4 ms·

What's clear is that Amazon is an unstoppable force, the only question is, how to handle that force. Their business model is here to stay, because online retai

What's clear is that Amazon is an unstoppable force, the only question is, how to handle that force. Their business model is here to stay, because online retailing turns out to be a natural monopoly due to network effects and economies of scale. The best solution is to nationalize it. Instead of squeezing the public to boost private profits, all profits would be returned to the public.

aerovistae 8y ago
could not agree more. amazon and google need to be nationalized. neither is going away as long as the web exists in its current form, which is probably indefinitely. i can't imagine anything other than brain-machine interfaces disrupting the web.
- nikkwong 8y ago
  > other than brain-machine interfaces disrupting the web these are probably coming sooner than we'd expect (neuralink supposedly has an 'exciting' update coming within the next few months), so, i wouldn't personally expect the way we interact with or even define the web to remain constant even, say, 10 years from now.
zorga 8y ago
> The best solution is to nationalize it. No, break them up. Governments are terrible at running businesses. Fragment the market legally so competition can't be eliminated by a monopoly. A competitive market is better than a government run monopoly.
- jdi92mxx 8y ago
  Because they have to be terrible at it or because there are benefits to making it so?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 8y ago
    Would you please stop creating accounts for every comment or two you post? This is in the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a very different kind of forum. There are legit uses for throwaways, just not routinely. Lots more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- djrobstep 8y ago
  > Governments are terrible at running businesses. Pure ideology, and trivially factually wrong. - Nationalization means the government owns the business, not that it runs it. Only difference is who collects the profits, Bezos or everyday people. - Norway and the other Scandy countries have high levels of public ownership and huge public sectors. Their economies run great. "Some of these SOEs are businesses often run by states: a postal service, a public broadcasting channel, an Alcohol retail monopoly. But others are just normal businesses typically associated with the private sector. In Finland, where I know the situation the best, there are 64 state-owned enterprises, including one called Solidium that operates as a holding company for the government’s minority stake in 13 of the companies. The Finnish state-owned enterprises include an airliner called Finnair; a wine and spirits maker called Altia; a marketing communications company called Nordic Morning; a large construction and engineering company called VR; and an $8.8 billion oil company called Neste. In Norway, the state manages direct ownership of 70 companies. The businesses include the real estate company Entra; the country’s largest financial services group DNB; the 30,000-employee mobile telecommunications company Telenor; and the famous state-owned oil company Statoil." Read more here: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-owns-76-of-norways-non-home-wealth/ https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-ow...
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    > In Norway, the state manages direct ownership of 70 companies. Including the airport train which even Trygve Hegnar, editor of Kapital and as capitalist as they come, says is one of the best run companies in the country. The Conservatives (Høyre) keep on promising it to sell it even though it is profitable, and Hegnar says it is unlikely that anyone else could run it better.
  - zorga 8y ago
    > Nationalization means the government owns the business, not that it runs it. Only difference is who collects the profits, Bezos or everyday people. A distinction without a difference, owners appoint who runs it, they effectively run it. > Norway and the other Scandy countries have high levels of public ownership and huge public sectors. Their economies run great. Tiny economies with largely mono culture populations who align on this political ideology; that won't work here, our diversity also includes ideological diversity that would never allow this kind of program to be implemented so it's a non-starter proposal. When a government is as ideologically split as our is, they are ineffective and bad at doing things due to the constant infighting and battling of ideologies. So no, it's not factually wrong at all, it's reality.
- hourislate 8y ago
  If they were to be broken up would it be along business lines like retail, AWS, etc? Because if that were the case I'm not sure they would survive as a retailer. Have they ever turned a profit on the retail end? https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/amazon-is-losing-money-from-retail-operations-14571703 https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/amazon-is-losing-money-fro...
- king07828 8y ago
  But how to "Fragment the market legally"? Breakups lead to more monopolies [1]. Could the tax code be manipulated to achieve the desired effect? A market share tax could tax revenue of large corporations (revenue >= $1B [2]) on products and services that are over X% market share at Y%. With X=40% and Y=80%, then: $4.2B revenue with 40% market share has $0 market share tax and keeps $4.2B; $5B revenue with 50% market share has $800M market share tax and keeps $4.2B; $7B revenue with 80% market share has $2.8B market share tax and keeps $4.2B; This would reduce the incentive to grow market share above the threshold. A 40% threshold allows for two companies to max out market share and a 30% threshold allows for three companies to max out market share. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System [2] https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/smbs-small-and-midsize-businesses/ https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/smbs-small-and-midsize-b...
  - ryacko 8y ago
    After a breakup, require the companies to not merge for decades? Have a theory on corporate organization for cases of industries where there is heavy capital investment to enter, but low marginal cost. A cooperative style organization where regional sellers can freely enter or join, but cannot do business with each other. The cooperative would own in the case of telecommunications the backbone, and the research labs (if research is needed that the regional companies cannot afford themselves). So that it won’t be a franchised monopoly, the cooperative doesn’t have patent or trade secret rights, it can’t sue competitors out of existence. Influenced by mutualism. Market share tax just results in companies redefining their industry.
    - king07828 8y ago
      > Market share tax just results in companies redefining their industry. Do you have a specific example?
amluto 8y ago
I would believe that running a “marketplace” full of commingled crud is somewhat of a natural monopoly. I don’t really believe that read online commerce is a real natural monopoly. A law that got rid of the liability shield that Amazon currently enjoys for the trademark infringing crap they sell might make a huge difference.

