(Bezos next plan to put Americans out of work): Gas stations and travel are the two trillion-dollar industries Amazon could disrupt next, analyst predicts
Funny, I can’t believe the way this guy is commandeering the economy. What’s the ability of the plebs to make a living mean to the richest man on the planet? It means absolutely NOTHING to this financial vampire. Why so many admire the man is a complete mystery to me.
Gas stations and travel are the two trillion-dollar industries Amazon could disrupt next, analyst predicts
There are two trillion-dollar markets that are great new business opportunities for Amazon, according to D.A. Davidson.
The firm reiterated its buy rating for Amazon shares, saying the e-commerce giant should enter the travel and gas station markets.
"Based on our estimates, Amazon is currently pursuing 8 of 10 market opportunities that exceed $1T, globally. We see an opportunity for it to exploit the remaining two – gas (stations) and travel," analyst Tom Forte said in a note to clients Tuesday. The "company has a history of solving complex logistical problems. Financially, it seeks opportunities that can generate significant free cash flow."
The analyst noted more than 10 percent of Costco's sales are generated by its gas stations. He said Amazon could provide Prime subscriber discounts, expand its data collection on its customers and add thousands of distribution stores for its products through the gas stations.
Forte said Amazon could also follow Costco's model for travel deals, offering discounts for cruises, rental cars and vacations.https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/08/07/amazon-could-disrupt-travel-industry...
Aren’t there any provisions in the antitrust laws that would cover this greedy SOB?
United States antitrust law
United States antitrust law is a collection of federal and state government laws that regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers. (The concept is called competition law in other English-speaking countries.) The main statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914 and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These Acts, first, restrict the formation of cartels and prohibit other collusive practices regarded as being in restraint of trade. Second, they restrict the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that could substantially lessen competition. Third, they prohibit the creation of a monopoly and the abuse of monopoly power.[1]
[1] For a general framework, see Thibault Schrepel, A New Structured Rule of Reason Approach for High-Tech Markets, Suffolk University Law Review, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2017 at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2908838
Where are the young in regard to employment opportunities in their futures?
Comments
There are anti-trust laws, but they've been swamped
...by decades of deregulation.
The nation's middle class was created and its infrastructure was built when predatory capitalism and monopolistic policies were held in check and when excess profits were diverted back into the general economy of the nation, making big ideas possible.
There were two gates that held back the flood of economic greed that wanted to asset-strip the entire nation for personal gain. The gates held for fifty years and they made Americans prosperous and ambitious. One is tight regulations enacted with an eye to the health of the people, the beauty of the environment, and the promise for future generations. The other is taxing excessive income extracted from the economy at very high rates and returning that excessive wealth back into the working economy. This kept the GDP high and made big dreams possible for new generations and new ideas. Excessive income was taxed at 95 percent. That's what made capitalism work for everyone. The anti-trust laws are designed to work with such a system.
When deliberate deregulation and tax cutting began, democracy was strangled. The people had no way to stop the gutting of their lives and the greedy extraction of nation's bounty.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Bezos dodges anti-trust by offering the lowest prices
Anti-trust laws presume that the purpose of monopoly is to over-charge the customer.
Bezos's brilliant idea is to provide low priced products by screwing over his workers, his suppliers, and any vendor stupid or desperate enough to offer his goods for sale on Amazon. Since the workers are the customers, its really hard to prove that Amazon's monopoly is harmful to consumers - which is the test currently applied by anti-trust laws.
There was an article about this tactic, but I haven't got time to dig it up. Basically, the old anti-trust laws have been thoroughly circumvented. We will need new laws. Given that the oligarchs own the government, we won't get new laws.
Good points, all.
The monopoly Amazon is forming is not in play yet. I agree, they are offering low prices by breaking the backs of their workers.
Doesn't the harming and abusing of consumers happen in the latter stages of monopolies? I see Amazon as still in the mergers and acquisitions stage and just beginning the phase where competitors are crushed and removed from the marketplace. This is where the anti-trust issues start to emerge, but you are right: it is being done cleverly. To survive capitalism, a society needs to be proactive about identifying public utilities and breaking up monopolies as they form. Clearly, economics is entirely missing from the core of public education. Adults enter society unprotected. Little wonder that the Plutocrats insist upon Democracies. The People do believe they are controlling their own fate from the selections they are given.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
The whole language of biz regulation has been erased
Concepts like "public utility", "monopoly rent", and "common carrier" are ignored, even as the internet recapitulates the Robber Baron tactics of the railroads and Standard Oil. Even when people call fascists like the Koch Brothers' empire "The Kochtopus", they probably don't recognize that Ida Tarbell called Standard Oil "The Octopus" a century ago.
