5 ms·

At least he's honest about it. Truth be told, it does feel like free markets have become a bit of a dirty word in both political realms recently; I'm not going

At least he's honest about it. Truth be told, it does feel like free markets have become a bit of a dirty word in both political realms recently; I'm not going to complain too much about Bezos advocating for it, we could use the help. I guess it remains to be seen just what kind of views they end up pushing, rather than what he says he wants to push :P

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
merb 2y ago
tbf most newspapers have a certain agenda to push, the same thing applies even to newspapers in Germany. You can clearly see that all of them do favor a certain view. Yes some of them look more open to alternative views, but they still favor something.
- oinkbutton 2y ago
  [dead]
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >tbf most newspapers have a certain agenda to push that's not the issue here though. Bezos is directly ordering the opinion editor to tow a certain line, and that is not a common practice at any reputable newspaper I am aware of (which is why the responsible editor, David Shipley immediately quit). I am German and I have friends working in the news sector. A corporate shareholder trying to dictate the topics would be considered a breach of ethics. Pretty sure that's the case at highly regarded newspapers in the US too.
bigtimesink 2y ago
When he killed the Harris endorsement, that sent a stronger signal than endorsing her.
- waveBidder 2y ago
  Hard to take calls for endorsing the free market seriously from someone so clearly trying to form a monopoly on online shopping.
  - wnolens 2y ago
    This should be a top level comment. To Bezos, a market controlled by a single large capital allocator is a free market. Unless the allocator is government of course (unless there's subsidies to apply for!).
  - Panzer04 2y ago
    I'm going to be honest; How is Amazon seeking to do this? Are they suppressing other online competitors? I'm sure they buy lots of competition, but that doesn't stop someone else from setting up shop. The idea to me is strange; I shop on Amazon, but also dozens of other online websites. It's really not hard to buy from some place other than Amazon if you desire. Many of the same effects that make it extremely hard to set up eg. competing social networks are not present for online shopping - There's plenty of shipping companies, so you can ship anywhere in the world without capital investment; You can set up an online shop and send it to anyone, you don't need to have a huge customer base to make money (relatively speaking, obviously you need customers)
    - erulabs 2y ago
      Shopify runs on AWS so if Amazon is trying to take control of all online shopping they sure are awful at doing so. They actively enable some huge number of non-amazon online retailers to exist.
    - waveBidder 2y ago
      One example of market power abuse they engage in is requiring the price listed on their website to be the lowest offer that a merchant can list. You can't list a product on their page and then have a discount for that product on your own page.
  - tayo42 2y ago
femiagbabiaka 2y ago
This line of thought really encapsulates the problems with purist free markets. What happens if someone who doesn't believe in those ideals uses the free market to simply buy up news media and push the opposite narrative? Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones. You just throw this out there as a statement of fact without backing it up beyond citing one hypothetical failure mode of a free market for media. Here's a dueling hypothetical: what happens if the state that is in charge of regulating the media gets taken over by someone who doesn't believe that media should hold elected officials accountable and they prevent the media from covering their actions negatively? Now that we've evened out the "what happens if"s: On what basis do you say that regulated media produces better outcomes? Because you say so? Is there evidence in favor that you can cite?
  - freejazz 2y ago
    All the other circumstances. Your hypothetical is the exception proving the rule.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      And again I ask: why is my hypothetical the exception proving the rule while their hypothetical is sufficient to prove that they're right? Make an argument in favor of regulated media producing better outcomes or don't, but all I've seen here so far is you and OP asserting a dogma.
      - freejazz 2y ago
        You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. I'm speaking colloquially here, if you want a robust argument, you're not going to find it from me right now. This is just a conversation, not a dissertation. If you don't want to engage in it, that's fine. But let's not overdramatize what is happening here right now, which is a basic conversation about intuitions and principles. You attacked the other poster's claim with a hypothetical. I rebutted yours the same way. Begging for "proof" is beyond the scope of this conversation.
cowpig 2y ago
