12 Midnight Again, It Must Be Another One of Those Times I Agree With Bill Maher - He Says Jeff Bezos and Amazon Are ‘Anti-Capitalist'

“Real Time With Bill Maher” was off last week, and Maher returned on Friday by taking a big swing at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. This rant, which came as part of the New Rules segment at the end of the show, was prompted by the news that Bezos is on pace to become the first-ever member of the trillionaire class. 

“New rule: you can’t have so much money that my computer’s spellcheck doesn’t know what to call you. Jeff Bezos is poised to be the world’s first trillionaire, the headline says. Even my phone was like, ‘That can’t be right,'” Maher quipped. (Sidenote: the spellcheck in my web browser also doesn’t think “trillionaire” is a word.)

“We now live in an age not of innovation but of domination,” he continued. “Startups are in a 13-year slump and financing is down 22% from eight years ago because, in the online marketplace, Amazon has become the only game in town. And that was before an event happened that made everyone stay home and order everything online. Yeah, I mean, predictably, once the virus hit and America locked itself upstairs like a babysitter hiding from a slasher, sure, of course, the rest of the economy cratered. But Amazon’s stock price is up 25%. That’s what I call asymptomatic.” 

Then Maher got serious: “If we don’t do something, we’re gonna come out of our holes and discover that there’s only one store and it knows where you live.” Now there’s the question, what can be done about it? Maher’s got some ideas. 

“You might be surprised to learn that Elizabeth Warren had a plan to break up Amazon. And I say let’s go for it,” Maher said. “Like Sen. Warren, I’m a capitalist to my core, but when a company gets so big it smothers all competitors in the crib, that’s anti-capitalist. Like when Amazon destroyed the startup Diapers.com by cutting Amazon’s own diaper costs below cost. By one estimate, Bezos lost $100 million in his quest to corner the online diaper market. But he owns it now. Which raises the question: What is wrong with this man?"