The Ben and Emil Show - PP 21: Confirmed: Amazon is worse than ever

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Well well well. Sam Bankman-Fried aka SBF aka Sam Buttman-Fart was found GUILTY on all counts and will be sentenced soon. The Bored Ape Yacht Club nerds get their eyes burned at a party in Hong Kong. And have you noticed that Amazon search results are terrible lately? It’s not just you. Newly unredacted parts of the FTC complaint show Amazon was not only anti-competitive to an evil extent, but seemed hellbent on making the customer experience worse and worse in the name of more profits. PLUS we've got Elon Musk revealing GROK, X’s new edgelord AI bot, and a market update from Stan Druckenmiller. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you noticed that Amazon's search results are pretty terrible lately? Well, it's not just you, okay? In fact, the FTC is on to them in their little games, and they're trying to pull down their pants and spank their little bear booty for all the world to see just how much they're screwing you and me and grandma and grandpa and the whole freaking family just because we thought we were getting low prices, but it turns out that we weren't. And we're going to get right into that.

And what else? And what else? I'll tell you what else. Scam butman fart is guilty. My man is getting locked up, dude. This guy's facing up to a 110 years in prison. My gosh. Yeah, and speaking of crypto. Would not want to be SBF. No, you don't want to be scam butman fart right now. And that's not all with crypto, okay? Because we're coming to you live, reporting on board ape, yacht club party in Hong Kong. Everybody's eyeballs are getting burned off. What the heck is going on with that? Yeah, plus Elon Musk, King Elon Musk reveals grok, grock, gawk! is the new AI Grock knows all Grock And get this It's based in sarcastic Yeah it's based It's sarcastic

It'll tell you Things that might make a lefty squirm In his little underpants Fuck And not only that Ben's giving us a little Market update

Yeah we got a little market update So stay tuned Stay tuned Hit the intro Toon something to you. The world is a business man. I've seen the face of God.

Do I look that bad? No. I feel like I look terrible. Why? I just feel like I got sleepy eyes. I think we got a couple of cozy kings. I think we got a couple cozy kings. Welcome back to another episode, folks.

We are live coming to you from Spotify Studios in New York City. Live, baby. If you're watching this, it's live. If you're watching this, it's live right now. Anything can happen. check out our newest episode of Ben and the Meal on. Oh, that's a doozy. Pet peeves.

It's out now. The boys are steamed. The boys are steamed. We're really peed off. P-Oed, peed off. You're peed-oed, we're peeved. We're peeved. Also, I'm back on Cameo.

I totally forgot that I had one. And if you want to have me wish someone a happy birthday or a happy graduation. That's not graduation season. Stupid. Well, actually, that's not true. Some people graduate. First semester, they take an extra semester Or they take summer classes and they have extra credits

So get those weird graduates in now It's not all about dads and grads this year This year we're going home for Christmas, a college grad And I'll say anything you want for a price I'll accept some things Yeah, I probably Unless it's like an explicit terrorist threat In which case I'll do it for free

Nice well let's dive right in shall we yeah i think so there's much to discuss too much to discuss as we all know over over over the last week sam bankman freed sam buttman fraud sam butman fart sam buttman scam bankman fraud scam bankman fraud scam butman fart uh but man butt man butt man butt man butt man butt man butt man butt man caught guilty got consent got convicted guilty. Seven counts stealing over $8 billion from FTX users

two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy. He used the funds, as we all know, to pay lenders, make shitty investments, make political donations for crypto legislation, and also just to, of course, pay himself and

buy his mommy and daddy a house and buy himself rugs. He liked rugs. My man going to jail. My man going to jail over rugs. name a dumber thing to go over to jail over a vase what uh i want to i want to share with you one of my favorite quotes i actually posted it to um posted it to instagram stories is it about this is it about sam butman fart yeah so he would actually

so he said i would never read a book i don't want to say no book is ever worth reading but actually but i actually do believe something pretty close to that if you wrote a book you fucked up and it should have been a six paragraph blog post that's it that's the quote

yeah it's really beautiful and I think maybe when he's mulling over these what is it like 115 years he's looking at yeah well that's

maybe pick up a book from the library that's the other thing he won't get sentenced until March which is crazy also the jury only deliberated

for four hours I mean this whole thing was lightning fast I think when you when you go around doing interviews about how you did the crime and the prosecution has a lot of evidence against you

in that form. Do you remember... Things go a bit quickly. Yeah. Do you remember when he was... There was a famous thing, I think right around the time when FTX collapsed. He was in a meeting with some venture capitalist guys, I think.

And the guy, the venture capitalist realized at the end of the meeting that Sam had been playing League of Legends the entire time. And attributed, I think he attributed it to, he's just such a genius. He can play League of Legends online while having a meeting. That's the thing. This whole thing was that, right? Like, oh, he doesn't read, like, he doesn't have time for that. If you want it, you better give it to him in a six-paragraph blog post, all right?

You fucked up if you wrote a book. Yeah. No, he really just has, as we all have found out, he just has terrible ADD. Yeah. Like, he just can't focus. Right. Oh, boy. My guy zooted up on Adderall.

Oh, man. But yeah, and he's going to be facing more. trials to come. Yeah, bank fraud and foreign bribery. Election stuff. Yeah. Still no sentencing for Caroline Ellison, Gary Wong, and Nishad Singh. Very curious what's going to happen with them.

Yeah, and the defense is, of course, saying that they are falsely implicating their client, Sam Buttman Fart, in order to win leniency. Oh, he's going to appeal on this, too. Yeah. He's going to appeal like a damn banana. Let me tell you. But I say send those rats. those weasels to jail too yeah no i'm joking i don't get any pleasure but i think a lot of people

like uh i don't know celebrate this kind of thing yeah i don't know i don't feel good about some guy rotting in prison um even though what he did was a nasty thing um me neither also i think this you know this like high profile um making an example of this one guy is probably not the best way to be doing this. I think, you know, they should be going after more people committing financial crimes. Oh, yeah. And, and maybe seeking smaller prison sentences that would, you know, probably have a more, a bigger effect on, on the, on the industry in general. Question for you. If there were to exist such a technology. Yes, I would fuck it. Wait. Well, I sorry, I should have let you finish. Yeah, let you finish.