I feel like every time I have a conversation with someone who believes in free markets, it becomes clear that they've confused the ideas of free markets and perfect competition. That somehow a lack of regulations is fair because it allows markets to adjust to supply and demand and come to an equilibrium. And modern economists who use actor-based simulations have shown that unregulated markets are typically not "perfect markets". But the reality is that a market with a monopolist does not do this. In fact, the closer you get to a pure monopoly, the more a price will approach one where consumers get none of the economic surplus and there is a large economic dead-weight loss. Unsurprisingly, the tech giants who are monopolists talk a lot about "free markets" in this way. But people who work in tech should probably refrain from using this term so that we can get rid of these superstitions.
archagon 2y ago
Is he honest about it? Based on his alignment with the Trump administration, "personal liberties and free markets" sounds like some heavy doublespeak to me. Is the paper going to be writing more articles about the othering of trans people and suppression of immigrant rights[1]? Somehow I doubt it. [1]: https://newrepublic.com/post/191606/tom-homan-ocasio-cortez-justice-department-investigation https://newrepublic.com/post/191606/tom-homan-ocasio-cortez-...
- bolognafairy 2y ago
  Yeah. I’d bet the farm on the % of so-called ‘libertarians’ not wanting you to change your gender marker as being…quite high. Let alone crony capitalists.
EliRivers 2y ago
Seeing Bezos advocate for free markers is a massive dissonance, until I remind myself that he hasn't said what they should be free of. Bezos would like to be free to run competition out of town, force brutal terms on suppliers, all that sort of thing.
- archagon 2y ago
  When he says "free markets," what he means is "unrestrained oligarchy."
  - EliRivers 2y ago
    Free from anything that stops him extracting all surplus value from consumers and suppliers both.
- tbossanova 2y ago
  “Free markets mean the best product always wins out. It just so happens my subsidiaries make the best product in all markets. Read about why in the Washington Post.” - Bezos, probably
redeux 2y ago
The idea of a free market should be dirty. Free markets are not a good thing for anyone but select capitalists. People benefit from regulated markets, where excesses and foul play are curbed for the public benefit. Bezos is advocating for free market ideas because he wants to run a monopoly, so he benefits directly from this position. For him it’s not idealism but pragmatism. For us it’s a nightmare position that will end in higher prices, worse service, worse working conditions, and less competition.
airstrike 2y ago
> I guess it remains to be seen just what kind of views they end up pushing, rather than what he says he wants to push :P This is my single most important heuristic for filtering news. Facts in the present and the past matter. Predictions about the future have very little value. Jon Stewart said it better. This whole show is 10/10 but linking to the most relevant timestamp: https://youtu.be/CuDcTyCq8nc?si=eiVXnJkfMxPGPv5k&t=812 https://youtu.be/CuDcTyCq8nc?si=eiVXnJkfMxPGPv5k&t=812
nitwit005 2y ago
> Truth be told, it does feel like free markets have become a bit of a dirty word in both political realms recently; Oddly, I'd say its basically only Trump attacking the idea in any significant way, with the strong advocacy of tariffs. It remains bizarre to me that conservatives have seemed happy to throw away generations of advocacy for free trade. I don't expect Bezos to contradict him either.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  It depends. There's more rhetoric nowadays around things like rent controls and profit caps, both of which I view as very destructive to the mechanisms of market allocation. I think it's a divisive issue though since there's no real home these days for people with those views (that is, (neo)liberal economics); the right is insane and the left have a large, very progressive segment which they have to pull back on.
  - brewdad 2y ago
    The left has a progressive segment that is very vocal online. I have yet to see that translate into much power or influence in national politics.
mmooss 2y ago
It depends on how 'free markets' and 'personal liberties' are defined, but as Bezos is adopting the nationalist propaganda, we might expect the definition used by others who adopt that tone, that the wealthy elite should have unlimited freedom. That position is widely supported in the professional news media, including the Wall Street Journal.
unethical_ban 2y ago
Bah. This is like saying "I support the idea of DOGE but am opposed to their methods". The motivation for DOGE is not efficiency. It is destruction of the federal civil service and destruction of oversight for Musk's business empire. I don't believe Bezos' motivation is honest. For God's sake, he is saying "I will silence opinions that do not align with my own; I am narrowing the intellectual capacity of this organization". It's also loaded. He doesn't give examples of opinion pieces or a trend of speaking against free markets (so-called) or personal liberties. It is now the personal opinion section of Jeff Bezos. Look what money can buy.
aqueueaqueue 2y ago
Bezos doesn't want free markets, he wants "great for AWS and Amazon" markets.
leftcenterright 2y ago
Free market where Big tech thrives and wants even fewer regulation, does seem to be dirty indeed. Just speaking of the IT field where I do know a thing or two, without regulations, none of these companies would even disclose that they have had a data breach.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

merb 2y ago

tbf most newspapers have a certain agenda to push, the same thing applies even to newspapers in Germany. You can clearly see that all of them do favor a certain view. Yes some of them look more open to alternative views, but they still favor something.

