Excerpt: Amazon controls key critical infrastructure for the Internet economy—in ways that are difficult for new entrants to replicate or compete against. This gives the company a key advantage over its rivals: Amazon’s competitors have come to depend on it.
> the current framework in antitrust—specifically its pegging competition to “consumer welfare,” defined as short-term price effects—is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy. We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon’s dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output.
Just a note, Amazon is not responsible for Seattle's poor decision making when it comes to city planning, the housing crisis and their poor decisions when dealing with (or choosing not to deal with) the homeless situation in Seattle. They have done plenty of horrible things, and the article is totally fair to point those out, but it seems beyond the pale to blame Seattle City council's failings and poor governance on Amazon.
As for the roads, Seattle is really three small towns jammed together, so the city planning was a nightmare, then there was a few city corruption scandals, etc etc etc and now the police are told to not enforce vagrancy laws and I think everyone is caught up. None of that has anything to do with Amazon.
Amazon isn't solely responsible for Seattle's poor city planning (rather, Seattle, Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Tacoma, etc.), but they're certainly responsible for ~50% of the influx of high-paid workers, which has increased housing demand, and that has certainly impacted Seattle.
Those are all positive things on their own though. They have only become negatives due to the city's resistance to allowing new housing to be built. The key issue is rent-seeking single-family-home owners using their political power to distort the market.
I'm often skeptical of these claims. In the SF Bay Area I can understand why this might be the case, since there are a lot more big tech companies shelling out huge salaries, but the Seattle area only really has two big ones: Amazon and Microsoft.
A little back of the napkin math: I'm going to guess that the number of engineers Amazon has in Seattle will be roughly equal to what they were advertising for their second HQ, around 50k. According to Wikipedia the population of the Seattle metro area is about 3.8 million, so the Amazon engineers represent just 1.3% of that - and those engineers haven't come in a huge wave, they've been trickling in over the near 25 years that Amazon has been in business. A major metro area should be able to handle that kind of shock.
There's something more at play than just well-paid tech workers pushing up the housing prices. A combination of low interest rates and restrictive housing rules would have a much bigger impact.
I agree with the back of the napkin math -- but remember, it isn't 1.3% added to the city's population, it's 1.3% added to the part of the city's population that is looking to move, mostly in the past decade, with a focus (in Amazon's case) on living near downtown. It's proportionally much larger, and they're coming in at the higher end of the income strata.
Add that again, but for Microsoft, and then the ecosystem of SIs / ISVs / startups around it, and suddenly you have Seattle's housing crisis.
I lived in Seattle for a couple years during the boom. Housing costs now are more than double what they were. I’d blame Amazon for the massive influx of workers and traffic actually becoming a nightmare.
Citation(s) needed. They specifically work (publicly and privately) to undermine local taxes, enforce non-competes/NDAs, capital gains, income taxes, etc. Then they do small investments like Mary's Place and point at it as being big community efforts. In fact, one can argue that it's Amazon's extensive work behind the scenes to that causes many contorted decisions that the city council and others make.
MSFT is investing $500M in Seattle (many through loans, but $25M is outright grants). Where's Amazon's similar commitment?
I suspect there must be a secret majority of capitalist-apologists lurking on Hacker News because every time I open a thread, the top comment is defending one of these corporations.
I grew up and lived in Seattle. I left because of Amazon. My rent spiked, Capital Hill's cultural landscape that raised me was bought out and appropriated for the new influx of tech workers who couldn't care or know the musical miracle of what they had plundered.
I live and breathe computing systems and I want less of me wherever I go. Our effect when we enter local ecologies is stultifying, ruining, yet is celebrated as progress by some nebulous measure none of us can touch or taste or feel except for the wealthy.
With Amazon's entrance came foreign Chinese investment to buy out family run businesses like Mama's Mexican Kitchen. My aunt worked at Mama's for more than a decade. She was a fixture: articles were written up on her special brand of caustic wit she brought to every table. The Chinese investors bought out the whole block to convert Mama's and other neighboring cultural waystations into soulless high rises for the likes of me.
Those Chinese investors didn’t do anything illegal did they? Sounds like your beef should be with your own city or towns council or state government for allowing this to happen. The Chinese investors saw an opportunity and took advantage.
What blows my mind are all the folks who point at corporations and capitalism in general as being inherently “bad” and are quick to point out the effects of transplants from other countries or cities moving to their area for economic opportunity. Then these same folks also are in favor of liberal immigration policies.
The NIMBY mentality is hypocritical.
You left Seattle but others moved in to take your place. I don’t see a negative here other than you’re upset that others are successful. You feel like you are entitled to live in Seattle, and I disagree. You moved out but Rahul who came from Hyderabad has a much better quality of life in Seattle. It sucks for you, but is it inherently bad for society?
The whole idea of “capitalism is bad” while the same person enjoys the fruit of capitalism is hypocritical.
It’s about like HN posters supporting “tax the rich” and aren’t self aware enough to know that if they have over $130K year of household income, they are doing better than 80% of the population and they are the statistical “rich”.
I don't know about HN-in-general, but I support taxing the rich while being quite aware that I'm in the top half (though not the top 80%) and might thus potentially pay higher taxes as a result.
People can be willing to contribute to the public good; whether or not taxes are the most efficient way to do this, they're more effective than ending up in decision-paralysis over where to donate.
On the one hand, Amazon deserves much of the success it's had. They've changed the game in both online shopping, and in infrastructure management.
Most liberal societies implement policies to create an environment of diminishing returns, to help curb the ability of companies to get "too big to fail". They also implement policies to keep the environment competitive for new companies.
Tax systems that create an environment of diminishing returns seem to be a good approach. If Amazon were paying the amount of taxes that would normally be warranted for a company of its size, this situation would be less frightening. But they've been able to take great advantage of the fatal flaw in our current approach to capitalism: aggressive reinvestment and expansion.
