The case for ending Amazon's dominance - <AUTHOR> http://timharford.com/2018/02/the-case-for-ending-amazons-dominance/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm alone in this, but I feel like if you're going to break up a company with antitrust regulation you should at least be able to point to a way they're abusing their power or are making a worse experience for customers. The article goes as far as to admit that Amazon is currently not doing anything wrong.

Should we really seek to regulate away hard-earned (and valuable!) advantages because they _make it possible_ to abuse the position? Surely we should wait until they're actually abusing it?

As an aside, I can't think of any advantage Amazon has that wouldn't open up opportunities for a competitor should they start to abuse them. That's the goal of capitalism, in a sense; you have to be great or people just go elsewhere. Seems odd to fight against that.

<comment><USER3> > at least be able to point to a way they're abusing their power or are making > a worse experience for customers

Didn't Amazon ban products from Apple and Google, that competed with their own, from their online store? Isn't this _still_ the case even though they said last year they would eventually allow them again?

If you tell Alexa, "buy me a chromecast", it orders you an Amazon fire stick instead.

<comment><USER4> Google Products: [https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search- alias%3...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search- alias%3Daps&field-keywords=chromecast)

Apple Products: [https://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPhone-GSM- Unlocked-32GB/dp/B01...](https://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPhone-GSM- Unlocked-32GB/dp/B01N9YOF3R/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1518899586&sr=1-1&keywords=apple+iphone+7)

[https://www.neowin.net/news/amazon-extends-olive-branch- towa...](https://www.neowin.net/news/amazon-extends-olive-branch-towards- google-plans-to-stock-chromecast)

> If you tell Alexa, "buy me a chromecast", it orders you an Amazon fire stick > instead.

Need a source on that.

<comment><USER5> Not to be a dick, but you get a slew of sources with a cursory Google search.

[https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9439281/amazon-ban- apple-...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9439281/amazon-ban-apple-tv- chromecast-why)

[https://www.wired.com/2015/10/amazon-apple-tv- chromecast/](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/amazon-apple-tv-chromecast/)

[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/amazon-ban-apple- tv...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/amazon-ban-apple-tv-google- chromecast-sales-report-article-1.2381709)

And their more recent reversal: [https://mashable.com/2017/12/14/amazon-to- sell-google-chrome...](https://mashable.com/2017/12/14/amazon-to-sell-google- chromecast-apple-tv-two-years/#7H0qsN_tj5qT)

<comment><USER2> you could just as easily make the argument against Apple and Google in these instances for not allowing Prime Video on their platforms.

Refusing to sell competitors' products isn't a very good case for antitrust when you can still buy them in hundreds of other places a click away.

<comment><USER3> > Apple and Google in these instances for not allowing Prime Video on their > platforms.

They're allowed. Amazon is choosing not to support it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a little different take on the whole Amazon is too big argument. My family has owned small businesses for over 40 years. My dad and I have a vastly different opinion of Amazon. My dad is constantly frustrated by them, because its "cutting into our business". We simply can't compete on price on some items, and people choose not to buy products from us when they can just purchase them and have them shipped home.

Now this isn't a poor us, feel bad for us statement. Like I said my opinion of them is vastly different. I want them around. I need them around. They make logistics for us a 1000 times easier. In 3 clicks I can get items ordered that we need and not have to worry about it. (Need a new storage rack? BAM! Be here on Tuesday? We need a new printer ribbon? Phone camera + Amazon app = I have the exact one I need to replace.)

I hear retailers largely complain about them, because they are taking away business that they have come to rely on. That's not Amazon's fault; that's the business' fault. This is no different than the Walmart's, Barnes and Nobles (remember when there were small bookstores?), etc. of the world. Amazon is different, because it's threatening them too. Amazon is making people realize that they need to be constantly searching for new products and new sources of revenue, but the truth is that they should have been doing this all along. Literally every time I walk into the store, I talk to the manager and ask, "What are we doing to move forward?" Amazon isn't what should be scaring people, it should be the fact that they've been asleep at the wheel not realizing they are driving of the road.

My point is that competing directly with Amazon is stupid, but so is competing with any other large dominant company. They don't have a monopoly on anything, it's just that their presence is more widely felt by a larger number of people at the same time.

<comment><USER7> Honestly, small knowledgeable shops owned by enthusiasts for the merch are the ones with the least to worry about from Amazon. It's the Walmarts and the Best Buys where the staff is basically untrained in their products that Amazon beats.

I go to Amazon when I know what I want. I go to a store when I need staff to tell me what I want.

One day Amazon will finally learn to curate their products in some vaguely coherent sense of order instead of an infinite pile of semi-differentiated search results and then Best Buy is really screwed.

<comment><USER8> I used to be a mid level manager at a small regional somewhat-niche retail chain. The last few years they have started to heavily focus on employee knowledge. Hiring full time staff whose only job are to be product experts to help customers, introducing huge amounts of product knowledge courses. They know they can't beat the big boys on price so they are trying to become THE local place you go to talk to someone about this specific niche. It has been working out very well for them.

The niche doesn't even really matter here. It could be car stereos, music, books, alcohol, grocery, whatever. I definitely think the path to survival for small retail shops going forward is going to be expert level knowledge and customer service. The days of people patronizing your store just because its physically nearby are numbered.

edit: Also, and this is totally anecdotal, but I personally shop at several places that aren't quite the cheapest (though none are TOO relatively high priced) but I continue to shop because the staff are far more knowledgeable than I and their assistance is well worth the extra ~10% in price.

<comment><USER9> Notable that yesterday one of the top stories was that Amazon's major book competitor, Barnes and Noble, just fired most of those exact "expert" staff. That they claim they cannot afford to loss lead books like Amazon does, so they must instead discard their highly paid, skilled workers in favor of minimum wage.

This is the general trend in most of America. Many now fall into one of three categories. Highly rewarded entrepreneur / chief officer, educated and well paid but fiercely worked salary, or minimum wage serf. The bands are also becoming more defined and logarithmically separated. ~$16000 (2^14) [serf], ~$90000 (2^16.5) [educated salary], $500000+(2^19) [wealthy / gentry]

Further, the middle section is mostly bleeding downward due to factors like the above mentioned layoffs (Sam's Club did similar), the increasing relative cost of education / health care / other barriers to entry, and the inflation adjusted erosion of buying power.

Its an argument to say the path is towards expert service, yet with the range of social review / recommendation pages / boards available now (much of which Amazon itself cultivates), even newcomers can quickly become informed if they are so inclined. No wonder many now prefer to use automated isles rather than human checkouts. The staff provide little and often just push annoying suggestive sells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazon accounts for 4% of ALL retail sales. Where are the calls about Walmart?

I think we have to see the bigger picture. Growth, momentum, and investments should be a good thing.

Dominance is not illegal. Nor technically is a monopoly. Using a monopoly illegally is.

Having said that we would have to fundamentally change the definition of a monopoly in order to break up the party responsible for 4% of the market -- and have a record of reducing prices.

<comment><USER11> I think you hit upon a really important idea. Amazon has been investing in itself for years, and focusing on longer term growth and success even at the cost of short term profit maximization. Which is... exactly what we as a society want. We want companies to think long term, to be investing in innovative new ways to succeed and relying on growing outward and always trying to be on the cutting edge.

All that stuff is great, far better than companies run by finance degree holding businessmen that haven't invented anything in 3 decades and keep existing purely through rent seeking or quarter-to-quarter profit pumping.

To bring Amazon down now, before its had a chance to reap the benefits of its prudence feels like the worst possible signal we could give the market. It'd basically be saying "Don't bother actually focusing on technical improvement, because if you ever do get really big as a result the government will step in and take it away from you".

