listing examples of market leaders that offer better products that are more aligned with consumer preferences, but I'm not sure that's going to convince you.
Yes, part of how they achieved this was by violating emissions standards for a decade, something that they've been fined for. I'd be willing to wager they engage in similar practices too.
>I could keep listing examples of market leaders that offer better products that are more aligned with consumer preferences,
Their existence alone won't convince me. You need to answer why the competition is unable to produce similar products at similar prices.
This began well after they entered the market and upset the dominance of established players.
> You need to answer why the competition is unable to produce similar products at similar prices.
The same way some people are better at given task. Many older firms are complacent, and operating on an understanding of the market as it existed in the past. Technology, consumer preferences, commodity prices, and other market conditions are constantly changing. If you see something you competitors don't you can offer better cheaper services. The bigger your competitors are, the slower they are to change course.
At bottom, firms are made up of people who are uniquely skilled and qualified. Better people in better systems will perform better. It can be dead simple sometimes. Firms with happier employees are often more productive.
If you don't understand the basics of competitive advantage, then of course you think companies can only gain an edge by doing something immoral. But this is ultimately sophomoric economic thinking.
I still find it unlikely that it is an isolated incident, but that decade is also when they started to pass the mentioned 10%.
>But this is ultimately sophomoric economic thinking.
Your attempt to explain why the competition may be unable to compete is "they're just better." Beyond that, you just say smaller is better, which is the point of my argument.
In any case, there are many reasons a company can offer a better deal - they have invested money and developed a new product/service that the competition cannot simply copy or negotiated a better deal with a supplier, or they're simply a better managed company, or about a million other things businesses can do to gain leverage over competition.
Also, like a closely fought game - the advantage could just be temporary. These things are very fluid.
With no limits, they can actually create artificial lower prices that competition can’t match, and they become exponentially more powerful and dominating.
And sometimes you end up as a customer having less options and lower quality.
No, not really. I shopped around. I picked the best for me. I want to buy from that company but it is already at your 10% limit.
What then? Can I actually buy what I want?
And honestly is hard to debate because it's an vaguely defined hypothetical, I guess we are talking about situations where the state limits how much you can produce. I think is already happening if you think about Spanish Olive Oil for example, EU limits how much countries can produce, so the price goes up, still everyone that can pay for it can buy it, but at a price that represents the scarcity of it, otherwise you can choose other origin of same product.
I'm really not an expert in these topics, but that's my mental model of it, and I'm not even defend it as I'm not sure it is the optimal, specially the EU way about vegetable production.
I said nothing about price. It is irrelevant. I shopped for a product and that particular company had exactly what I want, and they offer it in a way that makes it the absolute best option for my preference. The choice was made. The company wants to sell the product, I want to buy that product from them, but they hit 10% market share. What then? Am I free to buy what I want from who I want to buy it from?
It’s not like you are already free to buy whatever you want, there are production limitations, and your budget limitation.
Right now big companies are allowed to give 100x better solutions at fraction of the cost, that makes imposible to other companies to compete and your freedom to buy is just not real, as many times you’ll be obligated to buy from the big fish, being the only alternative. In the other hand limiting them, they will have to raise the prices and then it would make sense that something 100x more convenient is also more expensive. Right now we have convenience and low cost, but it’s at the expense of killing smaller business and creating virtual monopolies.
No, it can't. Your case involves a scenario where no transaction is possible because there is no product to buy or sell. It has zero to do with my very simple and very straight-forward example of a customer wanting to buy a product indeed sold and available and on the store of a seller who already reached its 10% market share.
My example is very clear, and for some reason all proponents of this virtuous 10% market share are either unable or unwilling to step up and either think their idea through or explain how they expect to implement their virtuous idea.
