Economics: How Did Amazon Become The Scapegoat?

(Drivebycuriosity) - It seems that Amazon became the scapegoat. Politicians from the left and right side of the political spectrum want to profile themselves by bashing Big Bad Amazon. Opportunistic senators like David Cicilline are building their career on Amazon bashing. A law student named Lina Khan became famous by publishing an anti-Amazon pamphlet and President Biden put her on the top of the powerful Federal Trade Commission (FTC), America`s trustbuster authority. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and other politicians are harassing Amazon, supported by antifa activists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). The Amazon haters claim that the e-commerce pioneer is a monopoly and abuses its alleged power.

Their claims are unfounded. The real reason of the  Amazon hate: The e-commerce company became very big. Politicians dislike big companies, they prefer Big Government.

Is big really so bad? Amazon became a giant because the company is popular with her customers. If Amazon would not serve her customers well, they would walk away. If Amazon would be too expensive, too slow, too inconvenient, the customers would buy elsewhere. The Amazon haters don´t understand these basic facts, maybe they don´t even care.

The crusade is based on false claims. Amazon is not a monopoly. The company is competing against a legion of other firms - and their number is increasing all the time. The success of the e-commerce pioneer has been animating a legion of copycats who also benefit from the ascent of e-commerce (and recently from the Covid-19 pandemic). 

Amazon is competing against huge traditional retail corporations like Walmart, Target, Best Buy & Costco who all developed large online departments. Amazon also competes again pure online companies like Shopify, Overstock, Wayfair & Etsy who are copying Amazon`s success. The competitors all are getting better over the time, challenging Amazon more and more. And people also can shop on huge online platforms run by Meta (Facebook & Instagram) and Google, who both are investing billions to steal a share from Amazon`s pie.

The Internet is intensifying competition because it makes it very easy to compare prices and services and to switch to other suppliers. Customers can choose the company which has the best quality, the best service and/or the lowest price which constrains the power of Big Tech.

The crusaders dislike Amazon`s marketplace department, where others can sell, and they claim that Amazon treats these third-party-sellers unfair. The  bashers want to shut down Amazon`s private label business, where it sells own products in competition with the products from her suppliers. But this business has been part of retail for generations (ben-evans.com). And the private label business is 1-2% of Amazon`s e-commerce sales. Most big retailers have a double-digit percentage of revenue from private label. "The average across different types of retailers tends to be in the 20% region. Amazon has the lowest share of private label sales by far!" ( tanay.substack).

Amazon`s quarterly reports show that Amazon’s retail partners are growing even faster than Amazon`s own online shops and more than 50% of the sales from Amazon`s website are from third-parties. Many of these sellers became large companies themselves. Obviously these third-party-sellers benefit from Amazon, because Amazon´s platform gives them access to markets they could not reach otherwise or only with much higher costs.

If these third-party seller would be unhappy with Amazon´s services they could switch to different platforms.  Even traditional retailers like Walmart have now their own third-party seller programs and compete with Amazon. The third-party sellers also could choose fast growing online platforms like Etsy & Shopify. Even Facebook (and their daughter Instagram) and Google developed online platforms where companies can sell their products & services, independent from Amazon.

FTC leader Khan and her crusaders ignore that the society benefits from Amazon. Even in the peak of the pandemic the company has been capable to support millions of customers and was able to deliver a huge amount of goods to everywhere in the US in very short time. Amazon could fulfill the gargantuan task of supplying America in a crisis because of her sheer size, a dense network of fulfillment centers and a lot of experience in stocking goods and in logistics.

Amazon saved potentially many lives - especially of elderly and disabled individuals - by making it possible for them to shelter at home during the current pandemic, shop online and receive necessary goods at their front door in a short time.

Today Amazon helps her customers to deal with the current inflation by rising her prices slower than her costs. Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky declared “we see ourselves as the shock absorber, absorbing a lot of the costs so that the customer is not impacted and sellers are not impacted."