Though the article does kind of share this sentiment, so kudos to Tom Harford:

>If that is a worrisome state of affairs — and it should be — then Amazon is the shining counterexample. The online retailer's strategy is driven not by short-term profit but by investment, innovation and growth. If only there were a few more companies like Amazon, capitalism would be in a happier spot.

I suppose the core disagreement then becomes I don't think the threat of Amazon becoming abusive is worth the negative signal going after them would generate, and he does. I'd be interested in reading a 2nd article from him that delves more specifically into this part of the issue.

<comment><USER12> _I don 't think the threat of Amazon becoming abusive_

The idea of regulating on a hypothetical is insane to me. If Amazon becomes abusive, the US Government will still be able to take them. Let's not start prosecuting pre-crime because Bezos is super rich.

<comment><USER13> That's because you're papering over the abuse that Amazon already inflicts on workers and rural communities and you need to make up for the the logical hole left by a bad-faith deregulation starting point of your argument.

<comment><USER14> Has Amazon made it worse for those groups than if Amazon didn't exist? I think generally not. Don't like Amazon's working conditions? Pretend that Amazon didn't exist and stop going to work there.

<comment><USER15> I note that this is a fully general argument for the permissibility of sweatshops of all sorts (as long as the company hasn't done anything other than set up and run the sweatshop). I also agree with it.

<comment><USER13> I really wonder why the the exploitation of workers and the immiseration of people who have no hope for economic mobility is acceptable in any circumstance. "Simply" operating a sweatshop in capitalism is by definition an effort to expand it.

<comment><USER15> The idea is, miserable though the conditions in a sweatshop may be, they are better than the alternatives the workers face, or else they wouldn't choose to be in the sweatshop. If donating $0 to that country is permissible, then surely doing something that makes things _slightly_ better is at least as permissible.

Also, if the company that runs the sweatshop is in fact making huge profit margins from it (I assume that's one thing "exploitation" implies), and if the company isn't especially unusual, then that suggests there's a lot of room for some other company to set up another factory, offer a slightly higher wage or better conditions to attract workers away from the first one, and still make great profits. If there are no artificial barriers to this, then foreign companies competing for workers may end up _really_ improving matters after a while. Contrariwise, if there are significant risks to setting up more sweatshops—e.g. suffering bad PR, running afoul of new or newly interpreted legislation—then the few sweatshops will tend to remain few and miserable, and be run by companies that are more immune to the above dangers (probably large, with good legal departments and/or political pull, and those that don't depend as much on a good reputation).

This implies that people who manage to cause serious problems for companies by protesting their use of sweatshops are probably making things worse for the workers. It is interesting to reflect on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author does not offer ANY evidence for Amazon's supposed "dominance".

How exactly is Amazon dominating?

What percentage of online retail sales does Amazon have? What percentage of TOTAL retail sales (online and offline)?

And more importantly, how is Amazon's market position harming consumers?

It's remarkable that Tim Harford wrote this entire article without citing a single figure or statistic.

What seems to be going on is that there is a PERCEPTION that Amazon is totally dominating and monopolizing retail, but retail is so big that you can grow massively and have revenues of a $100 billion without coming close to being a monopoly.

Points to note:

(1) Amazon has no MOAT. Anyone can set up shop and start delivering things to people. There is no switching cost.

(2) Amazon has MASSIVE well-funded competition in all of its areas: online retail (Walmart), Cloud (Google), video streaming (Netflix), Books (the big publishers who own the content)

(3) You can live quite comfortably and cheaply and conveniently get almost everything that Amazon has to offer without having to use Amazon if you don't want to (books, retail items, cloud services, etc.). This is not the case with pure monopolies like utilities, or monopolies like Intel or Microsoft where completely avoiding them is a big pain for the average person.

<comment><USER17> Just to counter the statement:

> Amazon has no MOAT.

Consider the following:

\- Distribution. Amazon has their own distribution system, and has deals with third-party distributors

\- Data. Amazon has a lot of data on consumer buying patterns.

\- Books. When selling books online, amazon is apparently a requirement for success.

These aren't the best moats, but they are something.

<comment><USER18> _Data. Amazon has a lot of data on consumer buying patterns_

I have a folder of screenshots I keep of hilariously bad Amazon product suggestions. I have been a regular Amazon customer since the '90's and I can say with a high degree of confidence that their consumer data isn't that valuable. All the recommendations that make sense are directly off products, if I buy one flavour of food for my cats it will suggest another but hell, anyone can do that. It's not even smart enough to suggest other cat-related products.

<comment><USER19> It's not even smart enough to realise most items I buy are items you only need one of. E.g. if I buy a screwdriver set, or desk, or frying pan, I'll keep getting recommendations for other similar products. I'm pretty sure a random product suggester could do better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article misses the real issue of "the Amazons" of today: The low-wage workers Amazon has built it's empire on (or, the "gig-economy" of others), and the massive scale, legal tax avoidance schemes only companies with global scale can play with.

If anything, companies of a certain revenue level should be taxed by (localized) revenue, not (globalized) gains. That alone would already go some way to put SMEs on a little more equal footing.

Addendum: In fact, we should tax _all_ companies by a progressive revenue scale.

<comment><USER10> The hourly employees are paid significantly more than Walmart/Best Buy/Target employees. In my home state, they start at $14-$15. About 2x Walmart.They also have programs for veterans to make even more.

They will also pay for community college degrees for those employees -- and it doesn't have to be related to their job nor do they have to stay at Amazon. I believe only in certain fields though, like STEM degrees.

<comment><USER20> Well, those are not really SMEs with high quality jobs either...

I'll happily accept your word that Amazon's sweatshops are better than X's sweatshop - but that just makes more shitty jobs...

<comment><USER19> Ah yes, the world without "shitty jobs" utopia. "Shitty" as compared to what? Who should do those jobs? Robots?

Assuming what parent said is true, except for paying employees much more than competitors and education options, what should they do in your opinion to make the jobs less "shitty"?

<comment><USER21> > Ah yes, the world without "shitty jobs" utopia. "Shitty" as compared to > what? Who should do those jobs? Robots?

For the life of me I can't figure out how this argument would be different if we were talking about actual slaves rather than terrible jobs. If we decide that labor standards are shitty, we dictate that wages be raised, that children not work, that machines be as safe as possible, etc.

<comment><USER19> My issue was with "shitty", which is pretty vague. Whatever you consider the bottom tier = "shitty", okay, let's do something about those. Now, bottom tier = "shitty" again. Okay, so we need to define a minimum limit of shittiness, which we're all happy with. That is called minimum wage, labour protections, etc. And this differs from country to country, depending on how society values people with limited options. Of the top of my head, two things that would predict this are a countries wealth, and how much influence corporations have in the political system, i.e. how broken/corrupt it is. However, I must admit that I'm living in a fairly wealthy and "socialist" European country, so it's easy for me to say.

I can't figure out if OP is hating the game or the player (Amazon), but the former is a bit of a tangent w.r.t. to the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amazon re-invests nearly everything back into the company, that is to be desired and they deserve to win because of it. Competing with them is hard due to this intense research and development investment culture they have.

It would be hard to claim they are a monopoly with Wal-mart out there but also in cloud computing, there are many competitors. Amazon just knows how to develop not only products but markets for their product.

Amazon has helped small to medium retailers sell on Amazon and small to medium development/technology companies compete with infrastructure.

Amazon will hopefully disrupt healthcare with their new venture with Berkshire (who owns Geico and should make healthcare/insurance more consumer focused like auto insurance) and it is a welcome initiative. They might even solve the fixed pharmaceutical pricing market.

