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Where Warren’s Wrong

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Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#231

Post by scarface74 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #225
scarface74 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit is a function of competition. If Apple had competitors, it would not be able to charge as much as it did for its computers. Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers ? Apple has been competing against commodity PC makers for 40 years. Or are you saying that Apple doesn’t have competition making MacOS computers? Apple competes with generic PC makers by making a differentiated experience .…

> Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers? They can have no competition for their computers when other people are selling computers. The reason the pricing power standard is used in antitrust is that a intuitively appealing descriptive category may not actually be a domain in which all products are actually considered against each other by purchasers and thus may not actually be a single mark…

So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them? Coke has pricing power on Coke and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola. Does that make Coke a monopoly?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#232

Post by extra88 »

strange_quark wrote: post #193
_ea1k wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that a marketplace is a place where it is easier for a third-party to get their goods sold than a retailer? And the distinction is how a supplier gets their product in is the differentiator? And then the argument is that the marketplace (where it is easier to get listed) should be regulated more than the retailer (which often uses control over sales to push prices up)? I'm not onboard with this.

The argument is that retailers take on risk by agreeing to sell a product since they purchase the product upfront. A marketplace like Amazon is different because they can take on 0 risk while still collecting all the data about what's selling and then turn around and undercut the vendor with an Amazon Basics product risk free.

First, I think large retailers like Walmart can reduce or even eliminate the risk of selling a product in their contracts with product producers, making it effectively like selling on consignment.

How profitable is Amazon Basics anyway? I bet it's small numbers. If dropping it was enough to get regulators to go away, I bet Amazon would drop it in a heartbeat. Other aspects like Prime and AWS are worth fighting over, both in terms of their value to the company and their potential to harm markets.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#233

Post by root_axis »

mech422 wrote: post #227
cm2187 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually amazon is the one that I would say doesn't have a monopoly. It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space (far from it), nor in the cloud hosting (let alone server hosting) business, nor in online streaming (music/tv). Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers). Facebook on social medias.

Amazon is the one that continues to amaze me. People forget the original pitch to investors was _LOSE_ money for 5 years until they either drove competitors out of business, or became the single largest e-commerce provider. I've never understood how this was legal. It seems like the definition of 'anti-competitive' and 'predatory'? If Microsoft gave a free computer with every purchase of windows, and could afford to…

Sounds ok to me. I think the consumer would be very happy with 200 dollar PCs that were comparable in quality to thousand dollar machines.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#234

Post by AnthonyMouse »

scarface74 wrote: post #228
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could download J2ME apps from anywhere. Honestly I used Verizon as an example but thinking back, Sprint’s store was a better example. I think Verizon used something different. In which case the lesson is that by charging so much in a competitive market, that business unit failed. Which leads to the real point: > So now the government should also decide what is a “fair” amount of markup? It's not a matter of set…

If Apple was charging 30% and there was a competing Mozilla App Store for iOS charging 5%, There was nothing stopping Mozilla from making a “Firefox phone” and having a fully integrated experience. Well they did try and failed to execute. As did Amazon, Ubuntu, and Facebook. Apple was nowhere near the behemoth it is today when the iPhone was introduced. A company shouldn’t come under government scrutiny because compe…

> There was nothing stopping Mozilla from making a “Firefox phone” and having a fully integrated experience. Well they did try and failed to execute.

The whole issue is that you shouldn't have to succeed in the phone market before you can operate an app store. Tying the phone to a specific app store is the problem. "Integrated experience" is the argument Microsoft failed to convince with when it tied Internet Explorer to Windows.

> If app makers don’t think the trade off is worth it, they are free to only target the other 80% of the phone market.

In other words, Apple has a monopoly over 20% of the app customers, in the same way that Charter may have a broadband monopoly in 20% of the country even if there are other providers in the other 80%.

Notice that this isn't the same thing as saying that Walmart has a monopoly over its own shelf space, because customers can trivially switch from Walmart to Amazon or vice versa at any time but to buy a $1 app from Amazon or Google Play instead of Apple you would first have to replace your $1000 phone. To reach the same position as Walmart, the issue isn't that they control what's in their own store, it's that there are no competing iOS app stores.

Moreover, the problem with the App Store isn't just that Apple takes 30%, it's that they can reject your app for entirely opaque reasons without recourse, explicitly including because it competes with one of theirs.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#235

Post by fcarraldo »

jklinger410 wrote: post #105
fcarraldo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens and Costco are not marketplaces, they're retailers, and they have contracts with suppliers and pay distributors to purchase goods to resell to consumers. Amazon is a marketplace where any retailer can list their goods for sale. I believe Warren's argument is that Amazon is abusing their position as the marketplace platform owner by listing their own goods at prices that undercut marketplace…

How is a platform different than a retail space?

Say you've invented a product and are producing them at a small scale (100 units per month).