Amazon has been hiring hundreds of thousands in the pandemic and employs 1.3 million people around the world, with 950,000 of those in the US ( google). The company pays a minimum salary of $15 and spends billions of dollars for safety. Amazon provides health care and funds full college tuition, high school diplomas, GED diplomas, and English as a Second Language proficiency certifications for its U.S. front-line employees. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos declared that Amazon"wants to be the best employer of the world".

 

 (statista. )

 

Amazon`s success helped many other companies - including small retailers (Amazon`s competitors) - to survive the crisis. Amazon offers a platform for any company (or individual) to sell products online. The e-commerce giant also supplies logistic services for other companies, including storage, packing and transporting. The giant invested in the pandemic year 2020 year more than $18 billion to help independent businesses grow their sales on Amazon. With the help of Amazon other companies, including even small retailers, are also able to sell products nationwide - and often globally. Many of these retailers would not exist without Amazon’s platform.

The trustbusters claim that Amazon stopped the growth of innovative companies and of new online sellers. Not true! The Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify, founded in 2006,  reached a market capitalization of about $210 billion, Wayfair, an e-commerce site for home supplies, started in 2002 and reached a market capitalization of around $30 billion  and Casper, launched in 2014, who sells mattresses online, became a brand name almost over night.

Today Amazon accounts for less than 1% of the $25 trillion global retail market and less than 4% of retail in the U.S. More than 80 U.S. retailers have annual revenues of more than $1 billion, including Walmart, whose revenues are more than double those of Amazon. Online sales account only for about 25% of the total retail sales (reason ).

The trustbusters also dislike that Amazon`s AWS (Amazon Web Services) department is the market leader in the fast growing cloud computing business. AWS gives other companies, even small start ups, cheap access to huge computer power and artificial intelligence (machine learning). Amazon cloud enables companies worldwide to process a flood of data created and to deal with organizational problems. AWS - and other Amazon services - helped many companies to stay in business during the pandemic and to participate in the recovery. And AWS is challenged by Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle and other companies who also want to have a large piece from Amazon´s pie and offer their own cloud services. And Microsoft`s & Google`s cloud businesses are growing even faster than AWS. 

Lina Khan, Tim Wu and other professional trustbusters don`t care that Amazon creates a lot benefits for her customers, employes and the society. Khan & Co. want to implement more bureaucracy and foster their own careers. Politicians, like Republican Senator Josh, are notching up their career wins by targeting the Big Tech bogeymen (washingtonexaminer). More regulation encourages corruption because powerful politicians & bureaucrats can blackmail corporations by threatening them to regulate them more (ssrn.com). 

The crusade gets a lot media attention which might attract potential voters and impress political leaders. The trust busters also want to gain more power and acquire more access to tax payer`s money. Lina Khan & Co. seek to expand their budgets and demand more onerous reporting requirements, so they can expand their offices and hire more people which in return gives them more political influence, prestige and higher incomes. "All of this is coupled with an oversized federal presence for enforcement, from greater congressional oversight to enhancing the powers of both the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission through expanded budgets, more onerous reporting requirements, and an invigorated use of merger retrospectives" writes Wayne T. Brough (aier.org ).  

Washington`s anti-Big-Tech crusade employs thousands of high paid lawyers - and President Biden is compliantly expanding their number. These brigades are burning a lot of tax payers money which could be used for education, health care or the ailing infrastructure. The anti-tech crusade creates a lot of highly attractive job opportunities for anti-trust lawyers like Lina Khan and university employees which attracts many young talents. Instead of moving into technology, medical research and other sciences, which would benefit the society, these people are wasting their talents in unproductive skirmishes. As a result the anti-tech crusade is slowing down economic growth and harms everybody who does not live from the money of the taxpayers.

The crusade is harming Amazon and other companies which are popular with their customers - the majority of the Americans - because their services are either for free or cheap. Amazon is doing a great service to the society, the US economy and the US consumers. The crusade is irresponsible and moronic.

 

 

Science Fiction: Mitigated Futures By Tobias S. Buckell

(Drivebycuriosity) -  Tobias S. Buckell belongs to the stars of the contemporary science fiction genre. According to Wikipedia he is a New York Times Bestselling author and won a World Fantasy Award and many other trophies (wikipedia ). I enjoyed his very subtle and thought provoking short story  "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” (reprinted here  here ). The plot is told in first person by a robot with artificial intelligence (AI) who does maintenance works on the hull of a space ship. This AI has to deal with a superior power which causes a conflict of interests.