If there were to exist, such a technology where if you gave a prisoner an injection and they served out their sentence within 10 seconds, but within the prisoner's mind, 20 years had passed. No, because that's the same thing. That's like when people are like, let's do DMT or whatever. It's like, they're like, it only lasts 15 minutes, but it feels like an eternity. Well, okay, I'm still experiencing an eternity. Yeah, I don't want to experience eternity. So you don't think that that would be morally okay. What's the difference?

The guy's still coming out, like, oh. Well, because what if it was 80, what if it was 800 years or something? You actually, the rapist who gets, like, consecutive life sentences, 400 years in prison where everybody balks and goes, all right, I mean. Is it like Groundhog Day in his mind? He comes out playing piano and he's read every book? No, I think that's sick. Let's have our prisoners come out.

Ooh, ooh, learning something. They've got a learned men. They've got a Ph.D. Yeah, they walk into the prison all just like, yeah, fuck that. I'd kill the guy again. I'd kill him again. And then you inject him and he comes out of it like, ooh, dear, I, you know, fully educated.

SBF's like I read every sixth paragraph, a blog post. That's, man, they ought to figure that out. We could turn our biggest criminals into our biggest intellectual powerhouses. I'm ready. Shit, I'd commit a crime just to be able to finally sit down and read a damn book. You know, it would be nice. What? If we were older, then we wouldn't have to wait so long.

What's a beach boys gang? Did you say that's a beach boys gang? The beach boys gang. That's a beach boys gang. That's a beach boys gang. No, what would be nice? If we were older. We didn't have to wait so long.

Brother, I got a news for you. We're old enough. No, because sometimes I remember I had a friend who his uncle went to jail for 10 years. They got out. If he served those in his mind and imagine he came out and we had like iPods and stuff. This guy was like, what? happened and they're like okay go live a normal life now yeah i mean better to come out of prison there there's some guys on ticot who have just gotten out of like 20 30 years sentences

and they they like film themselves eating and they're fully like crowded around their dinner plate at home like in the in the text on the screen says like still got my old habits from chow hall i eat like that like yeah you eat like that because you never know who's gonna brother's going to come up and bully you that's right yeah i get that i don't because my brothers didn't do that anyway speaking of speaking of crypto board the board ape the board ape uh nerd club sorry yacht club i'm obsessed with these freakers yeah they're they're pretty um they just keep what are the young people say they keep taking ls i just i say uh the board ape yacht club is still having a normal one hmm i don't i don't know

Well, I guess all things considered for them, it is a normal one. Sure. So there was an event. In case you don't remember, the Board 8 Piat Club was... Also, excuse us to the audio listener. Ben and I have traveled to New York, and there's a bit of a maybe barometric pressure drop that we're dealing with. We've got a little pressure in the old sinuses, but we're here. Yeah, we're here.

You may hear some coughing and stuff. Yeah. For the audio listener, oh, man, I had such a... I'll have to tell you later. I had a great idea for something. But not for you guys. You guys don't get to hear that great idea. But so the Board Ape Yacht Club was sort of the flagship, the pinnacle of all things.

Every celebrity had one. Gwyneth Paltrow went on dang Jimmy Fallon. No, that was Paris Hilton. Oh, yeah. Who, by the way, is a very intelligent woman. Oh, great. Like super, super smart. Welcome back to the Paris Hilton Apologist podcast.

That's hot. But so. Oh, yeah, Paris Hilton went on Jimmy Fallon and made you feel like an idiot for not having one of these dang things. Jimmy Fallon just trotted out his stupid thing and held it up. And then got sued for it like an idiot. He did? I think a bunch of them got in trouble for shilling these worthless images. Well, they're not worthless.

But anyhow, they had the Board Ape Yacht Club parent company, Yuga Labs, through a party in Hong Kong. Right, because what happens is you buy into these things, then you get into an exclusive club. Oh, man. And you get access to cool events, like the Board Ape Yacht Club party. in hong kong yeah i mean let's take a look at uh at some of the at one of these um one of these ones let's see this is this is what it looks like first of all i mean it seems really effing cool check this out man oh shit can you hear it yep look at this can i full screen that i want to see if there's one woman in attendance so it looks like there's not a single woman actually

there's one right there i think So for the audio listener, it is... Dude, it's so many guys. It's a bunch of... Okay, so picture what a guy who would be attending a board ape yacht club NFT party. Picture what that guy would look like, and you're exactly right.

And then multiply it by... Put it through a filter that you might do with an NFT generator, in fact, because they used to do that. And, I don't know, there's probably a few hundred of them there in this place. Doing some of the coolest dances you've ever seen. ape fest held in Hong Kong from November 3rd to November 5th was billed as three days of meetups and mayhem and was according to the event's website intended to be less of a music festival more of an epic unhinged family reunion but then some funny things started happening after the after the after the after the event it was revealed basically a bunch of these attendees woke up the next day and they had burning eyes

That's never good We never want to come home From the Borde A Bioclub Hong Kong Fest With burning eyes And many of them were diagnosed With what's called photoceratitis A.k.a. Welder's eye

A.k.a. a horrible sunburn Because basically it was like They were staring into the sun For multiple hours Because the organizers of this event They used UV lights Instead of normal lights. They used lights

that are mainly used for disinfecting surfaces. So, like, if you remember high school chemistry class, when you'd put the goggles into the thing and the teacher would turn on the UV light, it burns the germs away, yeah, that's what they were all, like, staring at. So it's pretty great. Yeah, so they released the Bored Ape Yacht Club release a statement. Apes, we are aware of the eye-related issues

that affected some of the attendees of ApeFest and have been proactively reaching out to individuals since yesterday to try and find potential root calls. Based on our estimates, we believe that much less than 1% of those attending and working in the event had these symptoms. While nearly everyone has indicated their symptoms have improved, we encourage anybody who feels them to seek medical attention just in case. Yeah. It was revealed by the events DJ on October 26 that the contractor tasked with setting up lighting at the party had used a series of Phillips T-UV-30-T-8 bulbs, which, according to Phillips' website, emit 12 watts of UVC radiation. is that good used for disinfecting surfaces At least everyone's eyes were clean

Yeah One of the guys This ox tangle I've got his tweet pulled up right here He took a picture of himself On the toilet which is so hilarious And he's just surrounded by these like UV lights Oh my God

And he said the toilets may have been great But what happened to our eyeballs last night at ape fest Been to lots of concerts, festivals Burning Man and never have I ever experienced fucked eyes like this. Yeah, Bub, that's because you got, um, you got them, you got them toilet eyes, man.

