{"id":595683,"date":"2021-07-18T05:05:50","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T09:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=595683"},"modified":"2021-07-18T05:05:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T09:05:52","slug":"prime-mover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/prime-mover\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime Mover"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">4<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fprime-mover%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=595683&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div readability=\"30.971644612476\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"article-category\"><a class href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/culture\/\">Culture<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-excerpt\">REVIEW: \u2018Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire\u2019<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-thumbnail-container relative lg:mr-24 w-full my-4 mb-8\">\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"736\" height=\"491\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-736x491-1.jpeg\" class=\"w-full lazyload blur-up wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 736px) 100vw, 736px\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-scaled-e1626295928589.jpeg 736w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Bezos-1400x933.jpeg 1400w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" \/><figcaption class=\"absolute text-white p-4 w-full text-right text-xs bottom-0 bg-black opacity-75\">\n\t\t\t\tNATIONAL HARBOR, MD &#8211; SEPTEMBER 19:  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, founder of space venture Blue Origin and owner of The Washington Post, participates in an event hosted by the Air Force Association September 19, 2018 in National Harbor, Maryland. Bezos talked about innovating in large organizations as well as staying on the cutting edge in the space industry.  (Photo by Alex Wong\/Getty Images)\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\t\t\t<span class=\"text-gray text-xs md:text-lg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/author\/santi-ruiz\/\" title=\"Posts by Santi Ruiz\" class=\"author url fn text-red-700\" rel=\"author\">Santi Ruiz<\/a> \u2022 July 18, 2021 4:59 am<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<div readability=\"115.78802625622\">\n<p><span>In 2016, Amazon faced a major decision as copycat listings and shoddy products began to flood the marketplace. According to Brad Stone in <\/span><i><span>Amazon Unbound<\/span><\/i><span>, company execs asked founder Jeff Bezos whether they should &#8220;prioritize the sale of high-end clothing \u2026 or should it favor low-end generic apparel and private label products across Amazon.com and via the Amazon Marketplace.&#8221; Bezos answered, &#8220;I think we should target everybody who wears clothes.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>That decision led to a massive influx of Chinese products, undercutting American prices by mass-producing clothing and gadgets designed to fall apart. As Amazon\u2019s system relies heavily on user reviews, the move also created a cottage industry of selling positive reviews in exchange for free products. (This author and myriad college students in need of cheap string lights and socks are intimately familiar with the practice.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Curiously, Stone sees this as a good thing. He quotes an Amazon executive who traveled to China and saw firsthand the mountains of low-cost product: &#8220;We realized that people charging ten to fifty times what products actually cost to make, based on a brand name, wasn\u2019t going to last and consumers would be the winners.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span>Amazon Unbound<\/span><\/i><span> is an insightful corporate history, but it\u2019s really about Jeff Bezos\u2014his neuroses, his brilliance as a corporate leader, and his long evolution into an American Caesar, willing to do battle with powerful political figures. For a book that is full of praise for the company, <\/span><i><span>Unbound<\/span><\/i><span> details the cutthroat culture that enables its success and the remarkable power its founder has become a natural at wielding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The book is also Stone\u2019s second on the topic: His first, <\/span><i><span>The Everything Store<\/span><\/i><span>, charted the company\u2019s remarkable rise from garage bookstore to retail titan over its first 10 years. Stone has a fair claim to the title of Amazon\u2019s premier chronicler, and <\/span><i><span>Unbound<\/span><\/i><span> displays his remarkable access to key decision-makers within the cavernous Amazon system.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>At times readers may be frustrated at the gentleness of the author\u2019s prose. The company\u2019s expansion into India, an arduous and not entirely successful move, is painted as brilliant. But Stone is also frank about the side effects of Bezos\u2019s brilliance, like the famously grinding, Darwinian office culture. Many aspects of that culture come directly from the top. Bezos has battled to keep the practice of stack ranking, in which workers are ranked regularly by their bosses and the lowest-scoring batch are automatically canned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Bezos\u2019s reach goes beyond corporate decisions. In one inadvertently funny passage, Bezos sits down with <\/span><i><span>Washington Post<\/span><\/i><span> execs to come up with a new branding statement for his paper. &#8220;If this was on a T-shirt, would you want to wear it?&#8221; he asks. He then suggests a phrase he likes: &#8220;Democracy dies in darkness.&#8221; The <\/span><i><span>Post <\/span><\/i><span>takes another year to consider alternatives, hires outside branding agencies (which suggest taglines like &#8220;Freedom moves in light&#8221;), before settling on the owner\u2019s preferred slogan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Stone is also soft on Amazon\u2019s treatment of third-party sellers. The company has made <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/latest-news\/policy-changes-drive-orthodox-jews-from-amazon\/\"><span>waves<\/span><\/a><span> in the past year for reforms to its Prime system that force third-party sellers off the platform. FTC chair Lina Khan has used this behavior as an example of Amazon\u2019s incredible market power. While perhaps not formally a monopoly under traditional metrics, Amazon has grown massively by running services below cost for years, providing a platform for third-party sellers (and pulling even more users onto the site), then cracking down on those sellers once it has achieved dominance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO earlier this month to focus on his dreams of interplanetary civilization through his space company, Blue Origin. In this dream, he\u2019s remarkably similar to fellow billionaire and cultural lodestone Elon Musk, with whom he has publicly clashed (Musk is critical of Blue Origin\u2019s approach). Before he left, Amazon announced an expansion of its executive team, adding <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/2021\/amazon-elevates-two-execs-senior-leadership-team-new-ceo-andy-jassy\/?utm_source=sg&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=article_email&amp;utm_content=article-5914\"><span>more<\/span><\/a><span> bloat to a historically lean and aggressive leadership. If Stone\u2019s book is any indication, Blue Origin will benefit from Bezos\u2019s more direct involvement and intensity, while Amazon may suffer. Whether Americans will benefit from his move is less clear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire<\/em><br \/>by Brad Stone<br \/>Simon &amp; Schuster, 496 pp., $30<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Culture REVIEW: \u2018Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire\u2019  NATIONAL HARBOR, MD &#8211; SEPTEMBER 19: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, founder of space &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1893740,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-595683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}