[HN Gopher] Amazon documents reveal company's strategy to dodge ...
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Amazon documents reveal company's strategy to dodge India's
regulators
Author : chanmad29
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-02-17 15:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| suyash wrote:
| Amazon being shady with government what's new. It's a monopoly
| and only care about itself.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| I am not sure why Amazon should care about anyone other than
| itself. To make profits though they have to serve an ordinary
| blok like me.
| suyash wrote:
| we all know what happens when companies sacrifice everything
| for profit - not good!
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| There is absolutely no evidence that Amazon is a monopoly in
| India, Flipkart is their main competitor and e-commerce is one
| of the hottest markets in India we increasing competition from
| all sides. There is no evidence that Amazon will make any
| profits either from India for foreseeable future.
|
| Indian people should ask why Indian government is creating laws
| that need "evasion", that too from a massively successful, well
| respected and very innovative company, Amazon wants to invest
| in India and India needs to change its laws if needed to
| welcome more investment and more competition.
|
| Perhaps it is the indian government that is wrong here?
| bigphishy wrote:
| But the question remains unanswered, is this behavior we should
| expect or reward when it is one of the world's largest and most
| influential actors?
| teatree wrote:
| This article looks at data without understanding the reason
| behind it.
|
| Many educated Indians choose to buy from these 33 Amazon owned /
| equity linked sellers because of the experience they offer - odds
| of receiving wrong/damaged product is low, and in case where that
| happens the return / replacement process is hassle free.
|
| Amazon has brought price discovery to many product categories in
| India. For expensive products I check Amazon's ClouldTail /
| Appario seller's price before making a purchase from even local
| vendors, keep that as a reference and negotiate.
|
| Eg: Every computer component, laptop has a ridicules MRP (Maximum
| Retail Price) in India. A RAM module sold at INR 5500 has an MRP
| of INR 20,500.
|
| The sad part is even companies like AMD collude with distributors
| in cheating end customers.
|
| Instead of fixing problems which makes citizens flock to few
| sellers at Amazon every Indian government irrespective of
| political party chooses to appease the voting block of traders
| union - who are nothing but middle men making prices expensive to
| the end consumer.
|
| A country grows when builders and innovators contribute to the
| economy, not leeches who don't even understand what they are
| selling. Everyday I lose a little hope of India ever becoming a
| developed country, we have our priorities backwards.
| bruceb wrote:
| Anyone who has purchased an electronic or smaller household
| appliance on Amazon.in would know Cloudtail made up a significant
| portion of over all sales.
|
| The Govt didn't needed a multi year report to know it wasn't
| small sellers making most sales. Some in position of power
| benefited.
|
| Side note, Even with Walmart's purchase of Flipkart a couple
| years ago, Amazon.in always seems to be cheaper. Also there is
| huge gap in reviews and review quality between the sites. Walmart
| still playing catch up 3 years later
| [deleted]
| cccc4alll wrote:
| Amazon's initial business advantage was avoiding state/local
| sales taxes.
|
| Most of tech valuation advances are about avoiding/bypassing
| regulations and taxation. They simply call it innovation and
| efficiency.
| newbie578 wrote:
| It disturbs me that with each day, it seems like the Great
| Chinese Firewall was a good solution.
|
| You keep out the foreign competition letting internal competition
| foster and you stop a capital drain.
|
| Imagine if the EU had it's own Alibaba, Baidu or WeChat... That
| is a lot of taxpaying money...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| This article focuses on Amazon, but the Indian native company
| Flipkart is facing the same challenges. As the article hints
| at, these regulations are set up specifically to _prevent_
| internal competition; the Indian government wants to protect
| traditional retail networks against competition from online
| stores.
| unmole wrote:
| > the Indian government wants to protect traditional retail
| networks against competition from online stores.
|
| Nope, the government wants to protect Jio from global
| competition.
| kevinkeller wrote:
| The regulation will also benefit other smaller players, no?
| For example, Tata Cliq, Snapdeal.
| neither_color wrote:
| I wonder about this. China has its own app ecosystem, as does
| Russia. India is pushing towards having its own as well. What
| about Europe? Is it harder because you have to localize to so
| many languages?
| evnix wrote:
| no that doesn't seem like the reason, India has more
| languages than Europe and Europe has mainly two writing
| systems Cyrillic and Latin while India has a lot more. If
| India can do it with such low resources, so can Europe.