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem is breaking up Amazon or any of the other big tech will just be replaced with another.

The issue is things gravitate to winner take all or at least most. We had tons of ecommcerce companies but now one dominate.

We had tons of search engines and now one dominate.

I believe the issue is the Internet. I was involved in 86 and honestly thought it would be the most democratizing thing ever.

But intuition was wrong and instead it is causing capitalism to break. Instead we are getting crazy concentration with companies and solutions.

<comment><USER24> Isn't this just the 80/20 rule though?

What inherent property of the internet would prevent the majority of people flocking to the few websites that are slightly better than their counterparts?

<comment><USER25> There isn't one that I can think of. The Internet is accessed using just a handful of browser clients. That in itself drives most users to start browsing at only a few websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article concludes by saying "... wouldn't two amazon's be better than one?"

But I didn't find any case made for this claim in the article.

<comment><USER27> The point of having a direct competitor to Amazon is to limit the possible actions they could do. Right now Amazon is well behaving and its supported by the customers. However, if Amazon were to change its actions, we would have a near monopoly that is not positively affecting people. Therefore, the theory of the author is to limit the power of Amazon by entroducing a competitor that would challenge the dominant position instead of waiting for the negative outcome.

<comment><USER28> Amazon has many direct competitors. It's likely that this is why they are behaving so well. But my guess is just Bezos' philosophy as a driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> OP is dreaming. The US has perhaps never been more pro-business, hands off, and unwilling to do any anti-trust, than they are now. They will not be breaking up any companies any time soon. A 1990s Microsoft anti-trust case, you wont see.

In fact I think we'll see corporations increasing their influence. acting as banks, keeping private armies, controlling political affairs.

<comment> the-dude And the MS case resulted in basically a flick on the wrist, nothing else.

<comment><USER30> It definitely slowed them down a lot. Things could be looking very different if there had been no action.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, they might not have made that investment in Apple in 1997 -- where would they be today with no Apple?

<comment><USER32> That was driven by an Apple lawsuit.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micr...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Products are commodities and they often do not win on price before shipping. Shipping is the secret sauce. Their ability to ship at lower costs.

I used to prefer ebay, prices are better, but after 2day shipping, you cant go back.

I can start an online retailer tomorrow, but i cant ship a package for less than $3. China too. I bought an iphone case for 80 cents, problem there you have to wait 3 weeks but their shipping too also government subsidized.

You wont find any huge corporation that wasnt somehow subsidized with public money.

<comment><USER33> > but after 2day shipping, you cant go back

Maybe it's a US-market issue, but I don't understand why Amazon is lauded for two-day shipping as if it is unique.

They don't have any particular delivery logistics genius except bulk-purchase discounts from the carriers.

The 'Amazon Prime' air cargo fleet is leased from an industry-standard cargo airline, nothing unique or exclusive.

And they make silly errors that show how their shipping system works; they won't ship lithium batteries ( or even DSLR cameras ) to Northern Ireland even though they have a logistics warehouse here. Because the inter-warehouse backhaul is via Royal Mail, who won't carry hazardous items.

<comment><USER34> They made massive capital investments that allowed Amazon to bypass carrier routing.

So they use government subsidy to deliver to expensive addresses (USPS), UPS to handle exceptions, (and to tie up capacity from competitors) and job out delivery to cut rate services whenever possible.

Few other retailers do that. A retailer like Willams Sonoma has one warehouse in northern Mississippi and one in Nevada, close to UPS/Fedex hubs. They probably get 3 day delivery for 50% of orders, but can not commit to anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't believe that most investors really have a grasp on how "long term" Bezos' thinking is. It's not multi-year, it's multi- _decade_... maybe even multi-century[0].

This is all just speculation from his involvement with the Long Now Foundation, but one of their goals is to foster long lived institutions... I believe that this is Bezos' vision for Amazon and that investors hoping for it to stop its self investment and growth are in for a _very_ long wait.

[0] [http://www.wideopencountry.com/there-is-a-10000-year- clock-u...](http://www.wideopencountry.com/there-is-a-10000-year-clock-under- construction-in-west-texas/)

<comment><USER36> Bezos dream of shifting all heavy industry and mining to the asteroids would be so beneficial to humanity and the planet, that whatever short term pain (short as in timescale of decades) to either current incumbents business performance or consumer choice should be balanced against this promise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Meh, Amazon does good things, many different good things, so we must stop them? If they start abusing their position we can have this discussion, but until then I'll enjoy the good they provide instead..

This seems more like jealousy they're doing so well. Screw that

</comment><comment><USER38> I think a good criterium for antitrust applicability (which the article implicitly mentions) is potential for damage: Even if a company doesn't hike prices, cut quality or blocks customers _right now_ , how easy _could_ they do this and how large would the damage to society be?

I think by that metric, Amazon (and others) should ring some alarm bells: If Jeff Bezos woke up tomorrow with an irrational hatred of redheads, he could immediately decide that his company should stop doing business with any redhead and denand that any partner company does the same - or they, too, will be kicked off Amazon. That would probably put redheads at a severe disadvantage in day-to-day activities pretty quickly.

Another thing I haven't seen discussed so far is creating sub-markets within your product. E.g., in the market for smartphone apps, Google and Apple are not large competitors or even monopolists, _they are the government_. They have full information about each market participant, can subject all participants to arbitrary regulations and instantly sanction players who don't confirm. Except, unlike an elected government, they are not required to justify the regulations, make them fair or even make them completely public.

Im kind of surprised such "sub-markets" seem to be completely unrelated so far.

</comment><comment><USER39> As much as I believe in free markets and less regulation, I believe we do need a law / regulation which disallows companies to use profits from one business to subsidize completely unrelated business while undercutting economics of the second one. For startups, they should be allowed to subsidize low prices only for a specified duration of time or until they hit a threshold of marketshare in a given market.

So Amazon should not be able to use AWS profits to subsidize retail, when other retailers don't have such cushions. Google should not be able to use Ads profits to undercut economics of browser or mobile OS. Uber/Lyft should not be allowed to capture more than 5-10% of SF/NYC taxi market unless they are profitable there.

Just to be clear - if someone can upend an entire business while being profitable, they should be allowed to flourish (eg. Netflix with rental movies, Apple with phones).

One possible exception - if there is no established business in a field and someone wants to move the technology forward there, they should be given some exception. So SpaceX can experiment with their rockets and Google can experiment with self driving cars because they won't be competing unfairly with any competitors.

Finally, I really hope EU adopts regulations along these lines. I have no hopes from US or China.

<comment><USER40> > Apple with phones

Apple uses their phone/hardware profits to upend other businesses. What Apple is doing to Spotify is the most recent example. Apple runs their iTunes/Music on a break-even basis. Apple has the dominant smartwatch market share. Apple runs adverts pushing Apple Watch+Apple Music combo. Apple privileges their Music app on the smartwatch and doesn't provide the needed APIs for Spotify to compete on that platform. Apple Music marketshare is growing and might catch up to Spotify soon.

<comment><USER39> Two points:

1\. Apple would be forbidden to subsidize unrelated unprofitable businesses for too long.

2\. Developing a feature of an existing business is okay under my proposal (so iPhone upending P&S cameras is okay because camera is just a feature of iPhone and hence not completely unrelated business).

<comment><USER41> That would unleash a pandora's box of corruption and abuse by inviting bureaucrats to even more directly control the economy through vague notions such as "too long." If you think the system is bad now, it'd be 10x worse if what you're suggesting were implemented.

