funny how Jeff Bezos pivoted to " We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets" thinking that would be obviously pro-trump
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He’s ok with the dropshipping because he gets a piece of the action. Temu, Shein and Aliexpress ship 1.1 to 1.8 packages a day into the US and us growing (they reckon Temu alone will go to 2m packages a day by end 25) Amazon ship up to 8m parcels a day.
Why? Did someone write an anti-Trump opinion piece that followed those guidelines? He has allowed anti-Trump opinion pieces before, so he might still find that acceptable for various reasons.
Free markets - WTF ? Perhaps, these people do not understand what a free market is. Being tied to the evil fascist GOP and evil Musk is not free market ideology.
Why are these so-called Titans of business afraid? Actions are louder than words. Freedom means speaking against governments policies.
Also, there was Zuck being all 'let's kiss up to Trump so his admin can ram through changes to Europe's tech laws.'
You know, somehow I just can't see the EU being in the mood to do this after this week.
It was never going to be Europe’s mood and these dumb fuckers are too thick to realise it.
Us, European citizens, don’t like a lot of regulations our joint governments let commissions introduce.
But, unlike toddler brains across the pond, we know they benefit us, protecting people from corporations.
Pig Billionaire's Jeff Bezos, Foreigner Kafer Pig Elon Musk has their nose in the government trough. $35.4B contract from Republicans Pentagon Drunk Pete Hegseth.
So just who is this tariff expert Ron Vera? Rachel Maddow tells the story of how Ron Vera explained tariffs to Trump. https://youtu.be/MJbZCbBLqkk?t=333
Please. You think Trump’s tariffs and civil oppression came as a total surprise to Bezos? I doubt it. He more likely thought his anti-Trump editorials would be most effective/least damaging if they flowed from libertarian-friendly principles, not that there wouldn’t be any anti-Trump editorials.
Why can't he just be honest? He kissed up to Trump as he feared Trump would use full power of his cronies in Gov agencies to close him down. Where was all this personal liberty & free market talk before Trump won election? Harris would have been a far better bet for him than Trump is currently.
Even if his taxes might have went up a whopping 2-3%. He can't be that much of moron not to be able to offset any tax increases that would have resulted from a Harris administration without using creative accounting options at his disposal?
Bezos has two competing interests: Getting his Project Kuiper on line (to compete w/Musk's Starlink) and getting cheap crap from China onto Amazon platform.
I find it really interesting how for Bezos "personal liberties" doesn't extend to the liberty of his employees to freely associate with each other in order to form a union
Adam Smith was savage on landlords and cartels. He'd be amazed at the successes of capitalism, but he would applaud the CFPB and antitrust law as ways to keep its worst aspects in check.
Yeah I think of him the same way I think of Freud for psychology or Chomsky for linguistics: he was far from right about everything but the insights he made were revolutionary for human knowledge. Overall he was dope.
adam smith wrote those against the monarchy. the state he was criticizing was a kingdom. then liberal revolutions happened and kingdoms became liberal nations, which the liberals of today use adam smith's words to criticize.
And it's really stupid mercantilism! Back when the Brits were doing it around the world, the countries they were doing it to had no way to communicate, coordinate and fight back! Now they definitely do!
And, the Brits controlled the other regions involved since they were colonies. Despite having the deck stacked completely in British favor, it was a raging disaster because mercantilism is built on a false economic premise and will always fail! We really are living in the stupidest timeline.
The thing starts to make sense when you see it as a bribery shakedown, rarity than a national policy. Kiss the ring, buy him an island, get a better rate.
Yeah, and we also at the time (including meme so you know I know it was not an one off) kinda maimed and killed anyone who didn’t want to participate. Or just brought them syphilis. And took their resources.
Oh lord the Opium War -- in which the UK basically acted as a drug cartel backed by the world's most powerful navy -- was an act of historic depravity.
That plus a national sales tax. Local news interviewed our local coffee company and the owner was confused- “we can’t grow coffee here.” And not going to be making Nikes here either.
Right! It's not free trade vs guaranteed housing and surgeries we're being offered, it's free trade vs you can get special contracts that actually work by including the King
Conservatives use money as a proxy for intelligence, racism as a proxy for patriotism, conspiracy theories as a proxy for critical thought, and torture and murder as proxies for sexual potency
We know this is true from various leaks and court documents which expose exchanges between people like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg. It’s embarrassing to read.
You can watch that group text dynamic play out daily on CNBC, as they slowly grapple with the cognitive dissonance that the business president could be so fucking dumb
About 6-7 years back Musk tweeted about how you could only find this level of conversation among "founders", referring to a thread between him and a few other techbros. It was 75% stupidity and 25% Elon tweeting, "interesting".
I opened Amazon Prime Video last night, and the third thing they were promoting at the top of the home screen after a new Amazon movie and TV show was... Season 4 of The Apprentice
No, not past the short-term.
If the color revolution of 2029 succeeds he’ll probably be hit with a 90% marginal asset tax.
Depending on how badly things go, he could end up fleeing to Dubai or put against the wall if things go really sideways.
