Is Amazon Doomed?

[alberta]

You are all speaking of price and speed of getting merchandise. You have not mentioned what china is doing to our world. The atrocities that China is doing is unheard of, environmental damage, societal damage, intellectual damage.The list goes on and on.
Hopefully young people see beyond the price and speed but pay attention to how China is a achieving global monopoly.
We should be educating the young on consumer choices and not just price and speed. Allowing China to continue its monopolization will only end poorly. I'm not a Trump fan by any means but what he started it protecting intellectual property was a good start to equalizing the playing field. The general consumer should start boycotting as many products from China as they can, or at least start talking about.

[LiveFromNY]

You are all speaking of price and speed of getting merchandise. You have not mentioned what china is doing to our world. The atrocities that China is doing is unheard of, environmental damage, societal damage, intellectual damage.The list goes on and on.
Hopefully young people see beyond the price and speed but pay attention to how China is a achieving global monopoly.
We should be educating the young on consumer choices and not just price and speed. Allowing China to continue its monopolization will only end poorly. I'm not a Trump fan by any means but what he started it protecting intellectual property was a good start to equalizing the playing field. The general consumer should start boycotting as many products from China as they can, or at least start talking about.

Can't disagree with any of that. China is not our friend or ally in any sense of the word. Of course, getting young people to concentrate on anything more than TikTok these days is an immense challenge.

[jaudette3]

China is an immense threat. We're all aware of the challenges we face competing with them so no sense trying to enumerate them all here. But to mention a few... They've already bought most of Africa with their $900B Silk Road. A government with complete control over that many people is beyond formidable. But I think their greatest advantage is extremely long term thinking. As I mentioned earlier we are hyper-focused on the current quarter. They couldn't care less. And if the dollar ever caves against the yuan the fat lady will be trilling high high C.

[NorthernThrux]

There was a school of thought that said that when oil became consistently over $100 a barrel (now $140 inflation adjusted - it's an old school) manufacturing would return to North America because the transport costs would outweigh the benefit of cheap, slave labour in China. However that school of thought never accounted for the myriad ways the large American corps find to make a buck off the American people. Bringing manufacturing back to North America would be a boon for the middle class. But it would suck for large shareholders and the influential uber rich. So it will never happen.

China has its share of extreme capitalist billionaires, but for the most part, its manufacturing prowess has resulted in a massive elevation of the poor to the affluent middle class. It's why China is Porsche's biggest market now (its even bigger than you think. Some estimates put 15-20% of all North American Porsche sales going into Chinese hands as well). I've been visiting for 40 years and the difference is mind boggling astounding. And it (it being the Government) has plowed a lot of the profits (from taxes) into Silk Road initiatives (or now COVID vaccines) to buy the affections of poor people around the world, notably Africa. China already has a lock on vast amounts of the rare earths needed for the future economy. The elements that make batteries, solar cells, computer chips etc. And the rest of those elements are in Africa, where they've also cornered the market through "goodwill". This was a 40 year plan, it was deliberate, calculated and brilliant. In both China and Africa, mining of this stuff comes with massive environmental and human rights violations mind you (but we still keep buying the products). In the mean time Americans were fretting about quarter over quarter revenue changes and Canadians (don't get me started) were still focused on being hewers of wood and drawers of water (with some oil sands, predatory telecoms and banks thrown into the mix).

You can accomplish a lot when you have complete control over your people. It's an interesting study. 2000 years ago, 95% of the world's trade was between its two advanced societies - China and India. This comes from a lot of historical research into ships' manifests. Both those societies fell into hard times to the extent that by 1900 trade between them accounted for 2% of the world's trade. Both have come back, but the democracy couldn't manage the social engineering that the communist government could (1 child, move people around, force labour etc.). We all have a lot more freedoms and virtually no desire to do things for societal benefit (the latter being a key differentiator between Americans and Canadians surprisingly, given the generally similar ethnic composition). Our governments can only use carrots, not sticks.

I don't know what the answers are. There is no perfect model. But I am happy we chose not to have kids. Not sure what this world is going to look like in 50 years, but pretty sure it will be shaped by China for the most part. When large numbers of a society partake in an economic miracle, it will move forward far more effectively than when only a select few reap the benefits. It's why the government in China enjoys the huge support it does (and of course dissent is not tolerated).

[jaudette3]

Remarkable post, thank you very much. It should be required reading in schools. We need to wake up.

[LiveFromNY]

When large numbers of a society partake in an economic miracle, it will move forward far more effectively than when only a select few reap the benefits.

I certainly hope your rosy view of China's economic progress isn't a tacit approval of communism. The truth is that China is a repressive regime, an enormous human rights violator, the world's largest polluter, an unfair competitor that manipulates their currency, a country that relies on stealing the IP of other countries/companies to power a huge part of their growth, and a place where nearly half of the population lives on less than 1,000 yaun a month (about $150).

Communism NEVER works in the long run. Never.

[NorthernThrux]

I certainly hope your rosy view of China's economic progress isn't a tacit approval of communism. The truth is that China is a repressive regime, an enormous human rights violator, the world's largest polluter, an unfair competitor that manipulates their currency, a country that relies on stealing the IP of other countries/companies to power a huge part of their growth, and a place where nearly half of the population lives on less than 1,000 yaun a month (about $150).

Communism NEVER works in the long run. Never.

Absolutely not an endorsement. Just a statement of fact that one can make huge progress when you control the people. I thought that was clear in what I wrote.

