The World According to Amazon (2019) - full transcript

I thought, this guy, he's drunk.

Come out here and buy these ranches

to put a spaceship deal out here.

He's gotta be drinking some kind

of bad whiskey or something.

It's true.

I guess he's got enough money to do it.

Whatever he wants to do,

he's got the money to play the game.

From 10 miles outside of town

to highway 62 180 is 45 miles

and he owns all that on both sides.

They don't let anything out about it.

This is the entrance but you have

to have the key in order to get in.

T minus 10,

Just like an average ordinary guy

until you talk to him and then you realize

this guy's got a lot on his plate

and he knows what he's doing.

Five, four, start, two, one.

Number one is Amazon founder

and CEO Jeff Bezos.

He is the first centi-billionaire.

I'm using

in place heavy lifting infrastructure

so that the next generation

a dynamic entrepreneurial

Is the

to satisfy the ambitions of Jeff Bezos?

Amazon is the largest store in the world.

It sends out 150 parcels per second

adding up to five billion each year.

Its boss Jeff Bezos

to sell everything instantly everywhere.

And to satisfy his customers'

There are 300 million Amazon

The multinational company

and the way we consume.

It has even succeeded in

How exactly is Amazon taking

What does Jeff Bezos want

What future does the multinational wish

to impose on us and at what cost?

Our story begins in 1994

Jeff Bezos a 30-something

creates Amazon in his garage.

I'm Jeff Bezos.

And what

Where did you

Well, three years ago

working for a quantitative hedge fund

when I came across a startling statistic

that web usage was

So, I decided I would try

that made sense in the

In the beginning

One of the things that

in Seattle at that time was grunge.

So, you had Nirvana and Pearl Jam

and all that kind of music.

So, there were plaid shirts on everyone.

Paul Davis

who developed Amazon's very first website.

And Amazon itself was out in a suburb

that really was very far

and any kind of scene

There were basically two programmers

working hard at writing code

and Jeff working hard on the sort

of business-y side of the new company.

There wasn't this kind

like, oh my god, what's

What are we gonna tick off today?

Oh my god, if that isn't done

It was more just a case of methodically

working as quickly as we could.

Books arrived.

Somebody was gonna have to

and sometimes that would be Jeff.

This is like the super early days

when it was really just still the three

of us plus his wife working part time.

Sometimes it would be his wife MacKenzie.

Sometimes it would even Shell or I

if there weren't that many

and we weren't super tied up in something.

This was at a time when

handling maybe less than 20

25 years

sends 20 parcels but 14 million a day.

The company owns over 250 warehouses

and delivers on five continents.

Amazon's success caught

She heads the Institute

a research center studying the evolution

of the American economy.

For the past 10 years,

she's been closely monitoring

Amazon is like, it's

It's got its tentacles in so

There's nothing that Amazon

They're now the biggest

and they produce a lot of clothing.

Bookstores, toy stores, hardware stores.

It's kind of grown invisibly.

It doesn't get noticed or covered

by the media in the same way because

it's not physically present

Amazon is growing so rapidly

but as they grow they're

And we found that for every one

new Amazon job that had been created,

there were two jobs that were

We've lost about 85,000 independent

small business in the last 10 years.

We've lost about 35,000 small

Amazon isn't the only cause

but it's the top cause of those losses.

Stacy Mitchell investigates

Amazon's strategy of conquest.

There's a kind of

to walk between slowly

or rapidly taking over everything

and yet not being so visible

that people become alarmed.

So, in some ways the

and as a society if we're

how to bring that back

than it would have been 10 years ago

if we had noticed what

In the United States,

Amazon now controls half

The company leads online sales,

in clothing, electronics, books, DVDs,

personal care, and beauty products.

It also offers video on demand,

online music streaming, video games,

data storage, insurance, as well as drugs.

Amazon also embodies a

progressive and liberal.

Its acquisition of Whole Foods,

leader of high-end organic

Jeff Bezos is a complex character.

