Note: Somewhere in the interwebs of drafting and publishing posts, I smashed an existing post with the post below. My bad. My apologies.

My practice is that if I republish, it is to correct an error. Not to change the body of a text. As such I have restored the text of the original post and the text below is published under its own title. Enjoy!

Or not.

tl;dr?! Occam’s d*ck, monopoly, monopsony, Amazon, Jeff, verb: bezos, bezosed, bezosing, oligarchs.

From some morning rumblings ramblings over coffee.

Let’s go!

Occam’s deck? duck? d*ck?

Jeff Bezos read the National Enquirer’s e-mail threatening to publish pictures of his deck or duck or d*ck and in a moment of self-reflection he realized he has more chips than the house than anyone else. He upped the ante, called their bluff and published e-mails he received from David Pecker’s attorneys. (David Pecker is owner of the Enquirer.)

And taking a moment here, we recognize that Jeff Bezos was able to read the letter and Occam’s writing on the wall. Although oscillation of of the waves his wealth takes in the markets would make us seasick, Jeff still had enough light to see that if he doesn’t have enough wealth to stop a blackmailer, no one does. So good job Jeff!

And David Pecker! His last name is capitalized. But if we read of David’s pecker, would it be censored as p*cker? Could we read smoothly of David’s packer, picker, or pucker? But to read of his p*cker, it must be capitalized?

And in this whole imbroglio, the media had a field day with the coincidence of d*cks and p*ckers.

Monopoly

Seth Godin is one of my favorite thinkers. March 11, 2019 in his blog (published impressively and relentlessly daily), he made the observation that “monopoly is the opposite of capitalism.”

Monopoly. The goal of the game of Monopoly is to bankrupt all of your opponents. Game over. And so it does not surprise me when money in a loosely regulated capitalist system has grown into a concentration of money held in the hands of a few thousand oligarchs while the millions and billions of us dry up from lack of water money to circulate in a healthy exchange of goods and services.

Monopsony

Monopoly and monopsony. We hear more about monopoly than monopsony. I’m assuming monopsony was touched on in the macroeconomics class I took a while back last century. Monopsony is a market situation when there is only one buyer. Monopoly is a market situation where there is only one seller. In the Frontline episode “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos (full film, 1 hour and 53 min)”:

“He [Jeff Bezos] owns the main street.”

– Jason Boyce (disambiguation: Jason Boyce, the CEO of Avenue7Media. NOT Jason Boyce, the ex-model. Mercy me, Google. Really.)

Amazon is running both sides of the mono-economics-house. Monopoly — a web search for any product posits Amazon at the top. And more subtly, Amazon is a monopsonist. Amazon, one seller provides Everthang. Remember when Main Street shopping migrated to malls, and then from malls to big box stores and then to the internet and now Everthang is starting to filter through Amazon? Whoo-ee! Where are we headed.

Buying. And selling. And skirting. But that’s another post …

Bezos’ Lottery Winnings

In Bezos’ own words:

“The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel,” he said this spring. “I am going to use my financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that.”

Jeff Bezos’s $150 Billion Fortune Is a Policy Failure, Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, August 1, 2018. Viva’s bold.

Bezos’ business degree may be ruining capitalism for all of us. In the Frontline episode, he starts out and looks to be a nerd with a big idea he wants to pursue and he has forgone money early to capitalize market share and monopolize later and he is wildly successful but he still looks like a nerd who forgoes his first beautiful wife to hook-up with an exciting stunner and the excitement that comes with the power to set whole communities in motion to bid for the location of Amazon HQ2 – oh, he is wanted, he is not a nerd, what he has is desirable, he is desirable – and Amazon hides behind the safety standards of 3rd parties and gobbles up competitors using the “Gazelle Concept” and we are reminded of Gene Wilder and the children of Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Jeff is busy collecting all the candy he can imagine but he is boxed in by his own lack of imagination and …

I digress.

Is oligarch a good verb? I think so. Or maybe bezosed.

Bezosed

Bezos, -ed, -ing (verb): 1) business demolished, developed, or owned by Amazon. Includes all verb tenses. Examples:

  • Brick and mortar businesses have been bezosed, big box stores are not far behind. (demolished)
  • Alexa was bezosed. (developed)
  • Amazon bezoses customers. (owns)

Should Mr. Bezos decide he has had enough time and space out at wealth’s end, here are a few ideas for him to walk back to participation in a civic life that doesn’t involve Washington DC mansions, lobbyists up the wazoo, and throwing money into the universe in the form of space travel when there are still so many problems from lack of running water money in circulation here. Jeff! Reclaim the verb ‘bezosed’ – essentially a synonym of destroyed, demolished, eliminated.

Turn it into a good thing. Creative problem-solving, float lots of boats, be a blessing rather than wallow in your blessedness. Watch Willie Wonka. Don’t be Augustus or Veruca or Violet or Mike. Be Charlie.

Oligarchs be bezosing.

As of this writing, Howard Schultz is still running for President. Michael Bloomberg is running for President. They are bezosing the DNC presidential candidate race. They are both plutocrats who are of a mind that their business acumen and, at least in the case of Bloomberg, previous political experience – qualifies them as head oligarch President OTUS.

We hope there is some good that our way their foolishness runs. Either one of them could have thrown their vast fortunes and names behind other candidates with more experience — Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Julian Castro — but no. Evidently with great wealth comes confusion and they are convinced their business experience qualifies them to run the country. The same reasons for which we have the Trump Regime now.

Our hope is that they bring enough heat money to the fire election to have an impact.

Maybe support some downstream candidates guys?

For completeness – definitions

From the Googles:

Plutocrat: a person whose power derives from their wealth

Oligarch: a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence