Reverse auctions

Today on my Amazon page they are offering Amazon dash – It’s a little button you can push to automatically re-order staple products, like laundry detergent, razors, cleaning supplies etc…

Seems to me that it would be pretty powerful to reverse the process and invite vendors to bid to fill your order… Some of the wholesalers do business that way - there is no reason it couldn’t be moved down to the consumer level.

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I think that is brilliant. Have the order be filled automatically by the lowest bidder? But there has to be transparency and the bidding process trust less. Although, some products are cheaply priced but also cheaply made which would stink to have show up at your door

I would assume you would put up lists with specific UPC codes for the products desired – You could probably also set a reserve price – (Don’t want to pay more than you can find it locally) Vendors could probably bid on individual fulfillment or whole load – Probably cheaper to cover shipping etc in one load… I believe the iTrade platform (used in the grocery business) optimizes loads etc so you can buy x from one vendor and the truck will pick up Y from the next vendor and the underlying software calculates the costs of the routes etc…

The ordering party could pick the bid they chose – so if there is an untrusted or unreputable company bidding you don’t have to accept it…

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Sounds interesting.
I read today that they also announced a market for local services - kind of P2P with them skimming a bit in between. Mechanical Turk @home, so to speak.

Mix this with Amazon’s drone delivery service and you have one heck of a product.

Autonomous agents. I actually wrote something similar about how to do this in decentralized form a long time ago (2013). It’s somewhere on the Internet.

I think first SAFE Network has to be up and running. I don’t think the ideas will be a problem.

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Interestingly, I have been hearing something like this advertised on the radio and it sparked my interest.

I think they are ‘find me a car’ followed by the service. Local garages then essentially bid for the tender. Seems like an interesting angle.

I have used similar sites where you find a trader in the past too. Got a tile on my roof fixed last year this way.

Oh Dear…look at this:

@jreighley I love that! Ive been telling Amazon to do automatic shopping for years. Ive noticed their prices are starting to rise and I think thats a huge mistake.

I’ve also been telling them to get rid of there sponsorship conflict for a long time. Outside products should be outside products not “sponsored products” and they shouldn’t be trying to sell our attention with actual sponsorship, despite a retail sight being the least vexing place its still a bribe based slippery slope conflict with the interests of their customers. Audible does a modal ad at launch- pure trash. It seems their customer loyalty is erroding a bit and they are getting confused about where their legitimate power comes from- need to tell Wall St and Maddison Ave to piss off, but great new feature even better if able to be improved by seemless reverse auction process. Id like to see that reverse auction feature implemented and refined to the point that no one would want to toggel the reverse auction off for any item. Great empowering idea!

@warren, I have zero problem with advertising and never will You are wasting your keystrokes with me. When I want to sell things, I feel I ought to have the right to get my products in front of people who might want to buy them and sponsorship and advertising is a very good way to do so… I despise your oppressive obsession, and you reek of a tyrant every time you rant.

Amazon’s use of advertising is very appropriate in my book because they attempt to show me options for things that I am actually looking for… Hooray for them for giving their competitors access to me when I am looking for what I am looking for.

@jreighly Its not me that reeks of tyrant on that front. My attention is mine and not for sale on any terms but mine where all money gained by it comes to me as I see fit. Its basic peace keeping and absolutely essential to keep away extractive society. Supply side society where suppliers are given the phony benefit of the doubt on this matter where there can be no doubt will always lead to slavery.

Amazon needs to take money only from its end users or there is a conflict. Soon its end users will be products and this will lead to higher prices and lower quality. If its already in a monopoly position that will be damaging and extractive, a broken market and a fraud. It cant trade in attention because that doesn’t belong to it. If A if taking money from B to exploit C then A is not a legeitmate or even honest trading partner for C. Labeling sponsorship doesnt go even remotely far enough. There will never be a fair society or a level playing field as long as money is unecessarily priveliged. There will only be: you have to do what I say because I was born with more money.

I think the battle is won here, people don’t support bribery as speech, its the reason for the word “bribery” people recognize money is not speech. And they know sponsorship reeks of privelidge, where only what us sufficiently funded by priveliged money will be made practical or allowed to happen.

You cant speak for a level playingfield move like reverse auction and then be pro sponsorship, as sponsorship is at least collusion and in aggregate over time undermines everything with the tyranny of money. Try to be less hypocritcal.

I don’t buy it. Amazon almost always gets me the lowest prices. Often not from an amazon seller or warehouse. That is not monoploistic behavior…

So you are arguing that it is somehow wrong for a more competitive product to bribe its way on to amazon’s page so I get more choices? And that somehow is more evil than them monopolistically hiding the information from me so I buy from themselves or their warehouse vendors?

There is nothing wrong with advertising. If you don’t trust the publication for taking the advertising then don’t trust it. That is an issue with the publication, not the advertiser. Most advertisers just want to sell their product… And media is an ideal way to find a audience that may be interested…

No, that’s twisting it a bit. I too am for maximum selection and I am willing to pay little more for the protections Amazon can provide to make that happen and I also support black box privacy protected efforts to optimize my product search on an opt in basis. I really like the idea of reverse auction mixed into auto shopping.