Every layer of bureaucrat control and vagueness that is applied, dramatically harms the economy and brings it down toward stagnation of zero growth. We got 30+ years of that demonstration from France, where their GDP growth and wage growth has averaged 1/4th to 1/5th that of the US over the last several decades. Similarly Japan has a hyper regulated and rigid economy, with predictably bad growth as a consequence. As the US has grown more regulated over the last 40 years, its GDP growth has dramatically slowed (while the global economy has routinely grown far faster, and the US share of the global economy has not fundamentally changed).

Instead of considering these political concepts in an idealized fantasy scenario, you have to actually apply them to things as they are. You have to apply them with politicians as they exist in the US today. It would be the worst nightmare imaginable economically, next to moving to actual Socialism (ie direct, literal corrupt control of the economy by bureaucrats).

<comment><USER42> I just searched the gdp per capita of both the us and and France since 1960 to 2016 and you could not be more wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> For some interesting context on "Amazon's dominance", in 2017 they managed a total marketshare of 4% of retail. Surprisingly even if we restrict it to e-commerce only, they 'only' achieved 44%. [1]

[1] - [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-captured-4-of-us- retai...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-captured-4-of-us-retail-sales- in-2017-2018-1)

</comment><comment><USER44> Not sure if it was intentional or not but I enjoyed the irony of putting two Amazon links to the book "The Box" directly in the article.

<comment><USER45> As well as his own book at the end of the piece; be the change you wish to see and all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sorry, it'll never happen. Not having to pay taxes and being the best of the tiny group of first movers in the online catalog shopping space space has allowed it to eliminate both brick and mortar and online retail competition. It's even confident enough in its institutionalization that it's been gradually lowering the quality of its service while making wildly successful investor fueled infrastructure plays for both the basic fabric of the internet and the logistics of all physical world home-deliveries.

A government whose elements nearly-unanimously insist that a company isn't a monopoly until it both controls 100% of all possible industries that can be substitute products for its own industry and owns all of its suppliers, could "ironically" never muster the power to break up a theoretical business that met that standard. At that point, that business has become an inseparable part of the government, itself.

Sorry for the scare quotes around "ironically," but I can't help believing that this mistake is intentional, not accidental. People who insist that a company has to be all-powerful before it's necessary to break that company up (in order to protect the improvements from competition that free markets use to justify themselves) can't possibly fail to see that all-powerful companies can't be broken up, because they are _all-powerful._ It's like having a law against dictators that only kicks in once someone has completely taken over the government.

<comment><USER46> > Not having to pay taxes

Amazon pays (collects) taxes nationwide: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15055662/amazon-us- sales-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15055662/amazon-us-sales-tax- collection-all-states)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So you want Amazon to provide incredible products and selection at the lowest reasonable prices, fast delivery, with the absolute best customer service.

But you don't want them to become giant and or dominant in the process of providing such an extraordinary service.

No no no, we should have two of them instead. Why? Because! Dominance! What would two of them do better than one is already doing in terms of providing service? No answer. Maybe the twins would lower prices further in a competitive death spiral and both could go bankrupt thanks to their currently barely existent profit margin.

How could anyone fail to miss the absurdity inherent in the premise? We want you to be incredible for the consumer, but not too incredible such that everyone uses you and you get big and dominant by doing it.

So Amazon should provide ok but not great products, ok but not great delivery, ok but not great customer service (or some combination of good and mediocrity). Maybe they should regularly mistreat customers like Comcast and charge far higher prices or provide really shit customer service. Really overall just bring their business game down to a lower level, so other mediocre companies can keep up with them. That'll show the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Yet for all this, I am deeply uneasy about Amazon's apparently unassailable position in online retail." I have found online ordering at both Costco and Walmart to be easier and much more efficient than Amazon. NewEgg, Lowe's, Home Depot are all websites I visit more than Amazon. Part of this is I am not much of a media consumer. But all, I do not have time for distractions and "suggestions" when online purchasing.

<comment><USER48> Thinking about it if anything other services are finally catching up. I've ordered as much stuff in the last 2 months from walmart and best buy as I have from Amazon despite being a prime member.

There isn't really as much of a network effect to Amazon they can abuse. For a lot of people, the day they jack up prices to exploit their position is the day a lot of people tab over to walmart or target.com and buy the thing from there instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's a tough one.

I've been an Amazon Prime customer for a few years now and notice my buying habits centralise further and further on Amazon.

The main "selling point" for me, and this is where Amazon's dominance probably doesn't help things, is they own every facet of their distribution chain. So when they say on the website "guaranteed delivery tomorrow!" I can be certain that the item will arrive tomorrow. Before Christmas last year I needed to get a thunderbolt to HDMI adapter for my Mac so my family could play a game, Amazon got that to me on Christmas Eve. All turned around within the space of about 18 hours.

Additionally the Amazon lockers make it simple for me to pick things up on the way home from work (there's one just outside my tube station).

I'm not sure what other businesses can do to compete really, Amazon isn't necessarily always the cheapest place anymore, but they offer the convienience - and I haven't seen another business be able to match, or even beat that

</comment><comment><USER50> Would there really be any benefit from splitting up Amazon right now though? Assuming there were two symmetrical Amazons, both focusing on consumers, innovation, and growth, the only way I can see either being competitive is to cut corners.

In my opinion, there would be a much more compelling reasons to split up Amazon if they ever begin to focus on profits.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm not convinced, I stopped buying from Amazon and haven't had any problems finding other suppliers.

</comment><comment><USER52> I agree with Peter Thiel's observations about allowing monopolists to reap the rewards of their innovation. And almost no-one (ok, Elon, I heard that cough) has innovated as much as Amazon in the last decade.

That said, banning chromecast etc is a dangerous precedent and I'd like to see Bezos apologise for that. It's an unusually shortsighted move that does not fit at all for me.

If you're going to attack a tech giant for being rubbish and monopolistic, Facebook is right there doing very little other than milking ads, acting irresponsibly, and burning a whole lot of time out of the economy.

</comment><comment><USER28> I remember a little bit of debate and a lot of consternation in 2002/2003 on whether a preemptive strike on Iraq was justified given their likelihood of having/using WMD. And in Minority Report how the theme was about how convicting on precrime was a right violation.

But has society really shifted thinking that acting based Amazon's potential future dominance is a substantial discussion? Our predictive ability is not very accurate to be able to act preemptively (eg, no WMDs in Iraq).

So ending Amazon's pre-dominance seems rather inefficient and bad for society.

</comment><comment><USER53> Related: Scott Galloway's take on breaking up Amazon.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ebKI4x_k8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ebKI4x_k8A)

</comment><comment><USER54> Amazon is the literal expression of pied piper consumption. You know what would mess with Amazons dominance? Consumers having critical thinking skills enough to make long term decisions. Everyone here knows what the game is, which is kind of disgusting/amusing/predictable. Carry on :) Particularly you, Bezo/Freud/Bernays, you lovable sociopaths. Here for the comedy not for the crowd.

</comment><comment><USER55> From the article:

> Punish it for success and you send a strange message to entrepreneurs and > investors.

Bezos is one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Do they think breaking up Amazon at this point is going to discourage anybody? Like maybe the fact that you can become a billionaire but probably not a trillionaire means I'm probably not going to launch my idea.

</comment><comment><USER56> Amazon and other large companies and even institutions should eventually lose most of their business to distributed applications running on peer-to-peer protocols or light-weight companies built on those types of public protocols taking small cuts.

This includes Amazon, Google, Uber, Waymo, Instacart, the US dollar, banking and government in general.

</comment><comment><USER57> Amazon is a convenience not a monopoly, not even close. They have 4% of the retail market share.

