&gt;<i>Amazon prices its products for thin margins and aggressively moves into new product spaces (sometimes with spectacular failures). Apple prices its products for thick margins and returns a lot of money to investors with stock buybacks. Using profits as a metric to compare these two companies holistically is specious.</i><p>I thought capitalism was a for-profit endeavour. Unless Amazon runs as a non-profit, it&#x27;s just people investing in perpetuity based on pure belief&#x2F;speculation of imagined future profit (and of course, on actual stock-based profits). Not that different from any pyramid scheme, which is why historically the stock market has periodical bubbles and crashes.<p>Those kind of rewards for the kind of actual prospects the company has are more or less a speculative bubble, with little basis on objective reality. $600 billion in &quot;cash&quot; on the other hand, that&#x27;s something to keep you going and to talk about.<p>Apple could even get to be privately owned company with their buybacks -- Amazon wouldn&#x27;t even stand a year as one at their churn rate.<p>&gt;<i>Amazon prices its products for thin margins and aggressively moves into new product spaces</i><p>Walmart does thin margins too -- but with huge revenues and profits compared to Amazon.