
FTC Approves of Amazon and Whole Foods Deal - janober
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/08/statement-federal-trade-commissions-acting-director-bureau
======
pen2l
Commentary of Amazon becoming a behemoth aside, I'm intrigued by the future we
will be living in where everything will be delivered to us.

Intrigued for two reasons:

1) I'm reminded of DFW's words about shopping at large stores playing 'soul-
killing musac': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-
ydFMI#t=10m8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI#t=10m8s) This is
going to make life easy for me. Grocery-shopping is stressful and time-
consuming, I look forward to the day that I can do it all online without
paying much extra.

2) Less people will need cars in the future of AmazonFresh/Grubhub/Blueapron.
This is also why I love Uber pool incidentally... I feel like I'm saving the
environment when I do that (vs. driving)! If you continue in this line of
thinking, what you have is: one truck delivering 50 people their groceries via
an optimized route vs. 50 cars traveling by stressed out people who are tired
and just don't want to go the store. Less accidents, less pollution, less
stress.

I am _really_ looking forward to the future of optimized infrastructure for
travel/transportation.

~~~
alaskamiller
1\. David Foster Wallace is commenting how one has to do the work to manage
stress and bias. That's the truth, you work for it. You running away the
stress by deferring it to someone else to handle (the delivery person or the
warehouse picker) undermines his whole point.

2\. So now instead of 50 cars, it's 1 truck with 50 people's worth of
individually packaged goods that gets trashed.

Cattle also feel pretty good about fed three times daily before getting
slaughtered.

~~~
bllguo
1\. A lot of the stress, at least imo, is in knowing what to get, how much to
get, and balancing that against constraints like what's available at the store
and price. Having to make a string of smaller decisions. Being able to do this
online makes things a lot easier. I really doubt that outsourcing the
mechanical part of it all - picking up, hauling, taking home the groceries -
is going to stress out the workers to a comparable degree.

2\. Sure, except a vehicle getting trashed will be much less likely if 50 cars
are reduced to 1. Not to mention the increase in productivity due to 50 people
not losing time by sitting in traffic, or being at risk of bodily harm.

Don't understand your cattle point.

------
castratikron
If 1) Amazon let me buy the groceries online and pick them up at the store and
2) started carrying "normal" brands, they would have my business. I don't want
to pay $8 for a gallon of milk, and I don't want to see a sign that asks me to
let the cashier know if I'd like the conveyor belt wiped clean in order to
preserve the organic integrity of my produce.

Basically, just get rid of the attitude where you expect someone to pay $6 for
asparagus in water, and we're good.
([https://www.eater.com/2015/8/3/9090797/whole-foods-
asparagus...](https://www.eater.com/2015/8/3/9090797/whole-foods-asparagus-
water-wtf))

~~~
slimsag
In all honesty... Walmart offers exactly what you're talking about[1]. Order
your groceries online, pick them up at their store. None of the fancy organic-
attitude stuff you talked about, either.

[1] [https://grocery.walmart.com](https://grocery.walmart.com)

~~~
tomjakubowski
Good luck finding a Walmart close enough to you if you live in New York City,
Boston/Cambridge, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, or much of the SF Bay.

~~~
smsm42
Hmm, I don't know about SF but I live in the Bay and there are at least five
Walmarts within a short drive. Maybe SF real estate is too expensive in the
city itself?

~~~
deagle50
Perhaps driving is not an option if you live in major cities? Whole Foods has
prime locations in urban centers.

~~~
smsm42
Sure. I'm talking about Bay Area, not SF proper. There, _not_ driving is
pretty much not an option.

------
tspike
Amazon won't raise any monopoly red flags until it's responsible for the vast
majority of our non-public infrastructure; it is simultaneously growing toward
becoming both a horizontal and a vertical monopoly in every field it operates
while not technically meeting the definition yet.

~~~
oconnore
I think the issue is that many people see monopolies as a good thing, as long
as they are not being very blatantly abusive (and especially if you can say,
"well look, they _only_ control 80+% of the market!"). Examples: Thiel,
Friedman, maybe there are others.

The march towards efficiency, productivity, and profits naturally cuts into
redundancy, diversity, and competition. Same goes for index funds, holding
companies, etc.

I wonder if there is any way we can find a balance, because it seems like
there are so many cases where giving up some efficiency/productivity for some
other traits is desirable (renewable energy, research and development, health,
safety, etc.)

------
JunkDNA
I think the best take on this whole thing by far is from Ben Thompson:

[https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-
customer/](https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-new-customer/)

(Incidentally, his podcast is fantastic)

------
swalsh
I had assumed this deal had already gone through. Amazon Fresh has gotten
orders of magnitude better in terms of selection and pricing this last month.
Perhaps they started working together before the deal finished?

------
vpribish
The only angle I saw for an antitrust concern was in delivery where Amazon is
already dominant (but not focused on groceries) and Instacart is a serious
player who has long partnered with Whole Foods - anytime #1 takes out a
significant competitor in a space the FTC could be needed. But there are
several more competitors in grocery deliveries including all the legacy
companies - Safeway, Kroger, Albertson's, and even Walmart. Basically, this
wasn't going to hurt consumers.

------
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
Until Amazon credibly deals with its counterfeit problem, I'm _not_ buying any
foodstuffs from them. While it's likely that Whole Foods / AmazonFresh supply
chains are currently separate, that's beside the point. If the problem goes
unchecked, Amazon may consider expanding the strategy further.

People are paying a premium for organic / fair trade / gluten free /
$FAD_OF_THE_DAY groceries, so there is margin for counterfeiters IMO.

~~~
gruez
there are third party sellers on amazon groceries?

~~~
ikeboy
Yes. But groceries and anything that expires is not commingled so if you buy
from Amazon you get Amazon's inventory

~~~
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
They're not co-mingled yet, but there's no assurance that they won't in the
future. And if / when they do, they're unlikely to forewarn you.

------
Joof
There's some crazy speculation about the whole deal. One more simple and
obvious optimization is stuff like Amazon Go that could replace the need for
cashiers.

------
2017Dude
Let's see if those stores will become even more useless. Maybe they will start
selling healing crystals?

------
dang
Url changed from [https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/23/ftc-approves-of-amazon-
and...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/23/ftc-approves-of-amazon-and-whole-
foods-deal), which points to this.

------
orf
The FTC is so weak.

~~~
kornish
Could you expand?

~~~
throwawayxu89
My guess is that the parent thinks the merger is a bad idea and that the FTC
is capitulating in some way by allowing it to go through.

But I think you knew that.

~~~
Dylan16807
But it's not their job to block "bad ideas". And Amazon gaining control of 2%
of the grocery market is clearly not monopolistic.

~~~
norea-armozel
I agree that Whole Foods isn't a big deal merger but the fact that Amazon has
a logistics system in place that could topple the other competitors is very
scary. The silver lining to this is that it'll be mostly Walmart vs Amazon now
rather than Walmart trying to destroy the regional chains (and Kroger to some
extent on the national side of things). Hopefully this will add some
competition on the Walmart front to force them to pull back where they're
really not needed (or wanted).