aerovistae 8y ago

could not agree more. amazon and google need to be nationalized. neither is going away as long as the web exists in its current form, which is probably indefinitely. i can't imagine anything other than brain-machine interfaces disrupting the web.

nikkwong 8y ago
> other than brain-machine interfaces disrupting the web these are probably coming sooner than we'd expect (neuralink supposedly has an 'exciting' update coming within the next few months), so, i wouldn't personally expect the way we interact with or even define the web to remain constant even, say, 10 years from now.

zorga 8y ago

> The best solution is to nationalize it. No, break them up. Governments are terrible at running businesses. Fragment the market legally so competition can't be eliminated by a monopoly. A competitive market is better than a government run monopoly.

jdi92mxx 8y ago
Because they have to be terrible at it or because there are benefits to making it so?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 8y ago
  Would you please stop creating accounts for every comment or two you post? This is in the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a very different kind of forum. There are legit uses for throwaways, just not routinely. Lots more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
djrobstep 8y ago
> Governments are terrible at running businesses. Pure ideology, and trivially factually wrong. - Nationalization means the government owns the business, not that it runs it. Only difference is who collects the profits, Bezos or everyday people. - Norway and the other Scandy countries have high levels of public ownership and huge public sectors. Their economies run great. "Some of these SOEs are businesses often run by states: a postal service, a public broadcasting channel, an Alcohol retail monopoly. But others are just normal businesses typically associated with the private sector. In Finland, where I know the situation the best, there are 64 state-owned enterprises, including one called Solidium that operates as a holding company for the government’s minority stake in 13 of the companies. The Finnish state-owned enterprises include an airliner called Finnair; a wine and spirits maker called Altia; a marketing communications company called Nordic Morning; a large construction and engineering company called VR; and an $8.8 billion oil company called Neste. In Norway, the state manages direct ownership of 70 companies. The businesses include the real estate company Entra; the country’s largest financial services group DNB; the 30,000-employee mobile telecommunications company Telenor; and the famous state-owned oil company Statoil." Read more here: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-owns-76-of-norways-non-home-wealth/ https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-ow...
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  > In Norway, the state manages direct ownership of 70 companies. Including the airport train which even Trygve Hegnar, editor of Kapital and as capitalist as they come, says is one of the best run companies in the country. The Conservatives (Høyre) keep on promising it to sell it even though it is profitable, and Hegnar says it is unlikely that anyone else could run it better.
- zorga 8y ago
  > Nationalization means the government owns the business, not that it runs it. Only difference is who collects the profits, Bezos or everyday people. A distinction without a difference, owners appoint who runs it, they effectively run it. > Norway and the other Scandy countries have high levels of public ownership and huge public sectors. Their economies run great. Tiny economies with largely mono culture populations who align on this political ideology; that won't work here, our diversity also includes ideological diversity that would never allow this kind of program to be implemented so it's a non-starter proposal. When a government is as ideologically split as our is, they are ineffective and bad at doing things due to the constant infighting and battling of ideologies. So no, it's not factually wrong at all, it's reality.
hourislate 8y ago
If they were to be broken up would it be along business lines like retail, AWS, etc? Because if that were the case I'm not sure they would survive as a retailer. Have they ever turned a profit on the retail end? https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/amazon-is-losing-money-from-retail-operations-14571703 https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/amazon-is-losing-money-fro...
king07828 8y ago
But how to "Fragment the market legally"? Breakups lead to more monopolies [1]. Could the tax code be manipulated to achieve the desired effect? A market share tax could tax revenue of large corporations (revenue >= $1B [2]) on products and services that are over X% market share at Y%. With X=40% and Y=80%, then: $4.2B revenue with 40% market share has $0 market share tax and keeps $4.2B; $5B revenue with 50% market share has $800M market share tax and keeps $4.2B; $7B revenue with 80% market share has $2.8B market share tax and keeps $4.2B; This would reduce the incentive to grow market share above the threshold. A 40% threshold allows for two companies to max out market share and a 30% threshold allows for three companies to max out market share. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System [2] https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/smbs-small-and-midsize-businesses/ https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/smbs-small-and-midsize-b...
- ryacko 8y ago
  After a breakup, require the companies to not merge for decades? Have a theory on corporate organization for cases of industries where there is heavy capital investment to enter, but low marginal cost. A cooperative style organization where regional sellers can freely enter or join, but cannot do business with each other. The cooperative would own in the case of telecommunications the backbone, and the research labs (if research is needed that the regional companies cannot afford themselves). So that it won’t be a franchised monopoly, the cooperative doesn’t have patent or trade secret rights, it can’t sue competitors out of existence. Influenced by mutualism. Market share tax just results in companies redefining their industry.
  - king07828 8y ago
    > Market share tax just results in companies redefining their industry. Do you have a specific example?

amluto 8y ago

I would believe that running a “marketplace” full of commingled crud is somewhat of a natural monopoly. I don’t really believe that read online commerce is a real natural monopoly. A law that got rid of the liability shield that Amazon currently enjoys for the trademark infringing crap they sell might make a huge difference.