oinkbutton 2y ago
[dead]
Barrin92 2y ago
>tbf most newspapers have a certain agenda to push that's not the issue here though. Bezos is directly ordering the opinion editor to tow a certain line, and that is not a common practice at any reputable newspaper I am aware of (which is why the responsible editor, David Shipley immediately quit). I am German and I have friends working in the news sector. A corporate shareholder trying to dictate the topics would be considered a breach of ethics. Pretty sure that's the case at highly regarded newspapers in the US too.

bigtimesink 2y ago

When he killed the Harris endorsement, that sent a stronger signal than endorsing her.

waveBidder 2y ago
Hard to take calls for endorsing the free market seriously from someone so clearly trying to form a monopoly on online shopping.
- wnolens 2y ago
  This should be a top level comment. To Bezos, a market controlled by a single large capital allocator is a free market. Unless the allocator is government of course (unless there's subsidies to apply for!).
- Panzer04 2y ago
  I'm going to be honest; How is Amazon seeking to do this? Are they suppressing other online competitors? I'm sure they buy lots of competition, but that doesn't stop someone else from setting up shop. The idea to me is strange; I shop on Amazon, but also dozens of other online websites. It's really not hard to buy from some place other than Amazon if you desire. Many of the same effects that make it extremely hard to set up eg. competing social networks are not present for online shopping - There's plenty of shipping companies, so you can ship anywhere in the world without capital investment; You can set up an online shop and send it to anyone, you don't need to have a huge customer base to make money (relatively speaking, obviously you need customers)
  - erulabs 2y ago
    Shopify runs on AWS so if Amazon is trying to take control of all online shopping they sure are awful at doing so. They actively enable some huge number of non-amazon online retailers to exist.
  - waveBidder 2y ago
    One example of market power abuse they engage in is requiring the price listed on their website to be the lowest offer that a merchant can list. You can't list a product on their page and then have a discount for that product on your own page.
- tayo42 2y ago

femiagbabiaka 2y ago

This line of thought really encapsulates the problems with purist free markets. What happens if someone who doesn't believe in those ideals uses the free market to simply buy up news media and push the opposite narrative? Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones.

lolinder 2y ago
> Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones. You just throw this out there as a statement of fact without backing it up beyond citing one hypothetical failure mode of a free market for media. Here's a dueling hypothetical: what happens if the state that is in charge of regulating the media gets taken over by someone who doesn't believe that media should hold elected officials accountable and they prevent the media from covering their actions negatively? Now that we've evened out the "what happens if"s: On what basis do you say that regulated media produces better outcomes? Because you say so? Is there evidence in favor that you can cite?
- freejazz 2y ago
  All the other circumstances. Your hypothetical is the exception proving the rule.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    And again I ask: why is my hypothetical the exception proving the rule while their hypothetical is sufficient to prove that they're right? Make an argument in favor of regulated media producing better outcomes or don't, but all I've seen here so far is you and OP asserting a dogma.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. I'm speaking colloquially here, if you want a robust argument, you're not going to find it from me right now. This is just a conversation, not a dissertation. If you don't want to engage in it, that's fine. But let's not overdramatize what is happening here right now, which is a basic conversation about intuitions and principles. You attacked the other poster's claim with a hypothetical. I rebutted yours the same way. Begging for "proof" is beyond the scope of this conversation.

cowpig 2y ago

I feel like every time I have a conversation with someone who believes in free markets, it becomes clear that they've confused the ideas of free markets and perfect competition. That somehow a lack of regulations is fair because it allows markets to adjust to supply and demand and come to an equilibrium. And modern economists who use actor-based simulations have shown that unregulated markets are typically not "perfect markets". But the reality is that a market with a monopolist does not do this. In fact, the closer you get to a pure monopoly, the more a price will approach one where consumers get none of the economic surplus and there is a large economic dead-weight loss. Unsurprisingly, the tech giants who are monopolists talk a lot about "free markets" in this way. But people who work in tech should probably refrain from using this term so that we can get rid of these superstitions.