And this is a very simple and straight-forward example: a seller has a product I want to buy, I shopped around and that seller has the absolute best offer, I want to buy the product from that seller, the seller has the product on the counter and I have the cash at hand, but the seller already hit the 10% market share. What then? Is the next step so mysterious that no one can even come close to dare explain what they believe should happen?
Perhaps the difference comes from you thinking in a limit that applies as per number of products sold, and you could find yourself on that situation of "what then?" the product being on the shelve but you are unable to buy it.
I'm thinking in a scenario where the limit is on the production, similar to what I mention before, the EU controlling vegetable productions.
So you don't get to find the product on the shelve if it's already gone but you'll find some other brand, the ones that are better will be more scarce and more pricy as a consequence.
Now, do I want as a consumer that the best things are also cheap and available?, yes! of course!
But the question is, is that sustainable? and what happens to the market when we have this huge player that outcompete everyone else, and dictate the rules, and they are in a position to set the quality standards, long term we might be free to buy just from them under their own rules. Is that freedom?
I'm really not familiar with those proponents of the 10% market, I was just talking from my common sense, I don't think is crazy to put some limits, and we already have some in some industries, for better or worse.
I'm dropping it here, but thanks for sharing your point of view, I'll read you if you reply, always learning and open to change my opinion.
Cheers!
Not really. This has zero to do with math. At all. We have a buyer and we have a seller, both the buyer and the seller wish to perform a transaction, but then we have a regulator which arbitrarily wants to force them not to execute said transaction because of reasons.
And my question is terribly simple: to those who want to force someone like me from buying what I like from a seller I chose but they arbitrarily reject, how exactly do they wish to force me from buying what I'd like from who I chose to buy from?
No math, no numbers. I'm asking a very simple question: what then?
The comment you replied to answered your question. The transaction goes through, absolutely no additional regulation or control comes into play at the transaction level.
NOTE: I am not supporting this position, or opposing it. I’m just stating what the gp post said.
It really didn't, instead it weaseled out by putting up a strawman that pretends to put a loophole in a straight-forward and very clear way.
In fact, it's blatantly clear by itself the fact that no one proposed a single idea or suggestion about how to enforce that mysterious 10%. No explanation was given on the impact on customers, and how the sellers would be forced to not go beyond that 10%. Why is that? Is the idea undefendable?
For instance, a regulation addressing this could involve a tax on gross receipts (not profits) in a defined market segment that was 0% at up to 8% share, and 50%×(10 - share in %) above that point.
on edit: to forestall anyone suggesting I think Amazon has a small market, no, just the Stallman quote doesn't take into account that monopoly can arise in a relatively small market that people would not consider worth nationalizing.
This is a compounding problem as companies that grow big enough can just buy then out or predatory price them out - like, say, Amazon and diapers.com.
In the end the only way to take down mono/oligopolies out is to take them out from a direction they're not expecting and that can take 100 years.
No, those Driscoll strawberries in March didn’t come from upstate New York farms.
Local farmers who used to sell at the farmer's market have moved to subscription boxes, from what I can tell.
Edit: Replaced AWS with Amazon
Its like competing in a five hundred meter sprint if the winner of the last twenty races had a shotgun. His time sucks, but he doesn't need to actually run as long as nobody else makes it to the finishing line.
They've such a volume here in India that since Amazon has got here, traditional LTL logistics soared in price wayyy higher
Amazon has completely revolutionised logistics here in India, you'll have hard time sending a box from point A to point B cheaper than what Amazon offers.
We are at a point where Amazon sells things much cheaper shipped to your door than a shop near you. (If you don't live in a metro city highly likely, the price which Amazon offers, local shops simply can't beat them)
And in India something like 60-70% people live in small towns and villages, traditional family owned distribution networks are failing to compete with Amazon, yes the ones which power most of the shops in the town.
I maintain, the traditional family owned distribution networks were even more exploitative (screwing over both customers and their workers) in India atleast compared to what Amazon offers.