He's a CEO as well as an investor.

But in 2013, he personally

one of the most prestigious

Step by step, the Amazon empire

extends its grip on the world.

Really, Amazon at this point represents

the transformation of

The old saying when I first came

to the Street back in the day

was what's good for GM

Today that's largely Amazon

as the largest market cap company.

It's greatly intertwined with

the entire American and global economy.

Amazon essentially

It's not really a market,

Amazon sets the rules.

It gets to decide which

which companies rank

who can even be there,

what they're allowed to sell,

how they can communicate

what they have to pay in

The old saying is if

and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

Amazon looks like a monopoly,

makes money like a monopoly,

so when I look at it you have

to use monopolies in the traditional sense

to find a comparable type company.

The real definition of a monopoly

is when you have the

by which other players

So, when you have that kind of power

to dictate what happens,

and Amazon has that power,

Amazon has become a kind of gatekeeper

and their strategy is very much about

being the e-commerce platform

Amazon is conquering

one territory after another.

After the U.S., Jeff Bezos

Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Italy,

Spain, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia.

Today the decisive battle for the company

is taking place in India.

In 2013, Amazon arrived in

of gaining control of a market

conquer or falter.

What Amazon has been

is they've been able to,

pretty much all major

whether it is in Europe or in the U.S.

and some of the other Asian markets

as well outside of China.

The only battlefield that

So, A, this is the only

B, it is a significantly

India is the

in the world with a seven

In recent years,

have joined the middle class,

dramatically increasing the number

of internet users and eager consumers.

As a result, Indian e-commerce

is growing by 30 to 50% every year.

Amazon is not the only company

trying to tap into this growth.

Competing with Jeff Bezos is Flipkart,

the leader of the Indian market founded

by two ex-Amazon employees

and Paytm, a new startup financed

The three of them are waging

a multibillion dollar commercial war.

In its first year,

Jeff Bezos invested two billion dollars

and then two billion

To gain market share,

Amazon has already invested

in India without seeing a profit.

All these three players

They have a lot of

big guys backing up.

So, you don't see anyone

The battle

as these multinational

a very strong nationalist

This is the case in old Delhi,

the commercial district

Here, commercial structures have

remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

Sitting at

the largest group of

Each owns several shops

they are the first to feel the

The merchants

but they have a major asset

They form the electoral base of the BJP,

the party in power in India since 2014.

Its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi,

promotes an exacerbated

and defends a protectionist

The Indian government

that could severely limit

Notably by preventing it

Jeff Bezos had to engage

He regularly meets with

It's a significant stake for Amazon

and for the kind of

has been doing in the Indian market,

it is a reflection of the point

at how seriously they take this market.

And if it fails,

it will reflect bad in

It's not a regional story,

To counter the Americans,

the merchants of Old Delhi have a plan

to ensure the government

The troubled businesses will be hurt

because their plans for five years

or 10 years down the line.

Because they have deep pockets,

they can afford to sustain big losses,

that is why they are coming to India.

You can see any example in the world,

wherever they went in the first instance,

they created their own market

and again then created their monopoly and.

This bus

to alert other merchants

of the threat that looms over India.

In 2018, Amazon

to invest yet again another

two billion dollars in the country.

Its operations in India have so far

resulted in a net loss of $883 million.

Investing massive amounts

in order to conquer market share

is the foundation of Jeff

Despite this risky plan,

Amazon's boss still maintains

the confidence of the financial markets.

Amazon's stock value rises constantly.

In the last four years,

it has increased fivefold.

Amazon lost about three billion dollars

in its first six years in

And it worked.

Now Amazon is the dominant book retailer

with more than half the market

and they've consistently done

that in one sector after another

where they go in, they lose money.

Other companies that are not,

don't have the same

aren't able to operate at a loss.

They go out of business,

This is a company that

like that in a way that no one else is.

Jeff Bezos, CEO, one

analyzing a company is

He spent time on Wall Street

So, I believe he sort of intuitively knew

what institutional

knew how to educate 'em about time frames.