</comment><comment><USER58> Any other country would love to have a company like Amazon. But the US wants to tear it apart.

</comment><comment><USER59> If anything it should be split into 3 companies - retail, logistics, and AWS.

<comment><USER60> Amazon logistics without retail is pointless, retail without AWS (etc) would be highly unprofitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I've tried supporting the little guy with my online purchaces, and been ripped off several times, whereas Amazon has always put things right.

Do we really want to go back to the wild-west days of online retail?

<comment><USER36> Unless the little guys were the original creators of whatever wares you were purchasing from them, their role in the value chain was merely that of a middle man. In that case, what moral, economic or societal benefit would come from purchasing from the little guy vs a giant retailer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The author laments the rarity, excellence and thus dominance of companies like Amazon, although this article could have been about Apple or Google too.

Rather than ponder to what extent if any government regulation is the answer, it'd be better to ask _why_ Amazon is so dominant and _why_ competitors have such a difficult time competing.

This isn't specific to Amazon. "Disruption" is a word that has come to mean tech firms, which we can roughly define as firms founded by computer programmers that make heavy use of computers, entering a new market and rapidly out competing the incumbents. These firms start with no particular competitive advantage and frequently have major disadvantages. When Bezos started selling books he had no knowledge of the books business, no warehouses, no logistics operation, no business relationships and no capital beyond his own savings and $300k his parents invested in the business. His _only_ edge was that Bezos had a computer science education and knew programming. Despite starting with literally nothing, Amazon now controls most of the entire book sales market. There was a story on HN recently about how Barnes and Noble is basically giving up and laying off employees.

Same thing for Steve Jobs and phones or Google and mapping. All relatively mature industries, all obliterated the incumbents (well, in phones the incumbents only survived by adopting Android wholesale). But Amazon is the best example because retail is such an old and established industry.

I've come to think that a big part of this is down to the different way programmers think, vs regular 'business people'. Any of the existing retail giants could have built an Amazon. Bezos didn't have any unique eureka-moment patent or other moat. And they all started way ahead of him in having warehouses and distribution networks. But they didn't, they never successfully did that, I don't think they ever _could_ , because they were run by people who weren't software developers.

There are two big parts to this:

1\. Understanding software projects and software developers.

2\. Clarity, precision and energy of thought.

(1) is obvious enough, people with a business background can't judge the skill of developers or quality of software directly so they have to rely heavily on proxies that aren't very good - things like "is this project hitting its projected deadlines" which projects never do, or "what are other companies doing" which creates herd behaviour and eliminates edge, or "is this solution backed by IBM or Microsoft". They tend to make basic errors like saying, well this company over in India says they'll write the software we need for 1/10th the cost of our own development team, and software is software so that's a great saving! And they don't understand the vast gulf in skills and quality of the possible outcomes, or how critical quality tech is to their business.

(2) is more controversial, but I can't escape the feeling that programmers tend to think a lot more clearly and rigorously than many business people. Writing software demands intense focus and concentration for long periods, very precise thinking, and computers cannot tolerate internally inconsistent thinking. Way too many people simply cannot or will not actually think things through in detail. Their thinking is often vague, contradictory, shallow and they are constantly looking for clever ways to get out of thinking at all, like by outsourcing their thought to consultants or repeating buzzwords they don't really understand (IoT, AI etc).

I'm not arguing that programmers are incapable of self delusion, woolly thinking or anything like that - I've seen plenty of dumb behaviour from supposedly smart people. It's more like maybe they _can_ do it, if they are reasonably free of biases and are given enough time and are motivated enough.

But if it's true that programming improves your general capacity for thought then we should expect to see tech firms systematically out-compete every firm in which the playing field is level and not radically tipped in favour of incumbents by regulators and governments. Retail is not very regulated so no surprise that Amazon is systematically taking over.

 _Edit:_ SpaceX is a better example of Amazon-style disruption than Apple. Musk went from knowing computer programming and nothing about space at all, to radically disrupting the existing aerospace industry with reusable rockets, in less than 20 years.

<comment><USER63> Occam's razor applies. I think there is a much simpler explanation of why your examples are able to "disrupt" the industries you cite -- those founders felt "with the advances made by mankind, this kind of business idea should exist" then they go out to build such a business and with some luck, they manage to succeed.

For every successful Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, there are several competitors (e.g Jean-Louis Gassée/BeOS, Jonathan Bulkeley/B&N and Shai Agassi/Better Place respectively) who failed.

Building a successful business like Apple, Amazon or Tesla is much much harder than you are admitting. Programming ability will only get you so far before the unavoidable laws of economics strikes home.

<comment><USER62> BeOS was trying to disrupt the operating system market, so he was up against other programmers on their home turf. That example doesn't refute my thesis.

I hadn't heard of Shai Agassi before. He seems a better counter-example, although from his Wikipedia page it sounds like he went from getting a BSc in CS directly into 'entrepreneurship' and holding executive positions at various firms. I don't see anything in the way of an actual career writing software first, like Bezos had, not even a few years.

Jonathan Bulkeley doesn't have a Wikipedia page but from what I found he has a BA from Yale and never really tried to disrupt anything? Maybe I am missing something about his story.

Of course building a business is hard. I'm doing it at the moment so I'm well aware of that! I am not suggesting that merely knowing programming magically grants guaranteed success. But when you look at the type of people who are disrupting whole industries, at least in the sense the word is used, it invariably seems to be entrepreneurs who had some grasp of software or hardware engineering first.

<comment><USER63> Some links on Jonathan Bulkeley's time at B&N:

Joined: [https://www.cnet.com/news/short-take-barnes-noble-names- new-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/short-take-barnes-noble-names-new-online- ceo/)

IPO: [https://nypost.com/1999/05/26/not-one-for-the-books-bn- com-h...](https://nypost.com/1999/05/26/not-one-for-the-books-bn-com-has- respectable-not-stellar-ipo/)

Resigned: [https://www.ourmidland.com/news/amp/Barnes-Noble-com- Names-N...](https://www.ourmidland.com/news/amp/Barnes-Noble-com-Names-New- CEO-7058015.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I really hope Costco steps up and saves itself from Amazon.

<comment><USER65> If they do, probably by reducing costs, it will likely be at the cost of manufactures, farmers producing the goods, and employees.

<comment><USER64> I mean they've completely underinvested in technology and new experiences. The in-store experience and the website feel like they haven't changed in 20 years. Maybe that is part of the Costco charm, but the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude is going to haunt them if they don't change.

Lots of headwinds in the next decade or so: younger consumers aren't driving as much (i.e. to big box stores with giant parking lots in the middle of suburbia), they are moving from suburban to urban centers, they're having fewer kids, buying anything online including perishables has become easy, etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Before you go after Amazon, I think there's far more egregious fish to fry: like the big ISP cartel and the pharmaceuticals

</comment><comment><USER67> just an anecdote but a Chinese person I met told me how crap Amazon is for buying clothing vs taobao. she said taobao has models for most clothing and showed us some examples.

seems like there is plenty of room compete with Amazon and that's just one example.

</comment><comment><USER68> please no, amazon makes life better, saving me so much time to focus on other things.. i do NOT want to go back to the time before that</comment>


Robinhood reports outage as markets rebound - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/robinhood-outage-stock-market-fbd81363-eb83-424f-8591-1bd4012a2c4f.html <comment><USER2> Being down for an entire trading day is pretty crazy. I can't imagine what's going over there today in the engineering & devops teams. Depending on where the issue is, there might be thousands+ of orders to reconcile (manually?). It will be really interesting to read a post-mortem engineering blog post if they make one.

