jpao79

Not sure if when you say CEO, if you are talking about a CEO with his individual personal stock holdings or for the company itself. If its the former, it feels like Mark Cuban did something of the sort with his Yahoo stock with his own personal holdings in Yahoo.

https://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Cuban-save-his-wealth-fro...

My thought is that if you like to see them inline/unified, then you could head directly to amazon-marketplace.com where they are all commingled like they currently are.

Amazon should (and still can while there's still time before some major negative social media event) split their website, reviews, search and fulfillment inventory to make it clear what you are getting/who you are buying from.

amazon.com -> the original trusted amazon, fulfilled by amazon with strict inventory management

marketplace.amazon.com -> wild west'e-bay style', 'get what you get and don't get upset' amazon

[Addition based on comment] Or maybe amazon-marketplace.com to further differentiate it. It'd be similar to how Netflix split into netflix.com and dvd.com (although I think they should have branded it netflix-dvd.com for branding purposes).

I think what's also interesting is that now that Microsoft is awake with Nadella at the helm and presenting a viable alternative, will Amazon's cloud business start losing marketshare.

If I were say, Procter and Gamble/Clorox (Consumer Staples), Macy's (Consumer Discretionary), Visa/Fedex (E-Commerce), Aetna (Healthcare) if I were going to look at options for cloud, would I host my enterprise on Amazon who is actively trying compete with me and provide the end customer with alternatives to my product/services? Or would I go with a vertical pure play cloud services provider like Microsoft.

Yes, in someways it feels like if Visa claimed that it handles 99.99% of all online retailing and showing revenue numbers based on the entire retail sales transaction and not just on the 1.5% processing fee.

To a certain extent, Amazon's retail presence is 68% Marketplace (from the article). Marketplace is really just a very high scale website plus very high scale order fulfillment which nets an analogous 6%-15% fee for listing, inventory storage and shipping/returns.

And on top of that, what happens when the bricks and mortar store goes out of business and you have nowhere to go when Amazon is not sending it to you and "need it urgently".

Sometimes I shop at the local BestBuy to delay that inevitable day when Amazon is the only thing available.

The environmentalist in me is thinking a single billionaire's carbon impact is probably lower than a 1,000 millionaire's carbon impact. A single billionaire (say Warren Buffet) has a consumption of probably $200,000 a year with the remainder held in investments. A 1,000 millionaire's consumption is probably also $100,000 a year, with the remainder held in investments. So the 1,000 millionaires have basically about 500x the environmental impact than a single billionaire.

Actually maybe a well insulated house could be considered a "thermal battery". If you look at the CAISO reports, a significant chunk of the duck curve is related to heating/cooling. If you had a super well insulated house, you could do the heating/cooling during the day.

Instead today, people fire up the AC on overdrive when they get home in the evening to cool/heat the place down/up. What happens if your Nest could just fired it up at 3pm while the sun was still shining.

In fact the opposite is done today to take advantage of early morning peak pricing, commercial buildings cool/heat at 3am to get optimal energy pricing.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/retired-cpuc-co...

More fair points. And, yes at the individual level, I agree, a higher wage, trickle up approach seems better/fairer than a trickle down approach.

However, at the macro level, the environmentalist in me worries, at the extreme end if wealth really was fully distributed and everyone was living like Richard Branson, Imelda Marcos, etc. with multiple houses in every city (each with a 4 bedroom layout, TVs and wet bar in every room and an SUV in every garage), a yacht, a private jet guzzles premium fuel and a private island, the environmental ramifications would be disastrous.

Fair point! I'm not an economist by training, just a hobby/armchair economist :).

That said, this economist that some HN'er recommended seems to think earnings are strong and much of the buyback is funded by repatriated money if I understand him correctly.

http://blog.yardeni.com/2018/06/buyback-bonanza.html

I agree with the other commenters on this subthread that buybacks are most often times simply a more tax efficient way of handing back profits to shareholders. I think it's a good thing that companies share profit gains with shareholders. At a certain point, well run and well focused companies can saturate their market domain but still have amazing fundamentals.

You have to ask yourself, particularly as a shareholder but also a member of society, do you want the company to extend into other industries where they could not only be over-extending themselves beyond their core competency but also over-exposing themselves to macro-economics, geo-politics and anti-trust issues.

Do we want all companies to chase monopolies in multiple domains like Amazon? Should Verizon/Comcast/etc. use its monopoly profits from telecom to go after media, then cloud computing and then conquer consumer goods and healthcare or should it just return profits to share holders? If the money goes back to the shareholder, then the shareholder can go find the category leader in those other domains and invest it more wisely.

That said buybacks can definitely be manipulated by some management teams to game their compensation, which is a definitely bad thing.

Saw this the other day. Seems like it would make sense. https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/03/google-clouds-coo-departs-...

There is likely some truth to this as it encourages new housing stock to be built. I also suspect that it does lead to a more sustainable long term growth that's less likely to have major sell offs since owners will hold onto their property to maintain their tax advantage. I openly wonder if this is the reason that California housing, particularly in the Bay Area, did not implode during the dotcom bubble.

As a side note, I've often pondered what would have the outcome if Subway had 'leaned in' and actually promoted its "50% chicken-50% soy but tastes the same as 100% chicken" as an environmentally sustainable and healthier option instead of trying to hide it and then getting caught.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/food-scientists-weig...

So some random thoughts on the case for this time its actually different are:

1.) The internet and computing has increased the flow of information. Investments in data mining and data science by the Fed lets it make better decisions and test stuff iteratively and react to changes faster. Companies can also track inventory in a more controlled manner and not build too much too fast. Employees can find prevailing wage information easier to find better, more productive jobs. Home buyers can see how overvalued their houses are relative to other cities.