The story inspired me to purchase Buckell`s short story collection: "Mitigated Futures" (amazon ). Unfortunately non of the 12 stories worked for me, I skipped reading each of it. I even wondered if this book is published by the same Buckell.

I glance in the quoted Wikipedia article gives an explanation. Buckell is a very profilic writer, maybe too prolific. In a few years he published more than a dozen of novels & novellas plus tons of short stories. Too much quantity kills quality.

 

Stock Market: Happy Thanksgiving 2021

(Drivebycuriosity) - Today the Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. The feast reminds of the pioneers who lauded their harvests and their survival in the harsh environment of the 17th century. This is the second Thanksgiving in the Covid-19 pandemic, but in the US anyone who wants it can get vaccinated, at least twice. And now are additional (booster) shots available which give about 95% immunity.

Investors also have plenty reasons to celebrate. The US stock market climbed in the recent days to a new all-time high. The S&P 500, the gauge for the US stock market, gained 23% year-to-date, 31% y-o-y and continued the positive trend of the recent years (chart below). 

 

 

 ( source)

The stock market accompanies the seemingly eternally  rising company profits. Both are fueled by the accelerating technological revolution which got boosted by the Covid-19 crisis. It seems that the pandemic started a new Roaring Twenties, comparable to the boom phase which happened during the 1920s years after the Spanish Flu. 

Covid-19 accelerated the fundamental trends that have been shaping economy & society in the recent decade. During the pandemic the rise of the Internet gained even more speed and turned into a great leap. The pandemic reduced the resistance against technological progress (faz.net ). The crisis forced many people to work at home, to learn, shop, educate & entertain themselves from home. These trends are fostering digitization and raising efficiency & productivity of the economy. 

The virus boosts the digitization process, which is fostering productivity across all industries, leading to more economic growth. Microsoft`s CEO Satya Nadella said "the pandemic has proven the PC’s central role in keeping people connected, productive, and secure ...What we are witnessing is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry" (transcript ). Last year Nadella noticed that “two years of digital transformation took place in two months” ( microsoft ). 

Online sales worldwide are surging, more people are working from home, they are binge watching Netflix & Amazon Prime, listening via Spotify, reading Kindle books, surfing Facebook & Twitter and businesses are running more & more on cloud computing. Home office & remote learning are raising productivity of the whole economy because many people spend less time with commuting. 

Not only consumers changed their behavior, companies were forced to adapt as well. We are witnessing an accelerated shift toward digital technologies that are faster, less expensive, more productive and raise creativity. Companies are compelled to streamline operations and they are using more & more Internet & and other software applications to get more efficient, creative & productive. The pandemic forced them to get faster and make their products & services cheaper and more convenient. These changes are accelerating the ongoing digitization process, using Internet and other software applications more intensely. The CEO of Bill.com, an online service, said: "We believe the ongoing pandemic has accelerated the need for businesses to focus on digital transformation” (seekingalpha).

Covid-19 made the companies much fitter and more efficient than before which translate into climbing profits. I believe that this learning process will continue and will fuel a long term trend of rising company profits & stock markets.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Books: The Twelve Lives Of Alfred Hitchcock By Edward White

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Alfred Hitchcock defined cinema and mingled entertainment with art. The biography "The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock" by Edward White shows how and why "Hitch" performed his magic ( amazon).

The book is not in chronological order. In each of the 12 chapters the author focuses on one special aspect of Hitchcock`s live and personality. We learn about Hitch`s anxieties, his voyeurism, his economic talents, his relations with women (would Hitch survive today´s me-too climate?), how he staged his obesity in public, how his talents got shaped by early German cinema and how Hitch developed after his move to America and much more.

The author condensed a vast amount of material into a very readable book. His portrait is analytical, but also entertaining. If it is possible to explain a genius, Edgar White came close to it. And "Twelve Lives" woke my appetite to re-watch Hitch`s masterpieces again.

