Amazon is such a remarkable company. I may have underestimated their long-term prospects. I've been skeptical they would be able to maintain a monopoly for a few decades, but even without Jeff Bezos at the helm, they got enough foresight to continue to expand their operations nonstop.
It's honestly because of Jeff Bezos that Amazon can succeed without Jeff Bezos.
People honestly do not give Bezos enough credit, not just for what Amazon has achieved, but for what he has achieved within Amazon. Decades from now there will be case studies about the succession planning at Amazon versus other "major" companies of our time which oftentimes revolve around the ego and narcissism of a CEO with too much self-importance to foster any sort of succession within the organization.
Amazon's best years are quite likely still not behind us and will quite likely happen when Bezos is no longer around to see them.
Bezos made a better web interface for a Walmart level selection of goods and now Walmart is caught up and it's all the same. Shopping at Amazon is ethically the same as shopping at Walmart (not good IMO).
how is Walmart "caught up"? this is what their homepage looks like today on my pixel 4a: https://ibb.co/Y3Zh7k2
if I flip it to landscape, the layout looks right, but the button to reveal the search bar (the most important element on a retail homepage) doesn't work. I would be shocked to have that experience with Amazon in the middle of the holidays. it's just throwing away money.
>how is Walmart "caught up"? this is what their homepage looks like today on my pixel 4a: https://ibb.co/Y3Zh7k2
They're caught up exactly because your biggest problem is that the site layout shit the bed. Your complaint wasn't that their business model and logistical infrastructure doesn't let you order stuff to your home on par with amazon.
it might seem like a minor issue. if I really wanted to shop with Walmart I could try a different browser, try their app, or switch to my PC. but people don't do that when they just want to buy something. approximately no one cares about giving second chances to a megacorp.
when you have strong competition, it's not enough to mostly get things right at a high level. the little things matter just as much for earning trust. Amazon gets this. Walmart, apparently, does not. they're a solid second choice if something is sold out elsewhere, I'll give them that.
This 2019 article [1] interestingly remarks that Amazon is one of the few companies that has been able to maintain efficiency with scale. Within the context of its foray into government contracting, perhaps the US government can learn a thing or two about cutting its obscene bureaucratic bloat?
As an aside, I would love to read a biography of Bezos the individual, not businessman. We all too often shrink the complex lives of humans into labels that fit 280 characters. Alas, that'll likely not happen anytime soon.
(You can listen to the article thanks to the YC-backed Audm. Great content, passable app)
Government will never be efficient because the players knows there are free money to grab and efficiency is not the goal of all the decision makers involve.
I don't know. In the UK I can submit my taxes online, the whole thing is straightforward even including dividends and capital gains tax. It spits out the calculations for you and avoids needing an accountant. You could do it all manually but why would you when it is so efficient.
There is clearly a spectrum here and blindly labelling all government as useless is wrong.
The parent commenter didn't refer to efficiency of tax collection.
They refer to the fact that taxes is the pot the government will draw money from whenever any of their enterprises becomes unprofitable. If the pot is too small to fund all the projects they can simply grow out by taxing the populace more.
When an unprofitable business in the private sector runs out of investor money it sells all its assets and eventually collapses.
>The parent commenter didn't refer to efficiency of tax collection.
Tax collection is part of government and in this case is an useful counterexample to the endless "all government is bad" messages we regularly hear on HN.
>When an unprofitable business in the private sector runs out of investor money it sells all its assets and eventually collapses.
Yes, and unpopular governments get voted out (assuming they are democratic).
It is easy to believe that “all government is bad” when the only government you’ve interacted with is the US government. Thanks for highlighting a counter example.
Eh, most companies in the world aren't as efficient as Amazon. I know it's fashionable to complain about big government, but I think everyone can learn from Amazon. The idea that it's only the government that is inefficient is such a strange thing to me
True! There's a parallel here between government bloat and corporate bloat. In the case of corporations, failing to eliminate bloat reduces competitiveness leading to disruption. The corp may survive at least temporarily by bullying or buying disruptors, but its just delaying the inevitable.