As an analyst it's not

but you want to know when that cash

is expected to come in the door.

That helps you build

And so, I believe he did

to speak the language to

Jeff Bezos has been

communicates what he's

And he always talks about this idea

that Amazon is for the long term,

that he's not focused on the short term,

that what he's building

and it's over the long term.

And Wall Street investors have very

much bought into that idea

and they have backed this company

even in the years when

years when they made very little money.

Wall Street continued

Jeff Bezos was successful

in imposing his long term vision

to an economy geared

Having secured the

he was able to make all

of the world's commodities

This ideal of accessibility was borne

50 years ago in San Francisco,

capital of the American counter culture.

Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon

are the unexpected heirs to

I click like that,

press your middle finger to your thumb,

drag them apart snapping like that.

You can find adult pajamas with cat memes

or typewriter's fashion manual.

You have insulin syringes and wallets,

greeting cards, even

You can have anything

A snap.

An forever to consider why you did.

In the 1960s in California,

thousands of young Americans turned away

from industrial society, the Vietnam war,

and the atomic bomb.

They decided to return to the land

and live in communities

This was the birth of

They were anti-big technology.

They didn't like bombs, they

but they loved LSD,

they loved VW vans.

They loved the products,

the kind of consumer products

And what they wanted to do was

take those consumer

turn them into the foundations

of a new kind of society,

a society built on shared experiences,

personal ambition, consumption.

Consumption for the

the foundation of a

The Whole Earth Catalog

was part of the movement.

This publication was

a former biology student

He wanted to help

they needed to fend for themselves

by showing them where to

It's so weird because,

so these people are going to build farms

but what kind of tools do they take?

They take books.

And that's because what

was not just farm equipment

They wanted to change their minds.

Catalog is absolutely essential

and to the commune

But it's also central to Silicon Valley.

They found this world and they began

to reimagine computers

that the Whole Earth Catalog had promised.

When I was young,

there was an amazing publication

called the Whole Earth Catalog

which was one of the

It was idealistic,

overflowing with neat

On the back cover of their final issue

were the words "Stay

It was their farewell

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

And I have always wished that for myself.

When you look at the catalog,

it is trying to give you access to goods

that will transform your life

and it is trying to be whole.

It is trying to literally

You can see that now in the

Amazon is in many ways

of access to the things

in its structure, in its interconnections,

in its being a global information system

to supply goods that

It's the catalog online.

Thanks to the internet,

has Amazon globalized the ideals

Today Stewart Brand, its founder,

has a very rich friend, Jeff Bezos.

But affinities between hippies

Jeff Bezos is a libertarian

He values complete

unimpeded by laws and regulations.

Amazon burned off the social vision

that animated so many in the 1960s,

the hope of a better

through interconnected

At least it's gone for

And it's gone along with

It's good along with some of

The civic world is not something

that I see Amazon caring about at all

and I think that's a great shame.

I think it's picked up on one

of the core elements of

but it's lost whatever civic

and that's a great shame.

My name is Alexander Schreiber.

I grew up in Leipzig and I live here now.

I am 41 years old.

I have worked at Amazon Leipzig for

So over the years, I have seen a lot.

And now I can work at all

of the large departments.

Receive, Stow, Pick and Packing.

Before joining Amazon,

Alexander was a soldier

But in the warehouse,

he was confronted with

where employees are treated like robots.

Because how it usually works

is that they create a position.

Afterwards, the human

like a piece of a puzzle.

Not the other way around.

At work,

it is not about a single procedure

of storing an item or picking up the

Rather, the challenge lies

That you might do something

maybe 10,000 times a week,

And meanwhile, staying

physically, and your mind, psychologically.

Keeping the precision after 500,000

You have a scanner that there's

a line telling you where you have to go.

When you pack you have to move the way

where a computer stands and the scanners

and the managers and teachers and leaders

teach you to make so-called, of movement.

