🔗 Amazon has no choice but to display tariffs on prices now | The Verge:

“You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.”

What we have here is one of America’s richest men, insisting that his wealth and principles will protect his newspaper from intimidation while it pursues an advocacy campaign for free markets, all while the White House calling the mere idea that Amazon might display pricing information a “hostile and political act” causes his company to cave. It seems like that same wealth and power might serve to protect Amazon, no? And definitely seems like a man so committed to free markets that he’s willing to burn down his newspaper has no choice but to look the bully in the eye and really put his money where his mouth is.

I agree with Patel’s larger point here, i.e., that these titans of industry ought to be embarrassed to be continually caught sucking up to the current administration, but I think he’s wrong to take Bezos at his word.

Jeff Bezos’s billions do not protect Amazon or The Washington Post; they protect Jeff Bezos. If he needs to protect the Amazon cash cow that keeps him rich, that is what he is going to, and if protecting that wealth means flushing Amazon or The Washington Post down the toilet, he’ll do that too.

None of these billionaires cares about societal good or public institutions. If they did, they would not be billionaires.