Art Market: New York`s Fall Auctions 2021 Redux - An Eclectic & Subjective Glance

(Drivebycuriosity) - In the recent days New York`s huge autumn art auctions happened, showing the state of the art market. According to the Wall Street Journal Sotheby`s, Christie`s & Phillips - the three world market leaders - sold together art work for $2.3 billion - a new record for them and for the global art market. 

I am not surprised. As I wrote before, the global art market follows the US stock market which climbed to a new record high as well ( driveby). Many investors are pouring their money into risky assets - including pricey art works - hoping on further rising prices (below a chart of the S&P 500, which represents the US stock market). It is not a coincidence that hedge fund managers and other finance people belonged to the top bidders.

                  

 

 ( wsj.com     macrotrends )

 

 

I was overwhelmed by quantity & quality of the exhibited art works which could easily compete with a major art museum. I can show here just some tidbits - a very subjective and eclectic selection.

 

 

Star of the auctions was a Rothko which Sotheby`s auctioned for $82.4 million. The painting came from the hyped Macklowe collection. A Manhattan couple in  divorce needed to auction their amassed art works to find out its market value. Good for the art world and for humble art lovers like me who could see these magical painting from close.

 

Cy Twombly`s wall filling doodles ("Untitled", 1961)  got a lot attention as well.

 

Joan Mitchell`s "Untitled" ( 1992) is a real eye catcher (seen @ Phillips).

Luc Tuymans` "Wallpaper" (2014) belonged to Phillips`highlights as well.

 

Helen Frankenthaler`s "Dream Decision" was another auction marvel (1976).

 

Eric Fischl`s “Best Western” (oil on canvas, 1983) crowns any salon.

 

 

This visitor is inspecting Jeff Koon`s "Gazing Ball (Titian Mars, Venus, and Cupid)".

                              

 

Cecily Brown belongs to the rising stars on the firmament of the art market. I enjoyed both "Untitled" works (2007 & 1997 ) @ Phillips and "Spree" (1999) @ Sotheby`s. Are these abstract paintings or do they show an orgy? You never can be sure with Brown.

 

Gerhard Richter is my favorite painter. He used to paint - in a photo-realist way - from a photo and then  rubbed a wet towel over it to create a blurring effect. Above you can see his "Sammler mit Hund/Collector with dog" (oil on canvas, 1966) and "Weiß (White)" (oil on canvas, 1988).

I am a fan of Sigmar Polke and Mark Tansey as well. Above Polke`s Rasterbild mit Palmen" (1966 ) and Tansey`s  "Garden" (2006).

 

 

Isn`t she wonderful: Javier Marín`s “Mujer Piedra II” clay from Zacatecas and Oaxaca with clay slip on metal artist's base, height: 41 in104 cm, 1998)

 

 

                  Blissful Discoveries

 

 

 

 

There were a lot of blissful discoveries. I was enchanted by Flora Yukhnovich`s wall filling "It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter" (oil on canvas, 2018). This work alone was worth the visiting Sotheby´s. 

             

                          

There were more gems: Karin Mamma Andersson`s "Med läsning öd ej iden borrt, Vårt kön så föga det behöver, Och skall du läsa, gör det kort, At såsen ej må fräsa öfver / Readers" (2002); Lukas Duwenhögger`s elegant  "Rezalet (Impertinence) (1998); Hernan Bas` "Night Flight or Midnight Migration, or My Merry Way"  2008) & Hilary Pecis`"Sculpture Court" (2017).

 

 

 

                                      

                     

Above follow Matthew Wong`s "Adam and Eve" (2016 ); Zsolt Bodoni`s "Turul's Sword" (acrylic and oil on canvas, 2009) & Jamian Juliano-Villani`s "Last Resort" (acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 2014).

 

                                            

                               

Tomás Sánchez invited to meditate wit his  “Contemplador del contemplador” (acrylic on canvas, 1996) & “Encuentro con el meditador de la laguna” (acrylic on canvas, 1992).