These people don’t realize 🇺🇸 isn’t that exceptional.
he’ll be lucky to only get away with punitive taxes. if the only thing he loses is money, he should thank the people of America for their boundless generosity
The only solace, and it doesn’t do Jack shit for us, is that he and about 10 other guys are trying to become the first trillionaire. They are probably miserable inside their brains because they obviously have no soul in climbing their way up to the trillioniare status.
Humans adapt to current circumstances as the normal and baseline very quickly and I assume he’s actually really pissed off about Money Go Down since he’s a guy who has pursued every route possible to increase his wealth with zero regard to morality other than lip service.
I’m begging any journalist who is interviewing a “normal” Republican elected official to ask this one question: “If the Republican Party no longer believes in free markets and free trade, what exactly do you believe?”
They believe in Jim Crow. Keep an underclass around to work for poverty wages, ensure they're treated badly because they hate their skin color, and repress violently any dissent
It's what they grew up under and taught their kids. They only care about hurting minorities and keeping whites in charge
"Normal" Republican is no more -& they should not be resurrected come election time.I hope people's memory is long & stop ever imposing MAGA GOPs onto the country and the world. Keep them in their sinister churches if people want to follow&support them-but keep them there w/ their cult congregation
Having spoken to people active in local Republican politics where I live, the primary political position of many of them is "Trump won the 2020 election".
Pointless to ask because they’ll just spout some nonsense about woke and DEI and women’s sports and antisemitism, plus the old standbys, deregulation is job creation and tax cuts pay for themselves
If they were honest they’d have to admit they still believe in those things but have always been using a different definition in which “free markets” are those free of competition and regulation and “personal liberty” is for oligarchs to be free of laws or anything blocking complete impunity.
I can’t think Bezos is that happy as quite a lot of stuff on Amazon comes from China.
But then he is the financial genius supporting a president, who claims the market crash is deliberate and part of a grand plan. (And down is really up et cetera et cetera.)
They take a cut of the sales, while also gathering data on popular products and selling their own copies of the best-selling stuff to grab a bigger slice of the pie. Along with dominating cloud-compute services.
Which is, of course, asinine, since Trump said he was going to put tariffs like this on all our trading partners during his campaign. Granted, he never mentioned the penguins, but he can't be expected to remember everything.
Have you ever seen Jeff Bezos talk? He's an idiot. Lots of rich guys are idiots, and the older they get, the dumber they get because nothing makes you dumber than being surrounded by suck ups telling you how brilliant you are.
I assume there's more to this under the hood, since WaPo is not out there raging daily about the evils of arrest without due process, restricted word lists, protectionism, and mercantilism.
Maybe his transformation into a billionaire burned out his original personality and replaced it with an antenna that receives buzzwords and market vibes.
Allow me to translate (I speak libertarian).
"personal liberties": Don't tax me.
"free markets": Don't interfere with my accumulation of wealth at any cost.
i am sure his understanding of those terms is not how normal people would understand them, but i still don't think 'global economy destroying tariffs' can fit easily within the 'free markets' frame
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Why are these so-called Titans of business afraid? Actions are louder than words. Freedom means speaking against governments policies.
Personal liberties means I, Jeff Bezos, get to do whatever I want.
Free markets mean the companies I, Jeff Bezos, control get to do whatever they want.
Do I fire up the barbecue?
Or roll out the guillotine?
When in doubt, do both.
You know, somehow I just can't see the EU being in the mood to do this after this week.
Us, European citizens, don’t like a lot of regulations our joint governments let commissions introduce.
But, unlike toddler brains across the pond, we know they benefit us, protecting people from corporations.
Nobody who utters them gives a shit what the words mean, they just know they're signaling fealty to the Republican party.
* but only when you're rich or a corporation
https://youtu.be/MJbZCbBLqkk?t=333
Free markets = cut my taxes
It's like the world's stupidest doublespeak.
Personal liberties = my secretary can't sass back when I grope her
🤮
This seems plausible, tho. Not great but not Bezos simply dumb either.
https://bsky.app/profile/proptermalone.bsky.social/post/3lj3wkx7w2s2p
For him, his own employees are all NPCs.
Trade policy is collateral damage.
Not a royalist anymore, massive respect to QEII but she should have been Elizabeth the last, however things have improved slightly since 😅
I just listened to a podcast about a book on this very subject
"The Invisible Doctrine" by George Monbiot
🤮
Until they don't.
If the color revolution of 2029 succeeds he’ll probably be hit with a 90% marginal asset tax.
Depending on how badly things go, he could end up fleeing to Dubai or put against the wall if things go really sideways.
These people don’t realize 🇺🇸 isn’t that exceptional.
I hope so, anyway.
It's what they grew up under and taught their kids. They only care about hurting minorities and keeping whites in charge
These seem to be their core principles.
But then he is the financial genius supporting a president, who claims the market crash is deliberate and part of a grand plan. (And down is really up et cetera et cetera.)
Maybe his transformation into a billionaire burned out his original personality and replaced it with an antenna that receives buzzwords and market vibes.
"personal liberties": Don't tax me.
"free markets": Don't interfere with my accumulation of wealth at any cost.