Amazon delivery agent here are guys from low economic class and often from villages nearby. I am glad my purchases are helping these people survive than the "several property owning shopkeeper near me" competing with me in the real estate market while simultaneously ripping me off on the price on various tools.
Few years ago I was working for such family owned distribution networks and I never seen such miseries in life, truckers were often not paid at time, often driving trucks which hardly get any service (dangerously), the axel could become rocket anytime while on road. Amazon has only brought best practises to us, they've regular vehicle maintenance schedule, drivers get paid on time. Amazon delivery agents are some of the happiest people I've met despite working so hard, they are always smiling while delivering stuff to me.
The distribution agents were regularly fired without payment (it's not completely organized sector so lots of labor operate in grey area, where if they don't get paid don't have any legal recourse and most likely no one will believe if they ever worked for the person they are claiming to have rendered their service to. I am glad, the nepotistic and exploitative power nexus of family owned distribution networks is dying.
Easy return was never available in India, and you risked getting "death stares" from the shopkeeper if you ever returned anything to him because of quality issues of the product.
Other than this, most of the times I had seen "young girls" walking into market and getting "40% discount" by some thristy shopkeeper and they wouldn't do same for a guy ever, atleast this form of descrimination is dying with Amazon.
And honestly speaking, if a lot of Amazon executives in Bangalore and Gurgaon are getting rich, it's well deserved for what they've done for the nation.
I forgot to mention, we've many Amazon competitors but primarily Flipkart - well, getting them to replace/return anything has been tough for me, maybe because I live in a small town, I don't say but I get all my packages in 2 days from Amazon (without prime), while Flipkart takes 5 days here minimum.
What would I like to see Amazon change?
1. Make it possible to sell low value items which cost less than 200 and aggregate it before it's shipped to customer and charge customer shipping on aggregate weight shipped for these small combines. Sometimes it's very difficult when you've to order small items and pay 150-200 shipping on each item. These can be "no return combine", I will not bother returning such low value item, so Amazon saves overhead and additional costs.
2. Please revolutionze hardware space for retail buyers, stuff like "steel sheets, MDF, nail, bolts, nuts" - we don't have any Homedepot or Lowe's, we really need it and my hope is only on Amazon. Other countries like US has Homedepot where u can get most of the hardware fittings while this space is seriously lagging in India, everyone uses different naming for a spare part, etc...we don't even have anything like "McMasterCarr".
Secondly, that isn’t what sellers want. Many sellers use Amazon to fulfill their orders. Amazon is far more than just a “market stall”.
This.
Amazon is basically a huge logistics network. Their business is not selling you products, whether from their own generic brands, from high-end Veblen goods companies like Apple or from cheap chinese dropship artists. Their business is to process payment, and get that package delivered to your front door. To Amazon, their products is just a way to generate output through their logistics network.
The same tends to be true for large corporate software projects.
As a fairly recent example: https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/23/hertz_accenture_lawsu...
Yes, but it's not true for Amazon, the topic of conversation.
It's basically why collective ownership of complicated things has never worked. Except for perhaps the army, which costs an absolute fortune.
Except also the roads, railroads, airports, ports, oil pipelines, nuclear weapons and reactors, GPS and weather satellites, chunks of the energy grid, NASA, a national postal service, social security numbers, and so on
Which proves my point. Look at the innovation that SpaceX has created with VTOL rockets. If it was left purely up to nationalized bodies this would have never happened (or maybe, it would have taken 50-100 years). The incentives and desire for economic efficiency just simply aren't there. Government wants flashy one-off wins that generate publicity and votes, if it wastes a few billion and doesn't scale there isn't any consternation. The entire mindset top to bottom is completely inconsistent with VTOL rockets.
> roads, railroads, airports, ports, GPS,
The argument for these being nationalized is that these are goods that are prone to natural monopoly and some of those are largely non-excludable in the case of roads.
None of those arguments apply to Amazon. eBay is a substitute for marketplace, Azure is a substitute for AWS, etc.