|
| In my opinion, China and Russia have their own ecosystems
| because of the language barrier and the physical firewall
| that their respective governments have put in. India is able
| to build its own eco system because it has got the
| fundamentals right, it probably is the only country which
| broke the Master Card and Visa duopoly allowing local vendors
| to slash costs by a good margin. I already see a lot of Apps
| which might pose a threat to the likes of Google in the
| coming decade(if they are not bought over) but in the long
| run, I don't see India having a separate ecosystem, India and
| it's way of thinking is more like the west than it seems to
| be and it will eventually merge in with larger western
| ecosystem.
| mangatmodi wrote:
| Actually English is the most common language across India.
| Majority of the app ecosystem in India is English only.
|
| In Europe, majority of people can't read English at all. I
| mean atleast people from Germany, Spain, Italy and France.
| yorwba wrote:
| It's not localization that's stopping European companies from
| taking over the entire EU market, it's competition from other
| companies.
|
| If a French company wants to expand into the Spanish market,
| they can localize their app all they want; if their
| prospective customers in Spain are already using a different
| app that works just as well, they're going to have a hard
| time convincing them to switch.
|
| The same dynamic also applies within countries, where two
| interchangeable apps might dominate in different areas or
| demographics of the same country, without either able to gain
| significant market share from the other, but it's a bit rarer
| because of network effects, where people start using an app
| because they know someone else using it and the app with the
| most users grows the fastest, eclipsing the competition.
|
| Cross-border network effects in Europe are much weaker than
| within countries, and not much stronger than between European
| and non-European countries, so if a company manages to
| dominate their niche across all of Europe, they'll probably
| also win in much of the rest of the world.
| dexen wrote:
| _> It's not localization that's stopping European companies
| from taking over the entire EU market_
|
| It very much is about localization - both language and to
| some extent also culture. Both are notable problems with
| b2c, and there are no "good enough" automated solutions.
|
| My point of reference is the success of Polish domestic
| "Allegro" ecommerce platform, which was able to out-fox
| EBay, and later on Amazon, and still maintains dominant
| position on the local market. There were no significant
| technological advantages, nor any notable political
| connections. The platform won purely on being _local_.
|
| In spite all the local success the platform could not
| expand to the west of Poland due to localization (language
| and partly culture). It did expand a little bit to Ukraine
| and Czech Republic. And while it's possible to browse
| foreign offers, it's rather rare to do so - due to the
| language barrier.
| BugWatch wrote:
| That, and the inter-cultural differences are certainly a
| large stumbling block.
| rini17 wrote:
| Yes the EU single market works well for goods, but not so
| much for services. Not just languages, there are significant
| law differences as well.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I'm starting to think the reason why tech companies are so well-
| valued is purely due to regulatory evasion skills and a dash of
| political engineering. Effectively, every tech company has been
| given a pass on _something_. Facebook doesn 't have to worry
| about defamation lawsuits. Google doesn't have to worry (as much)
| about copyright. Amazon built it's business on evading sales tax.
| Uber broke the back of your local city's taxi medallion scheme.
| And so on and so forth. All of those are things their legacy
| competitors have had to spend millions of dollars on compliance
| for, but tech companies don't.
|
| Here's the thing: the market really does not give two shits about
| "smarts". You can engineer the best mousetrap in the world and
| get it into everyone's homes, but the market won't care about the
| company that makes them... as much as they will care about a
| company that's found a way to break the rules. That's what they
| really want. People in tech are being paid massively not because
| they're postdocs with good credentials and amazing skills, but
| because they know how to bend governments to their will.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| > regulatory evasion skills
|
| You will be surprised to know that from your corner store
| florist to Walmart and from Bank of America to your child's
| babysitter everyone is obstructed by regulators of all kinds
| and to some or large extent all businesses are successful
| because they have learned how to evade government regulation. I
| remember a lecture by Aetna CEO who said the only competitive
| advantage they have over competitors is that they have far
| better handle on the regulation.
|
| If I were Amazon, I would do the same and as an Indian citizen
| I am greatly happy to see Amazon going so out of the way to
| help me get what I want.
|
| > People in tech are being paid massively not because they're
| postdocs with good credentials and amazing skills, but because
| they know how to bend governments to their will.
