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Comment by throwk8s | Hacker News Reader

> If your unit economics don't work then you're fucked...

From the company's perspective that's certainly true.

As a regular person I'm more worried about the companies whose unit economics work too well. Companies like Amazon have so much momentum that it seems like they could go on indefinitely, instead of eventually failing and making room for new entrants.

Companies whose unit economics don't work transfer wealth from investors to customers, then get out of the way. Companies that work too well can become an inescapable force.

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> Companies whose unit economics don't work transfer wealth from investors to customers, then get out of the way.

Not always. Consider the rash of subsidized “we’ll pick up your dry cleaning and then save by doing the work at a centralized facility elsewhere). These parasites wiped out the network of local dry cleaners, in particular in SF.

You could say, well, they wiped out the buggy whip makers. But actually they wiped out the infrastructure and then went bust, leaving a desert (in dry cleaning terms) behind.

Parasite is too kind a word.

This is the pessimistic view of Uber. If Uber was just subsidizing car rides, that would be fine. But since they’re dominating the industry in an unsustainable way, they’re hurting public and private transportation infrastructure. Cities aren’t investing in trains or buses because of Uber, but if Uber goes under, we’re going to be out of luck.

> they’re hurting public and private transportation infrastructure. Cities aren’t investing in trains or buses because of Uber

i dont think you can blame the lack of public transport investment on uber. and there's no hurting private transportation infrastructure - that's just private cars! People who ditched their car because of the availability of uber isn't getting hurt if uber goes away. They can just repurchase a car (after all, they saved money not owning a car previously, so they must be ahead already).

So Uber is the culprit behind the lack of public transportation and infrastructure development? Lol...In 2006 when I came to the US, the train between LA and SF took 13 hours. Today in 2022, 18 years later, it still takes 13 hours.

> These parasites wiped out the network of local dry cleaners, in particular in SF.

Huh? I’ve never had an issue finding a dry cleaning shop in SF and there’s tons that pop on Google maps - hardly seems like a dry cleaning “desert”.

They mean "actual" dry cleaners that clean in the shop - almost all those you find are fronts for some massive cleaning warehouse somewhere else (check to see if they have any machines on-site).

Even if that's the case, how does that make it a dry cleaning "desert"? I only care if I can get my clothes cleaned quickly and I've never had any problem with that.

Not the OP but I assume it has something to do with the loss of same-day or 4 hour turnaround-type services (which if you need try laundromats, some offer fluff and fold services where they'll wash for you).

> Consider the rash of subsidized “we’ll pick up your dry cleaning and then save by doing the work at a centralized facility elsewhere).

Is that not the default business model of dry cleaners globally?

Chemicals like PERC are nearly completely banned in residential/commercial zones. Almost all dry cleaning in the developed world is done in centralised depots in industrial areas, for health & safety reasons.

No, most dry cleaners use more friendly chemicals locally, and only send out things like leather goods. Otherwise, how would they be able to do sub 8-hour turn arounds?

It's never happened, though. Buffett likes to say something along the lines of, "I like to invest in businesses that could be successfully run by a monkey, because eventually they will be."

My prediction is that every behemoth of today will be tomorrow's Sears Roebuck, GE, West India Trading Company, etc. At some point, they'll become mired in bureaucracy. Enough incompetence will eventually rise to the top to allow competitors to pounce.

I'd bet on that, if I had to.

That said, I may easily be wrong, and I honestly share your concern about Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

In particular, I want a successful OSS phone competitor to Apple and Google. I don't think something as important as our telecommunication devices should be run by a duopoly. There's no freedom in the phone market the way there is in the PC market, and I'd really like to see that change.

I agree with the premise. Success is never immortal. The gap, however, is in societies being intended to be immortal. If you let companies run amok, so the thinking goes, when goes the company so goes the country. Limiting companies’ power let’s them creatively destroy one another without threatening the culture at large.

I have an easier time seeing the fall of the US before I see the fall of Amazon.

Amazon would have to be eaten by a three-prong (or more) attack, but I could see it fall quite quickly.

AWS is probably the biggest moat they have, but not often what people think of by "Amazon".

Amazon has really good diversification, and they aren’t going away anytime. Look at IBM, they still exist after decades of being essential irrelevant.

It takes an awful lot to actually kill a company (often fraud or similar), but a company that is no longer dominant the same way is usually considered to have "died". Myspace still exists, but Facebook is clearly the one to beat in that sector.

If Amazon retreats to being AWS-only, I'll consider them to have "failed", even if AWS continues to be a success.

I think the silver lining is at the time of their peak Sears etc. seemed unstoppable. And it took only a few decades for that to be undone. And that is basically guaranteed to happen to any behemoth simply by their inertia and inability to stay relevant for a long time.

eventually, their business becomes politics. see: unionization, windfall tax, the nascent antisurveillance backlash, ftc action...

once your business becomes everyone's business, they'll just go ahead and make decisions about it without you

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