Perhaps you should remove your political colored glasses and consider things objectively. A company can be both remarkable in its achievements and have committed labor abuses.
> doesn't pay taxes
Yes, that's what R&D investment is. They "make" billions but reinvest all of it into growth so they pay no tax. If you somehow split off AWS and taxed its profits separately Amazon would just increase its R&D spending on AWS and go back to paying $0 in tax.
This is a good policy, by the way. You want to encourage companies to make use of their money rather than returning it to shareholders. That creates more jobs and results in more technological and economic growth.
Let's not forget that they also use(d) actual tax avoidance schemes via Ireland, Luxembourg, etc. It's not just that they invested all their money back into their business.
Every large American company and every American business owner is involved in minimizing their tax burden. Why is it “wrong” when Amazon or any other large company does it?
I took every write off I could last year to minimize my tax burden. Am I also a bad person?
I can actually respect Amazon. They reinvest a huge chunk of the change into new business verticals and create new jobs.
Let’s say Amazon paid another $N billion in taxes. Where would the money go? To Washington politicians who’ve been promising change and reform in education, infrastructure, healthcare - at least my entire existence on this planet of not longer. Why should we give them money? Who holds them accountable, and regardless of your politics, how well has that worked out? Americas politicians optimize for their reelection. None of them, not the career officials or the one or two term presidents, regardless of political party, have done much to optimize for the marathon.
Bezos was apparently going to go bankrupt and Amazons model just wasn’t sustainable - according to the same media that cheerleads the two political parties. Yet, here we are, and the failed politicians and divisive media has no ideas other than blaming successful companies.
You could take every penny of Amazon and Apples total market cap and hand it to Washington and state governments. You believe anything will change and will stop overspending every year and adding to the national debt? Who will politicians blame then? Tesla? Ha!
You seem to be questioning taxes/government in general, I'm not gonna comment on that.
Sure, individuals and companies can use the rules of the system to minimize the tax they're paying. Everyone does that. But companies like Amazon also have a responsibility to the country they operate in and in my opinion should pay taxes there. Just because some financial wizard figured out that that there is such a thing as a double dutch sandwich or what it's called doesn't mean everyone has to eat it.
If you're going to make an argument for why we should tax companies like Amazon more, you need to also make an argument for why that money wouldn't otherwise be better used by Amazon compared to the government.
In my opinion anything larger than a medium sized city (think one of the many cities in SoCal) is basically guaranteed to use its funds poorly.
And Amazon most likely shared a postal address in Amsterdam with Mercedes, Siemens or BMW. Or at least the street. That shit is common practice. DO I like it? No. Does this make Amazon any less impressive? No.
> Amazon most likely shared a postal address in Amsterdam with Mercedes, Siemens or BMW. Or at least the street
You are talking out of your ass and revealing your xenophobia. The Dutch Sandwich tax dodge works mostly for firms who can pretend that Caribbean post box firm own their "intellectual property" (i.e. tech and pharma firms) and who can then pretend that their actual operating entities are loss making. And no, the German car and industrial companies don't do that.
The efficiency of a government is determined by those who direct it, it's not inherent to the structure.
The Manhatten Project, the New Deal, and the Space Race were remarkably efficient and productive, back in the time that we believed that governments can and should do things, and politicians worked together in good faith.
Then corporate lobbyists bought our politicians and convinced us that governments are evil and inept, and that they shouldn't have to pay taxes because the government will just waste it. So we deregulated everything, and now billionares just waste their record profits on low orbit joyrides instead, while average Americans die preventable deaths because they can't afford healthcare (which the governments of every other developed nation manage to provide their citizens for free).
amazon does have a lot of revenue, but it doesn't have the extreme margins that companies like google and facebook have. they can't just throw money at problems the same way. amazon has similar margins to walmart, and only just exceeded the latter's revenue in 2020. would anyone argue walmart is the more innovative company?
Color me completely impressed.