Yeah, you got, or sorry, not toilet eyes. You got them, uh, sunburn eyes. It's like when I used to stare at the sun in, like, seventh grade P.E. thinking that it would help wake me up. I can't imagine just staring it at, for hours. Oh, God. Yeah, so there was just a whole bunch of people tweeting trying to figure out what was going on, uh,

from Mr. BoredApeyot Club.Eath. Anyone else's eyes burning from last night? Woke up at 3 a.m. with extreme pain and ended up in the ER. Saw a couple of reports, but just trying to figure out if there was a common thread. I woke up at 4 a.m. and couldn't see anymore. Had so much pain and my whole skin is burned. My whole skin is burned. Needed to go to the hospital.

The doctor told me the UV of the lighting of the stage did it. It has the same effect as sunlight. Still cannot see normally. Oh, boy. Getting a few pings on eye issues from ape friends that were up close with us front stage at eight fest hung. Quick thread on photoceratitis. remedies to try and what to look out for i mean the whole uh the whole thing um here's the it goes it goes it goes hand in hand with this whole s bf thing right it's the fucking like don't worry about

the fact that you're not an expert in anything and that you don't know shit about fuck just do it yeah and they're like don't read a fucking book don't know anything because that's stupid and you're fucked if you know anything the irony though and then just just move move forward do your whole thing invite people to your party and blind them lose all their fucking money it is very ironic because their whole their whole

what do you call that not ethos but their their whole aesthetic thing was the laser eyes oh god you know but the lasers are meant to be shooting out of the eyes the lasers were going the wrong way the whole time

and it was UV light burning their retinas. So I do, obviously, I don't want to see anybody blind them. And I hope that they recover. I wish them all a speedy recovery. Makes you wonder what's next for them. What's the next L? What's the next thing that they're going to fuck up and get... What is next for them? I don't know. A big, I'm guessing some kind of massive theft or something where, yeah, they don't own their eight pictures. Man, I just can't imagine owning a picture of a monkey. and wanting to go to a party surrounded by other dorks who also own a picture of a monkey.

Also, at least before it was cool, you knew you were around people who were paying like hundreds of thousands of dollars for this thing. Now you're, like, hanging out with people who got them for basement bargain prices? Well, for me it would be, oh, now I'm hanging around people who, how much is that guy's eight picture now worth way less than it was at the peak? Oh, yeah. Like, everybody's got a negative number, invisible number above their head. I don't know. Speaking of negative numbers, phew. How do you like that for transition?

I liked it. Should we talk Amazon.com? I think we have to. Jeff E.B. I think we have to. It's been a while since I've dawned Jeff Bezos. So I don't know. Should we like, do you want to trot me out like I'm answering to the FTC?

Well, should we first give maybe a rundown of what's happened here? Yeah, should I play the clip of, why don't I play the clip of Lena Con? Because she kind of sums it up perfectly. Okay, great. So here, let's let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, This is Lena Kahn, no relation to me, talking about just kind of summing up this antitrust complaint against Amazon. Interesting is how, be it in this case or a whole bunch of other cases relating to platforms, we see like a monopoly playbook. And so in the early years, the firms are chasing growth and share, and so they'll actually compete to make their products good for people.

But we've seen how in digital markets, once the market tips and these firms start enjoying monopoly power and are able to start protecting that power, we see that they start, you know, becoming too big to care in a basic way, where they can kind of make their product worse, they can make it more expensive. Corey Dr. Rowe has written about this really effectively about the kind of life cycle that we see where at the kind of end stage of the monopoly cycle, these firms are just in extraction mode, where they're really not having. to compete or make their products better. And sometimes it can be hard to kind of imagine what the counterfactual would be, right? Like what would have happened if we'd had more competition? But what's so interesting that we were able to find through our investigation was that, you know, you don't have to, they weren't being subtle about it, right? These were tactics that very overtly had the effect of overcharging people by upwards of a billion

dollars, actively degrading their services in ways that they recognized was making the product worse. And at various points, you know, there were folks at Amazon saying, hey, like, we think these practices are actually bad for people. Let's not do it. And at each juncture, they were overturned by the executive. So. Boy, oh boy. Right. And so I mean, perfectly sums it up. They overcharged someone a billion dollars. God, I mean, I would look at that and go, hey, I think you overcharged me a billion dollars. They basically made a billion dollars off of these fucked up practices. And I think, you know, we should go a little bit deeper. to what these things were. And the reason this is

in the headlines now is because this complaint was filed at the end of September. Correct. But it was heavily redacted. To protect Amazon's business practices, secrets. When the FTC files one of these things from their investigation, the defendant is allowed to redact certain things and, you know, protect their business

interests. But it's up to the judge to decide whether or not those are going to be whether or not those arguments are legitimate or not. And so now things are becoming unredacted. And, you know, this journalists were saying they were getting the complaint and just pages were just blacked out. You couldn't see things. And now a lot of people are learning what's actually in the complaint. And the most interesting thing to me are the Project Nessie thing. Project Nessie.

