What Is Amazon?

The ever-growing retail supremacy of Amazon has contributed to the closing of 9300 stores in the U.S. in 2019. Has it or is it just a coincidence of a larger problem? Is this behemoth a monopoly as many have argued and it thus must be broken into smaller entities?

"I think we're just in the middle of a major transition in the retail space. Traditional brick and mortar stores for the most part haven't learned how to compete," stated Nathan. Amazon is a major time saver, delivering stuff to customers door instead of using limited time to go shopping.  

People still use some local businesses for certain things and some avoid the national big box stores in favor of Amazon. They like Amazon's lower prices on many things and free delivery to the front door. Return policies are generous and return shipping is almost always free with convenient pre-printed postage paid label. But other online retailers do the same thing.

"Amazon's customer service is amazing and they've given some customers things for free rather than make them return it. So I reward them with my business and I think that's just fine. I'd be foolish not to do it. I understand the concerns that smaller companies are unable to compete but it's a problem that I don't want to be responsible for solving. I usually prefer to buy clothing at brick and mortar stores however because I like to try things on. And I don't have to fight traffic and weather," added Shannah.

Some have argued that Amazon is not a monopoly at all. 

There are two types of monopolies, pure and natural.

A pure monopoly is an industry in which there is only one supplier of a product for which there are no close substitutes and in which it is very difficult or impossible for another firm to coexist. Sources of maintenance of such a monopoly include legal restrictions (U.S. postal service has a monopoly because Congress has given it one; that is not to say that there are not other mail delivery companies but they are much more expensive), patents (most pharmaceutical companies have patents on their drugs so, until the patent expires, they control a specific drug they develop thus they are a monopolist in that sense), control of scarce resource or input (De Beers control the diamond market), deliberately erected entry barriers into the business (start expensive lawsuits on trumped-up charges or spending outrageous amounts on advertising that rivals cannot match), and large sunk costs (airplane producing companies like Boeing in the U.S. and Airbus in Europe).

A natural monopoly is an industry in which advantages of large-scale production make it possible for a single firm to produce the entire output of the market at lower average cost than a number of smaller firms, each producing a smaller quantity.

Which one of these does Amazon fit into? It supplies and ships goods, connecting suppliers with customers in a novel way that does not require huge personal inventories. But it is still a behemoth company that controls a large swath of the market. So, is it a monopoly? Is it becoming one? Will it eventually put out of business ALL the little guys?

Another interesting issue is that a monopolist engages in price discrimination - charging higher prices for the same goods to customers who are less resistant to price increases, or failing to charge higher prices to customers whom it costs more to serve. (one example is national health care)  
Price discrimination can sometimes be damaging to the public interest, but at other times it can be beneficial. Some firms cannot survive without it, and price discrimination may even reduce prices to ALL customers if there are substantial economies of scale. (Amazon is definitely an economy of scale).

More questions to ponder of other products and service providers:

- Is the software industry a natural monopoly?

- Are Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube monopolies?

Some have argued that they are and should be broken up, particularly the social platform ones that drive the information highway.

Last but not least, why do we have Anti-trust laws at the Justice Department and are they doing their job?

What will happen to customer choice for goods and delivery charges once Amazon is the only one left delivering goods and the shipping costs skyrocket? As it is now, Amazon hires the postal service for weekend deliveries.

Not withstanding the wide variety of goods provided, stellar service, free returns and rapid deliveries, does Amazon fall under monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, or perfect competition?

Which Retailer Will Bite the Dust Next?

Another retailer bit the dust and filed for bankruptcy, Forever21. It’s not that people don’t have the money for cheap and disposable clothes with each season and don’t spend, we are a consumerist society and the economy is booming, with the lowest unemployment rate possible, 3.7 percent in August 2019.

But people are spending money more wisely and often from their computer keyboards and the comfort of their own homes, not having to spend precious time, wear and tear on cars, gasoline, or braving public transportation to shop.

Some even find great bargains in thrift stores, estate sales, and garage sales. Amazon is thriving thanks to low delivery costs provided among others, by the USPS. If such delivery costs should increase, then the online shopping habits of U.S. consumers may change away from Amazon.

People don’t want to take the time to go shopping in a mall anymore, or in grocery stores, as home deliveries for food are relatively cheap. Time can be spent on other activities because Americans are well off compared to most other nations and can afford to pay someone else to shop for their food. Few others in the world have that luxury; they also spend much more of their disposable incomes for food. Americans spend less than 15 percent of their after-tax earnings for groceries.

