it is so disheartening to live in a world where the real career killer for state operaters, waging an illegal war of agression, is the that oil prices significantly increase, and not the crimes against humanity being committed for absolutely bullshit reasons.
That is not “allowing us to be the sole host of the thing that is destroying our economy and trust in all media from inside out”. That is keeping parity with it. China is also having major issues with fabricated media from AI. The Chinese government has also latched on to AI, as many others, to manipulate media, and many other police state things. Their economy is heavily, heavily, invested in the success of llms. When this bubble bursts, it will be bad for every major economy on earth, as they are all disproportionately invested in this.
China is 38%, and growing, of the world’s investment in LLMs
I know you are thinking about the fact they started with books, and don’t want a real answer, but this is here for others too.
Venture capital held them together until they expanded their offerings, and developed a network for shipping, internationally. It turned its first profit in 2001, 3 years after expanding beyond books. It didn’t start turning it’s first full year profit until 2004. However it was another decade of consistent losses, mixed with the profits. By 2014 they had developed their own international infrastructure for storing, and shipping, and providing an interface for purchasing products with their website. At this point they were basically allowing anything on their site, and third party business building storefronts on their infrastructure. During this time, they found that the data centers behind their website, could also become a major point of profit. AWS has since become is the primary source for income that covers their operating costs.
So, basically, books lost money, VC saw potential, as they didn’t completely die in the bubble burst, and then supported them under the long term plan of creating a massive shipping network, and massive data services infrastructure, which is their real business. Once this infrastructure was in place they started producing reliable, year after year, profits, which made the shares the VC’s owned worth the the time, and risk. Now they basically just allow third parties to use their infrastructure, for a cut, and if some product becomes a consistent seller, they just order a copy to be made, at the level their purchasing power provides, which means they can sell it for less, and since they own the infrastructure, they can make it so you find their version first. This is how Amazon makes money.
Hey now, great depression america wasn’t trying to get into wars of aggression all over the place