Jeff Bezos and Amazon demonstrated the hopeless inadequacy of the typical distribution chain for products in America and traditional retail has been gasping like a Brontosaurus going down for the last time. No-one particularly misses retail since the salespeople were often snot-nosed high school kids even or especially their own parents didn't want to see.
Note: we do miss Radio Shack and Sears, however, and maybe because they're two places snot-nosed high school kids would never go.
There are two ways to deal with an unhappy Brontosaurus: let it eat Louisiana or just put a bullet in its head. The Rockhouse preference is to let the unhappy Brontosaurus eat Louisiana and then put a bullet in its head so it at least dies happy. People in Louisiana won't ever be happy because, well, they live in fuckin' Louisiana.
Not surprisingly, the answer is different in Washington and Wall Street since their belief regarding the best ways to keep a Brontosaurus alive is to file an anti-trust suit against the meteorite which will blow them into smithereens. (RT: Amazon’s antitrust issue comes under scrutiny in DC & beyond)
© Rick Wilking / Reuters
Amazon’s desire to spread its empire far and wide is facing pushback from two power-centers in the US. Legislators in Washington, DC and moneymakers on Wall Street are weary of the company’s new plans.
Amazon has announced that it will buy Whole Foods Market for a whopping $13.7 billion. The popular online company also has other plans to expand in the near future and has already announced another service called Amazon Wardrobe, a service that allows consumers to try clothing on before they buy it.
“There’s a concern Amazon might be getting too big,” antitrust expert, Michael Carrier, of Rutgers University School of Law said, according to Bloomberg. “The odds are the Whole Foods acquisition will go through, but these political winds will create a bit of a fight.”
That sound you hear in the background is the Walton family for Wal-Mart licking Washington's backside like they're Olympic champions. Washington listens because Wal-Mart represents a significant number of the fake jobs in America and it will swing the Washington charts quite a bit if those people are out looking for work somewhere else.
Washington's logic in such things is clear since they own destroying the world's finest phone company (i.e. AT&T) and they also turned cable into such a munge of monkeys and misfits just about any other country has faster cable systems than in America. The consequence of that is you can get a different deal on a cellphone on every block in the country ... but all of the deals suck.
ML never used a cellphone all that much and she has been surprised when the calls just cut off for no apparent reason. CM is more of a veteran of the mindless electronica of the new age but he still gets a little surprised as well. Such things never happened with an AT&T landline so there was only one answer: break it up.
Washington's inordinate fascination with capitalism made the people in power rich but it didn't do a damn thing for improved service.
That takes us back up to Amazon since the outfit clearly represents evolution in action. It works better, it costs less, and the people like it. What answer is more obvious than to tie a boulder around Amazon's neck to sink it in the ocean. It's the Washington way.
The most the Rockhouse is willing to accept is Amazon could be mandated to explain the process by which their business works such that other companies may adopt a similar process if they have the initiative, the gumption, and the cojones do get it done rather than whinging and whining to Washington which is a town filled to the brim with whingers and whiners.
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