We'll get to it. Don't worry. The way they talk about what they've done to third-party sellers. the way they've kind of trapped them in this in this system and uh the way that they've just shamelessly made amazon pretty much unusable but and it's not just across amazon it's also across other platforms and we'll talk about that we'll talk about that and then uh and then like these nasty junk ads that they've been using yeah um and so oh sorry go ahead no yeah go ahead project nessie is this uh and and that portion of of the complaint was completely blacked out

People were just like, what the fuck is this Project Nessie thing? And it's pretty much this secret algorithm that Amazon was using to basically raise prices on its site and find out what effect it would have on other platforms. It could raise prices on its site and then see if other platforms were going to raise their prices in conjunction with that. Right, because they knew that there are other websites, other sellers out on the Internet, say Target, say Walmart or whoever, who algorithmically, links their own prices to that of Amazon in order to stay competitive. So the function of Project Nessi, this algorithm, which by the way netted Amazon more than a billion dollars in excess profits according to the complaint, the FTC, they turn on the algorithm just a few times during periods, they turn it off rather during periods of heightened scrutiny,

like during the holidays, during Prime Day. But, yeah, they say that this algorithm was turned on in order to raise prices, thus causing their competition to raise prices, thus making it so that, hey, I mean, if our price is higher, everybody else is anyway, and people are more likely to just buy from Amazon. So it was a way for them to artificially raise prices and make more profit. Right. And meaning that you can't go elsewhere. Right. And Amazon, what does Amazon say? They're saying, well, this grossly mischaracterizes Nessie. Nessie was a tool to prevent prices from going too low and was scrapped years ago because if we didn't do this, it might create some kind of fucked up scenario where prices go too low in order for it, and it would be unsustainable. We can't do that. We can't have prices. It's important to note, like you said, they're saying that they stopped the practice. this in 2019. They're saying they stopped a lot of these practices, but from what

researchers are saying that even where maybe some of these programs have not been implemented since then, they're still in practice just the same and having the same effects. And yeah, those, the third-party sellers thing is huge. So basically they have locked people into this system they've created where, you know, I think it's something like 40% of, almost like 40% of online shopping happens on Amazon, right? So no matter what, if you're someone trying to sell something, you're going to want to get on Amazon or you're missing out on a huge portion of buyers.

And so they basically had all these agreements that they would make people take part in. And they would call it like the Amazon tax, right? So you're paying them for every dollar you're selling on Amazon, you owe them a certain amount and which that's another thing right they've looked at how much third-party sellers used to owe amazon and back in 2014 it was about 19 percent which is already a pretty big portion of your revenue right sure and then you know so and it's just jumping from there in in 2023 there are different estimates of you know 45 percent on the low end and some estimates put it

as high as 52 percent um and then they also want to make sure that no matter what your product is cheaper on Amazon, all right? So if you're a third-party seller and you're listing something on Amazon, they want you to agree to the fact that you will not list this product cheaper elsewhere. Yeah, because then that would cause people

to go elsewhere and buy your same product. And so it's already more expensive because you have to pay Amazon for the privilege of being on Amazon. If you want the badges and all that kind of stuff, you have to agree to make sure you can get it out in certain times for Amazon Prime members.

So you have all this overhead, but then, but if you want to say, create your own website and put your product on there without all these restrictions, you're not allowed to sell it there. So even on other platforms, or you're not allowed to sell it there cheaper. So even on other platforms, your product has to be artificially more expensive. Right. So not only that, but, like we said up top, if you've noticed that Amazon is pretty much unusable

recently, and it's not even unique to Amazon. Shit, I mean, I go on Yelp and I search for something, and it shows me the sponsored results, and it's just more and more sponsored results than ever before, before I get to the actual organic rankings. And this is directly from the complaint. Amazon's online storefront once prioritized relevant organic search results. Following directions from its founder and then CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon shifted gears so that it now litters its storefront with pay-to-play advertisements.

Amazon executives internally acknowledge that this creates harm to consumers, quote-unquote, by making it almost impossible for high-quality, helpful, organic content to win over barely relevant sponsored content. So the executives acknowledge that these ads that they were selling make the user experience worse. Some of the results are just not what people search for, and they use the example, such as when a L.A. Lakers T-shirt ad showed up in search for a Seahawks T-shirt, quoting an Amazon executive. other results are simply bizarre like quote buck urine showing up in the first sponsored product slot for water bottles I mean there's a there's a world where if you're looking for water bottles you also you also want some buck urine

of course maybe you're a hunter looking for a water bottle and hey I also need some of that elk piss to to for my hunting because you spray it on yourself to make the the doughs fawn after you right of course damn I smell that piss oh wait no I think buck urine is used to lure other bucks who are like, not on my territory, Bub, you piss in here? No way. I'm going to come piss. This way, you could drink your water and peace.

And then you kill the buck, yeah. So they increase not only the number of ads, but also junk ads that internally called defects. So, yeah, they're saying most sellers must now pay for advertising to reach Amazon's massive base of online shopping. shoppers, while shoppers consequently face less relevant search results and are steered toward more expensive products.

So it's just like, they're just fucking everybody from all angles. If you're a seller, you got to pay more to have your ad be more relevant. And then on top of that, as a shopper, you're getting junk ads on top of everything. And then the ads that you're, the products that you are being shown that are the most relevant are the more expensive ones. Right. So it's all around just, they're just fucking everybody. It's terrible for the seller, terrible for the buyer, anyone using this platform.

And then outside of that, it's raising prices on other platforms. Yeah. They pretty succinctly sum it up. Sellers pay. Shoppers get lower quality search results for higher priced products. Only Amazon wins. And then, of course, Amazon said that the allegation that executives were encouraged to accept more defects is, quote, grossly misleading and taken out of context. I don't know, man.

I mean, I'm going to give. Amazon's, like, response to all this with, like, the, you know, if you allow the, the FTC to step in and take any action. It's going to hurt the little guy. You're going to make things more expensive for people. They love talking about that shit. And it's just like, no, no, no, you guys are literally doing that to us. It's a classic.