There is no reason to suspect that Amazon won't succeed in fully vertically integrating their supply change through private ship, air and land delivery. There is no reason to think they will not succeed in aggressively expanding into more markets, like music production, tv and movie production, audiobook production, etc. And there is no reason to think they will not aggressively seek to automate as much as they can to further augment their already substantial lead in online retail.
None of these things are inherently bad. They create good products, good services and are a general boon to society. But we need to put in some limits, whether by better tax policy, or by taking a more aggressive stance on anti-trust.
It's unfortunate that these sorts of debates often devolve into "Capitalism vs Socialism", reductionist arguments. The truth is capitalism is a fantastic tool. But unchecked capitalism has serious flaws, and regulation and unions can help to keep things in balance.
I pretty much believe this is how tech will evolve in general. A small group of big companies will completely dominate tech, consolidating talent, power, and money. They have so much cash that they will buy out, or copy and dismantle their competitors. Even in the valley, so called cradle for tech innovation, the way of thinking for a number of years has been to create tech and sell it to a big company. This is the end game for all capitalist societies in general, in every area, the consolidation of everything by the few over the many.
22 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 65.1 ms ] threadExcerpt: Amazon controls key critical infrastructure for the Internet economy—in ways that are difficult for new entrants to replicate or compete against. This gives the company a key advantage over its rivals: Amazon’s competitors have come to depend on it.
> the current framework in antitrust—specifically its pegging competition to “consumer welfare,” defined as short-term price effects—is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy. We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon’s dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output.
A little back of the napkin math: I'm going to guess that the number of engineers Amazon has in Seattle will be roughly equal to what they were advertising for their second HQ, around 50k. According to Wikipedia the population of the Seattle metro area is about 3.8 million, so the Amazon engineers represent just 1.3% of that - and those engineers haven't come in a huge wave, they've been trickling in over the near 25 years that Amazon has been in business. A major metro area should be able to handle that kind of shock.
There's something more at play than just well-paid tech workers pushing up the housing prices. A combination of low interest rates and restrictive housing rules would have a much bigger impact.
Add that again, but for Microsoft, and then the ecosystem of SIs / ISVs / startups around it, and suddenly you have Seattle's housing crisis.
Citation(s) needed. They specifically work (publicly and privately) to undermine local taxes, enforce non-competes/NDAs, capital gains, income taxes, etc. Then they do small investments like Mary's Place and point at it as being big community efforts. In fact, one can argue that it's Amazon's extensive work behind the scenes to that causes many contorted decisions that the city council and others make.
MSFT is investing $500M in Seattle (many through loans, but $25M is outright grants). Where's Amazon's similar commitment?
I grew up and lived in Seattle. I left because of Amazon. My rent spiked, Capital Hill's cultural landscape that raised me was bought out and appropriated for the new influx of tech workers who couldn't care or know the musical miracle of what they had plundered.
I live and breathe computing systems and I want less of me wherever I go. Our effect when we enter local ecologies is stultifying, ruining, yet is celebrated as progress by some nebulous measure none of us can touch or taste or feel except for the wealthy.
With Amazon's entrance came foreign Chinese investment to buy out family run businesses like Mama's Mexican Kitchen. My aunt worked at Mama's for more than a decade. She was a fixture: articles were written up on her special brand of caustic wit she brought to every table. The Chinese investors bought out the whole block to convert Mama's and other neighboring cultural waystations into soulless high rises for the likes of me.
What blows my mind are all the folks who point at corporations and capitalism in general as being inherently “bad” and are quick to point out the effects of transplants from other countries or cities moving to their area for economic opportunity. Then these same folks also are in favor of liberal immigration policies.
The NIMBY mentality is hypocritical.
You left Seattle but others moved in to take your place. I don’t see a negative here other than you’re upset that others are successful. You feel like you are entitled to live in Seattle, and I disagree. You moved out but Rahul who came from Hyderabad has a much better quality of life in Seattle. It sucks for you, but is it inherently bad for society?
It’s about like HN posters supporting “tax the rich” and aren’t self aware enough to know that if they have over $130K year of household income, they are doing better than 80% of the population and they are the statistical “rich”.
https://dqydj.com/united-states-household-income-brackets-pe...
People can be willing to contribute to the public good; whether or not taxes are the most efficient way to do this, they're more effective than ending up in decision-paralysis over where to donate.
Most liberal societies implement policies to create an environment of diminishing returns, to help curb the ability of companies to get "too big to fail". They also implement policies to keep the environment competitive for new companies.
Tax systems that create an environment of diminishing returns seem to be a good approach. If Amazon were paying the amount of taxes that would normally be warranted for a company of its size, this situation would be less frightening. But they've been able to take great advantage of the fatal flaw in our current approach to capitalism: aggressive reinvestment and expansion.
There is no reason to suspect that Amazon won't succeed in fully vertically integrating their supply change through private ship, air and land delivery. There is no reason to think they will not succeed in aggressively expanding into more markets, like music production, tv and movie production, audiobook production, etc. And there is no reason to think they will not aggressively seek to automate as much as they can to further augment their already substantial lead in online retail.
None of these things are inherently bad. They create good products, good services and are a general boon to society. But we need to put in some limits, whether by better tax policy, or by taking a more aggressive stance on anti-trust.
It's unfortunate that these sorts of debates often devolve into "Capitalism vs Socialism", reductionist arguments. The truth is capitalism is a fantastic tool. But unchecked capitalism has serious flaws, and regulation and unions can help to keep things in balance.
It happened to Standard Oil (way back when), AT&T, even Microsoft got spanked handily over Netscape.
Amazon will not become 'too big'.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antit...