|
| It is other way around. The regulators in DC are confused as to
| how they will regulate the tech. They simply can not as the
| people are hooked to Instagram and Snapchat. If you give a free
| hand to DC people they would want every internet user to have a
| "internet license" and their search history be made available
| to every possible alphabet soup of government agency.
| nerbert wrote:
| Somalia must be so nice without all these regulations. A
| godsend for all these business!
| fallingknife wrote:
| FB - Congress passed a law (before FB existed) exempting all
| companies that post user generated content. You may not like
| this law, but FB is not "evading" anything, and it is not a
| competitive advantage because section 230 applies to all
| companies in the industry.
|
| Google - How does Google not have to worry about copyright?
| What exactly is their evasive behavior here?
|
| Amazon - Until the rules changed in 2018, Amazon was following
| the same tax treatment that existed for mail order catalog
| sales decades prior to Amazon's existence. These same rules
| applied to other online retailers as well. They are not
| "evading" anything. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-
| court/supreme-court...
|
| Uber - OK you have a point here. I'm glad they did it, but that
| doesn't change the fact that they did evade regulations.
| random5634 wrote:
| At least locally, breaking the taxi medallion cartel was a
| godsend if you lived in a poorer part of time / needed to get
| places on a weekend.
|
| There had to have been some deals on backend to keep things the
| way they were - insane shortages of vehicles on weekends and no
| service to minority areas - with Uber you can get dropped and
| picked up most places I've found even dicey ones.
| lupire wrote:
| This isn't a webtech thing. Look at Superfund as one of many
| examples of the conventional wisdom that business winnby
| cheating. Most theft in USA is wage theft by employers.
| Corporations are constantly getting caught breaking the law and
| not getting punished, defrauding customers or polluting the
| environment. Sports stadiums being built my governments and
| given away to corporations.
| missedthecue wrote:
| _" Most theft in USA is wage theft by employers"_
|
| This is something I hear repeated ad infinitum on the net,
| but has a calculation ever been done the other way? That is,
| workers stealing from employers by deliberately clocking out
| early/late, or by goofing off on HN while on the clock. I
| would hazard a guess that this number is an order of
| magnitude greater than seedy business owners short changing
| their staff.
| capableweb wrote:
| Yes, calculations have been done. Search for "wage theft"
| and there is bunch of research about this. The US is not
| alone in this and it's also not a new problem, it's been
| like this for a while now.
|
| Here's a good starting point:
| https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-
| costing-...
|
| > If these findings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles
| are generalizable to the rest of the U.S. low-wage
| workforce of 30 million, wage theft is costing workers more
| than $50 billion a year.
|
| > All of the robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor
| vehicle thefts in the nation cost their victims less than
| $14 billion in 2012, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime
| Reports
|
| > in the United States in 2012, there were 292,074
| robberies of all kinds, including bank robberies,
| residential robberies, convenience store and gas station
| robberies, and street robberies.3 The total value of the
| property taken in those crimes was $340,850,358
|
| Worth noting that that report is from 2012. Things are
| surely worse now.
|
| Edit: Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant. I'm not sure
| if there is any research around employees slacking off on
| work time. If there is, it's probably conducted by
| companies themselves and therefore private.
| ska wrote:
| > but has a calculation ever been done the other way?
|
| The usual answer to something that is both an obvious
| question and clearly impactful is "yes, extensively". Which
| is separate from the question of how well the research has
| been done of course (in either direction).
|
| > I would hazard a guess that this number is an order of
| magnitude greater than seedy business owners short changing
| their staff.
|
| What broad data are you basing this on? I suspect this is
| one of those areas where (nearly) any one persons
| individual experience is basically useless, because of the
| inherent lack of breadth. Exceptions made for extremely
| unusual life/career paths that lead to better sampling by
| accident.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Well there doesn't seem to be much data, hence my
| original comment. My assumptions are based primarily on
| my own anecdotal observation. I work a relatively low
| wage job with a lot of relatively low wage coworkers.
| Most of them make a deliberate effort every day to do as
| little work as possible, to the point that it occurred to
| me that they might be engaging in more effort than if
| they just did their jobs anyway.
|
| I'm not minimizing wage theft. It's a real issue. I'm
| just casting some doubt on the claim that it's the
| biggest form of theft by bringing light to a viewpoint
| most people haven't even ever considered.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _I work a relatively low wage job with a lot of
| relatively low wage coworkers. Most of them make a
| deliberate effort every day to do as little work as
| possible, to the point that it occurred to me that they
| might be engaging in more effort than if they just did
| their jobs anyway._
|
| Do you work in a state government's IT department?
