The brutal business practices of Amazon

The writer Rob K. Henderson has covered the hypocrisy of the upper and upper-middle classes in several of his pieces on what he calls &quot;luxury beliefs&quot;. The case of Amazon def. fits into a similar theme.<p>You can broach the topic with uppercrust folks (without even really trying) of whether supporting Walmart by shopping there is conscionable or not, and you&#x27;ll get one set of responses&#x2F;reactions. Meanwhile, it&#x27;s nowhere near socially unacceptable to talk about all the stuff you order from Amazon, despite Amazon appearing to be by and large worse in its compensation&#x2F;treatment of its employees and its effect on the economy and the environment—all things that aspiring bougie types ostensibly profess to rank highly in their meditations when it comes to Walmart.

Traditional business value comes from some innovation, and a lot of execution&#x2F;logistics delivering the innovation. Logistics for product companies being manufacturing, and sales&#x2F;delivery.<p>But now most small product companies have outsourced production on the &quot;input&quot; side, and outsourced logistics on the &quot;output&quot; side.<p>Which leaves harsher more direct competition for their innovation core, since that is a fraction of the original business and more easily copied.<p>High componentization of any economy ratches up competitive pressure exponentially, whether it was Amazon, or a collection of service companies offloading the downstream logistics.<p>But since Amazon is protecting itself by doing the opposite, by de-componentizing, i.e. preferencing and tying different sales and delivery logistics services to each other, that centralized leverage is going to squeeze small product companies even more.<p>Especially those that don&#x27;t have a unique manufacturing process, unique branding, or some other differentiating moat.

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How does Amazon operate in countries outside the US. Does Amazon apply the same anti-competitive business practices? Is the workplace equally cut-throat? Just curious.

Whatever happened with the &quot;false or perjurious&quot; testimony at the beginning of the article? Nothing?

&gt; Dana Mattioli reveals how the company systematically stifles criticism, squeezes out competitors, and even pits its own employees against one another. “People tend not to last,” she says, “because it’s very aggressive and it can be bruising.”<p>Wow! Wait till she does an investigation of professional sports!

I was Amazon for quite some time, and also outside of Amazon trying to compete against them. The company is both decentralized and has a culture of delivering. While that sometimes has unintended consequences, the people there are quite aware that they can sometimes be an elephant in a china shop. There are practices in place to rein that in. Nonetheless, investigations like this book hardly ever give a balanced view.

Can I read this on Kindle?