Monopoly, Abundance and Fulfillment for Jeff Bezos and Amazon with Help from DOJ

The US Department of Justice has announced that it will block a huge proposed merger deal between American Airlines and US Airways that would have given them almost a monopoly in the country, free to do what they want with prices and services. In this case, there’s no doubt that Attorney General Eric Holden is acting to protect the consumer. 

But it’s not always so simple. A month ago the Department of Justice took on and won against Apple and five of the largest publishers for colluding to keep book prices higher. In this case, publishers, including giant Barnes and Noble, weren’t colluding to screw the consumer, they were desperately trying to stay alive. It’s no news to anybody that publishers are struggling to compete against the ebook industry, and in particular against Amazon. Barnes and Noble recently lost its CEO who it isn’t going to replace. Pretty soon it will probably break up. 

There’s only one winner and that’s Amazon. Anybody who reads loves Amazon. It’s fabulous that they drive prices down so you can have a whole library and pay very little for it. What people who read but don’t write don’t know about Amazon is that as a writer you get your biggest royalty – 70% - if you keep your price below $9.99. Anything above that and you only get 35%.

Everybody knows about books like Shades of WTF as a friend of mine called it. The author could have sold them for a few bucks apiece and still made a fortune, and that’s Amazon’s argument for keeping prices low. You sell more and there are no big megalomaniac control freak publishers telling you your book isn’t good enough. It costs you nothing to format it and load it onto Amazon. Anything you sell is money for jam. 

But here’s the real catch; Amazon doesn’t market your books. They leave that to the authors. Who, because they make so little per book, are desperate to make something. And bingo, Amazon has free marketing. No wonder Jeff Bezos has such a huge fortune.

Most writers who start out think that marketing on the internet will be a breeze but it isn’t, because there’s no barrier to entry and you’re literally competing against millions trying to sell something. Most people who have succeeded with selling ebooks advise writers to give their first one away for free. So what, you say? It didn’t cost you anything. Apart from the time that it took you to write. Very few non-writers who love to read take that into account. That writers often have to work for nothing so that readers can read.

So from the writer’s side of the fence, for once the big giants colluding was a good thing. It helped to stabilise prices for writers and keep some reality alive. Ebooks are always cheaper than paper books, but at least there’s something to correlate prices against. If paper books disappear Amazon will have total control over the whole book industry. World-wide. Scary thought.

Harder for writers? Definitely. Pretty good for people who know how to manipulate the internet marketing-wise, regardless of the quality of what they’ve written – which actually is nothing new, so it’s barely worth mentioning. Great for readers? Maybe. For now. Until Jeff Bezos’ lust for power consumes him. Who knows what he’ll do with prices then. Wonderful for Amazon shareholders? Oh yes. For now. Until the book industry or Amazon implodes. So the Justice Department’s decision in this case actually worked to enable a monopoly that will become a stranglehold in the book industry.

Consumer protection is supposed to protect the consumer in the short and the long term. But if it leaves the manufacturer so exposed that manufacturing either stops or produces worse and worse quality, then nobody is protected. Writers need to live, a fact that anybody who doesn’t write but loves to read happily ignores. The harder it gets for writers to earn, the more they’re forced to write highly marketable but utterly unoriginal crap.  And that's good for readers how?

Amazon’s global monopoly doesn’t bode well in the long term for readers, and for writers it spells slave labor on a global scale.Thanks a lot, Jeff. BTW, have fun with the Washington Post.

Honor Amongst Thieves? Bloomberg News Reporters Cross the Line

 

It’s not often that something happens on Wall Street that should and could make news but gets mentioned casually in passing instead of being thoroughly investigated. But that seems to have happened in the reporting about the latest accusations leveled at Bloomberg financial data and news by public relation chiefs Jake Siewert of Goldman Sachs and Joe Evangelista of JP Morgan Chase.

The accusations are that Bloomberg reporters have been crossing the line drawn in the contract that states they may not use information gleaned from the terminals for reporting. Accusations surfaced when a Bloomberg reporter noticed that a Goldman executive hadn’t logged in for a few days. He called the Hong Kong office to ask what had happened to the executive. When news of it got to Siewert he called Evangelista, who said the same thing had been happening to JP Morgan’s execs.