<comment><USER3> They don't seem like serious enough professionals to release a postmortem. Did they do so for the "infinite leverage" bug?

I have a couple grand in play money in Robinhood, because hey, zero commissions, but it's clearly not sustainable for the long term. I'm glad my real investments are all safely parked at Vanguard, where I likely wouldn't even notice if the brokerage seized up for a day.

<comment><USER4> The business model is perfectly sustainable and the same as all the other brokers. Commissions were purely extra income.

The problem is that Robinhood is a young tech company and the "move fast and break things" approach doesn't work when it comes to industries that need reliability and risk management.

I'm surprised they got away unscathed from the lack of proper margin calculations before. That should've led to major fines.

<comment><USER3> Ah, sure, this is what I meant by it not being sustainable. They keep fucking up in standard SV ways, eventually FINRA or maybe even the SEC will come down hard. The basic brokerage business seems fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently leap day is the cause: [https://mobile.twitter.com/jtech63/status/123460004578739404...](https://mobile.twitter.com/jtech63/status/1234600045787394048)

Also rumor has it they "lost user data and the backups are not working as expected"

Edit: This is the tweet. Not sure if it is legit: [https://mobile.twitter.com/classrobinhood/status/12345774264...](https://mobile.twitter.com/classrobinhood/status/1234577426488811520)

<comment><USER6> If this is true and nothing happens to this company, everyone should feel free to use bugs to cover up any and all IT negligence.

<comment><USER5> I doubt it will be possible to just shake it off as there is likely millions of dollars lost for customers. Not in some abstract way like when github goes down but literally because people cannot close out positions and options expire. If it is really just a leap year bug It should be gross negligence. Not sure if their TOS will hold then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Guess they weren't ready for the massive amounts of requests coming from a world record market correction / recession. That, or they released a bunch of new features over the weekend.

Why we are building highly sensitive monetary performance based applications under the guise of agile and electron is beyond me.

The app market needs a market correction in design. IEEE, military, aerospace, or aviation design standardizing comes to mind.

<comment><USER8> > Why we are building highly sensitive monetary performance based applications > under the guise of agile and electron is beyond me.

It's cheaper.

This is not complicated. The entire society is orientated to getting the most for least. Excessive effort in quality is a waste.

Besides, the "serious" people hardly fared better. The notorious TSB failure, for example: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tsb-it- fail...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tsb-it-failure-cost- compensation-customers-switch-current-account-a8757821.html)

<comment><USER9> These guys just took $323 million in a series E. They're valued at 7.6B (well, they were...) Can't afford better engineers?

<comment><USER10> If they are down for one full day out of every 365, that's still a potential ceiling of 99.726% uptime for the year. My home internet was down 14% of the afternoon on Sunday this week, and on through the evening.

On a month-to-month basis, I can't even seem to crack 99% reliability. (Geez, I should really call them on it, or perhaps get a new modem...)

Point is, how high is Comcast's valuation again exactly?

<comment><USER11> Your internet goes down, you can't watch netflix. Boo hoo. Your brokerage goes down, you can't exit your positions, and, well, just look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars lost on reddit today. People were using their student loan money in their brokerage accounts. It really is a disaster.

<comment><USER12> > People were using their student loan money in their brokerage accounts

Doesn't sound like the smartest thing to do.

<comment><USER8> Reminder that the financial return maximising function for Robinhood benefits far more from "unsophisticated investors put in their student loans" than "service is up all the time". People who are actively trading, especially in options, may well be losing money.

<comment><USER10> This is largely my point. I live with <99% internet uptime and I have a Robin Hood account. I only know about this outage because I read about it... feel pretty sure that I am just like the majority of their customer base.

I don't check RH every day and I wouldn't have been compelled to check on it at all yesterday except for the news (I'm losing money, who wants to look at that! LOL)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just got an email from Robinhood support on the outage, half an hour before markets close.

I don't actively use RH as my main brokerage so not a big deal to me, but obviously this is unacceptable. Don't recall any other online brokerage suffering an outage like this.

Suffice to say this throws cold water on any mystic around Robinhood having better tech that any incumbent.

<comment><USER14> _Don 't recall any other online brokerage suffering an outage like this. _

Brokerage firms have outages with surprising regularity. I remember Sharebuilder being particularly bad, but Vanguard was down for a bit last week. A whole day though is pretty spectacular.

<comment><USER15> Vanguard was down for 2 minutes that's way different than a whole trading day.

<comment><USER14> Vanguard was down for around 30 minutes by my count with no status updates.

<comment><USER16> No even in the same ballpark of fuckup as being down an entire trading day will _zero_ information as to why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand the attraction of Robinhood over the likes of TD or Etrade. TD minimum balance is $50 (the minimum transfer) and Etrade $500. Both are well vetted brokers with additional features and services.

If you are investing, how sexy the app is (if you only use a phone) shouldn't matter. If you are day trading from a phone app (except in emergency), you are, IMHO, delusional.

<comment><USER18> Most people who believe they can profit day trading are delusional to begin with.

If you are just doing it to gamble (for fun), a sexy app that lets you gamble easier on the fly better can well be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They have been down basically the entire day. Are they going to face some action? I'm unclear who even punishes them for potentially causing millions of dollar losses for customers.

<comment><USER20> The SEC does.

<comment><USER19> Pardon my ignorance, but what are SEC rules for things like this? Do they expect some reasonable availability for trading platforms or do they consider massive outages like this "negligence"?

<comment><USER21> My limited understanding is that if you have a license to be a broker in this nature, you have to meet certain requirements. Similar to getting a bank charter - banks have to be open all standard business days during certain hours. Things may happen from time to time that are unexpected - like a massive snow storm that closes the bank for the day or at least part of the day.

I imagine the rules are similar - you must be able to have your clients trade during normal market hours. The regulators understand there can be unexpected events that put systems down unexpectedly (high volume, bug that crashes the system, etc.) and are generally pretty understanding. But I think something like this where they are down the whole day (and STILL down from the looks of their status page, though they claim to have identified the issue), could easily earn them a fine from the regulators for not meeting the license/charter requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The biggest question is whether or not their systems were able to execute margin calls. If they were down this long, that to me suggests data got corrupt and they've been restoring from backups, etc, which means maybe all their services were inactive. If that's the case then could the margin system be active, or are people (and potentially RH) sitting on oversized losses if they were short today? What happens tomorrow if their margins kick in and sell at the open, and then the market drops? Lots of very interesting questions that need to be answered.

<comment><USER23> I tried to clear all user data for RobinHood off my phone this morning and login fresh. At first I got absolutely nothing, but eventually my stocks and options came up, then my watchlist. However the watchlist was missing everything I added to it yesterday, though if I look up a symbol directly it does show as added. So I think your theory of restoring from backups has some merit. I wonder how they'll reconcile any orders placed/executed after the backup was taken if that's the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Aaaand, there's already a twitter account trying to build a class action lawsuit against Robinhood for allowing an outage to happen. Wonder if this'll go anywhere! [https://twitter.com/ClassRobinhood](https://twitter.com/ClassRobinhood)

<comment><USER25> it's probably some law firm trying to see if they can get any $$$

<comment><USER26> Well yeah, but you have to admit that a system that converts greed to something approximating justice is not the worst idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is starting to look like a customer extinction level incident — Any idea which competing service their users / wsb will likely move to?

<comment><USER28> webull and thinkorswim will probably be the two biggest beneficiaries today.

<comment><USER29> One of the biggest lessons here is not to use tech-forward brokers. I see a lot of people talking about how swapping from robinhood to webull is ridiculous, and I honestly agree. I'm personally thinking of going TD or thinkorswim.

