saltking112's comments

ic. but from Amazon's perspective, if customers want something that is mostly turn-key with the ability to customize, wouldn't they just combine AWS services themselves? I would believe Amazon has DB only solutions, compute only solutions like EC2 etc... So why was Snowflake able to thrive in this environment? Was the market simply too big?

sounds interesting. can you elaborate? Not familiar with what Snowflake does or how it compares. Thanks

I agree that the results are important, but in the amazon vs third party vendor the difference between the two parties are large.

One is much better capitalized than the other and enjoy many cost advantages. On product and price alone, many consumers would choose Amazon, all else being equal, including product placement. In short, since we haven't seen Amazon crushing equally well capitalized and competent white-label players like Anker, Amazon is only out competing inefficient firms.

Similarly, Walmart's "Grocery Store O's" are competing against P&G, which is a equally well capitalized firm. That is, the Cereal market is efficient and competitive, and winners win through distribution and market positioning. This is why P&G O's aren't getting destroyed.

The results you are witnessing - smaller firms getting taken out, is just a phenomenon of competition. I suspect as consolidation takes place, many large firms like Anker will be able to offer competitive product at competitive prices vs. Amazon Basics.

Walmart eCommerce is relatively small, so not really comparable in terms of anti-trust concerns.

Theoretically Amazon has infinite shelf space, but in reality, no one really scrolls past the first few pages.

So in reality, if your product is on page 5, it is perhaps as good as not being on Amazon anyway for that particular query.

If you look at it this way, the space constraint isn't much different than brick and mortar.

So suppose Amazon shared sales/behavior data with other sellers/companies, such that everyone is competing on a even footing with regards to product research. Do you still think what Amazon is doing is anti-competative?

In other words, if other well capitalized players had the same data, same ability to manufacture at the same scale, advertise etc... and Amazon's sole advantage is product placement, is it still problematic?

> you might imagine a supermarket which stocks all brands, but the first item in every row is the store-brand equivalent of that product which you must remove to get to the branded one.

I think this is going a bit too far. "removing to get to the branded one" would be appropriate if you had to go to 2nd page of search results to see branded products, but most results on Amazon show competing products above the fold.

A better comparison would be reserving the best shelf space for Amazon Basics.

So if a store decides to sell things on consignment they no longer have power over how the products are displayed?

With commoditized products the brand/manufacturer has no pricing power, so in order to go down the cost curve the firm would need to deploy more capital. This means making things in bigger batches, more efficient shipping, more advertisement investment taking ads out on Amazon to get initial reviews etc...

In each of these components Amazon Basics has an advantage over third parties whom are often mom and pop and are undercapitailized.

The points of contention are

1) If amazon competes fairly in Ad bidding so Basics products shows up first on the paid search results, is this anti-competitive?

I don't think so. They just have more capital. Any other well capitalized firm can do the same.

2) Is it fair for amazon to display their products more prominently?

I don't think so. How is this any different than Walmart refusing to carry a product? Or putting their private labels more prominently?

but some industries clearly needs economies of scale in order to provide the consumer with cheaper and better products.

Can you truly argue just because a firm is large they are no longer allowed to offer the same product for cheaper simply because they have a strong foothold in distribution?

It makes me wonder when behaviors like this becomes an anti-trust issue.

Can someone explain to the uninitiated what halving is?

One would argue the ability to mold yourself, letting go of your ego in the process, is where the challenge lies for many.

Is this the all in cost? Including lease on land/building, staff, electricity etc...

If Trump is talking about immigration and work visas alike, I simply can't imagine how large parts of the American economy is going to function without foreign workers.

For one, no labor could be hired to perform many farm duties, and certainly not for the amount that farms pay foreign temp workers.

Similarly, Silicon Valley is also hugely dependent. Indeed, if firms could hire locally, they won't jump through the extra hoops to secure work visas - yet we see so many folks on work visas all across the tech industry.

Last, investor visas also inject a sizable amount of capital into the US capital markets and pulling the plug on that when many businesses can't access capital just doesn't make any sense. Most of these people do not even need to work anyway.

I am afraid this is going to accomplish precisely the opposite of what he set out to do.

What about part time employees. They often don’t have benefits, or much less.

I think they are the same. Airbnb certainly be a full time job be, just like Uber.

Not sure what the situation is but because Clovis is a black swan event Canada has expanded the Employment Insurance to include small business owners, who are normally not eligible.

I believe unless Airbnb host and Uber driver seek on going EI benefit, they shouldn’t need to pay.

Not simulating slow connection but delaying page display via JS/Tempermonkey.

https://jsfiddle.net/16yuzxLr/

This is great news. Making it uneconomical for companies to enforce arbitration will be a big step in consumer/labor protection.