The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power is the provocative title of a new book. It looks at the internet’s winner-takes-all dynamic set up by Jeff Bezos who launched his competition-squashing behemoth in 1995.
Amazon’s march to monopoly has raised questions about why the US government has done little to stop its anti-competitive behaviour, caring more, it is suggested about “consumer welfare”, which puts efficiency and customer outcomes above all else. There is an antitrust lawsuit on the books against Amazon but it could be years before that reaches a judgement.
The chart of the first sale, 16 July 1995, is, astrologically speaking, jaw dropping with an imaginative Water Grand Trine from a Cancer Sun (= has a nose for public trends) trine Pluto in Scorpio (conjunct Jupiter) trine Saturn Moon in Pisces. It is both sensitive to customer needs and unyielding. Built for endurance. The Water Grand Trine is formed into three talented Kites with the Sun opposition the inventive, inspired and can-be-fanatical Uranus Neptune in Capricorn; Saturn in an unsentimental, can-be-destructive opposition to a hard working Mars in Virgo; and Pluto opposition Algol. If there was ever a chart for a colossus this is it.
Jeff Bezos, 12 January 1964, is no slouch in terms of a birth chart either, with a super ambitious Capricorn Sun and Mars but more significantly Jupiter in pro-active Aries on the focal point of a yod to a mould-breaking, inventive Uranus Pluto conjunction sextile Neptune. Stratospheric ambitions which could be brought low by massive over-confidence.
There will be hitches and glitches ahead but nothing that stands out as hubris brought crashing down.
[I fear I am one of the ones who sighs ‘Amazon is nasty but it works’.]
The only thing I am upset is Amazon buying of Books Depository. It was a much convenient concept than Amazon where there was no free shipping in those days. Now that Amazon have free international shipping above certain value I have another problem, I have to put items in cart and waited until I hit that limit. And in the mean time prices of books keep changing. I put the book “The Prophet” into my cart and 4 months later I still have no book. And in that time I have buy a bunch of non books items on Amazon.
I always thought Jeff was a Cancer rising.