Amazon? Is it BAD?

[Uncle Gizmo]

Very nice and well written article, loads of things I didn't know about Amazon!

The regime that enabled Amazon's monopoly power is falling apart | Matt Stoller

It is long past time for policymakers to fight corporate concentration. Fortunately, there is good reason to think they will soon do so

www.theguardian.com

All I really know about Amazon is their products are amazingly cheap and quickly delivered.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Amazon is evil. The actions of AWS against Parler last month confirm my opinion. I sold my stock. I can't hold stock in a company I want to see destroyed by antitrust lawsuits.

 

[cianreid98]

Amazon is evil. The actions of AWS against Parler last month confirm my opinion. I sold my stock. I can't hold stock in a company I want to see destroyed by antitrust lawsuits.

Why are they evil? What did they do last month? Thanks

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Why are they evil? What did they do last month? Thanks

Spammer!

 

[Steve R.]

Well, Amazon - through Jeff Bezos - does own the Democratic Party propaganda outlet, the Washington Post. Kessler's fact checking of Biden's Covid-19 speech in the Post was outstandingly trivial and was essentially based on nitpicking minor details. Kessler must have done this as a sad excuse to assert that his fact checking was really bipartisan in nature. Most of those commenting on Kessler's fact checking where fanatically pro Biden and were quizzical over why Kessler was even bothering with that. "Come'on Man!!!" Biden's obfuscations and lies were merely attributed to whimsically "stretching the truth" by "Good Old Joe" for a good cause and were not condemned.

The real reason for posting on the "evils" of Amazon. Have you ever tried to reconcile Amazon purchases? It's an accounting nightmare, which is my this thread caught my attention today. Essentially there are three accounting baskets. One is the Amazon gift card, the second and third relate to the Amazon credit card which identify the obvious purchases, but also contain, off to the side, "reward credits" that accumulate. Consequently, when you buy/return an item, there may be an effect on each of these three accounting baskets. I just spent a couple of hours unraveling the purchase and return of one item, were the net price of another item was "modified" by the return of the first item. Fun!

Some of that problem is my fault. I don't reconcile until the statements actually arrive, where you don't see how the accounting baskets have actually been affected. Make the adjustments at the time of purchase/refund; there really isn't a problem. Anyway, if you aren't compulsive about fully reconciling, no problem.

 

[AccessBlaster]

I can't hold stock in a company I want to see destroyed by antitrust lawsuits.

Then you better get out of the market. Amazon and Microsoft are the templates that drive successful portfolios. The Amazon's of tomorrow will piggyback on Amazon's strategies while pushing the limits of antitrust and monopolies.

 

[Pat Hartman]

At the moment, Microsoft is not abusing their position of power. Apple is doing well with their OS1. Apple was almost defunct until they came out with the iPhone and came back from the dead. Linix is also pretty popular as an OS. So, even though MS doesn't have much competition, it does have some. I think Windows is the best so I would never buy Apple. But I never bought Apple in the 80's when they actually were building better products than DOS because they even back then they insisted on controlling the entire product. MS licensed DOS and later Windows to any company that wanted to resell hardware but Apple refused to do that and that is why Apple languished as a niche product until they lucked out with the iPhone. Apple is now abusing it's position of power by banning apps from the Apple Store for political reasons. When my twin granddaughters started college a few years ago I was going to buy them new laptops. They wanted macbooks and so they paid for them themselves because I wasn't spending twice as much money for a laptop as I needed to. Apple keeps its prices much higher than necessary and they get away with it by making their products as incompatible as possible with the rest of the world. And silly people who buy labels let them get away with it. It reminds me of my daughter when she was in high school. No jeans other than Jordash would ever touch her body. Where is Jordash now? On the dust heap of history.

I was an Amazon supporter until January. Not only did they crush Parler (and others I'm sure that we didn't hear about) but they are now being hypocritical in their attempts to block the unionization attempts at their plants. I am anti-union (long story) so I hope the unionization attempt fails but Amazon tried to block the use of mail-in ballots because they were prone to fraud Says the company who wants state and local elections to be run entirely by mail-in ballots

It is not the monopoly aspects of Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc that I object to, it is their blatant abuse of power that makes me want to see them crushed. If you make the best product, you deserve the most customers. But when you start trying to crush competitors by using your power, that crosses a line.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Apple just banned Parler again from the app store.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Wasn't Parler free to browse, now you need to have an account to browse their content.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Apple is blocking the distribution of the Parler app that runs on iPhones. I don't believe they can block accessing Parler via a browser. It is just a matter of convenience. People like apps when using their phone because they provide a better experience than a browser version. I can't say for sure since I don't use any social media at all (except for here) and I try very hard to use my phone as a phone and nothing else.

 

[harpygaggle]

Amazon is evil. The actions of AWS against Parler last month confirm my opinion. I sold my stock. I can't hold stock in a company I want to see destroyed by antitrust lawsuits.

This is the other reason why I don't buy at Amazon.