Jeff Bezos Swallowed Our Economy Whole
The Amazon founder shrewdly steps down at the peak of his company’s power
Jeff Bezos, the archetypal daredevil capitalist, spent 27 years charging headlong into industry after industry, seemingly indifferent to the bloodletting and destruction in his wake. Now, at 57, as he plans to step down as CEO this summer, transitioning to the role of executive chairman, he leaves the helm of Amazon like a shrewd championship boxer — with his shaved pate among the most identifiable individuals on the planet, very possibly at the peak of his and his company’s powers, and down possibly the only way to go — on top.
Amid social, economic, and political chaos, regulators and antitrust lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic are circling Big Tech, with the aim of bringing Facebook, Google, and Apple to heel. But Amazon is a special target of some of the neo-antitrust movement’s best minds, a proving ground that laggard monopoly law can be modernized to tame today’s biggest companies. And if it confronts a future of being fractured into pieces, Bezos’ original dream — an “everything store” that stocked literally anything anyone might desire — would be over. Not that Bezos would suffer financially: Even if Amazon is broken up, Bezos would still probably be the largest shareholder of every piece of it. Still, when you are a…