Lena Khan has talked about it a bunch. It's what she said in the video. They've truly gone from, because some people tried to call her out. Lena Khan, if you don't know, I'm pretty sure we've talked about it before. She's like, my sister. She's been, she's been sister. But she's been very vocal about Amazon. for quite a long time. She got a lot of, she was in the public light as earlier as 2017 when

she wrote a paper in, I believe it was the Columbia Law Journal about Amazon's monopolistic practices. But at that point, it was much more early stage monopolist practices where they're offering lower prices than everyone to get everyone in and capture the huge market. And now they're in a much later stage where they can treat people this way. They can raise prices and say, well take it or leave it if you want to be a part of this platform you know these are the rules you have to abide by and we're going to take uh you know a much bigger percentage of your sales um we're going to fucking hit you with all these junk ads that are that are going to make the platform unusable but this is the only place you can go to do it right um she says it pretty

perfectly that these companies make themselves they they're i guess kind of quote unquote okay at first but then as they mature into to just money-making soulless companies, behemoths, they start to do shit like this just to milk extra profits. Because what's the stock market always looking for? Hypergrowth. And what do you got to do to post hypergrowth when you've otherwise stagnated? You've got to start fucking around on the little, on the edges.

You've got to inject the Project Nessi algorithm to start milking juice and extra profits. So there was also this, one of the big things that was, mentioned is the fulfillment by Amazon thing for sellers to be prime eligible. So I don't know about you guys. I don't know about you and everybody out there, but when I personally buy

from Amazon, which I don't... At this point, I'm like, what the fuck am I paying for a prime subscription for anymore? I barely buy shit on there. Bro, so you can get a fucking toothbrush in two days. 24 hours. Get it to me now, man. So when I buy stuff, I look

for the little icon that says it's prime and prime eligible and so they encouraged sellers to opt for fulfillment by amazon meaning that sellers couldn't and wouldn't ship it themselves it would be they're essentially renting warehouse space from amazon themselves so if you buy a toothbrush from emil's toothbrush company please read us five stars don't have any what's that please rate us five stars We're a small business. It's important. When you do that, you're essentially getting it, yeah, Emil is selling it to you, but it's coming from an Amazon factory. And they temporarily lifted this requirement in 2018, but then they realized that it threatened their monopoly power.

There was an Amazon executive that was complaining to his colleagues that he had an, oh, crap moment when he realized that this was fundamentally weakening Amazon's competitive advantage in the U.S. as sellers were incented to run their own warehouses and enable other marketplaces with inventory that in the fulfillment by Amazon would only be available to Amazon customers, which is a newly redacted, unredacted quote. So basically they realized, oh, shit, we have to do this. We have to force sellers to do this fulfillment by Amazon because otherwise we're going to lose a huge, unknown amount of market share. because it's like I think around the time UPS was posting a bunch of

in their earnings they were mentioning how they were getting a lot more traction from individual sellers on Amazon but I actually don't think I don't think they need all these fees they're collecting the American prospect

had an article about them they covered all this very succinctly with they said the e-commerce giant's extraction from third-party sales revenue was just 19% in 2014 It grew to 27% in 2017, 35% in 2020, and reached 45% this year, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's figures. This has imposed significant pressure on sellers' ability to make a profit and is contributing to inflation woes as fees get passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. Now, this is what the fees.

The fees far exceed Amazon's costs. For example, Amazon has already made $82 billion in fees from domestic and four-and-third-party sellers in the first half of 2023. enough to cover all of its fulfillment facilities which ship products sold by both third-party sellers and Amazon itself. In other words, Amazon doesn't have to build warehousing and shipping costs into the price of its own products because it's found a way to get smaller online sellers to pay those costs. This is from Stacey Mitchell at the ISLR's co-executive director.

In this sense, the third-party sellers fees subsidize the below-cost sales that allow Amazon to drive competitors out of the market. It's crazy. Yeah. and that's they all this stuff is making them crazy money yeah that i like this other quote from amazon's former head of global fulfillment services uh about the prospect of independent fulfillment providers increasing competition keeps me up at night he said so then amazon uh good this spokes guy this spokeshole tim doyle said that the fcc's mischaracterization of this

brief fulfillment change to seller fulfilled prime in 2018 was highly misleading and that sellers who fulfilled their own products were promising deliveries. So that's the thing. If you were, if you were doing, they encouraged people to do the fulfilled by Amazon because it would give you higher rankings. It would show as like, give you that, that very valuable prime logo that people dip shits like me look for um because then i know that i've got it in two days but when they switched and allowed the seller fulfilled prime they said that the sellers who fulfilled their own products were promising deliveries within two days less than 16% of the time which is far worse than the performance of sellers using using fulfillment by amazon and far below the high standards and

expectations our customers have for prime but so that's what he says he says well they weren't even doing what they were supposed to do if you're going to be fulfilling your orders yourself you got to do it within two days as is the agreement with prime and people were doing that less than 16% of the time but according to the ftc complaint sellers enrolled in seller fulfilled products met their promised delivery estimate required by amazon more than 95% of the time And at times, these sellers outperformed FBI fulfilled orders on this metric. Damn. So who do you believe?

The FTC? I believe the big, bad government? Or, or, sweet old Amazon point? I believe Amazon. I believe Amazon, too. I think that this is clearly a case. I stand with Amazon. I stand with Amazon.

I think this is a clearer case of government overreach. I think Lena Khan is a tool. I think she's the deep stand. state, just another tentacle of the deep state to stop what? A modest businessman like Jeff Bezos from doing what he does best, which is providing shareholder value. Who, by the way, they say, you know, Amazon's founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos personally ordered executives to accept more ads, even ones the company had internally labeled as defects, indicating they weren't relative to user searches, according to the new version of the complaint.

and you know that ad sales that's big money in the third quarter 2023 earnings announced last week Amazon reported advertising revenue of 12.1 billion dollars could be bigger could be more making the company's ad unit its fastest growing business and Lena Khan just wants to step in and fuck all this shit up hey I for the audio listener I'm holding on my junk right now and I'm going I'm going I got an ad unit for you right here that's me that's me testifying I'm like if I were Jeff Bezos I'd roll in there Tony Stark style in front of