The internet and computing is enabling a much higher control loop (a.k.a. a steeper gradient descent toward optimal economic output based on the production needs for the current population).

2.) Steady reduction in the reliance on oil and gas. Much of the crazy inflation in past cycles was due to oil and gas shortages.

Would love to get opinions and more cases for why its different.

Yeah kind like a super duper high end vending machine at locations where there might be a person that normally is tasked with doing other stuff could do minimal burger robot maintenance (i.e. refill, clean at the end of the day, etc.). Like at a gas station, corner mom and pop grocery store, wework office lobby, etc.

Japanese Vending Machine Unboxing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Z80J3jOao

I think what's kind of interesting is if this actually makes it easier to start a restaurant. Assuming at some point, some food robot maker steps up and starts selling the robot itself to independent restauranteurs, instead of selling hamburgers to end consumers, do these robots put the power back into the hands of the small business/restaurant owner?

I have to imagine a big complication in starting an independent restaurant is the overhead of hiring/managing/supporting employees (i.e. wait staff, cooks, dishwashers, etc.). A large employee base probably requires a large franchise with economies of scale to distribute the cost of centralized HR over many restaurants.

Without that overhead, entrepreneurial restauranteurs can focus on differentiating the food, the location(s) of the restaurant and the ambiance.

Ah - maybe a better way to phrase it is, if Harvard is pitching itself as a place a person can learn to lead global teams, set optimal global government policy, guide diverse groups toward a common solution, then the student body should probably not just be high test scorers pulled from high test affluent suburbs. It should be pulled from a variety of sources with a diverse set of socioeconomic, academic, artistic and cultural experiences.

I think that's actually a secret of Silicon Valley. If Apple needs to ask how a UI should be setup to handle the nuances from a certain country, they can go ask a person from that country. It'd be much harder trying to do that in Asia or even Europe.

There could be a case that it is not just for photographs but it is actually the marketing pitch for the value proposition of Harvard over, as the Tyler Cowen mentions, UC Irvine.

If you are trying to train and prepare a student to lead global teams, set global government policy, guide diverse groups toward a common solution, etc., you will need exposure to a diverse set of ideas and a diverse future network of fellow alumni to debate ideas with during your formative undergraduate years.

Otherwise, might as well save the $0.25 million in tuition and indeed go to UCI instead because otherwise it really is the same lectures, reading material and tests!

Adapted by CGP Grey for people who don't read:

The Rules for Rulers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

For better or worse, I think a good analogy is making a movie in Hollywood versus anywhere else. Yes you could make your movie in New Hampshire, but it'd be that much more inertia to find a screenwriter, to cast the talent, find the crew and get funding, etc.

And for tech startups, where time is of the essence and the secret recipe for making a blockbuster tech IPO is somewhat ephemeral, why risk it if the opportunity really is as amazing as you are telling the VCs and LPs.

Another aspect is a lot of startups have the back-up plan to get acqui-hired by FANG or Cisco which are located in SF/Bay Area, so it make sense to have the key talent on the team prepared for that eventual integration/docking with the mothership.

I've always thought it would be cool to create a site which matched people living on a dime trying to do something interesting (art, tech, music, ...) with cities/suburbs (i.e. urban development organizations) looking to diversify and grow a culture scene. Like Sacramento/Gilroy/Detroit/Yakima.

Sort of like an Airbnb but matching cities/towns and culture makers wanting permanent, low cost housing.

Agreed. Caching the video to a Netflix DVR would likely only be guaranteed to work with Netflix's own content. But isn't creating all its own content Netflix's plan?

Yes, it would be like a Netflix box (maybe branded under their Roku brand name) that's similar to Tivo. A Tivo Bolt Premier can be had for $299 with a 1TB drive.

The key is signing a lower cost deal with Verizon/ATT LTE or Dish Satellite to do some sort of the multicast broadcasting similar to Over the Air broadcasting but over the internet. Or do unicast transmissions but during off peak hours and blast it out over the LTE/Satellite network over the span of a week between the hours of 1AM to 5AM. The Netflix Top 100 is probably like 95% of what people are watching.

That way not everyone is congested from 5PM to 11PM every night and the mobile operators have additional revenue from existing wireless/satellite infrastructure.

What would seem to make sense for Netflix would be use more HDD/SSD caching of videos, similar to how a DVR for Tivo works. There really isn't a huge reason to live stream Netflix movie/show content. It's not live video.

The Netflix subscriber user could download up to 30 or 40 Netflix shows in advance from their Netflix queue (sort of like the original 'Netflix by mail' queue) over LTE at midnight under some sort of LTE multi-cast deal with AT&T or Verizon. Or maybe lossless transmission over standard POTS/DSL or Dish Satellite.

Actually after you reach a certain point with respect to financial independence (which I am sure Dean Kamen has done), it might be more rewarding to actually generate really amazing prototypes of what could be done and then let other people put the actual money on the line to make it a reality. Then in your own mind, you get to claim thought leadership on 'high mobility carless cities' when you are reflecting back on your life without any actual financial risk and go about creating the next prototype for some completely unrelated industry.

Reminds me of this article:

Google and Facebook contribute zero economic value. That's a big problem for trade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/10/2...

I found this PBS Newshour report that was inspiring:

Job training and community college put coal miners on a new path https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/job-training-community-col...

The question is, is it to optimistic? As someone who has never been to the region first hand, I'd be curious if it is too idealized.

Ok true. Just would add that high housing costs are actually the sum of asinine zoning laws + high labor costs and that high labor costs are due to high housing costs. :)

Actually its driven by the need for localized labor and unfortunately due to high housing costs, labor can't afford to live in downtown SF/LA and so a lot of time is wasted getting to the job site from the outer suburbs.