What would it take to sell that product at Walmart?

What would it take to sell it on Amazon?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#236

Post by AnthonyMouse »

scarface74 wrote: post #229
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So how do we trust third party software not to be collecting data and sending it back? How do we trust that Chrome or Windows isn't currently? > How does Facebook give access to the customer’s information and ensure that the third party doesn’t abuse it? It's the customer giving the software access to the data. Facebook has no more to do with it than gmail has to do with whether you use Thunderbird or Outlook. > My…

Have you forgotten what happened with Cambridge Analytica? A “Facebook cookie” doesn’t have all of the information to all my friends information

> Have you forgotten what happened with Cambridge Analytica?

That was Facebook giving a third party everyone's information without consent. This is your friends having the information you shared with your friends.

> A “Facebook cookie” doesn’t have all of the information to all my friends information

It allows you to get all of the information that your account has access to on Facebook, which is all such a client would need.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#237

Post by dragonwriter »

scarface74 wrote: post #231
dragonwriter wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you really saying that Apple has no competition in computers? They can have no competition for their computers when other people are selling computers. The reason the pricing power standard is used in antitrust is that a intuitively appealing descriptive category may not actually be a domain in which all products are actually considered against each other by purchasers and thus may not actually be a single mark…

So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them? Coke has pricing power on Coke and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola. Does that make Coke a monopoly?

> So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them?

No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors.

> Coke has pricing power on Coke

That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for.

> and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola.

A premium price alone does not establish pricing power (in fact, that the sustainable price is some additive or multiplicative premium of the price of competing goods would be evidence against pricing power.)

> Does that make Coke a monopoly?

If Coke actually had pricing power such that increases in price did not produce movement to competing products, then, yes, it would mean it was a monopoly, because the descriptively similar products would empirically not be competing with it.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#238

Post by zepto »

root_axis wrote: post #165
zepto wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is patently false. Google’s monopoly is on resources required to be a search competitor. It has a giant stash of patents related to search, and it also has an enormous collection of historical data that can never be obtained by a new competitors. On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach. These…

> It has a giant stash of patents related to search Patents are not an antitrust violation. Breaking up google doesn't revoke their patents. > On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach. Breaking up google doesn't mean all this insight disappears. We need better data privacy laws to address this. > Th…

A barrier to entry is something a competitor cannot acquire.

I have clearly described multiple of those. It’s not just difficult to compete. It is impossible for competitors to acquire the insight that Google has amassed, since it is based on historical data that is not available anymore.

Breaking up google wouldn’t make this insight disappear, but the fact that you acknowledge it exists proves my point that barriers to entry are present.

Your claim that I haven’t described a barrier to entry is therefore false based on the implications of your own statements.

I am not arguing that the remedy should be the breakup of Google, and your complaints about that remedy are irrelevant to what I am saying, and do not refute the contention that Google is in a monopoly position.

Nevertheless I am arguing that Google has critical resources that cannot be replicated by this mythical group of genius polymaths because they are now owned by Google exclusively, and that this is certainly a consequence of their market position, power and business practices.

It is ridiculous to suggest that the only thing preventing this is ‘brand awareness’. It’s hard to believe you are serious about that.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#239

Post by scarface74 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #236
scarface74 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you forgotten what happened with Cambridge Analytica? A “Facebook cookie” doesn’t have all of the information to all my friends information

> Have you forgotten what happened with Cambridge Analytica? That was Facebook giving a third party everyone's information without consent. This is your friends having the information you shared with your friends. > A “Facebook cookie” doesn’t have all of the information to all my friends information It allows you to get all of the information that your account has access to on Facebook, which is all such a client wo…

Facebook did not give “everyone” information without consent. One person gave access to their information - including their friends information (their social graph). This is the same thing. My account has all of my friends’ information.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#240

Post by chc »

everdev wrote: post #164
chc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This definition kind of punts the question on to the definition of "compete." Microsoft in the 1990s was probably the most clear-cut monopoly in most of our lifetimes, and they still had multiple competitors (e.g. the then-beleaguered Apple), which they did try to use as a defense. I think the key factor is more about whether you believe the competitors are a credible threat. If it doesn't seem like a company is real…

And in retrospect, it would have been a mistake to break up Microsoft. No one is advocating breaking them up today. And that happened just through market forces and time, no government intervention needed.

There was absolutely intervention from multiple governments, and it scared Microsoft so much that they changed their company culture to studiously avoid even the appearance of monopolism — because they knew that if they ever got brought to court again, the break-up would almost certainly happen. If it had really been left just to market forces and time, Apple might have gone under (Microsoft actually propped them up when they were struggling in order to keep up the facade of competition), and Microsoft would have brought their might to bear against all the competitors that have risen up since then instead of being the gentle giant we have known for the past couple of decades.
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