These are also much simpler than Amazon. Could a government have created AWS? Could a government create an iPhone? It's a rhetorical question because all know that the answer is no. Even if they could in terms of capability, they won't because the incentives aren't right. And if they tried, they'd do it incredibly inefficiently and be outcompeted in am embarrassing fashion by a private alternative (e.g. eBay), with the difference being subsidized by the taxpayer.
> nuclear weapons
In the case of nukes, the argument is that the government has a monopoly on force (which is also why the army should be nationalized).
And I already conceded that the army was well-run, although at a ridiculous level of cost (which is another byproduct of nationalization).
> weather satellites
Built by a private company.
Heavily subsidize car use, incentivizing urban sprawl and carbon emissions. Repairs take too long. Design is convoluted.
> railroads
Usually privately owned
> Airports
TSA
> Ports
Jones Act
> Oil pipelines
Usually privately owned
> nuclear weapons
Oh yeah, what a great thing to have around. Really provide a service to citizens.
> nuclear reactors
Often privatized
> national postal service
Junk mail. Also, have you heard of the American Letter Mail Company? They competed so well, the government essentially banned competition in the letter delivery space.
> social security numbers
Insecure, easy abusable. Not meant for identification, but used for that anyways.
I find that UK and USA governments are worse at IT than Russia and Czech Republic. Maybe it's age of the lawmakers, or over-reliance on old sustem, I dont know
Amazon has issues, but "nationalizing" it would not ease those issues in fact in most ways it would make them worse.
Change my mind then? What would be worse in that situation?
I've used plenty of for-profit software that did essentially the same thing but which fell flat on it's face in terms of UI/UX.
At the very least, it’s worth being clear eyed with respect to the quality of government run services.
What would be necessary for the government to run a service like Amazon successfully? Is our government today capable of doing such a thing? I think the answer is clearly no.
Anti-corruption measures to stop politicians from sabotaging those services. E.g., USPS.
Is that their problem, though? I don't think anyone expects the post to police package contents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspectio...
With that critical truth that you've touched on said... American civilian resident-facing government services tend to be organized and run with all the strong incentives being to make it good for everyone but the residents. Usually the workforce has a strong union and management has their goals, but us users have no strong force to exert except distant oversight in the form of Congress.
Some organizations escape this. Others do so partially at best. Most do not. State DMVs are notorious pits of utter misery, and this is generally an honest reflection of experience.
You can report a passport lost online, but you have to file a DS-11 in black ink at a post office to request a new one. This process can be easy or hard unpredictably, depending mainly on how nice the postal worker feels that day. There are few to no organizational incentives towards better customer service.
Why black ink? Because the State Department says so. And they don't have to care what you think.
Not that i see calue in nationalising Amazon, but i thi k it would be fine
It would be by far worse to not have Amazon, or dump their market share to shady chinese competitors like ali express.
The only dailight I see between them is the shipoing time and language.
In my area, Amazon's logistics is the least likely to be on time. I've gotten many free months of Prime from delayed packages.
You might be right, but...
Should be merged with UPS.
I also believe NBA should be nationalised. All teams should be owned by cities and revenues used to fund schools etc
oof. Amazons actual website is frankly horrible, but i shudder to think how terrible it would be if it was run by the government. I'm cringing at the thought. There would just be an endless stream of news about gross mismanagement, incompetence, wasting taxpayers money ad nuseaum. No. The only thing that could possibly be worse then Amazon in its current format would be if it were run as a government enterprise.
And to the whataboutism; "who says Amazon doesn't have those problems etc, it's different. I don't have to be bothered so much by the internal affairs of a private company. A government company otoh, it would just be all over the news.
Everybody but communists know that Nationalization is a goddamned terrible idea doomed to failure - you can see it by not being in their political platforms at all. Only those with dogmas to consider the action a goal in itself advocate for it.