| ska wrote:
| > bringing light to a viewpoint most people haven't even
| ever considered.
|
| Why do you think this statement is true?
| missedthecue wrote:
| I mean there isn't even any research on it. No one talks
| about it. I've never heard or read anyone make the point
| aside from myself. What set of criterion do you regard as
| sufficient to deem some fact under-appreciated?
| ska wrote:
| > I mean there isn't even any research on it. No one
| talks about it.
|
| Neither of these statements can be true, as I've seen
| multiple examples of both. For what it's worth, one of
| the search terms you are looking for is "time theft" (as
| opposed to "wage theft"), the literature on this is also
| well developed as you might expect. And of course there
| are various types of related fraud (both in favor of
| employer and employee) which have been studied.
|
| > I've never heard or read anyone make the point aside
| from myself.
|
| This is plausible, but doesn't tell us much about
| anything but your own exposure.
| missedthecue wrote:
| So if you take some studies on time theft, it looks like
| it amounts to $400 billion annually, which is far and
| away in excess of the figure that the original poster
| said was the largest type of theft. This proves my
| original point.
| EricE wrote:
| It's easy to demonize groups you aren't a part of.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I make $15/hr
|
| which group am I not a part of?
| Nicksil wrote:
| >I make $15/hr
|
| This is a dishonest statement.
| missedthecue wrote:
| ok you tell me how much I make
| [deleted]
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Yeah, the guy mowing the lawn and getting dicked on
| overtime is totally goofing off on HN
| nullandvoid wrote:
| Spotted the guy who underpays their staff
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't
| sneer, including at the rest of the community._
|
| > _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._
|
| > _Please don 't post shallow dismissals_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Uber broke the back of your local city's taxi medallion
| scheme.
|
| Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go
| back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver
| rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a
| rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks
| won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous
| interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his
| retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very
| liquid).
|
| The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their
| industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established
| rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber
| brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car,
| calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since
| unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do
| rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out
| of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are
| going to get for the car they have should they sell it.
|
| And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often
| discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card
| payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-
| white neighborhoods...).
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648
| c22 wrote:
| Uber is just a different rent seeker, though. Over time the
| situation will likely just keep getting worse until it is as
| bad as the system it is replacing (many things about the
| ride-sharing ecosystem are already not great...)
|
| While it's always nice to see a broken rent-seeking system in
| our world become eroded we should not laude the transfer to
| another fiat regency.
| portpecos wrote:
| By that statement, you can claim TaskRabbit and the like
| are also rent-seekers.
| lucideer wrote:
| Sounds like the old system was pretty bad, but also sounds
| like you're looking at Uber through extremely rose-tinted
| lenses.
|
| > _a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker
| take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a
| breeze of fresh air_
|
| In what way is Uber not a rent-seeker taking advantage of
| often poor new immigrants?
|
| The fact that the old system was so poor just lowers our
| standards for anything that may seek to replace it, but
| that's no reason to throw all critical thinking out the
| window.
|
| --
|
| Europe is a really good example to look at. Uber entered the
| market in most (all) European countries, but they simply
| couldn't compete with what already existed. (speaking only of
| Uber taxis; Uber Eats is doing fine in Europe)
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > In what way is Uber not a rent-seeker taking advantage of
| often poor new immigrants?
|
| Doesn't trap them.
|
| Used cars are a liquid market (with a lot of transactions)
| with well established pricing. It's easy to buy and sell at
| the blue book's price and get cheap financing. This makes
| it easy to get into Ubering and out of it, as at any point
| you know exactly how much money the car is still worth.
|
| Compare that to a taxi medallion, often financed through
| "alternate means" (no banks will touch them), completely
| opaque pricing (there's no market place, transactions are
| often done privately) and at the mercy of regulators
| (tomorrow the city council might create 10x the current
| amount of medallions out of thin air, thus crushing the
| price of existing ones).
| cccc4alll wrote:
| Uber and Lyft reworked the medallion system into mobile apps.
|
| Instead of a physical medallion bolted on the car, it's a
| verified driver ID and rating in Uber/Lyft app.
|
| Uber/Lyft are now collecting what the medallion owners were
| collecting previously from the drivers.