<comment><USER30> Note that thinkorswim is owned by TD, so it's effectively the same platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As of 3:44PM EST. It's still not back. I then signed out of the app and can't sign back in. I then thought maybe they reset passwords, so I tried resetting. Even that's not working. Total outage!

<comment><USER32> Reset passwords? They're not MoviePass :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My theory is that this was a leap year bug.

<comment><USER33> Or because Sunday starts daylight savings time.

<comment><USER34> That's next Sunday

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Somewhat related, they ruined their app for me last week by adding the "lists". Instead of I instantly visible scrollable symbols I am interested in trading, the app now presents a bunch of "expand" and "add new list" controls, that when expanded show abridged lists with "click to see more". That totally ruined its main differentiator as an "easy app". Additionally the update was shoddy: due to a memory leak the scrolling eventually becomes very slow.

</comment><comment><USER36> Still down. Entire trading day outage.

</comment><comment><USER37> Do they compensate their customers for this?

<comment><USER38> How would that work? If I'm holding a stock and it tanks while RH is down, why wouldn't I claim I was planning on selling it?

Now if I had a trade scheduled ahead of time to execute during the down time, that seems like a more justifiable case for compensation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you want to glimpse the sentiment of their customers at the moment, check out the thread at /r/wallstreetbets: [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fcfuux/robi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fcfuux/robinhood_crash_megathread/)

</comment><comment><USER40> [https://status.robinhood.com/](https://status.robinhood.com/)

</comment><comment><USER41> At Robinhood, you're not the customer. You're the product.[1] Robinhood makes their money by selling order flow to high-frequency traders. Robinhood doesn't charge commissions, but the price is slightly worse.

[1] [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4212397-robinhood-high- freq...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4212397-robinhood-high-frequency- trading-scandal-plot-thickens)

<comment><USER42> How do you think most brokerages fill orders? I'd rather get filled at the best price possible, which I assume a high frequency firm would be able to do better than some other filling method. Pretty sure most brokerages do this anyway.

<comment><USER42> Sorry thinking about this more, I guess the actual best price at the stock exchanges would be preferable

<comment><USER3> Reg NMS prevents HFTs from filling your order outside of the NBBO. if anything you'll get slightly _more_ favorable prices from a market maker, since they know you're a retail trader who's not going to run them over.

<comment><USER42> Yeah that makes sense then. I have been using Robinhood cause I figured it wouldn't matter anyway the latency differences between click trading and their algos are so large. But I won't be after the outage today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I was getting ready to buy a bunch of calls this morning via Robinhood. I hit the "submit" button on the trade, and nothing happened. VERY disappointing experience. When it comes to applications like this, downtime is critical. Haven't been able to place a trade all day.

</comment><comment><USER44> What have /r/wallstreetbets done _this_ time?

<comment><USER45> They've been locked out of the market all day, and we get a big uptick. Coincidence? /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Reading Reddit's WallStreetBets has been unintentionally hilarious.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/)

Folks were leveraging up all last week and buying puts, thinking the market was tanking to zero and we're all going to die of "beer virus" as they call it -- and are getting a harsh lesson about timing the market today.

They've been giving so much leverage to broke young people, I wouldn't even be surprised to read that they're insolvent someday after a big, unexpected move.

<comment><USER47> Long term puts (at least 2 weeks out) on the market are the safest investment that you could possibly make. The market recovery today is a dead cat bounce. Mark my words I guarantee you that I will be right about this

<comment><USER46> Yes, always double down on a loss, that's the WSB way!

Or, you know, buy for the long term and ignore today's news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> fuck you robinhood

</comment><comment><USER48> To the founders of Robinhood, FUCK YOU ALL, HOPE YA'LL PAY FOR THIS.

</comment><comment><USER49> What are the odds that this was a cyberterrorism attack? If you can predict this kind of market event (the bounce back), and you want to hurt a company and its users, you would simply DDoS at the right time.

<comment><USER50> If you can predict this kind of market event I imagine you've got better things to do.

<comment><USER51> Well, all you have to predict is that the market will move - the direction wouldn't matter much, since the brokerage has customers trying to do both calls and puts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I remember when Schwab went down just as Facebook went public. Couldn't cancel my order, ended up with the stock at a much higher price and the stock had dropped by a lot by the time I had access again. I can't help but be suspicious of events like this.</comment>


Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal - <AUTHOR> http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/09/why-you-should-hate-treasury-bailout.html

<comment><USER2> The part I find ridiculous is that we're just giving the money away. Fact is, these institutions would collapse without a bailout- thus becoming effectively worthless, ala Bear Stearns.

If we're going to bail them out, we should nationalize them, that way we at least have the potential of making money from the upside.

Otherwise it's just a continuation of our current fiscal policy: socialism for the rich.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Anyway, I wanted to let you know that, behind closed doors, Paulson describes the plan differently. He explicitly says that it will buy assets at above market prices (although he still claims that they are undervalued) because the holders won't sell at market prices. Anna Eshoo pressed him on how the government can compel the holders to sell, and he basically dodged the question. I think that's because he didn't want to admit that the government would just keep offering more and more._

<comment><USER3> That doesn't make any sense. The current bagholders have much more motivation to get rid of them. And since the US is the only buyer (unless they do set up an auction) then they have all the power to set price.

Take each asset, calculate fair value, apply 30-50% discount, and put in a limit bid. If someone wants to buy them, let them.

<comment><AUTHOR> As noted in the article, there are plenty of private buyers for these toxic assets. The problem is that the buyers want to buy them at $0.10 on the dollar while the banks want to sell them at far above market value ($0.60 on the dollar).

While the current bagholders have much motivation to get rid of them, they won't sell them at market value because doing so would render many of them insolvent. (Many of them are marking these assets at $0.60 on the dollar on their balance sheets).

So the Treasury is planning to help out the banks by giving these banks what they want - ability to sell the assets at above market price. (which results in a transfer of losses from the banks to the taxpayers)

<comment><USER4> yeah not only are the banks licking their chops knowing they have a guaranteed buyer, they will likely go through other non-toxic stuff in their portfolio that has simply become inconvenient and pawn that off too

this is the wall st scam of our lifetimes. its just starting

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, this is why you should hate it:

"Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non- reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Please folks, call your congress-people. This is the kind of tyranny that caused the United States to form in the first place.

www.senate.gov www.house.gov

<comment><USER6> This is mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article and source. Lots of material.

I've seen this criticized by both the left, right, and populists positions.

I DO think this article mischaracterizes the situation. The situation, as I understand it, is a crisis of confidence and liquidity. The impact was described to senior congressional leaders as being able to quickly spread to the entire credit industry. That means retail credit, auto loans, bridge loans -- everything that makes our system work was at risk of shutting down.

That's why the blank check: to buy unknown risk now and then auction it off later. I'm not getting into the politics of it, aside from simply stating I doubt Paulson is going off to buy his own country or moon base (which he could probably afford!) and that the more complicated you make the deal, the more you start defeating the entire purpose of an executive branch in the first place -- some things respond better to a single-decision-making point instead of a committee. But if you're worried, call your congressmen and by all means tell him/her how you feel.

My concern is I'm just not sure the fundamentals of the problem are being solved, and I wonder how you can fix something while keeping the system in place that caused the problem in the first place. In my opinion, this problem is just another normal swing in the capitalist system, whereby people looking to game the system figure out something that can't work long-term and the system eventually stresses out. We usually tweak the rules and we move towards a new excess in 10-20 years. I'm concerned that I'm not hearing anything about the "tweaking". As I understand it, Congress is going to be working through all of that.