So, first you take this hand,

and you pack and do the line

and you really have to

There's something new in the sense

that you work as a machine

but you're also controlled by machines

and this is something scary.

If you don't follow this rhythm that

corporation push on you

They tell you if you don't

we don't want unhappy workers.

And also, when I have to do

I don’t get bored to an extent that causes

« bore out syndrome».

It has the same effects as a burnout,

but it is characterized by

That’s the challenge.

And that’s the psychological

The main one, in my opinion.

In Germany, on Black Friday,

the unions are calling for a strike.

I am welcoming you to this

who organized today’s event.

Thanks to those of you who helped

In Europe, Jeff

where social protections

and where employees

For the last five years, Verdi,

the main German union,

has been organizing strikes

in the country's 11 Amazon warehouses.

Did you sign up for the strike

Done.

The workers are mainly

asking for wage increases.

Thanks to these mobilizations,

the Leipzig warehouse

increased their wages by

See you tomorrow then, thank you!

April 2018.

The major German media group Axel Springer

is about to award Bezos its prize

for the most innovative

Verdi has called on workers

to come and protest in

Standing alongside the Germans today

are Polish, Italian, and French workers.

They are 1,000 strong.

Welcome to Berlin.

Thanks, it's great to be here.

Today Amazon is

You're probably the biggest

At the same time, you are

by unions and by media

for inappropriate working conditions.

How do deal with these accusations?

If you're going to do

you have to be willing

If you can't afford to be misunderstood

then for goodness' sake,

don't do anything new or innovative.

We no longer tighten our

I'm very proud of our working conditions

and I'm very proud of

Even if Jeff Bezos doesn’t

In Germany we employ 16,000 people.

We pay at the high end of the

We demand wages and

to work less so we can live more.

We have very good

so we don't believe that

an intermediary between

Congratulate you for

Thank you.

And congratulations.

Very nice, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you guys, thank you.

In 2017,

in total revenue.

The multinational is crushing all

its competitors in online sales.

But Amazon is also the

It has nothing to do with

but it's of strategic importance.

The cloud, an online data

Entire databases and web services

are physically hosted in

huge buildings filled with servers.

Amazon owns 120 data centers like

this one spread around the world.

In 2017, Amazon Web Services accounted

for only 12% of its turnover,

but 60% of its profits.

Amazon is a retailer but it's really,

it's a mistake to think

Amazon is a company that

the underlying infrastructure

So, it wants to be the platform on which

all buying and selling happens.

It wants to be basically the interface

between all buyers and sellers.

It is a major part of the cloud,

Amazon Web Services controls about a third

of the world's cloud computing capacity.

And increasingly it's moving

into shipping and package delivery.

There isn't anything in history

It's completely a new thing.

We've never really encountered

But you can think about it

in the sense that that's

and lots of other companies

in order to get to market.

That's an incredibly powerful position.

I don't think Amazon

that could potentially challenge it.

I think the only thing

today would be government intervention.

Aware of the risk,

Amazon is increasingly nurturing

its relationships with governments.

In 17 years, its lobbying

In the United States,

they've gone from

to $13 million in 2017.

In Europe alone, they add up

Will Jeff Bezos use this money

to counter a less than

In 2017, for the first time,

the European Commission

Margaret Vestager, European

sanctioned Amazon for

The Commission has

that Amazon's tax benefits are illegal

under EU state aid rules.

A tax ruling granted by Luxembourg

has reduced Amazon's tax

between May 2006 and June 2014.

It was not justified.

Amazon now has to repay the tax benefit

worth around $250 million

Amazon paid the $250 million

but Luxembourg appealed the decision.

Not all states endorsed the

Nor do they all support other

measures that promote tax fairness.

The thing with Amazon,

and we know that from the tax case,

is that you don't necessarily make profits

but you create value.

So, you create value

but you don't make

So, people make money by

instead of making money by having a profit

coming out of the business itself.