|
| The apps are more convenient for riders and there are more
| efficiencies in the routes. But, it's still the same system.
| Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
| loceng wrote:
| Regulatory evasion and/or regulatory capture - I never thought
| about it being called evasion but it certainly fits: get big
| enough with a large amount of the population now
| depending/relying/using the service, and then it causes a
| problem for policy makers - who aren't skilled or knowledgable
| enough to understand the intricacies of the business models in
| order to safely adjust policy to benefit society, society more
| than the profits of the business anyhow - that business who is
| lobbying and manipulating regulators as well to get policy to
| fit their needs, and coining the narrative for the users who
| benefit from the lack of regulations as well (e.g. Airbnb hosts
| who side-step worrying or dealing about the externalities on
| society of rents going up further due to higher pressure and
| less supply).
| dexen wrote:
| _> defamation lawsuits_
|
| _> copyright_
|
| _> local city's taxi medallion scheme_
|
| Arguably the three areas of law where special protections &
| privilleges got expended so far, repeatedly and over decades,
| as to create ample opportunity for easy arbitration. Especially
| in case of copyright and taxi medallions, mafia-like structures
| were created through very one-sided markets; the only
| distinction from mafia being that those were gradually
| introduced through layers upon layers of legislation.
|
| The fault, if any, lays with the legislators. The tangible
| result of tech businesses is cheaper music for the consumers
| and cheaper transportation for the consumers.
|
| _> special protections for local businesses online_
|
| Good luck with that./s France also tried similar legislation,
| targeted specifically at extracting more tax revenue from
| Amazon under the guise of "protecting local bookstores". That's
| neither moral nor productive.
| op03 wrote:
| On the flip side in India atleast they are competing against
| well known crony monopolists who own the govt. Nothing simple
| or obvious about the rules of that game.
|
| As long as they are preoccupied with ruthlessly competing
| against each other things tend to head in positive directions
| for everyone. Its when they have no competition is when the the
| mindless ambition and ruthlessness causes the most damage.
| TT3351 wrote:
| Depending on which side of the bed I wake up on, I can
| lambast the US status quo as crony monopolists who own the
| government as well; yet I'm still nervous about the move
| "fast and break things" philosophy when it comes to real
| world markets, societies, and governments.
| 1996 wrote:
| > I'm starting to think the reason why tech companies are so
| well-valued is purely due to regulatory evasion skills and a
| dash of political engineering.
|
| And how exactly is that a bad thing?
|
| You assume regulations are good, but as a customer this is
| incredibly short sighted.
|
| > Facebook doesn't have to worry about defamation lawsuits.
| Google doesn't have to worry (as much) about copyright. Amazon
| built it's business on evading sales tax. Uber broke the back
| of your local city's taxi medallion scheme. And so on and so
| forth
|
| So are you sad that you can use freedom of speech without fear
| of defamation lawsuits, read newspapers on google news without
| paying, have cheaper goods thanks to businesses forgetting to
| collect taxes, and better quality cabs that will come to you
| immediately?
|
| > they know how to bend governments to their will.
|
| That's one of the best points about tech :)
| swayvil wrote:
| Every corporation seeks, ultimately, to dodge regulations,
| dominate the government and establish a monopoly.
|
| And we let these beasts run around willy-nilly.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| Yet more evidence to be used in the eventual US anti-trust case
| demonstrating a pattern of anti-competitive behavior. Prefering
| big sellers and lying about it is not "customer centric" in any
| market. Actions like this are going to eventually crush the stock
| value. When that happens senior employees will cash out and
| retail will be sold off to the highest bidding hedge fund. AWS is
| the money maker anyway and that will be protected at all costs.
| throwaw4ybio wrote:
| They should be careful not to cross into Icarus territory.
| throwaway20875 wrote:
| >Yet more evidence to be used in the eventual US anti-trust
| case demonstrating a pattern of anti-competitive behavior
|
| Little chance. Bezos has purchased his way into the class of
| decision makers in this country through acquisitions of media
| and integrating into the military industrial complex (in
| numerous ways). Amazon embodies the privatization of a
| centralized economy more than anything else. Needless to say:
| this is not good.
| blueblisters wrote:
| Ooh this is going to ruffle some feathers in the Indian Traders
| lobby. Although more regulation here is almost certainly going to
| be bad for consumers.
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