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You say doomed, but isn't JC Penney still chugging? They seem to have worked to climb back from the abyss.
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Nov 8, 2018 18:37
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Golbez posted:You say doomed, but isn't JC Penney still chugging? They seem to have worked to climb back from the abyss. They've been generating ~$100 million losses every quarter in the last few years with the exception of the January 2018 quarter (which was due to the new tax law's impact and not because of business income) - at the going rate, they'll be insolvent within 12 quarters (or 3 years).
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Nov 9, 2018 01:37
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They are in a long death spiral. These companies have massive debt so any money they may actually earn just goes to debt service. And they really need that money to invest in repositioning the company, so they end up never getting enough growth and eventually succumb to the debt payments. Their doom isn’t right around the corner but basically impossible to avoid. They’ll continue selling assets but the debt will do them in eventually. I mean their stock price is like $1.50. The Johnson era dug too big of a hole to ever fully climb out of.
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Nov 9, 2018 01:51
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nepetaMisekiryoiki posted:This is what I not understand of this whole "break up Amazon!! wait not that it is not practical but do this instead" thing people keep bringing up. Why should not these rules apply to all business, if you want to apply them to Amazon? It would already be of a very tough project to get any of the new restriction applied to Amazon by itself, so should not the politics effort be to make the uniform regulation? Because amazon is a dominant market abuser, that’s what a monopoly is No other retailer dominates online shopping like they do
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Nov 9, 2018 02:08
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Malcolm XML posted:Because amazon is a dominant market abuser, that’s what a monopoly is This is a propos of nothing, really, but one thing that I never understand is why people are, somewhat understandably, so strident about making sure that there are balances in government and so on, but then seem so blasé about corporations becoming too powerful. I am utterly baffled that so many people think that government doing basically loving anything, even if it's obviously socially useful, is a sign of incoming totalitarianism but are utterly fine with massive corporations accruing terrifying amounts of wealth and power and using that too rig the so-called "free market", destroy the environment, treat their employees like cattle and pay them laughable wages while making billions in profit. I really do understand not wanting some major entity to be too powerful, but acting as if this can happen in government but not in private enterprise is beyond me.
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Nov 9, 2018 02:17
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Democracy is a fickle easily swayed thing made up of short sighted emotional voters. The market though is 100% rational and pure and can never be wrong.
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Nov 9, 2018 02:21
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JustJeff88 posted:This is a propos of nothing, really, but one thing that I never understand is why people are, somewhat understandably, so strident about making sure that there are balances in government and so on, but then seem so blasé about corporations becoming too powerful. I am utterly baffled that so many people think that government doing basically loving anything, even if it's obviously socially useful, is a sign of incoming totalitarianism but are utterly fine with massive corporations accruing terrifying amounts of wealth and power and using that too rig the so-called "free market", destroy the environment, treat their employees like cattle and pay them laughable wages while making billions in profit. I really do understand not wanting some major entity to be too powerful, but acting as if this can happen in government but not in private enterprise is beyond me. In theory corporations are supposed to answer to the government. We can also collectively burn down a corporation by just not doing business with them. Getting rid of a government is far more difficult. Governments, currently at least, are supposed to be way more powerful than a corporation. A government is supposed to be able to go "no, gently caress you corporation, you're loving everything and now no longer exist." Historically of course you have obscenely powerful corporations coming into existence. Corporations today aren't as influential as they were in, say, the 19th century.
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Nov 9, 2018 03:10
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I tried to explain what Bain does to my mom and she wouldn't believe me.
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Nov 9, 2018 03:47
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Beachcomber posted:I tried to explain what Bain does to my mom and she wouldn't believe me. I'm sorry to hear about your mom but who doesn't believe you?
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Nov 9, 2018 04:44
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Commissioner Gordon
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Nov 9, 2018 07:37
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There are decades of indoctrinational/educational shorts about "companies good, markets good, govt implicitly/explicitly bad”. They make for an interesting watch nowadays. One has blond Ronald Reagan equating regulations on advertisements with no more cake mix, being nuked by Krustchauv, and no more money for polio research. I am not being hyperbolic.
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Nov 9, 2018 13:50
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Malcolm XML posted:Because amazon is a dominant market abuser, that’s what a monopoly is JustJeff88 posted:This is a propos of nothing, really, but one thing that I never understand is why people are, somewhat understandably, so strident about making sure that there are balances in government and so on, but then seem so blasé about corporations becoming too powerful.
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Nov 9, 2018 13:50
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RandomPauI posted:There are decades of indoctrinational/educational shorts about "companies good, markets good, govt implicitly/explicitly bad”. They make for an interesting watch nowadays.
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Nov 9, 2018 13:53
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Beachcomber posted:I tried to explain what Bain does to my mom and she wouldn't believe me. It's pretty amazing how resistant people are to being shown how much of a cancer things like arbitrage and private equity can mutate into. I still cannot get over that the Republican Party managed to nominate Mitt loving Romney in 2012, four years after guys just like him played so fast and loose with structured finance that it almost deep sixed the entire goddamned world.
