The real Favorite for Amazon's next headquarters could mean the end of capitalism.

We Now Know where Amazon’s HQ will Be!

By 2020, it will be clear Amazon will be one of the biggest tech monopolies America will ever produce, and it might shift capitalism forever.

To give you some context, it was February 20th and Walmart had its worst day in three decades on the stock market. This after news its E-commerce growth under-performed in the last quarter.

Amazon’s stock? It’s never been better. After being neck and neck with Google for a long while, its stock is now at $1,500. This means even in 2018, its market cap has overtaken Microsoft, and could beat Apple to become the first company to reach a $1 trillion valuation.

Amazon’s market value to $726.2 billion, behind only Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL).

AMAZON WILL ALSO BECOME A DIGITAL ADVERTISING GIANT

In such a scenario, Amazon is an inside favorite to challenge Google in digital advertising, beat Netflix in original content, and be the new American AI duopology (along with Google) standing against the Chinese golden age of technology of the next twenty years.

It may be that 2018 is the point in history where historians will look back and say, that’s when Chinese AI and tech began to overtake U.S. companies, talent and researchers. The reality is, Amazon can quickly scale its digital advertising business, and it will be a cash-cow to drive future growth and acquisitions. This should scare the likes of Walmart and Facebook, the most.

THE PLAY FOR WASHINGTON

In terms of entering monopoly status that truly scales the market, Amazon has a few years left of growth and disruption. Amazon must prevent any threat to its future growth. This means boosting its presence in Washington. It turns out, the "everything store" might also be the biggest threat to the future of jobs and in the coming era of automation in America. So here's the catch:

In the past five years, Amazon increased lobbying spending by more than 400 percent, a rate of change that far exceeds rivals’, according to Bloomberg.

Jeff Bezos knew this might happen of course, he didn’t even do due diligence when he for $250 million acquired the Washington Post deal in 2013. He knew his relationship with Government would become more important. Nay, for Amazon’s master-plan, it was central to have Washington on its side. In 2018, this hasn’t changed.

For the future of American retail, it doesn’t matter if Nordstrom goes private, or Walmart thinks it can innovate, or Macy’s is taking longer to become the next Sears, we basically know that Amazon is cannibalizing the future of apparel, grocery and consumer fulfillment.

In doing so, it’s mathematically impossible Amazon will create more jobs than it disrupts.

This is why Amazon needs to set up shop right next to Washington D.C., to make sure it’s not dismantled.

AMAZON WILL CHOOSE THIS TOWN

Amazon’s #HQ2 won’t be favorites Atlanta, Austin or my underdog favorite Columbus, it will actually be Arlington, Virginia. Amazon can’t afford to put its next headquarters any further from Washington D.C. itself.

Also on February 20th, 2018 an article on a local news site in Arlington, Virginia, blew up overnight with traffic coming from an internal microsite for Amazon employees. According to the viral story, ARLnow.com speculates that this indicates that this location is receiving considerable interest in its bid for HQ2, and I agree.

Washington D.C. and two D.C. adjacent areas (Northern Virginia, VA and Montgomery County, MD) are among three of the top twenty spots left in the running, but Arlington is my darkhorse favorite.

Walmart was supposed to be able to compete in E-commerce with the acquisition of Jet but is having certain logistic challenges. They have partnered with Google for voice-activated shopping, but lack the add-on value of what Amazon Prime continues to become; an ecosystem of consumer fulfillment that will acquire more data on users and push capitalism to the brink. How can this be?

AMAZON GO STORES WILL BE EXPANDING

Amazon’s cashierless store AmazonGo is ready to expand to new locations in the Seattle and L.A. area. Amazon announced in early 2018 it’s also getting into logistics and healthcare more aggressively. With Walmart’s stock dropping more than 10% this week, its worst day since January 1988, it’s just a sign of things to come.

Amazon can take marketshare away from verticals which fear what it will become including grocery, retail, healthcare and it’s successfully taking on tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple in the cloud and with artificial intelligence. That it will soon revolutionize healthcare and banking is not far-fetched. Amazon could in theory acquire a ride-sharing operation such as Lyft, to power its logistics and consumer fulfillment with driverless cars.

One thing is certain, in the age of automation which we are on the cusp, Amazon will be a serious player.

THE ONLY THREAT TO AMAZON, IS WASHINGTON

With Arlington it would be the right fit a Amazon HQ, since they have recently ramped up its lobbying efforts in DC (which will be key in the 2020s). Bezos already spends a lot of time at the Washington Post, and as Amazon rises as an advertising giant in the 2020s, it will become such a strong monopoly its dangers to capitalism and market competition will become abundantly clear in the next five to fifteen years.

THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM IS SHIFTING

Amazon isn’t just a retailer or a tech Cloud-AI company, it’s the kind of company that could end capitalism as we know it while providing an incentivized UBI, that exaggerates wealth inequality and deteriorates the middle class for decades to come. As the voice to break Amazon apart will only continue to grow as it disrupts the markets and new industries with monopolistic growth, Amazon’s HQ2 will be in Arlington to ensure this does not happen.

It’s one thing for Facebook to facilitate the hacking of democracy, but for an automation and exponential tech company like Amazon, it could hack capitalism itself and the evidence is out that this has already basically occurred on Wall Street with a hype machine and shareholder veneration that's reaching epic and bloated proportions.

In the era of instant gratification, how we experience capitalism changes as tech monopolies continue to scale as they break-down legacy industries with data-driven consumerism that grossly accelerates wealth inequality.

Coincidentally the fall of the American middle class will coincide with the rise of a Chinese tech dynasty, that will gradually challenge American innovation itself. Amazon is both then the friend of the American consumer and enemy of American innovation itself, which dooms and hinders the ability of the U.S. to compete with the likes of China in the coming years.

However, we now know in early 2018 that Amazon will choose Arlington, for its benefit of being next to Washington D.C.

The article was first published on Medium, follow me there. If this topic interests you simply do a YouTube search of Scott Galloway on Amazon and listen to his recent talks on CNBC, Fox and the L2 Channel.