It's going to be really hard for a committee made up of political hacks to publicly figure out what went wrong in the middle of an election cycle without degenerating in schoolyard name-calling. Oddly enough, it's much easier just to authorize Treasury to spend some money. That doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, but I do think immediate action is necessary and I'm at least happy that Congress can come around to getting this one thing accomplished.

<comment><USER5> I admire your practicality about taking action. But...

Haven't we seen enough of this style of decision-making and 'action' from this administration? Take a look at the record, at all the high-pressure-sales-to- the-citizens executive actions they've taken. It's a lot like Iraq. Pump up the fear in Congress and among the populace that 'something terrible' will happen if we don't immediately cede rights and budget to the exec to do 'whatever trick is up our sleeve, don't worry we'll tell you all about it later.' We've seen enough erosion of rights and we've seen enough power grabbing. It's time to say no, take our medicine, and clean up the mess we've all caused.

'No Mas.'

<comment><USER7> I'll assume your point as proven.

So because the pattern up to now was flawed, we reject this instance, under the assumption that it must somehow be flawed as well?

That's not logical, in my opinion. Each case has to stand on its own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> these will continue while we let unassailable yet unsupported statements be passed

 _this is too big to fail_

 _the alternative would be worse_

 _markets will never recover unless we act_

now that we've handed over a blank check once in response to these issues, we'll be doing it again and again and again

fuck that, i'm liquid. put some of this shit on the auction block and i'll bid on it, yeah, the seller will take it up the shorts. but it will sell. will i buy ten bankrupt houses for $5k each without knowing if they are on a landfill? sure. so would others.</comment>


Startup lessons from serial entrepreneur Norm Brodsky - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081001/street-smarts-secrets-of-a-110-million-man_Printer_Friendly.html

<comment><USER2> Another important lesson is that successful people don't have much higher batting averages than everyone else, they simply try to hit more balls, and eventually one will be a strike.

Hewlett and Packard started a number of unsuccessful companies before they started HP, Seth Godin invented the first fax board for the Mac, invented a version of the wireless music player and much more before he became successful.

This seems to be a common trait among a lot of serial entrepreneurs. Get them drunk, ask them about their previous attempts and prepare for a lot of great stories.

<comment><USER3> I just bought and read a very interesting but slim tome called "Go for No" An interesting opinion of the book is that the most successful people are those who not only take on (1st level) or accept (2nd level) or want (3rd level) or truly desire failure (4th level) - it's those who organize others to take on risk or failure (5th level).

As someone who is probably just barely 2nd level and logical to a fault, I am starting to open my eyes and see that the 4th level is a characteristic that I see in all of my successful friends (and almost everyone I've read about- from Sylvester Stallone with "Rocky" (the story behind how he got the first one made) to...)

<comment><USER4> can you elaborate? thanks.

<comment><USER3> It's really a great small book, and I fear that I am undercutting their ideas by elaborating (too much). However, I am typing in their valuable content (apologies to the authors if they come across this) in the hope that you will be inspired. And be able to rate honestly, which level you are at now.

Incorrect model: Success <\--- Me ---> Failure

Correct model: Me ---> Failure ---> Success

"Most people get to the sign marked 'failure' and they figure they're heading in the wrong direction, turn around and head back home. They think that success must be back the other way, but it's not! _It's_ _straight_ _ahead_!"

"The best way to desensitize to a word is to use it, and the best way to desensitize yourself to an action is to do it."

Level 2 explained verbatim: "Develop the willingness to fail, which means they come to _accept_ failure as a natural by product of the process of seeking success."

Level 3 explained verbatim:

"Having the wantingness to fail goes beyond mere tolerance and acceptance of failure as a part of life..Wantingness means developing the desire to fail with the inner faith that personal and financial growth will follow"

Level 4 explained verbatim: "The people who ascend to Level Four are those who have come to the conclusion that if failing is _good_ , then failing faster is _better_!

And not just failing faster, but if one is going to increase their failure rate, do it going after BIG goals that are worthy of the effort"

"Instead of avoiding rejection, what if we made the decision to seek rejection? Instead of avoiding _no_ or perhaps simply tolerating it, what if we went out of our way to actually _go_ _for_ _no_!"

If these failure-tome nuggets strike the tuning fork in your head, please buy the book!

<comment><USER4> That's very unorthodox. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like Norm Brodsky's Inc column and find it consistently insightful. I thought this one was very good and blogged about it when it came out [http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/10/26/norm-brodskys- guidel...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/10/26/norm-brodskys-guidelines- for-entrepreneurs/) In particular his definition of successful resonated with me:

"By successful, I mean a business that lives off its own cash flow, provides a good living for its owners and employees, and generates the profit it needs to keep growing."

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a great read. I'm currently trying my hand at my very first internet related business. I'm an aspiring hacker (I figured out programming is what I love) but before this I started a traditional business. It was a lifestyle business and I did it mostly just to "learn how to build a business", so the point is, I can attest to every one of these insights. Business is all about the data. That's definitely something a hacker can appreciate! The operational cost of running a traditional brick-and-mortar business is what usually does the company in. Fees for everything, permits, bills, bills, bills, equipment, employees, insurance, taxes ... it really literally kicks your ass.... So like this article encourages ... please pay attention to your numbers!

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm currently reading The Knack. It is a great book on how to actually _build a business_ instead of a get-rich-quick, build-to-flip scheme.

Talks about important things like cash flow. Ironically I don't know of many startup/business books that talk about such important practical stuff.

Highly recommended!

</comment><comment><USER8> This a solid no-nonsense list that applies well whatever your startup about is about, be it in biotech or software. "#10. The life plan has to come before the business plan." was recently discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411693>

</comment><comment><USER9> _"Rather, what we have in common is a certain mentality, a way of thinking that allows us to overcome many obstacles and take advantage of many opportunities as they arise. I call it the knack."_

Does this remind anyone else of that Dilbert episode (yeah back when it was a TV show, too) where Dilbert loses The Knack?

Good read though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Number 4 is great advice for web startups. Just because it's easier to take shortcuts in programming than it is in construction, doesn't mean it's any less sacrosanct.

<comment><USER11> For me, it conflicts with Number 5 too much. How do you decide what counts as "not taking shortcuts" versus what is a luxury you can't yet afford?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> His book "The Knack" which is basically a chapter devoted to each of these topics is a great read.</comment>


Show HN: Github GameOff entry, Xonix for two players - <AUTHOR> http://www.mascee.com/games/xonix/index.html Help for the game: http://www.mascee.com/games/xonix/help.html <comment><USER2> I can't quite figure out how to play. Every movement results in me losing a life in some way. I'm on osx/chrome if that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Lot of people complained they cannot figure out how to play, so a gameplay video is now accessible from the page: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUoJOdtulA4></comment></comment>


Towards A More Robust And Powerful CrunchBase API - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/30/towards-a-more-robust-and-powerful-crunchbase-api/

<comment><USER2> This is great. I believe CrunchBase, in the long run, will prove a more valuable resourse than TechCrunch itself. Arrington has often suggested this as well.

Whereas TechCrunch lives and dies by the strength of its' reporters, CrunchBase has cemented itself as the "Wikipedia of startups" and as long as they continue to make gradual improvements I don't see what will change that.</comment>


IT Project Management - <AUTHOR> http://www.comparz.com/reviews/it-project-management Comparing Project Management solutions <comment><USER2> user reviews of IT project management applications. users should add reviews or suggest applications this listing is missing.</comment>


Wikipedia, We Have a Problem - <AUTHOR> http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com <comment><AUTHOR> Editor suppression, misinformation, sock puppets, trolls, and impersonations - case studies into wiki wars.</comment>