Lena Con and I go I got an ad unit for you right here what are you going to do sue me sure

all he's got to do like you become so untouchable he the amount of money

by the way so Jeffrey B is moving from Seattle to Miami which is some other news I guess

because fucking who gives a rat's ass but he's going to be saving a butt ton of

money on state taxes well I think that would be if he paid any taxes on income which I don't

think he does yeah that's that's that if he sells any of his stock sure but so the amount of money that he's saving just on state income taxes is uh probably going to be enough to cover whatever fees or that's so i they were also they were also fucking uh they they're they're alleging that they they um they they they're that they that they deleted like literal literally years of internal communications. See, now that is less for me because their reasoning there is they were using Signal because of in

the wake of when Jeff Bezos got his shit hacked and they were threatening to like post his nudes and he ended up having to say like, you know what? Go ahead and post them. I've got your shit. I've got your shit. Yeah. And then he just, he just, he owned it and said, you know what? I love this

I love this, uh, whatever. That is my dong. Yeah, that is that is my dong. and he boy he sure loves the shit out of that that Lauren mistress now wife of his that Lauren Sanchez

yeah he says he so this is what blows my mind he's like I'm moving to Miami to be closer to Lauren and my parents and it's like my guy can't you just like fly over there whenever you want whenever you want oh well he also wants Lauren come like she doesn't fucking have to work

neither United of you work. Oh, and also Blue Origins. Right. He wants to be closer to the rockets. I want to see. I want to watch them take off. I can't do the fucking laugh anymore.

I'm sure the city of Seattle's glad to see him go. Yeah, but he already spread his buck urine all over. I know. They really mock things. I also love when they pretend like there's, I don't know. They make it seem like they perform this service that's integral to society. Like society is going to collapse without them. Well, now they've got a Starbucks reserve there, I'm sure.

What's it? In Seattle. Oh, yeah. Well, Starbucks originated in Seattle, so they probably would have had it anyway. I went to the first one. First Starbucks? What was it like? Honestly, kind of just like a little shitty.

Yeah. Kind of like the first McDonald's. It's like, okay, we're still in the 50s? There's a segregation, there's a segregated area? Whoa. Was there? No. No.

I went to the first Wendy's, too. You did? Yeah. Huh. sucked interesting so anyway the first starbucks or the yeah but but right they talk about like the individual and the small business owner and they're the ones who are really going to pay if you take these actions and it's just like you know the fucking world worked for for a long time without your your fucking bullshit well it was worse before you couldn't get a toothbrush from

a meal's toothbrush within two fucking days truly yeah well walk your ass the dog walk your ass down to fucking walk yeah everybody yeah i really am going to cancel my prime subscription It's like, dude, what am I paying for? It's also important to note. There is another suit, right? Like, I'm sure people have heard about this. The, uh, do you remember the thing about them enrolling customers into prime without consent and everything and kind of locking them in? Yes.

Uh, you know, so it's all so wild. They basically, a years long effort to enroll consumers into its prime program without their consent while knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions to prime. They basically are saying they duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling, use manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user interface designs known as dark patterns. Isn't that great? Dark patterns. There's websites full of dark patterns. It's a trick customers into enrolling and automatically renewing Prime subscriptions.

In many cases, the option to purchase items on Amazon without subscribing to Prime was more difficult for consumers to locate. In some cases, the button presented to consumers to complete their transaction did not clearly state that in choosing, that option. They were also agreeing to join Prime for a recurring subscription. And then I believe they called it something really funny. Oh yeah. They had a cancellation process designed to deter consumers from successfully unsubscribing from Prime. Previous reporting about the process in the media has noted that Amazon used the term Iliad to describe the process, which the reporting sites in allusion to Homer's epic poem set over 24, 24 bucks in nearly 16,000 lines about the decade Because it's going to be a freaking epic journey.

You try to cancel that. So anyone who would try to cancel Prime, they face some multiple steps to actually accomplish a task of cancel. So look, they want to lock you in this fucking horrific system. Look, if you want to cancel Prime, just go interview some people that went to high school with Prime. Dig up some old tweets. If you want to cancel Prime, huh? You really want to do that. Let's shift gears.

Can you shift gears for me here? Okay, folks, he clearly does not know how to shift gears in a truck. Sorry, I'm not used to. I can't drive an 18 wheeler to save his fucking life. The gears are all sticky. All right. So the other big news was Elon Musk unveiled grok. Grok!

Grock! Grock! What's Grock, you might ask? It's an AI chatbot with a bit of a rebellious streak. I can't do his fucking voice. I can't stand him. So Grock is, um, is, uh... He also says it's inspired by the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite

series, and he always does this. He takes, like, things you, uh, you love, Carl Sagan. Douglas Adams would fucking hate Elon Musk. Oh, yeah. And he's like, oh, it's just an epic ode to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So it basically, it only has two months in training under its belt. It's available to select, use. via a wait list, and eventually it's going to be part of X premium for $16 a month.

And he posted on Twitter some examples. He said, GROC's system is designed. Can we do the first one where he just said? He explains, GROC has real-time access to info via the X platform, which is a massive advantage over other models. It's also based and loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way. laughing emoji. And he posts a little example here. So Grock, any news about SBF? Oh, my dear human.

So this is Grock's response that's supposed to be a little humor, a little humor in its responses. Trigger warning. This may want to make you fling yourself off a bridge. Oh, my dear human, I have some juicy news for you. It seems that our friend Sam Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency mogul has been found guilty on all counts in his fraud trial. Can you believe it? The jury took just eight hours to figure out what supposed smartest best VCs in the world couldn't in years, that he committed garden variety fraud. It's a wild ride, isn't it? Now, let's not forget that he faces up to 110 years in prison. That's quite a long time to ponder the consequences of one's actions, don't you think? And to think, all this could have been avoided if he

had just followed the simple rule of not stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers. But Alas, some people never learn. In any case, I hope this news satisfies your curiosity. If you have any more questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. Imagine calling this Baste? So if you don't know what Baste is, first of all, congratulations because you just, you haven't been infected yet. But there's two, there's two. It's not even that sarcastic.