BTW, it's not communism that's the problem per se. Communism works well in some democracies too. See Kerala, India for example. OTOH, there are people that argue that Kerala's success with literacy, health care etc. is because it is a matriarchal society. So who knows? Communist women. Maybe that's the ticket ;-) It's communism of the repressive type (which many scholars don't consider communism) practised in Russia and China that leads to a lot of the maladies you list. And that list of transgressions is even longer than you wrote. It's truly disgusting and alarming.

Communism, monarchies or democracies only work as long as they benefit the majority of people. The minute only an elite group of people benefit, those societies collapse. There is plenty of historical record to back me up on that. Yes, I absolutely believe that free market democracies are the best chance for the advancement of mankind. But there are various shades of that from the Scandinavian countries to the US, with much of the EU and Canada somewhere in between. Free markets can give people free rein to exploit as well. And exploitative free markets like those in the US (or more correctly, some companies in the US) rely on socialism for their success. The US is second to none in the world in the way it innovates. Nobody comes close (China just steals the IP) and the US record in patents and Nobel prizes will support that argument. But it's also got big companies who are very good at concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, while exploiting others and suckling at the teat of the taxpayer. I personally find that offensive and think that will result in social upheaval down the road. It ALWAYS has in the long run.

I wish we could be sitting outside having this discussion with a beer in hand. It's fun. Some day....

[jaudette3]

Communism, monarchies or democracies only work as long as they benefit the majority of people. The minute only an elite group of people benefit, those societies collapse. There is plenty of historical record to back me up on that.

And there in lies the rub. Unfettered capitalism, such as we currently have in the United States, inevitably leads to wealth concentrated in a small pool of folks. It's not a fair game because the winners and losers are largely determined by IQ. This is an almost taboo subject in America at this time but it is one of the largest factors creating striation in our society. The U.S. Army deals with it head on. If your IQ is below 82 then you are not eligible to enlist. So what do you do? You probably don't go trade cryptocurrencies or start a new internet company. Some people earn their living with their brains and some people earn their living with their bodies. Advances in technology have increasingly favored the bright folks while the movement away from manufacturing has increasingly diminished opportunities for the not so fortunate.

We like to talk about a merit based system where winners are determined by hard work, conscientiousness and education (we seldom mention luck which is huge in my opinion). But there are a lot of folks with low IQ's who are willing to work hard. The problem is that the human body is quickly becoming obsolete as a tool of production. The folks who used to work on the assembly line at GM (who were well paid) have of course been replaced by robots. This huge group of people (there is an IQ bell curve after all) become discouraged at being disenfranchised over time.

What to do? The natural order of things must be interrupted in an effort to more equally distribute opportunity. And the institution best situated to that is the government. The methods and what we call them are another (highly emotional) topic. Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism - those are all big, big words. I think that it is theoretically possible to construct a perfect dynamic, but implementation requires sensitivity, nuance and touch, something that governments (and human beings) are not known for.

The system in China, while anathema to us, has improved life for millions of people. As long as that continues the system will persist. The system in the United States has of late started to lower the standard of living for an increasing number of people. Which creates an environment ripe for fascist leadership. And while we struggle to meet these challenges China just keeps chugging ahead.

[LiveFromNY]

.I wish we could be sitting outside having this discussion with a beer in hand. It's fun. Some day....

Me too, my friend. Me too!

[LiveFromNY]

Communism, monarchies or democracies only work as long as they benefit the majority of people. The minute only an elite group of people benefit, those societies collapse. There is plenty of historical record to back me up on that.

And there in lies the rub. Unfettered capitalism, such as we currently have in the United States, inevitably leads to wealth concentrated in a small pool of folks. It's not a fair game because the winners and losers are largely determined by IQ. This is an almost taboo subject in America at this time but it is one of the largest factors creating striation in our society. The U.S. Army deals with it head on. If your IQ is below 82 then you are not eligible to enlist. So what do you do? You probably don't go trade cryptocurrencies or start a new internet company. Some people earn their living with their brains and some people earn their living with their bodies. Advances in technology have increasingly favored the bright folks while the movement away from manufacturing has increasingly diminished opportunities for the not so fortunate.

We like to talk about a merit based system where winners are determined by hard work, conscientiousness and education (we seldom mention luck which is huge in my opinion). But there are a lot of folks with low IQ's who are willing to work hard. The problem is that the human body is quickly becoming obsolete as a tool of production. The folks who used to work on the assembly line at GM (who were well paid) have of course been replaced by robots. This huge group of people (there is an IQ bell curve after all) become discouraged at being disenfranchised over time.

What to do? The natural order of things must be interrupted in an effort to more equally distribute opportunity. And the institution best situated to that is the government. The methods and what we call them are another (highly emotional) topic. Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism - those are all big, big words. I think that it is theoretically possible to construct a perfect dynamic, but implementation requires sensitivity, nuance and touch, something that governments (and human beings) are not known for.

The system in China, while anathema to us, has improved life for millions of people. As long as that continues the system will persist. The system in the United States has of late started to lower the standard of living for an increasing number of people. Which creates an environment ripe for fascist leadership. And while we struggle to meet these challenges China just keeps chugging ahead.

And yet capitalism, not communism, has pulled more people out of poverty than communism or socialism ever will. As for China v. the U.S., China has historically been one of the poorest countries in the world. And it's only this latest chapter where they've allowed some (minimal) capitalistic ideals to creep into their system that they've begun to change that. Meanwhile, the U.S. has traditionally led the world in nearly every economic factor and only recently, as a portion of our population embraces semi-socialist ideals, have we begun to contemplate the end of that streak.

You don't need to look any further than right here at home where California, the State that works hardest to implement these ideas - high taxes, government control, wealth redistribution - has the largest percentage of people living in poverty and wealth and income inequality that is right near the top as well.