That Bork theory is nutty. Imagine thinking that businesses don't take calculated risks. There is a conveyor belt of judges supported and moved forward by big money corporate interests.
Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
51–60 of 159 posts
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#52The real danger is in debasement—something we’ve seen with product over the past 40-50 years and it’s no different than Walmart putting pricing pressure on it’s suppliers. If suppliers can’t increase costs and they’ve maxed out economies of scale then they need to debase their product to Suppliers need to cut corners to generate additional profits.
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#53Amazon has a team called "Amazon Profitability Group". I used to work for said team, albeit only briefly. The purpose of the team is to calculate the proper price to sell items for, the "discount" to vendors, and the items to put in the "buy box" in order to make the most profit for Amazon. I think the what is described here in the article is only the tip of the iceberg. Amazon isn't doing something as simplistic as…
"and then doing what the systems tell them is the most profitable." ...so, not predatory pricing then?
luckily, predatory pricing does not have to consider intent.
see Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U.S. 209.
essentially, all you have to do is prove that there is "dangerous probability" that a monopolist can recoup their losses after all competitors have been priced out.
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#54(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not in the retail, legal, or finance departments, and I have no inside information about what the company is doing with respect to its pricing. Opinions are my own and not of the company.) Yet another sensationalist headline that is unsubstantiated by the article. "This law student" has a theory . He does not have evidence -- and, in fact, much ink in the article is spilled on the…
Oh come on. You're clearly engineering on how to evade antitrust law. But the better argument is simply that if antitrust law doesn't sufficiently cover Amazon's business, then it needs to be changed to ensure that it does.
This comment crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed on Hacker News. Please make your points without stooping to that.
In this case, the nasty bits at the beginning of the comment could be replaced with a factual explanation about the issue at hand. Since you say it's clear, that ought to be easy to do, and it would make your comment into a good one rather than a bad one for HN.
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#55(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not in the retail, legal, or finance departments, and I have no inside information about what the company is doing with respect to its pricing. Opinions are my own and not of the company.) Yet another sensationalist headline that is unsubstantiated by the article. "This law student" has a theory . He does not have evidence -- and, in fact, much ink in the article is spilled on the…
I haven't looked closely enough to see if there's evidence, but we can finesse the matter by just taking the law student part out of the title above.
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me that, by this description, Amazon is admirably fulfilling its legal and fiscal duties, and to a greater degree than I thought before receiving this information.
Maybe to the shareholders but definitely not to the consumers or the businesses on the platform.
> definitely not to the consumers
Amazon always ships packages ahead of time, at my leisure, and often cheaper than retail. They always process returns and complaints in my favour, without contest. They reach out to local logistics companies in order to improve delivery, and I can tell by the fact that those companies now have branded vehicles (and much happier and more attentive personnel than UPS!), and better verification processes (they found a logistics provider that actually emails the signature given at the door to you when the delivery is processed) that they've done well out of that.
I feel they're serving me very well as a customer, and every ordinary person in my life who isn't competing with Amazon is richer and happier because of Amazon's services.
> definitely not ... the businesses on the platform
The businesses fulfilling through Amazon would absolutely not have received my business were it not for Amazon; in many cases they do not have the expertise to handle the orders correctly, and I do not trust all of them to process the payments securely to the degree that I trust Amazon to.
They have every opportunity to improve their ordering and fulfillment systems, but they choose Amazon because it's where the customers are comfortable already.
I dreamt of a logistics integration system much like Amazon Marketplace when I was 16, and every year they make it closer to that dream, I think it's great. I'm willing to accept an argument from concrete evidence that they have somehow deliberately and systematically broken the law in so doing, but I've yet to see it.
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#57Amazon has a team called "Amazon Profitability Group". I used to work for said team, albeit only briefly. The purpose of the team is to calculate the proper price to sell items for, the "discount" to vendors, and the items to put in the "buy box" in order to make the most profit for Amazon. I think the what is described here in the article is only the tip of the iceberg. Amazon isn't doing something as simplistic as…
"and then doing what the systems tell them is the most profitable." ...so, not predatory pricing then?
Predatory pricing is still predatory if a human does it or if a giant Rube Goldberg machine does it.
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is illegal to do this when you slip below the cost of production line - at that point your lost profit becomes an investment (if you're doing it right) in either securing long term profits[1] (printers and toner) or driving competitors out of business (predatory pricing[2] or possibly dumping[3] if done for market control) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pr…
From the article: > 5 percent profit margin on Amazon’s own retail sales Last I checked, 5 percent margin is still making a profit, and definitely doesn't fit the definition of dumping nor predatory pricing. Part of the theory hinges on this: > However, Sussman asserts in his paper, “Amazon utilizes existing loopholes in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) disclosure regulations to exclude a significant p…
> The leases don’t show up as expenses in Amazon’s free cash flow calculations, even though the equipment is listed as an asset.
Article aside, how does this work?
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe to the shareholders but definitely not to the consumers or the businesses on the platform.
> definitely not to the consumers Amazon always ships packages ahead of time, at my leisure, and often cheaper than retail. They always process returns and complaints in my favour, without contest. They reach out to local logistics companies in order to improve delivery, and I can tell by the fact that those companies now have branded vehicles (and much happier and more attentive personnel than UPS!), and better veri…
I get free shipping from Walmart.com and AliExpress, the latter of which 90% of electronics on Amazon are sourced from. Walmart offers free 2 day shipping and in-store pickup. AliExpress offers the same items on Amazon without having to give middleman their expensive cut.
I don't trust Amazon not to send me fake items or cheap Chinese knockoffs. There is absolutely no quality control on Amazon's end. Amazon has the resources to fight fake reviews, yet fake reviews are still rampant. As a result, I cannot trust Amazon's rating system at all.
Re: Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
#60Interesting piece from the article: "Sussman points to evidence that Amazon has already flipped the switch, moving from dominating the market by undercutting rivals to reaping the profits from that dominance."
So according to Sussman, Amazon is already making money. I wonder what point in time the author thinks Amazon started making money.
If the author claims that happened e.g. in 2016, them Amazon was actually losing money for the first 20 years of its operation. That would require Amazon to have been raising capital for a long, long time. Can that be verified? Are there stock market metrics on total amount of capital raised/net borrowed in a given year?
Has anyone been able to access the actual article to check the details of authors claims?