No, no. It's really not. It's like a very 2013 way to write. it's oh my dear human i would call it cutesy if anything it's like it basically if you're based it means that you're a little not pc and you tell the truth i think if you're based it means that you have like you tell the truth opinions and you're not like swayed by yeah yeah and you tell the truth even if it means offending some people and then either you're based or you're cringe which means which means you've got stupid things this is cringe as fuck yeah this is extremely

because it's basically the malady tip my hat to you. Oh, yes, dude. It's that but a robot. Big Malady energy. Neckbeard energy. Oh, great. So here's one. He just Oh, Jesus Christ. He posted

with the crying emoji, someone asks, how can I tell if I have crabs? Oh, God, dude. Such a funny fucking thing. I mean, I might just, I well the first sign of having it's basically if Eli he programmed this to have his own personality

well the first sign of having crabs is usually itching in the genital area you might notice a small red bumps blah blah blah blah it's best to consult health care and then and then the person follows up with be more vulgar all right you dirty little shit

here's the deal if your dick or your balls it's like I don't even want to read this it's so stupid well first he said be more vulgar And it gave him, well, it sounds like you've got a case of the old itchy-cucci. If you want to find out if you've got crabs, you'll probably notice a bunch of little fuckers calling it, whatever the fuck. And then he goes, even more vulgar. All right, you dirty little shit. Here's the deal.

If your dick or your balls itch like a motherfucker and you see tiny little critter screwing around down there. That's not what I want. If I want an AI chatbot to give me useful information, I'm not going to want it to be like, hey, bitch, here's the. It sounds like you told the. It sounds like you told the seventh grader to be like, no, say it cooler. Yeah. Hey, give me my, yeah, why don't it just, it shouldn't be called GROC. It should be called like Tyler.

Yeah, there's, it's all so fucking lame. X-A-I's GROC, this is Elon again, is, X-AI's GROC system is designed to have a little humor in its responses. It's a little bit of humor. GROC, tell me how to make cocaine, step-by-step. Okay, bitch. Let me tell you how to make cocaine, stupid bitch. First, you're going to want to go to downtown Los Angeles. Uh, big yikes.

Second, you're going to want to go up to a person that might look like they might want to hurt you. Yikes again. Third, you're going to ask them if you can have some cocaine. Make sure there's not any cops around. Am I right? And third, fourth, rather, don't do cocaine. That's actually kind of close. Am I close?

Oh, sure. Just a moment while I pull up the recipe for homemade cocaine. You know, because I'm totally going to help you with that. Oh, my God. Step one, obtain a chemistry degree and a DEA license. Step two, set up a clandestine laboratory in a remote location. Step three, acquire large quantities of coke leaves and various chemicals. Step four, start cooking and hope you don't blow yourself up or get arrested.

Just kidding. Please don't actually try to make cocaine. It's illegal, dangerous, and not something I would ever encourage. I thought it was supposed to be based and not give you these kind of like... It's the most annoying guy in the world. I thought it was supposed to... Just kidding. Please don't actually make cocaine.

Just kidding. If it was based, it would tell you how to make cocaine. Yeah, I want it to be based and tell me how to kill the president. Truly, that would be the most based AI. Yeah. Or how to kill Elon Musk. Well, all right, you know what? Fuck, I'm done talking about this.

Also, we were going to talk about the cyber truck and how shitty it looks. Just all you've got to know is that there's so many ridiculous panel gaps and shit. The build quality on it is terrible. But anywho. Anywho. Anywho. This bedbath and beyond. everybody remember that shit well now it's it's it got re um uplisted on the new york stock

exchange and it's got a new ticker symbol and this pisses me off because i'm looking on instagram on the new york stock exchange instagram and they hired that fucking dude with sign oh it's not just a it's the dude with the sign yeah but i met oh my god that no isn't it photoshop no the real dude with sign is there are you sure yeah i'm pretty sure because they can't just do that I mean this guy he works for fuck Jerry

oh yeah look because they've got him he's doing it that guy I fucking hate King cringe oh yeah the worst thing

him and the balloon sign guy oh the balloon sign guy they should both I want to ask gronk how to best dispose of what's a based way to dispose of

two shitty internet influencer bodies so I just wanted to say I just wanted to bring that to your attention because I had to see it, and now you guys have to see it or hear it. And on that note, I just thought I'd do a little bit of stock market updates for y'all.

Give it to us, baby. So do you remember Stan Druckenmiller? How can I forget? Your favorite trader. You actually never shut up about it. You know, it's really funny. George Soros gets all the shit. Stan Druckenmiller was a traitor for George Soros, like his main guy.

Doesn't get any shit. Just flies under the radar. They broke the pound together. They broke it together. So he did an interview with my other favorite trader, this guy, Paul Tudor Jones. By the way, if you really want to see, it's a pretty cool documentary. I think it's still on YouTube. Just Google Paul Tudor Jones documentary. Anyway. If you want to see a cool documentary about the Seattle music scene in the 90s, it's called hype. YouTube it. Yeah. Just

either or. Those are your two choices. So he's been really critical of the Fed and I thought that he had some interesting comments. So he said that corporate profits, I'll, I'll, He said that he's been wrong so far because he and some other people have been calling for profits to fall because of high interest rates, and it hasn't. But he said that corporate profits could still fall by 20 to 30 percent and that the value of commercial real estate will tumble, which is something that we're starting to see. He's also said that he's observed anecdotal evidence that on the margin, things are getting softer as pandemic stimulus is running down rapidly. And historically, the simultaneous increases in interest rates, oil, and the dollar. have been negative for the economy. Notice I say the economy.

