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For clarification: Monopolies can result from anti-competitive practices, or an overwhelming competitive advantage. Talking about the latter here The 'anti-trust' and 'monopoly' arguments strike me as hypocritical and self-contradictory in the context of capitalism. We encourage businesses to compete and succeed, yet when they do so disproportionally, everyone suddenly feels entitled to intervene in their structure,…
How we actually define a company to be a monopoly seems to be somewhat arbitrary? I agree that Amazon engages in anticompetitive behaviour but I'm not sure that it can control prices or exclude competition to that extent? I mean every company can affect that, at what point does it become problematic?
If eBay, UPS, Walmart, Rackspace, Oracle and Dropbox (post Hellosign acquisition) merged -- you would have a near approximation of the market impact of Amazon. If it's not a monopoly then it's something worse.
For clarification: Monopolies can result from anti-competitive practices, or an overwhelming competitive advantage. Talking about the latter here The 'anti-trust' and 'monopoly' arguments strike me as hypocritical and self-contradictory in the context of capitalism. We encourage businesses to compete and succeed, yet when they do so disproportionally, everyone suddenly feels entitled to intervene in their structure,…
This is a strange take. Monopolies are decidedly anti-capitalist, stifling growth and competition. I'd recommend reading up on antitrust law origins as consumer abuse is common as well.
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All of these companies (Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Facebook, etc) are very fortunate that the others exist because every single goddamn time anybody criticizes one, somebody will try to derail the discussion with "well what about [one of the others]?" They all suck. Stop trying to use one to justify another.
>somebody will try to derail the discussion Pointing out competitors to a supposed monopoly is not derailing the conversation. It is the conversation.
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I think we should call it hypercompetitive instead of anticompetitive.
Why is that a more appropriate term for behaviors that reduce competition?
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I remember reading about an anti-trust case against Microsoft in the 90s since they included Microsoft Explorer with the OS. They were forced to separate the two, but Chromebook does the same thing without consequences. The rules for Antitrust keep changing and companies are integrating vertically and horizontally quickly before the law catches up.
This is an argument that doesn't feel to be in good faith, but to just stir reactions.
If eBay, UPS, Walmart, Rackspace, Oracle and Dropbox (post Hellosign acquisition) merged -- you would have a near approximation of the market impact of Amazon. If it's not a monopoly then it's something worse.
How do you figure? Amazon makes less than half the revenue of Walmart. Personally it seems kind of silly to talk about any of them as a 'monopoly' when I literally use a competitor to each of the biggies (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc.) every week. Why does anyone consider these companies a 'monopoly' when I'm easily and conveniently getting the same product from someone else?
You're not buying toilet paper from Apple.
You're not searching the internet with Amazon.
For the discussion to make sense, you have to specify which market you're looking at -- a company can have a monopoly in one market (e.g. search) but not in another (e.g. mobile phones).
For clarification: Monopolies can result from anti-competitive practices, or an overwhelming competitive advantage. Talking about the latter here The 'anti-trust' and 'monopoly' arguments strike me as hypocritical and self-contradictory in the context of capitalism. We encourage businesses to compete and succeed, yet when they do so disproportionally, everyone suddenly feels entitled to intervene in their structure,…
I remember reading about an anti-trust case against Microsoft in the 90s since they included Microsoft Explorer with the OS. They were forced to separate the two, but Chromebook does the same thing without consequences. The rules for Antitrust keep changing and companies are integrating vertically and horizontally quickly before the law catches up.
Also note that Google's market share in search isn't relevant. Chromebook's market share in OSes is what matters for this particular case.