Bloomberg investigated, admitted that reporters were crossing the line and breaching the terminals contract and agreed to put a stop to it. One would imagine lawsuits and huge press would have ensued but nothing seems to have really happened. It’s a bit of a damp squib, news-wise.

What hasn’t been explained is that the contract allowed reporters a limited period during which they could access help desks and log ins. If they couldn’t use that information why were they allowed to access it?

Much more interesting, though, is that this isn’t the first time executives have complained about reporters crossing the line. So when Siewert took the latest complaint seriously, some executives – reported on by the New York Times on condition of anonymity – admitted to having tried to use the breach to bargain down the price of the terminals! It’s blackmail. Soft blackmail, maybe, no threats, no bad guys, no anonymous notes, but blackmail nevertheless. In a country where people sue for the most tenuous reasons and even win, that nothing came of this is pretty extraordinary. Honor amongst thieves, I guess.

That anybody in Wall Street would be accusing anybody else of crossing the line is amusing. That execs would even openly admit to indulging in blackmail is testament to how much Wall Street believes itself to be above the law. That’s still amusing but in a rather sinister kind of way. 

What’s puzzling is that these two aspects of the same company exist as bedfellows. There are many complaints that Bloomberg News reports destructively on Wall Street goings on, yet Bloomberg financial data terminals are everywhere. And this despite that they’re by far the most expensive at $20,000 apiece. 

Maybe it’s explained by the fact that Bloomberg News is part of Bloomberg L.P., a multinational mass media limited partnership that’s based in the city of New York. Revenue in 2011 was $7.6 billion. Global revenue for the financial data market was $16 billion. No wonder nobody really challenges Bloomberg. And with all those connections, why would they have to bother reducing the price of their terminals? For once Wall Street is on the receiving end. Of a corporation that  probably controls Wall Street. Which pretty much boils down to one man. Michael Bloomberg, the 7th wealthiest man in the US, owns 88% of Bloomberg L.P.

 

President Obama Calls for an End to War and Closure of Guantanamo

How long is it since a US president openly promoted peace instead of war? War has become part of the American psyche, almost. The right wing political machine, with its super-powerful media, has long stirred up paranoia and terror so that false premises would be overlooked when used as justification for war.  

The military industrial complex has achieved its object, and Eisenhower’s prediction has come to pass. The whole world is drunk on war and America has heavily contributed to feeding the addiction.

But on Thursday President Obama, speaking at the National Defense University, said the terrorist threat no longer requires America to be at war. He acknowledged that torture has been used on prisoners, that Guantanamo flouts international law, and expressed regret that civilians have been killed by drones.  

“This war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.” He spoke rationally, as he always does, about how the terror threat has been reduced so that it is now where it was pre 9/11. There’s no more rationale for war.

President Obama has worked so solidly and tirelessly to restore America to a country that has a chance of surviving and flourishing again, and to one that the world can respect. He's been trashed from every direction and on trumped up, irrational charges. Everything he does is cast in an evil light. Right wing politicians and media prey on paranoia in the electorate. Dust storms of irrational fear and mindless hostility are stirred up.  

He’s come up against obstacle after obstacle in a Congress whose only aim is to destroy him in the eyes of the electorate and unseat him and the Democratic Party. And maintain the current status quo that is strangling the middle class. 

But he's never let it thrust him off course. He’s kept his head even though he’s been in the eye of the storm that’s been driven to a large degree, I suspect, by racism, for 5 years. It’s nothing short of heroic. 

That he speaks out now about the need to stop war in the face of the military industrial complex's power is incredible. It shows what a courageous man he is. When America stops creating wars on false premises for the aggrandizement of that shadowy group, and leads the way with policies that promote a healthy middle class it affects the whole world. World peace becomes a possibility not a dumb dream.  

All the money spent on war can be used for furthering the prosperity of the American middle class, helping the poor out of the gutter, renovating infrastructure that's falling apart all over the place. Creating a renaissance. Instead of a war machine that justifies maiming, torturing and killing foreigners and Americans and puts fortunes in the pockets of those who profit from manufacturing weapons of destruction.  