And one of the reasons why we're so eager

also to have a sort of broad

is to make sure that we get it right

because digital companies on

where ordinary businesses

Europe is trying

that specifically

This new tax would levy

their revenues and not their profits

since these web giants usually store away

their profits in countries

France is alone in

We have all had a wake

yes, technology is fascinating

and it produces great

but there's a bad side to everything.

There's a threat to our democracy,

there's a threat to

there's a threat for us as consumers

to be respected in the marketplace.

We need to get in control of that.

So, here it is.

The world according to Amazon.

A world where a single company controls

the distribution of

the infrastructure of our economy.

When I'm buying stuff on Amazon

or receiving packages or have

I'm like, yes, awesome.

Man, that's a great thing that we built.

But as I said, if I put on my

then I'm a lot more questioning

of whether I really

I think most of the time I feel

That I helped to create

turn out to really be a

The issue is who shapes

Is it us or is it Amazon?

That's the question.

On the

that question has already been answered.

Here Amazon is already imposing

its vision of the world of tomorrow.

At first glance, it's an ideal world.

The company's headquarters are located

in this building called Day 1.

At its feet, the brand new

A series of glass balls sheltering rare

tropical plants like a biotube 2.0,

where Amazon employees come to work

in harmony with a domesticated nature.

In total, 20% of Seattle's downtown

area is occupied by Amazon.

In the last eight years,

40,000 new executives

have joined the ranks

Often young and very well paid,

they can take full advantage

and can preview much of

Lockers where you can pick

Or Amazon Go supermarkets

Customers enter with their smartphone

and a computer automatically

To welcome these newcomers,

are constantly being constructed.

Thanks to Amazon,

Seattle has become a favorite city

for the American executive class.

But at night, Seattle becomes

Since Amazon's arrival with

its numerous hires of senior executives,

rents in Seattle have been

The poorest can no longer find housing

even if they have a job.

Here 30% of the homeless

At City Hall, Seattle's

Theresa Mosqueda made housing

We saw about a 600%

and we saw twice the amount of people

who are living in RVS become homeless.

That number is immense.

You can see the crisis of poverty

and homelessness on the street.

However, here in Seattle we have

a higher rate of homelessness per capita

than cities like Los Angeles

and it's imperative that we do something.

We have a thousand people who

are moving to this region a week

which means if we're not building housing,

the cost of housing increases.

People who were in otherwise affordable

rental units really have nowhere to go.

They are falling into the street

or they are getting displaced

Spring 2018,

the creation of a new tax.

The biggest companies in

will have to pay $500

in order to finance the

We had initially proposed a tax that

would have brought in $75 million a year

which is a drop in the bucket

We ended up with $47 million per year

which Amazon agreed to.

The proposal was passed unanimously,

unanimously by the council

Within 24 hours of Amazon agreeing

to that amount of taxing each

for five years for just

after they agreed to that,

within 24 hours they changed their mind,

they funded the opposition

and ran a campaign to undermine it.

No head tax!

No head tax!

No head tax!

Amazon

to push back on City Council.

Seattle was divided.

To counter the multinationals campaign,

citizens mobilized for social justice.

Amazon won

Its petition gathered

On June 12th, 2018,

the Seattle City Council

on the tax in front of

Red against green.

Pro-tax against anti-tax.

Quickly the City Council voted

to reverse its new taxation policy.

Juarez vote for aye.

Only two Council members,

including Theresa Mosqueda,

voted against the repeal of the tax.

Mosqueda vote for nay.

O'Brien vote for aye.

Seven in favor, two opposed.

So, the bill passes

Three months

the launching of his own housing policy.

A two billion dollar private fund to help

poorly housed families across the country.

I want to make sure that

by those who were elected

not by the whims of one

who on one day decides to donate money.

I think it's a real warning signal

to the entire country that we have got

to be able to govern and

to make sure that our most vulnerable

are being protected and invested in.

We need public policy to be passed

by those who've been elected to do so.

Every night in Seattle,

City Hall opens its doors

on the floor to those who