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February 14, 2022: The time I met Jeff Bezos: reflecting on how success changed Amazon & Bezos

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Today: The time I met Jeff Bezos: reflecting on how success changed Amazon and Bezos

Links:

• How Hard Would It Be to Hit Jeff Bezos’s Superyacht With a Rotten Egg? (by Clio Chang, Curbed, Feb 8, 2022): “A group of residents in Rotterdam has put out a call to throw rotten eggs at Jeff Bezos’s superyacht when it passes through the city’s river in June. The event, succinctly titled ‘Throwing eggs at superyacht Jeff Bezos,’ is a response to reports that the city is considering a plan to dismantle the historic Koningshaven Bridge to allow Bezos’s $500 million, and apparently very tall, new superyacht to take to the sea.”

• MacKenzie Scott (Wikipedia entry): “As of November 2021, she has a net worth of US$62.2 billion, owing to a 4% stake in Amazon. ... Scott made US$5.8 billion in charitable gifts in 2020, one of the largest annual distributions by a private individual to working charities. She donated a further $2.7 billion in 2021.”

Reposting from last week’s show...

• Amazon Breaks Record for One-Day Gain in Market Cap (WSJ, Feb 5, 2022): "Shares surged 14% Friday, their biggest one-day jump in almost seven years. The added $191 billion to Amazon’s market value, eclipsing the record Apple set just last week when it added $181 billion after posting quarterly results that shattered previous records."

• Lawmakers Press Amazon on Sales of Chemical Used in Suicides (NYT, Feb 4, 2022). As Vice's Maxwell Strachan put it:

• Bezos has come a long way since his Taco Bell commercial (yes, really) in 2001.

• The true cost of Amazon’s low prices (by Sara Morrison, Vox, Jan 13, 2022): “Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly advocacy group, [says]: ‘Amazon leverages its power in one space to take over a new space, which is core to their business practice. They have the ability to combine the competitive advantages of different aspects of their business to take over new sectors of the economy.’”

• Amazon vs. N.Y.’s small businesses: The little guys need a 21st century antitrust act (Natasha Amott op-ed in N.Y. Daily News, Jan 31, 2022): “When monopolies like Amazon are allowed to dominate single marketplaces so fully, small businesses see the effect in what they can afford to pay their staff; in what rents they can afford to pay to property owners; and in how they fight to stay a part of the American middle class.”

And...

• From Insider (Feb 9, 2022): “Amazon has expanded its new medical service to Boston, Dallas, Austin, and Los Angeles. Called Amazon Care, the venture provides primary care through an app to self-insured companies or those that pay for their employees’ medical expenses — and it’s already signed up big employers Whole Foods and Hilton.”

• Pat Garofalo (Feb 9, 2022): “Large, profitable corporations are demanding secrecy while they negotiate for billions of public dollars that are being granted by explicit statute to them individually.”

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