However, my next question is: What can we do to make more companies be like Amazon?
Not every business needs to operate on razor thin margins, but I'd love to see more big companies playing the long game and continuously innovating. Wall Street invests in returns, not innovation. What can be done to help reset that balance a bit?
Not to mention that when the endgame is "own the entire retail sector," even if other companies want to be like Amazon, in the end they'd have to kill Amazon to do it. Owning the entire retail sector is incompatible with the existence of lots of thriving alternatives. It's like the Highlander -- there can be only one.
It always helps to compete on different terms than your competitors and incumbents.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complain...
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/668688/is_amazo...
http://blog.seattlepi.com/trevorgriffey/2011/04/03/top-10-re...
my gf is the one who has been telling me about amazon and their labor practices. she tells me about jeff not giving back to the community (she is from seattle), tax issues, labor issues. i'm not educated on the whole ordeeal but she has def sparked my interest. does anyone have any feedback? is amazon different from any other warehouse job?
i used to work at UPS and a document storage company a while back and i don't remember it being terrible on either accounts.
And of course encourage changes towards long term investment, maybe using the tax code.