Where I draw the line is on being able to pay to cut in line on customer attention. That undermines customer buying power and creates an un level playing field for suppliers. That’s sponsorship, paying or bribing to skew the quality of results.

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The position in line for your attention has a price. So long as the prime position is offered for the same price to all bidders, there is no corruption there. The only reason there is a line at all is because Amazon is being nice to it’s customers and it’s competitors and allowing the parties to get know about one another. Other websites don’t do that at all and keep all the profits and sales for themselves.

I dont follow that. There should be no price only the product that best matches my needs as a customer and no ability to cut ahead on any other criterion than the merits of matching the actual customer search. Where the match is too close for ordering the the system should randomize the order.

How does amazon know what you best want? They aren’t mindreaders. They have a good ballpark guess, but most folks look at a lot of options before they decide on an exact product.

Who belongs first in your “Unbribed” line? It is all totally subjective what the best fit is for what you want.

If I build a website that figures out that you really want blenders, and I know somebody who has blenders to sell, Getting your attention for them is a valuable service to the seller, and the sellers are willing to pay for your attention… Nothing at all wrong with that. It gives you more choices, and it gives them access to an audience that is ready to buy. The Amazon doesn’t know that Joe’s blender is better than Bob’s blender… It just knows that Joes is willing to pay X to get their product mentioned and Bob is willing to pay Y…

@Warren I understand that moral basis for idea such as “Thou shall not steal”, and “Thou Shall not kill”

I see zero basis for “Thou shall not rent your legitimately earned audience to others that may want to address them”

To ban such is stealing from the person who built the audience. It is his audience, and he ought to be able to serve it as he feels best fit. He knows what they tollerate and what they enjoy. He has the burden of retaining or losing the audience. You, Warren, have zero basis for interfering in his business, and when you do, you are the one who is the oppressor. If you don’t like advertizing, read a book, don’t ban magazines.

So every time you talk about banning sponsorship you lose 90% of the audience, and you come across as a tyrant.

Yes, its moral absolutism as opposed to moral Relativism. The former usually associated with ultimate centralised authority figures. :smiley:
This whole advertising debate appears to be a case for moral Relativism- it is a matter of degrees. I think a balance has to be found between constantly tapping someone on the shoulder and grabbing their attention and no advertising whatsoever.
I think a middle ground has to found…just saying. :smiley:

Depends whether the good or service is in relatively high demand.
For certain goods you want to bid early and bid often and suppliers may not necessarily be interested to spend money to make offers to everyone.
It makes sense to make a single offer in that case.

For other things that would be cool.

@jreighly I still dont think you are seeing the issue clearly. I dont lose anyone on this either. There is a reason we hear people under 40 don’t click on ads. There is a reason short of collusion and sponsor driven content strikes (which should have been met with court driven monopoly break ups) that ad or ad plus subcription models never beat ad free models at scale.

If you have sponsorship in aggregate even over a small period of time you lose democracy and people lose their rights in a society ruled by bribery. Sponsorship is not about selling products it is bribery meant to allow censorship and laws and elections based on bribery.

Your attention defines you, it belongs to you, it is the basic means of self determination and self definition in the political sense and even beyond.

There are no corporate rights or any special rights given to people with money. Business doesnt even have a right to exist, because all rights are with the people and we contantly limit money business to prevent the slippery slipe dillution into tyranny that any concession on greed based activity would set up. There us nothing more basic than soveriengty over one’s attention and by extension time, and stress and agravation from interuption.

Honest unsponsored search is fine, manipulation of attention is an abuse, as is puffing and every other bribery assualt on attention and reason. I also dont think there is much of a balance. For instance a sign to mark the exact spot of a location is a safety aid, distracting drivers attention for profit needs to invite aggravated unlimitef liability for every accident it causes.

You think you can rent attention? Wrong. You need to respect my default global opt in, ask only where the flag is set to allow specific pre-negotiated and all monies out of the transaction should accrue to me at nothing less the the global ppp price for a second of attention. I think you will find in every case that distracting me from my voluntary attention to your cite idls not worth it and you’d rather just let honest search do the sorting, which it will with stupid attention gateway, toll road and walled garden fiefdom attempts.

I think you need to consider that unbribed unsponsored AI fueled search will reach a level of precision in the near future where no attempt at selling will have any attraction for seller or buyer, just mangage your wharehouse logistics as transparently and efficiently as possible.

But in that vein reverse auction and automatic novelty and sundry purchases on a recuring debit would be part if it along with, a special box or just not taking in or setting out what dont want for the automated billing system to deal with. And in the same vein Id like an even deeper relationship in that privacy abstracted black box voluntary sponsor bribe free system where I could tell the system about my personal preferences and it could with my permission ask me questions of a general sort. Naturally suppliers might want to pay for some of that abstracted data on their products relative to demographics and that’s a healthy feedback loop. But such search and provisioning may also be done by non profit DAO.

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