                         

 The auctioned also some avant-garde:  "Face Your Fears" by RISK (found metal objects,2019) & Ugo Rondinone`s “If There Were Anywhere But Desert, Saturday” (painted fiberglass with wig, clothing and glitter, 2002).

 

Sotheby`s also showed some works, including Remedios Varo`s "Les Feuilles mortes (Les heures mortes, El hilo)" (oil on board , 1956).

  

There were some awesome some classics as. Above the wonderful impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His lovely "Jeune fille à la corbeille de fleurs" sold @ Sotheby´s for $12,9 million. The late Renaissance painting by Artimesia Gentileschi`s "Portrait of a seated Lady", was earmarked for Sotheby`s Master Paintings Auction, New York January 27 2022.

 

 

 

I am grateful that even a humble blogger and art lover like me could enjoy this masterpieces without any admission fee and I could shoot as many photos I wanted. Thanks to Christie`s, Phillips & Sotheby´s.

 

Stay tuned

Economics: Why We Need Billionaires

 (Drivebycuriosity) - In the recent days a funny twitter dispute happened (cnbc. ). Senator Bernie Sanders complained that the extremely wealthy don`t pay their fair share of taxes and Tesla`s CEO Elon Musk responded by tweeting "I didn`t know that you are still alive"  and continued with "Bernie is a taker not a maker". In the following days Musk started selling tons of his Tesla shares which will cause him a huge tax bill.

Sen. Sander´s aversion against billionaires is well known:

 

 

(cnn.com )

Bernie is wrong. America`s rise was driven by inventors & entrepreneurs who often became billionaires (in today´s money). America benefited from Samuel Slater, who developed a cotton spinning machine in the 18th century and from Oliver Evans, who created a flour mill. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie & Cornelius Vanderbilt created a networks of railroads which had an important role in the development of the vast nation. In the early 1920s Henry Ford, who was obsessed with driving production costs lower, made cars affordable for the masses and created so a huge industry and wealth for the whole nation. The banker JP Morgan used his own huge fortune and his enormous influence on Wall Street to hinder the bank panic from 1907 to evolve into a full-fledged depression.

Yes, billionaires amassed fortunes, but we, the society, gained as well. Prof. Nordhaus, winner of Economics Nobel Prizes 2018, wrote in his 2004 paper “Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement,” : “Only a minuscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers.” (aier.org). According to Nordhaus "producers, on average, capture a mere 2.2% of the total benefits of their successful introduction into markets of technological advances. A whopping 97.8 % of those benefits are enjoyed by people each of whom as a consumer did nothing other than exercise his right to spend his money on those options that he judges best for himself".

Today millions of Americans benefit from Sam Walton, who founded Walmart in 1962, by being able to purchase a lot of things for very low prices, especially people with a tight budget are better off thanks to him. Millions of Germans - and some Americans & British - buy cheap things @ the  supermarket chains Aldi Nord & Aldi Süd, founded & owned by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht. Millions enjoy the comfort to have a huge variety of goods delivered fast & cheap to their homes - thanks to Jeff Bezos & Amazon. Bezos` obsession with customer service, low costs & prices forces the whole retail industry to get more efficient and customer friendly. It takes only a few clicks to make a purchase that will arrive at their home in about a day in most cases. The Amazon effect is making the economy more efficient & flexible. Many startups & established companies use Amazon`s cloud computing services (AWS) for processing & storing information. Bezos` Amazon also started cloud computing which reduces the costs of managing corporations, researching complicated topics and multiple other complex tasks considerably. Thanks to the cloud, new ideas can spread faster, which is encouraging discoveries and inventions. 

Google founders Larry Page & Sergey Brin became billionaires by offering online search,  maps & other  services for free. More than two billion people are using Zuckerberg´s Facebook to communicate with their friends & relatives worldwide without paying any cent. All these billionaire entrepreneurs made their fortunes because they had ideas,  took risks and worked hard - and they deliver a huge service to the society.