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Nov 9, 2018 13:55
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Cicero posted:Actually they're not and are not even close to a monopoly. Every time this comes up, it gets explained why it's wrong, and then a few pages later D&D forgets that discussion and reverts back to "Amazon monopoly yes" Except it doesn't get explained why it's wrong. They absolutely are dominant and they are using their leverage.
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Nov 9, 2018 13:59
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Maera Sior posted:Please tell me this is available online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8cqk0uIuso
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Nov 9, 2018 14:01
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Beaten, but yes. It's online. Did you know advertising lets men in loveless marriages watch pretty women in commercials? Edit: I may be thinking of a short by the Chamber of Commerce that shows the US being founded by capitalism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=220XsrVZ1rk RandomPauI fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Nov 9, 2018 |
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Nov 9, 2018 14:12
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Lambert posted:Except it doesn't get explained why it's wrong. quote:I could understand that if Amazon was actually a monopoly, but they're not. If you break things down by channel they're kinda close in one of them, but that's like breaking down car sales by dealership vs online or getting mad at QVC for dominating TV channel/phone order retail. quote:They absolutely are dominant and they are using their leverage.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:16
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Cicero posted:Yes it does. For example: They pretty much have 50% market share in online retail. hth. Also, monopolistic behavior doesn't hinge on "exactly 50% market share in some randomly defined overarching segment".
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Nov 9, 2018 14:19
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Lambert posted:They pretty much have 50% market share in online retail. hth. quote:Also, monopolistic behavior doesn't hinge on "exactly 50% market share in some randomly defined overarching segment". They might be a monopoly in ebooks. That's not just a different channel than regular books, the form of the product is different (and these days many books are only ebooks).
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Nov 9, 2018 14:25
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Besides, the burden of proof is on the one making the assertion, and nobody has offered any convincing evidence that Amazon has a retail monopoly or is engaging in anti-competitive practices (particularly ones that hurt consumers). Trying to get low prices from suppliers isn't something specific to monopolies, virtually every retail company does that.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:28
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Cicero posted:Siloing by sales channel is irrelevant since people are still buying the same poo poo via a different channel. Their retail market share is 5%, that's not a monopoly, or even close to it. They are online retail, differentiating by sales channels absolutely makes sense and absolutely is part of considering what constitutes monopolistic behavior. Cicero posted:No, but IIRC that's generally been the minimum legal threshold to be considered a monopoly by the courts (although yes there are other factors too). The definition US courts use doesn't matter at all. In a similar vein, Wal Mart very likely is a local monopoly in quite a few parts of the US. Lambert fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Nov 9, 2018 |
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Nov 9, 2018 14:31
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JustJeff88 posted:This is a propos of nothing, really, but one thing that I never understand is why people are, somewhat understandably, so strident about making sure that there are balances in government and so on, but then seem so blasé about corporations becoming too powerful. I am utterly baffled that so many people think that government doing basically loving anything, even if it's obviously socially useful, is a sign of incoming totalitarianism but are utterly fine with massive corporations accruing terrifying amounts of wealth and power and using that too rig the so-called "free market", destroy the environment, treat their employees like cattle and pay them laughable wages while making billions in profit. I really do understand not wanting some major entity to be too powerful, but acting as if this can happen in government but not in private enterprise is beyond me. We grow ever closer to the cyberpunk dystopia and it's easy to point to individual examples where the line blurs a scary amount, but even today companies lack a lot of the absolute power countries do. Like you can point to the east india company or dole bananas for counter examples but as a general case even giant powerful countries only have a fraction of the power a country has.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:34
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Lambert posted:They are online retail. hth. quote:The definition US courts use doesn't matter at all. quote:In a similiar vein, Wal Mart very likely is a local monopoly in quite a few places of the US.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:34
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Cicero posted:They're that and B&M retail, but nevertheless siloing by sales channel is meaningless. Nobody looks at "online car sales" vs "dealership car sales" to determine if some company has a monopoly by sales channel. Nobody gets mad at QVC for dominating TV retail sales. But people do get mad at companies for having local monopolies as well as online monopolies. It's just that TV retail sales don't matter, that's why nobody cares about their monopoly. It doesn't hurt consumers in any meaningful way. Cicero posted:Okay cool, so the superior definition you use comes from...where, exactly? And what even is it? What makes a company a monopoly? Do you have anything that's not vague and wishy-washy as all hell? The US legal system isn't the arbiter of truth. And the question is whether they are big and dominant enough to engage in monopolistic behavior, which Amazon most certainly is. Cicero posted:Yeah, that's probably true as far as B&M sales, but they're definitely not a monopoly for the retail sector as a whole, and at least these days people have other options even in little podunk towns. Like, for example, online retail, because people -- and suppliers -- aren't constrained by channel. I don't know why you're griping about abstract definitions of monopolies so much when that's not even the relevant question. In terms of grocery shopping, online isn't really a viable option in small towns. Either no one will deliver groceries, or the delivery costs are too high.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:38
