The new commercial behemoths of the 21st century, Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al, are all ‘Platform’ businesses. They leverage technology to create connections up and down value chains, replacing as they have businesses that have hard assets that make stuff.
They are facilitators, not producers.
When was the last time you ate a steak produced by a ‘facilitator’?
In order to produce the stuff we need to live and prosper, we need hard, productive, assets. Bits and algorithms help to leverage the hard assets, to build their productivity, but to believe they will replace them is to believe we can eat them and live.
Amazon may not produce the goods they sell, but somebody does, and it is these ‘somebodies’ Amazon relies on, as do the rest of us, to live.