Fighting crowds and long lines for the cashier at the mall is a dauting proposition that most Americans have learned to dread and avoid. In large urban areas the malls have become the hang out place for foreign youth and sometimes their parents who congregate for their communities’ latest news and gossip as they did in the places they came from.

Americans have so many options that they have no idea how other people in the world live or shop. They don’t understand lines unless it’s lines to buy a concert ticket, a football ticket, Black Friday sales, or to get into a much-desired venue. Lining up for food or necessities is an alien concept to most Americans unless they are naturalized Americans like me who grew up under the communist boot and stood in lines every day in order to find food and other necessities to survive.

Who will be the last retailer standing when the war for the American pocketbook between them and online giants like Amazon intensifies?

Amazon will be one major winner, as it has already put out of business many small and large retailers which have not adapted well or fast enough to the Internet age.

Large retailers like Walmart are trying to keep up with Amazon but many of its customers are left out of online commerce as they do not have Internet access.

Costco’s e-commerce is thriving, having experienced “an increase of 20 percent year-over-year during the company’s second quarter 2019. Growth was seen in orders, profits and other metrics, in addition to digital sales.” People bought more “groceries, consumer electronics, hardware, health and beauty aids, tire and automotive, toys, and seasonal apparel.”

Many customers boycotted retailers like Target who made it their mission to force female customers and their children to use the same bathrooms with perverts of the opposite sex. That drove away many customers who did not feel safe in their stores. Some have not returned.

Boycotts of the Christian fast food chain, Chick-fil-a, have backfired, patronage of its restaurants has increased, and the fast food chain is expanding nationally and internationally.

There will be older Americans who would still want to try on clothing and feel the fabric before they buy. For them, ordering online is a technological inconvenience. They prefer to deal with a human being, but those human beings are scarcer in large department stores as they have cut back staff to the bare minimum.

Inventories and choice are down in all department stores. The associates who are available, hail from a foreign country where the concept of customer service does not exist, so customers leave the department store disgusted and disappointed with service. Even Nordstrom, long renowned for its customer service, has come down a few notches.

Higher end clothing and luxury items will always be available but most stores that will be in competition with Amazon will stock up essentials. Everybody needs household items, cleaning supplies, sheets, towels, and basics. In the makeup department, women will still prefer to try on things before they buy the right colors.

Many think that Walmart will probably survive because one cannot yet buy enough good groceries on Amazon. Perhaps if they refine their choices. But Walmart and Target are still cheaper for most consumers.

Eileen Johnson, who worked in the beauty industry, strongly believes that “cosmetics is succeeding online. The department stores now poach their in-store business by offering better cosmetics deals and gifts online. People come to the counter, try items, take pictures of what they want, and then order online. What is currently thriving and what will be the future are Sephora and Ulta. These are unique experiences that don’t require employee intervention. The downside is that no one is knowledgeable anymore on products, but the millennials and younger generations use YouTube and cosmetic blogs to get their info anyway.”

The old boutiques and seamstress style shops might make a comeback for the very affluent. Perhaps the more enterprising and talented among us will dust off their sewing machines and start making their own clothes again. With such a possibility, fabrics, sewing patterns and essentials would make a comeback as they were quite common in the 1980s America. Some small online retailers are already offering services where they can measure their customers for the proper-fitting shirts and blue jeans.

On the other hand, if we develop into the one-party state that we are slated to become, when equal pay will kick in, only the approved attire with limited choices and colors will be sold. With equal wages, few will afford nice things, just the elites in power. The rest will only need one dress, trousers, a few shirts, a couple of uniforms, one pair of shoes or sandals, and one pair of boots, no purse or makeup and other frillies.

In communist regimes like China, people who ran afoul of the “behavioral modification” program called social scoring of the Communist Party, have already been prevented from flying. An embarrassing ring tone warns others of the presence among them of blacklisted Chinese consumers who are “bad” and “untrustworthy” as defined by the chairman of the Communist Party. They are on an undesirables list of 13 million Chinese consumers so far. https://tinyurl.com/y26g6g5m)

In a totalitarian, central government-run economy, most income will be spent for taxes, survival basics such as rent, utilities, food, bikes, and monthly fares for bus/train. There will be no disposable income for extras like entertainment, vacations, and luxury goods as the economic police would not encourage such bourgeois accumulation of goods.