archagon 2y ago

Is he honest about it? Based on his alignment with the Trump administration, "personal liberties and free markets" sounds like some heavy doublespeak to me. Is the paper going to be writing more articles about the othering of trans people and suppression of immigrant rights[1]? Somehow I doubt it. [1]: https://newrepublic.com/post/191606/tom-homan-ocasio-cortez-justice-department-investigation https://newrepublic.com/post/191606/tom-homan-ocasio-cortez-...

bolognafairy 2y ago
Yeah. I’d bet the farm on the % of so-called ‘libertarians’ not wanting you to change your gender marker as being…quite high. Let alone crony capitalists.

EliRivers 2y ago

Seeing Bezos advocate for free markers is a massive dissonance, until I remind myself that he hasn't said what they should be free of. Bezos would like to be free to run competition out of town, force brutal terms on suppliers, all that sort of thing.

archagon 2y ago
When he says "free markets," what he means is "unrestrained oligarchy."
- EliRivers 2y ago
  Free from anything that stops him extracting all surplus value from consumers and suppliers both.
tbossanova 2y ago
“Free markets mean the best product always wins out. It just so happens my subsidiaries make the best product in all markets. Read about why in the Washington Post.” - Bezos, probably

redeux 2y ago

The idea of a free market should be dirty. Free markets are not a good thing for anyone but select capitalists. People benefit from regulated markets, where excesses and foul play are curbed for the public benefit. Bezos is advocating for free market ideas because he wants to run a monopoly, so he benefits directly from this position. For him it’s not idealism but pragmatism. For us it’s a nightmare position that will end in higher prices, worse service, worse working conditions, and less competition.

airstrike 2y ago

> I guess it remains to be seen just what kind of views they end up pushing, rather than what he says he wants to push :P This is my single most important heuristic for filtering news. Facts in the present and the past matter. Predictions about the future have very little value. Jon Stewart said it better. This whole show is 10/10 but linking to the most relevant timestamp: https://youtu.be/CuDcTyCq8nc?si=eiVXnJkfMxPGPv5k&t=812 https://youtu.be/CuDcTyCq8nc?si=eiVXnJkfMxPGPv5k&t=812

nitwit005 2y ago

> Truth be told, it does feel like free markets have become a bit of a dirty word in both political realms recently; Oddly, I'd say its basically only Trump attacking the idea in any significant way, with the strong advocacy of tariffs. It remains bizarre to me that conservatives have seemed happy to throw away generations of advocacy for free trade. I don't expect Bezos to contradict him either.

Panzer04 2y ago
It depends. There's more rhetoric nowadays around things like rent controls and profit caps, both of which I view as very destructive to the mechanisms of market allocation. I think it's a divisive issue though since there's no real home these days for people with those views (that is, (neo)liberal economics); the right is insane and the left have a large, very progressive segment which they have to pull back on.
- brewdad 2y ago
  The left has a progressive segment that is very vocal online. I have yet to see that translate into much power or influence in national politics.

mmooss 2y ago

It depends on how 'free markets' and 'personal liberties' are defined, but as Bezos is adopting the nationalist propaganda, we might expect the definition used by others who adopt that tone, that the wealthy elite should have unlimited freedom. That position is widely supported in the professional news media, including the Wall Street Journal.

unethical_ban 2y ago

Bah. This is like saying "I support the idea of DOGE but am opposed to their methods". The motivation for DOGE is not efficiency. It is destruction of the federal civil service and destruction of oversight for Musk's business empire. I don't believe Bezos' motivation is honest. For God's sake, he is saying "I will silence opinions that do not align with my own; I am narrowing the intellectual capacity of this organization". It's also loaded. He doesn't give examples of opinion pieces or a trend of speaking against free markets (so-called) or personal liberties. It is now the personal opinion section of Jeff Bezos. Look what money can buy.

aqueueaqueue 2y ago

Bezos doesn't want free markets, he wants "great for AWS and Amazon" markets.

leftcenterright 2y ago

Free market where Big tech thrives and wants even fewer regulation, does seem to be dirty indeed. Just speaking of the IT field where I do know a thing or two, without regulations, none of these companies would even disclose that they have had a data breach.