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Comment by miohtama | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Warren is proud of blocking this deal:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/amazon-irobot-deal-collapse-room...

That old bat is the enemy of any kind of US technical progress.

No. Enforcing anti-trust law is critical for healthy markets. Healthy markets support technological progress through competition.

How is Chinese market consolidation a healthier market outcome here?

Opposing one purchaser does not imply supporting another purchaser. I don't know the details of this specific transaction, but I would guess the Chinese buyer does not have the same market power that Amazon does, so isn't running afoul of antitrust law. It's also possible Warren is opposed to this purchase, too, but no longer has the influence to stop it.

> Opposing one purchaser does not imply supporting another purchaser

Opposing the merger in this case necessarily meant embracing iRobot going out of business. Their financial position was clear, and no one else was in that business vertical but iRobot and Chinese companies. So either iRobot folds and the market is owned by Chiense companies, or iRobot folds and its IP is bought by Chinese companies.

> but I would guess the Chinese buyer does not have the same market power that Amazon does

In home robotics? They own the whole market.

> Warren is opposed to this purchase, too, but no longer has the influence to stop it.

Warren is too blindly ideological and frankly stupid to have pieced this together.

It's not US government's job to help bad business leaders, they should do a better job of running their companies than using them as a slush fund.

This company would have probably flourished if it had workplace democracy but instead it was a centrally planned dictatorship and failed.

Maybe that is the real lesson here.

It’s not the government’s job to punish them either, and in this case Warren destroyed the jobs of many of her constituents.

Ahh yes workplace democracy, famously tenable for high tech companies.

It is absolutely the the role of government to regulate commerce and establish competitive markets (note the lack of the word free here).

I also have zero faith in tech leadership as they have been the major driver of mass misery across humanity. Not only should they be stripped of their positions in their companies, but leadership should be directly given to the workers.

It's the only way to right to the wrong. If it's good enough for executives (voting for other executives, pay packages, and company direction), it's also good enough for workers.

How did iRobot hurt anyone? It seems like Warren hurt their workers by denying them the opportunity to keep their jobs. Moreover the whole home robotics industry no resides in China where the companies are run in an even more authoritarian fashion.

You're assuming the deal was anti-competitive. A lot of the time, the process is the punishment.

She should be, honestly. To me as an American, China has a better reputation than Amazon. Of those two choices, I'm happier with this outcome than giving even more stuff to Amazon.

As an American with a strong personal interest (kids) in keeping the country strong and competitive in the future, it seems bizarre to cheer for our largest adversary to gain advantages over us.

I also would have preferred to keep it in the country, but the fact is that Amazon does more harm and is a larger threat to Americans and your children than China is. Hence "Of those two choices... I pick China."

I would love for there to have been more than those two options, but this is where we ended up after decades of not enforcing anti-trust law, thanks in no small part to Amazon.

I would definitely argue the opposite, that China is the larger threat.

They want control of Taiwan and are building way more capable hardware than Russia has.

Sounds bad man.

Meanwhile, Amazon and its executives are union-busting to keep worker rights minimal, running a nation-wide law enforcement surveillance network, supporting Republican politicians and all of their anti-American policies and practices, lobbying to oppose anti-trust enforcement to keep hold of their illegal market positions and keep our economy weak, and they own one of the nation's largest newspapers specifically so they can control the narrative over their own actions. And that's all happening right here, in the US, influencing our laws and our media, right now today, not in some theoretical future.

So yeah in terms of entities that are actually doing real harm to Americans, Amazon beats China no question.

There are threats from without and threats from within.

China isn't going to physically invade the US. They want to take our place as the world's cultural leader and relegate the US to approximately the current state of the UK.

Companies like Amazon want to increase the wealth of the owners at any cost including domestic political capture. They would see the country being run by oligarchs like Russia.

Would you rather live in the UK or Russia?

>Amazon does more harm and is a larger threat to Americans and your children than China is

Yeah, I'm going to need some examples as to how Amazon is worse than China.

See downthread comment[1], and please keep in mind the context of this conversation is specifically, "Amazon does more harm and is a larger threat to Americans than China is".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277647

Chinese doctrine explicitly has labeled America as the enemy for 10-20 years, with a goal of taking a democracy by force (after crushing dissent in HK and taking it over earlier than promised), and steals the West’s IP, and manipulates American businesses, and is actively committing a genocide for the past decade.

That's all pretty hand wavey and abstract, not very convincing (for example, I'm pretty sure China is not committing a genocide in the US, and Western IP law is arguably not worth much respect anyway). I'm not saying China is without problems, I'm just saying they're less harmful to Americans than Amazon is.

You’re claiming that documented and active IP theft and anti-democracy and enemy-action doctrine is handwavy and better than a tax paying business that supports democracy and that is not trying to undermine the west? You’re wrong

I similarly can't understand how you can look at the US over the last 10-20 years and think the US's biggest threat is some country on the other side of the planet who makes the stuff that we ask them to make, and not the billionaires and megacorps who control every aspect of our economic and political system which directly lead to the situation we are in now. The call is coming from inside the house, man :)

To be fair, shopping at Amazon is nearly the same as shopping at some Chinese company. They bring in Chinese products by the boatload, warehouse them here and offer 2 day shipping. That's virtually their entire retail business and value proposition. It's a slightly curated selection, easy ordering and fast shipping. You can buy all the same stuff for less at Ali Express if you don't mind waiting 3 weeks.

I don't mean to make light of what Amazon actually does. Their logistics are incredible. But, really, that's what they are. A logistics company. Your money still goes to China and you pay more so an American company can get their cut too.

>"To be fair, shopping at Amazon is nearly the same as shopping at some Chinese company."

Have you actually used AliExpress? I use both Amazon and AE, and the former definitely offers a lower-deceit, easier to use, and better customer experience. Amazon powers most of the web, whereas AE regularly has massive bugs (I was completely unable to sign in for over a month due to a UI bug last year).

That's interesting. To me as a Canadian, I think Amazon is more aligned with my best interests than China.

What makes you feel otherwise?

See other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277647

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