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Lambert posted:But people do get mad at companies for having local monopolies as well as online monopolies. It's just that TV retail sales don't matter, that's why nobody cares about their monopoly. It doesn't hurt consumers in any meaningful way. quote:Economists? The US legal system isn't the arbiter of truth. quote:And the question is whether they are big and dominant enough to engage in monopolistic behavior, which Amazon most certainly is. quote:I don't know why you're griping about abstract definitions of monopolies so much when that's not even the relevant question. quote:In terms of grocery shopping, online isn't really a viable option in small towns. Either no one will deliver groceries, or the delivery costs are too high.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:44
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Oh, and they're probably not using their market power to hurt the consumer directly, at least I'm not seeing any evidence of this. So we're in agreement there. But they are certainly using their extremely dominant position in online retail to squeeze suppliers to a large degree.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:46
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As I already pointed out, squeezing suppliers is not inherently monopolistic behavior. All retail companies try to get low prices from their suppliers for obvious reasons, as you get bigger this gets easier, but in and of itself it doesn't indicate a monopoly.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:47
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Cicero posted:As I already pointed out, squeezing suppliers is not inherently monopolistic behavior. All retail companies try to get low prices from their suppliers for obvious reasons, as you get bigger this gets easier, but in and of itself it doesn't indicate a monopoly. But if you are dominant, it does become monopolistic behavior at some point (see: Ebooks). For some reason you seem to think monopolies exist only in relation to end consumers of products.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:49
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quote:But if you are dominant, it does become monopolistic behavior at some point Do you know any clear explanations for what makes Amazon a monopoly -- or a clear definition for what makes a monopoly -- that don't involve circular reasoning?
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Nov 9, 2018 14:52
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Cicero posted:So we know they're a monopoly & dominant because they're squeezing suppliers, and squeezing suppliers means they're a monopoly because of how dominant they are. Truly, circular reasoning is best reasoning. Their market share in online retail.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:53
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quote:Also, monopolistic behavior doesn't hinge on "exactly 50% market share in some randomly defined overarching segment". Anyway, that doesn't a monopoly make; the companies selling poo poo online are largely also selling stuff offline. Since the total retail market is, what, 10x as big as the online one, that means most of their suppliers are going to still be doing most of their selling offline.
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Nov 9, 2018 14:55
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TyroneGoldstein posted:It's pretty amazing how resistant people are to being shown how much of a cancer things like arbitrage and private equity can mutate into. I still cannot get over that the Republican Party managed to nominate Mitt loving Romney in 2012, four years after guys just like him played so fast and loose with structured finance that it almost deep sixed the entire goddamned world. Bain-style private equity and venture capital are completely different from securities trading, investment banks, and mortgage lending companies. You can like or dislike Bain and other venture capital/PE groups, but they were not the ones coming up with the new derivative products, extending consumer credit, or issuing mortgages.
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Nov 9, 2018 15:18
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Amazon inarguably is a big, powerful company, and arguably is a monopoly specifically for online retail, but even then, pushing for low prices from suppliers is not an example of abusing market power. An example of abusing market power w/r/t suppliers would be, say, forcing them to sign agreements saying that they can't sell to other competitors, or they can't sell to other competitors for as low a price as they give you. Just squeezing them really hard to give you low prices has never been understood as a company abusing monopoly position/market power, it needs to be doing the squeezing in a way that's anti-competitive. I think Intel was caught doing something conceptually similar, for example, except it was a supplier using their market power against retailers that time.
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Nov 9, 2018 16:17
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Cicero posted:An example of abusing market power w/r/t suppliers would be, say, forcing them to sign agreements saying that they can't sell to other competitors, or they can't sell to other competitors for as low a price as they give you. They absolutely did the latter with sellers on their platform and got slapped down for it in Germany, for example. Sellers weren't allowed to offer better prices than they were offering on Amazon on their own sites.
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Nov 9, 2018 16:23
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I don't think that's the same thing as saying they must offer lower prices on Amazon than other places, they could give each place the same price. Honestly though that sounds like the kind of agreement that should be made illegal in general, not just for companies with a certain level of market share.
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Nov 9, 2018 16:26
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If 50% of of a specific channel in a retail market is a monopoly, there’s a poo poo ton of companies you would consider a monopoly then. And those companies are way worse as they actually lock down their market vs hyper competitive retail.
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Nov 9, 2018 16:44
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Bain-style private equity and venture capital are completely different from securities trading, investment banks, and mortgage lending companies. Oh hey Leon, what's doin'?
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Nov 9, 2018 16:56
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TyroneGoldstein posted:Oh hey Leon, what's doin'? Nothing much. Just waiting for that 3-day weekend. Know thy enemy. Venture Capital and PE firms have lots of areas to criticize, but it was investment banks, mortgage lenders, credit agencies, and derivatives bundlers that caused 2008.
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Nov 9, 2018 17:00
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Love to come to the retail collapse thread to Stan for Amazon. If they're big enough to undercut prices putting others out of business and they treat workers like dirt, they're a trash company. Saying they're not technically is... Missing the point. SSJ_naruto_2003 fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Nov 9, 2018 |
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Nov 9, 2018 19:01
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