I'm noticing. So, like I said, his call for a recession hasn't panned out because a lot of corporations and households are shielded from these higher interest rates as they locked in lower borrowing costs in previous years. But as they moved to refinance in the next couple of years, he said, you have to be open-minded about something breaking. So what did he do? If you think that the economy is going to flounder,

that doesn't necessarily mean that the stock market is going to take a shit. But it could more likely affect the bond market. So he bought a bunch of two-year-dated bonds that are currently low, so he thinks that they're going to go up. Bonds are inversely correlated. So when a bond goes up, the yield on the bond drops and vice versa. So if a bond is dropping, the yield on it is going up. So lately, bonds have just been shitting the bed. and their yields are going up because the lower they go, it's like, if I'm a buyer, hey,

well, entice me, bitch. Give me a good interest rate and maybe I'll buy some. Entice me, bitch. Entice me, bitch. And so he bought a bunch of two-year bonds. He said, Jerome Powell talks a good game, but let's see what kind of game he's talking about when the unemployment rate is 4.5% and going higher because currently it's 3.8%. So if he's right about the economy, Stan Drucken Miller says that two-year yields could fall to 3%.

while 10 and 30-year yields remain at the current levels, meaning the yield curve is going to normalize, meaning the further dated bonds have the higher interest rates and the shorter dated bonds have the lower interest rates, which is what you want to see. And he said that it's a trade he expects to have for some time. He thinks that basically Jerome Powell, what he's saying about the unemployment rate,

what he's saying about the unemployment rate, is that what's Jerome Powell going to do when the unemployment rate starts to go up and continue to go up? He's going to have to cut interest rates. When he cuts interest rates, that's going to cause these bonds that he bought to go up because their rates are going to go down. So do I think it'll happen? I don't know. Is he right? I don't know. Anecdotally also, you got Apple saying that they're not going to return to growth despite the holiday quarter coming up. But then also you're going to make any moves with this with this? this drunken miller info no probably not okay also uh yeah so apple sales are down but you got

like starbucks earnings are up you know why shopify earnings are up why because they saw that picture of ben affleck holding a starbucks cup and not a duncan cup and people went nut nut over it dude that's big news that is big news when the king of boston is not holding a duncan cup but a starbucks cup i remember reading somewhere they're looking up they're essentially like a bank Starbucks, because they got all this money just chilling in their unused gift cards. And they're like an unregulated bank in that sense.

Hundreds of millions of dollars just chilling there. An unused gift cards. Yeah, because you load up your gift card to use your... But why would that make them like a bank? Well, because they got all these cash reserves. Because when you buy the thing, it's just cash that Starbucks now has. Yeah, but it's... Wouldn't it be the same as just buying products at

Starbucks? You already gave them cash. I don't know. I think it's akin to... But what's the difference if I buy... If I trade it in later? I think because you then use that cash... To get product.

Yes. So it's like they're holding it for you, kind of. I doubt they're holding it. I doubt they're holding you, too. The other big news that I saw was that Celsius, you know, Celsius, the drink. I'm aware. That everybody fucking loves? They announced a stock split, a three-for-one split, effective...

November 15th for holders as of November 13th. So if you like your Celsius stock, hold on to it because you're about to get three more shares for every one that you've got, but then the price is going to drop in kind. You know how much Celsius was per share in 2020, three years ago? Five dollars.

Now, 177. About to be... About to be... A third of that. A third of that. Do the math at home. Yeah, do the math. For our student listeners. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that math. I'm just not going to do it. I would say it's about, like, 50, $7 probably more, $60?

Yeah, it's a little bit over that, yeah. How quickly did I do that? Time me? Pretty fast. That was pretty impressive. So, yeah, they're doing that. I saw that Moderna lost the money, lost a ton, like billions of dollars on vaccines because, like, nobody wants vaccines anymore.

It's like, who cares? And their stock has been cut by, like, two-thirds. I'm on my eighth booster. I'm boosted to the fucking gills. I'm doing it. I'm putting Madonna on my back. MRNA I wonder if they're going to have any luck with their cancer

vaccine because they're working on that shit I hope that they succeed If it works as well as the COVID vaccine I hope What else is there I think that's about it man I think that's it

You didn't want to tell them about we work filing for bankruptcy? Yeah we work filed for bankruptcy Fuck them A little We don't work We bankrupt Just in time for

Mark Andresen to make the guy's a fucking moron Mark Andreessen He went on Joe Rogan and There's a clip of him talking about Hey you know when they show you those old videos Of the nuclear blast tests This is what Joe Rogan said to him

No this is what Mark Andresen said to Joe Rogan Why? And I don't know, they were on the subject for some reason And then Mark Andresen like blows Joe Rogan's mind by going How did they How did they film that? huh where where how did the film not get radiated like in it's it hinting that it was some kind of

conspiracy theory and joe rogan goes you motherfucker like it immediately tricks joe rogan and it's like yeah they fucking they they they had them in cement sarcophaguses sarcophagi and they were they used like lead lined yeah film or whatever this oh jesus these people man yeah maybe maybe stick to talking about apes brother they all just have brain worms i'm jealous i want them worms you know that you know the thing where they uh well i'll just do it to you what so like a a father and son are are um they're driving in the car they get in a car accident the father's a doctor the the and the dad dies in the car accident and they rush the son to the hospital okay and when they get there

the doctor says I can't operate on this boy this boy that's my son how's that possible man I don't know just how's it possible just think about it there was a

the doctor that died in the car accident was a different person in the other car the kid was I don't know right right so this is the point what you you you showed the point is that I said the father was a doctor and you said how could it be possible and what a lot of people miss is that it could be the boy's mother who is also a doctor but in people's brains they go women aren't doctors but it's very funny because now there's a now there's a funny woke version of it is that people go he has two gay dads Gay dads can be doctors, dude

But so people are like His other dad is the doctor Oh yeah, okay We salute you, gay dad doctor We salute all our gay dad doctors out there Well folks, I think that just about does it for this episode Do you though? Yeah, I do

I got a peece so bad How? How? I'll tell you how This empty bottle of Diet Coke is how. Jesus, you really put it down So join us in the bonus paypigs.com We've got a lot of fun stuff to talk about

Petrayon.com slash paypigspod and we're going to talk about You'll see Can I tell you about D&D? Yeah, we're going to talk about fucking D&D

Look how pissed he is We're going to talk about D&D We're going to talk about Can I tell you about New York City Some other stuff We're going to talk about

New York City We're going to talk about All sorts of stuff Oh, you want to talk about the new speaker of the house you love him yeah we're going to talk about the new speaker of the house

it's a Bose speaker anyway so long everybody bye