Sanders, Warren & Co. claim that the billionaire`s wealth would be in better hands when they take it away (wealth & capital gains taxes). Does the government really know how to use money better than these billionaires? Gates, Musk, Bezos & Co. have a proven talent for finding and investing in successful technologies & businesses. What business experience do Warren, Sanders & their bureaucrats have? 

 

 

( twitter)
 

Elon Musk doesn`t get a salary, he is paid in Tesla stocks which made him a billionaire and the car company can keep the money and invests in its business. Nike co-founder Phil Knight’s recalls in his memoir: Any dollar that wasn’t nailed down I was plowing directly back into the business” ( realclearmarkets).
 

Elon Musk invests a part of his wealth also in his "Boring Company" which builds tunnel boring machines. He wants to dig a network of cheap tunnels which are optimized for electric vehicles. Musk also plans to implement Hyperloop - a high-speed transportation system ( reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors). All these projects will make transportation much cheaper & environmentally friendly - creating another tailwind for the global economy.

Bill Gates invests a part of his fortune in a series of startups including Grail, a life sciences company working to develop technology that could spot cancer before it's incurable; Varentec, which develops products for electrical grid systems, including a software platform that lets cities more easily manage how power flows & EtaGena, a startup producing ultra-efficient generators that supply power for companies, buildings, and microgrids.  

Jeff Bezos puts his private money into a variety of start-ups including EverFi, an online education and certification firm; Unity Biotechnology, a life-extension research firm hoping to slow or stop the process of aging; Juno Therapeutics, which aims to develop a pipeline of cancer immunotherapy drugs & Plenty, an indoor vertical farming company that uses less space and fewer resources to grow fresh produce year-round.

Bezos, Elon Musk & Richard Branson, the British owner of the Virgin Group, are also developing independently from each other rockets for space flights (Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Blue Origin). The three billionaires aim to make space travel affordable by making rockets reusable. They do a service for whole world by risking their private money for space flights which may give humanity some day more chances to survive.

The investments by Musk & Co. are supporting the world and humanity by fostering innovation, reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, fighting cancer, supporting education and much more. If their money would be taken by the government it would get into the hands of bureaucrats which are less efficient & competent. Transferring money to the government often leads to waste, inefficiency & corruption as you can see in New York City where building a subway costs far more than elsewhere the world (marginalrevolution).

 The majority of US cultural institutions depends on charities financed by billionaires. At the end of 19th century people who had build great fortunes - like Henry Clay Frick, John d. Rockefeller &J.P. Morgan - began to found or endow museums, concert halls, orchestras, colleges, hospitals, and libraries in astonishing numbers in every major city (driveby ). The billionaire Carnegie - one of these donators - wrote, that "a man who dies rich, dies disgraced" and gave away  nearly his entire fortune. Cultural landmarks like Manhattan`s Carnegie Hall are financed by philanthropists. If you visit New York`s Metropolitan Museum of Art - or any other huge American museum - you might notice that most of the displayed art works are donated by some wealthy families or individuals (google). Even their running costs (administration etc) are partly financed by donations. Most American universities and hospitals are also funded by donations (forbes). The Rockefeller Foundation, based on the oil profits amassed by the Rockefeller family, has been supporting science, education, culture & health care for decades. Industrialist Peter Cooper initiated New York´s "The Cooper Union", which is still the only major college in the US which charges no tuition and John Jacob Astor founded the Astor Library, the core of the New York Public Library, the largest privately financed library in the world. Were would America be without billionaires?

In 2017 Americans gave over $400 billion to charitable causes with the largest growth in contributions coming from foundations created by major philanthropists (i.e. the ultra-rich). Warren Buffett and Bill Gates developed "The Giving Pledge" in 2010 to encourage the world’s wealthiest individuals to give away more than half of their wealth to charitable causes. To date more than 204 individuals and families have pledged to donate over $500 Billion. Bill & Melanie Gates Bill Gates declared that they are willing to give half their wealth to vetted charities of his choosing. Do Sanders, Warren & Co. really know how to spend this money more beneficial for the society?

Billionaires like Musk, Bezos, Gates are making the world a better place. The government should not try to stop them.  

 

PS On top of this post you can see a succesful test for Musk`s Starship (teslarati ).