Why We All Benefit From Free-Market Capitalism -- May 10, 2016

Some weeks ago, I was informed by Google's YouTube that I could no longer upload any more videos. Google has a complicated formula for determining when someone has exhausted his/her usefulness for YouTube.

I was at a loss. I depended on YouTube to upload personal videos to share with family and post on the blog.

Our younger daughter came to my aid. She said Flickr offers one (1) terabyte of free server space for photos and videos. I have now uploaded several videos to Flickr and have used less than 1% of that free server space. I will "never" use a terabyte but if I do, Flickr offers additional server space for a nominal fee.

Now this: my favorite on-line retailer, Amazon is offering the same opportunity to upload videos. This will be directly competitive with YouTube. The Amazon service is designed for professionals so it may not be for me, but we will see. It will be a long time before I use a terabyte of Flickr server space. (Speaking of which, unlike Hillary Clinton and her personal IT staff, I have never lost any e-mail or uploaded videos. Amazing.)

The other day, I accidentally clicked the wrong button (seriously) at the Amazon website and inadvertently signed up for Amazon Prime, which now costs about $100/year. I did not need it. I won't go through the "gory" details of how that happened. It was my mistake. I'm pretty sure that had I told Amazon it was a mistake, they would have reimbursed me and removed me from Amazon Prime.

The problem: I love it. I love Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime is a whole lot more than "fast delivery" but that's pretty much all I use Prime for right now. It is amazing. With fulfillment centers in the local area, I can order things one evening, and get the product (generally books), not the next day, but the following day, even on weekends. I'll have to watch closely; it's possible some packages are arriving the next day, but I don't know. Sometimes it takes longer for the manager to alert me that a package has arrived for me at the manager's office.

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Notes For The Granddaughters

Speaking of Amazon, Google, et al, I am enjoying a number of music videos during the midnight hour. I don't stream yet from Amazon Prime so for the most part I watch and re-watch old DVDs and Blu-Rays. As mentioned earlier, I am back in my Bob Dylan phase and interestingly enough, back in my Bee Gees phase. (When I pick up Sophia from TutorTime, I play the Beatles CD with their 27 #1 hits. She loves the older songs -- the fast, bubble-gum, teenage-love songs -- I play them loud in the car, and she jumps and claps and laughs and swings her hands and arms in time with the music.)

If one watches closely the timeline and the progression of music along the Steve Jobs / Apple timeline, one understands very, very well why Apple is pursuing an Apple Car.

My hunch: there is a indirect relationship between the information we read about Apple in the daily news and what Tim Cook is focused on -- if that makes sense. In other words, as we get more and more information each day regarding Apple computers, software, watches, phones, etc., Tim Cook is spending less and less time on those products and spending more time on automobiles.

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ATT, Charter, Comcast, Verizon, Walmart -- it's an interesting world.