I blame this dumbing down on the so-called economics "profession", which has reverted to the same laissez faire that blighted the 19th century. Their dominance was no accident. The phony Bank of Sweden Economics Prize was started in the 1960s. The oil crisis of the 1970s was used to "prove" that Keynesianism didn't work (Just about any economic policy would have failed in the face of an overnight quadrupling of the price of a basic input to the economy.) The whole Cambridge Capital Controversy argument of the 1950s became an irrelevant footnote in economics textbooks.
The big money bought academia a long time ago.
Americans unfailingly
worship the super rich, so many think somewhere down deep that they'll become one. I used to ask my Tea Party mother why she thought and acted like she was a member of their club. No answer for that, of course. These freaks laugh all the way to the bank at how they've got their rubes trained.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Many 'Muricans think they'll win the lottery
Others may opt to hold up liquor stores.
Not sure why these are good ideas
Gas is on the way out and travel has been automated for years (remember "travel agents"?)
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Good points!
Really, Bezos is going to beat out Expedia, which is owned by Microsoft? How exactly?
As for "gas being on the way out", I don't think so. All the numbers say that electric vehicles and other alternative energy tech will hit resource bottlenecks, such as cobalt for lithium battery electodes and rare earths for strong magnets for windmills. Fossil fuels, unfortunately, will not be gotten rid of that easily. Unfortunately is too weak a word. We are already past the climate tipping point. Methane releases from the poles are in a positive feedback loop. Our civilization is a dead man walking. We have crossed the environmental equivalent of a black hole event horizon. We are past the point of no return.
The cure for fossil fuel dependency is almost upon us
[video:http://thoriumsaltnetwork.azurewebsites.net/the-white-paper/]
H/t to davidmillsatty
Unlimited power readily available
Thorium reactors have the potential to both small enough for location in small spaces and yet scalable for larger applications. Unlike Uranium / plutonium-based energy sources, the byproducts are able to be partially re-utilized for fuel and the remainder has a half-life of only 300 years, not > 100,000 years with Uranium degradation products. The limiting factor here is dislodgment of a highly potent, entrenched alternative energy source: the dreaded fossil fuel industry.
If thorium reactors can be produced economically, entrepreneurs (yes, capitalists) will be able to underprice their competitors, a la Bezos, and collapse the fossil fuel industry without the large scale damage to the ecosystem currently undertaken.
The wide-spread availability of thorium will insure a low cost for production of energy. Wind and solar energy are not sufficiently scalable to offer a practical alternative--but should not be abandoned. Tidal energy is an underutilized power source also--non-polluting as well.
Thorium reactors: gateway to nuclear proliferation via U-233
From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/thorium-power-has-a-protactinium-problem/
How synchronistic..
That that article was published just two days ago!
Thanks for that info.
How curious this article was published so recently
Kudos to you, lotlizard, for such a timely find. Who would have thought that a political blog would lead to such abstruse topics as nuclear chemistry. But the topic is indeed pertinent. Alternative, non-climate altering fuels (energy sources) are necessary in order to rid the planet of its fossil fuel dependency. The need for pipelines spanning Syria versus Turkey or the Black Sea (Nordstream I and 2) would then be rendered moot.
From the combined articles in your comment, I gather that protactinium is the joker in thorium energy processing. If 233U can be diluted with U 232, its ability to permit weaponization seems to be prevented, if my reading is correct. Since Pa adheres prominently to silica (glass), one would think that perhaps silica-doping to remove Pa would lessen the likelihood of fuel diversion to military applications. Of course, the chemistry and physics of such doping is beyond my knowledge.
Lacking actinide contamination/generation, thorium still seems like a good bet.
Sociopaths don't give a
flying fuck about their employees. Or customers /consumers. Or anybody else.
And Bezos is one, as are most Billionaires.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Walmart did this to small chains and individual
businesses. That brought in the "China Price" for manufacturers, along with the NAFTA disruption. I'd imagine Walmart will be sliding into other sidings, insurance, banking, something to compete and capture other sectors....this disruption may be more harmful to workers than anything seen previously, with the shift to automate everything in sight.
Automating everything in sight.
Speaking of, I just learned about "car vending machines." Sure, no one likes the hassle of going to the dealership, but here's another sector where, if the disruption succeeds, people will be out of work.
Page not found from your link.
Geez, I'm hopeless
When it comes to links.
Let's try this again.
Your link worked
Now will this mean I don't have to haggle?
At least not with me!
In a somewhat related question ...
... that can be filed under "SUE," or "stupid user error:"
Is there a way to be notified of replies to comments? I seem not to have figured this out, and rely heavily on both refreshing the C99 page, and my memory (bad news) to prompt me to refresh the same.
(Kinda embarrassed to be asking this).