Being Bogart

Our children's book is available in paperback at Amazon and other booksellers. It is intended for children of all ages.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1790806240?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Virginia, Fairfax County, Education, and Trailers

Virginia is an interesting educational and political study in how to destroy a formerly well-off state with tolerance and multi-culturalism dictated by politicians from Richmond and Washington, D.C. It is a microcosm of the civilization suicide that is taking place in Europe.

Virginia is not very far behind the Seattle School District that sent a letter recently to teachers asking them to bless Muslim students in Arabic during Ramadan. Virginia obsesses over accommodating those who will not give an inch in their quest to be a specially protected class.

The Guardian wrote that “Virginia students learn in trailers while the state offers Amazon huge tax breaks.” And the unhappy teachers went on strike in January 2019 to express their dissatisfaction with what they saw as low pay, $9,000 less than the national average, while the state of Virginia was so generous to Amazon. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/27/virginia-teachers-strike-amazon-tax-breaks?CMP=share_btn_fb The Washington Post published data from the National Education Association that the average K-12 teacher earned $58,353 in 2016-2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/03/05/how-much-or-little-teachers-earn-state-by-state/?noredirect=on

According to the Guardian, “more than 22,000 students in Fairfax county [the third richest county in America] receive their education in cheaply constructed plywood trailers, often with visible signs of green mold, like those parked next to the baseball fields next to McClean High School.”

McClean is a rich area in NOVA where the average homes cost over a million dollars. The property tax base to help fund public schools is thus very large.

Quoting school board member Ryan McElveen, the Guardian wrote, “Our staff often likes to say that Fairfax Public schools is the largest trailer dealer on the east coast. We own 820 trailers, more than any other entity on the entire east coast.”

Gov. Ralph Northam proposed to increase the education budget by approximately $270 million. Teachers objected to Northam’s proposed $750 million expenditure to lure Amazon to build its second HQ in Virginia, while classrooms were overcrowded, necessitating the use of trailers.

Why is there such an overcrowding in northern Virginia’s schools?  It is certainly not because Americans are having more babies, far from it, it is because illegal aliens have so many anchor babies that we are educating for free.

Educators are the first to push the liberal agenda of flooding the country with illegals whose children must be educated in their own native language, often dialects that require financial investing in specialized translators, teachers, textbooks, classes, and special tutoring, at the expense of American children who must learn in trailers and make do with less.

These new illegal arrivals must be also be fed at taxpayers’ expense and illegal families must be sheltered in welfare housing and provided with everything they may need to survive, including free and expensive healthcare.

Some teachers believe that giving tax breaks to Amazon is wrong when they could teach so many more illegal aliens’ children instead and house their families at the expense of the Virginian taxpayers.

Local and very vocal liberals in Fairfax county, who push for more school funding, argue that “building new schools could actually create more jobs than bringing in Amazon.” More schools mean more teachers and a lower teacher-to-student ratio argues Lee Carter, a Democrat Socialist state delegate from Manassas.

Northern Virginia (NOVA) with its progressive and corrupt political atmosphere is the reason why the entire state of Virginia is turning socialist. Republicans barely control the House of Delegates by only one delegate and the Senate by two Senators.

The NOVA population is composed mostly of federal government workers from Washington, D.C. and an ever-growing and very large contingent of illegal and legal aliens who vote Democrat as a block because they want to turn Virginia into the socialist paradise they’ve fled from.

Fairfax County Public School has adopted highly controversial curricula on sex education, sidestepping the important role of parents to teach their own children about human sexuality.  FCPS agenda was transgenderism and co-ed bathrooms.

The state education budget and local property taxes fund the public schools but is the money being used judiciously?

FCPS, with its budget of $3 billion annually, focuses more on globalism, with graduates who have “…attributes of Communicator, Collaborator, Ethical and Global Citizen, Creative and Critical Thinker, and Goal-Directed and Resilient Individual.”

Next year’s proposed budget increase of $117 million will “provide excellence and equity, hiring more staff to teach 1,000 fewer students.” According to Arthur Purves, “FCPS has a Chief Equity Officer but not much equity.” https://thebullelephant.com/Fairfax-county-public-schools-excellence-for-a-few/

You Tube Book Review of my Amazon best seller book, U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy

Political book review on YouTube of my best seller book, U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy
http://youtu.be/-uIO50d61Yo