Imagine if Obama had everybody working with him? This country could truly be a shining light in the world. All that beautiful creativity and entitlement could be put to good use. If any country could change the world on its own, it’s America. 

That Obama has continued along his path to this point and with such clear and rational purpose, is the greatest inspiration in my life and I’m sure of the lives of many. Whether he achieves his objective this time isn’t what makes him a hero. It’s that he works towards it unfailingly despite obstacles. He teaches all of us in the world how not to give up. How not to let those who try to bring you down get the better of you. How not to give in to despair. 

In a lot of ways, he remains an unsung hero. He ought to get the next Nobel Peace Prize. I can’t think of anybody else in the world who deserves it more than he does. He doesn't only lead America, he leads the world. Not because the US is a super-power but because he's a great man.

Google's New Search Tools Invade Your Privacy Even More

Once again Google has been working hard to do us all a favor – this time to save us the time and energy of thinking for ourselves. They’ve introduced new search tools, which, when you ask a question, predict what your next question will be and give you the answer to that too. They already do it, but they've refined it now. None of this of course allows for any original thinking and is predicated on the assumption that we’re all the same.

So Jack, who lives in LA, has a wife and two children, is an upper middle income architect who owns his own home, may ask Google how to bake a chocolate cake. I might ask the same question. I’m not an architect, I don’t live in LA and I don’t have two children or a wife. Will Google know the difference between us? If we’ve both got gmail accounts it might, because its algorithms mine the information in everybody’s gmail correspondence, and blogger blogs. From which a profile is created that’s updated every second you’re blogging or corresponding with somebody via gmail. Probably via other email hosts as well. It’s common knowledge that Google will commit dirty deeds if it can get away with it.

I Googled the question ‘how do I bake chocolate cake’ just to see the results. Can’t do any comparing here since I don’t know a Jack from LA. Google’s search results on the first page are all about, yes, baking a chocolate cake. Down at the bottom of the page, I see ‘how to bake a chocolate cornflake cake’ ‘no bake chocolate cake’. Clearly Google thinks I love cornflakes and don’t really like baking.

For now it’s just guesswork, but when that tool kicks in… And people are worried about big government big brother tactics? Big government has nothing on Google. Unless of course – OMG – Google is big government. Which isn't as absurd as you'd hope it would be given how much influence corporate interest has on state policies the world over.

Google’s PR drive with their new tools is that they’re helping people to become smarter. By spoonfeeding them information they haven’t directly asked for. What an absurd rationale. Ironically, big brother tactics by governments actually promote entitlement empowerment, because people have to think for themselves to find ways to elude being spied on. And they do. And they protest, and communicate with each other, and use their brains in all sorts of creative ways. But Google’s so-called ‘empowerment tool’ is a way of deadening people’s capacity for creative thinking altogether. 

But then that’s marketing for you. Extraordinary understanding of psychology they have - to be able to create an image of themselves as being heavily invested in individuality and creativity. Mind you, maybe they don't have such a great understanding after all. There’s one enormous aspect of being human that they've overlooked. Or just don't know anything about because - well, because they're all clones. It's that some people can actually think for themselves. For myself I’m happy to say, what Google never gets is that I don’t give a damn darling about affiliate marketers’ versions of how to bake a chocolate cake, or their cheap diversionary attempts to draw me to another site trying to sell me something that has nothing to do with chocolate cake. 

Nor does Google take into account that when I want to know something I know how to ask the specific question, and I don’t like somebody trying to predict what I want or what I need. In fact, I'm likely to discount any of those results out of pure annoyance.

And all the work they put into creating a profile they can market to is a waste of time, since I ignore all advertising. If I want to buy something I look for it. They're welcome to try and use that info against me, but it will never work. Furthermore, if what Google gives me doesn't meet my need I'll get frustrated with Googledom and try another route altogether. I guess they could start putting anarchistic sites in front of me. Which could lead to being targetting by gun dealers and right wing organizations. Then the FBI and the CIA could get wind of me and arrest me and… 

I wonder if there’s an architect named Jack living in LA, with two kids and a wife who’s thinking along the same lines as I am? Catch us if you can, Google. And here's a recipe that will never bake: Google + respect for the right to privacy.