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Amazon Is a Monopoly

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Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#151

Post by prepend »

tj-teej wrote: post #87
lisper wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a huge Uber fan, but in their case at least I don't think you're being entirely fair. My home airport is SFO. The official taxis there have an extremely annoying pricing policy: if your destination is more than 20 miles form the airport they add a $50 surcharge to the cost of your trip. (I live 25 miles away.) And you can't summon a cab with an app. If you're at the airport they are very convenient. If you ar…

Serious question: once the taxi industry has died what makes you believe that Uber won't implement similar policies?

I think it will be easier to identify pricing problems with Uber than the 50+ different taxi markets. Uber and Lyft can adjust prices quite easily, while taxi markets require local regulators to approve changes.

There’s also an issue that theoretically Uber and Lyft compete, where in every city in the US, pretty much, taxis don’t compete on price once it is set for a market.

Uber/Lyft might start having anti-consumer prices once they kill all the taxis, but I think they will be subject to closer scrutiny than trying to take on local taxis.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#152

Post by dlgeek »

ken wrote: post #135
jimbokun wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's time to apply anti-trust law to Uber. (Assuming Lyft or other companies are no longer viable competitors.)

Why not try to apply that to taxis now? Alternatively: why would the government care that a new monopoly replaced what is essentially an old government-approved one?

Because they no longer get a massive cut?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#153

Post by prepend »

pessimizer wrote: post #111
yawz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can ask a similar question: What makes you think that Uber can destroy/prevent the system/model that disrupts another (future) unfair market that it benefitted from? I don't think that Uber is a good example in the original context.

Because they can buy out the competition before you've even heard of them?

That didn’t work for taxis.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#154

Post by notyourwork »

snarfy wrote: post #140
mbesto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and aren't expected to make a profit Sorry to be harsh, but this "no profit" trope specifically when it comes to Amazon needs to die in a hot fire. "“Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that’s somethin…

When you reinvest your profits back into the company, your net profits are zero and you don't pay any taxes. This is where the distortion comes in. It's government subsidized growth. At this point it's grown over all the competitors and affects the market.

I think that’s a completely different issue from ops concern regarding not turning a profit.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#155

Post by ian0 »

rb808 wrote: post #81

I think I can generalize that the problem with Amazon is similar to many of the modern tech companies in that they're super well funded and aren't expected to make a profit which allows them to undercut incumbents. Amazon can price lower than Target/Wallmart/B&N/Local Stores, lose money every year while the competition slowly dies. Uber can price lower than local taxis, lose money every year while the competition slo…

Thats not a monopoly. Thats.. common business sense? I mean even local stores price lower than competitors as a strategy! The fact that there is competitors to all these companies goes to show it isn't a monopoly.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#156

Post by parasubvert »

snarfy wrote: post #140
mbesto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and aren't expected to make a profit Sorry to be harsh, but this "no profit" trope specifically when it comes to Amazon needs to die in a hot fire. "“Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that’s somethin…

When you reinvest your profits back into the company, your net profits are zero and you don't pay any taxes. This is where the distortion comes in. It's government subsidized growth. At this point it's grown over all the competitors and affects the market.

Re-investment for the long term is government subsidized growth? That's a new one. I have to disagree pretty strongly that this is a distortion of anything, it's capitalism 101 in the face of a progressive corporate profit tax. If the US government wants to tax all business activity regardless of profit, they can do what the rest of the Western world has done and introduce a VAT.

Amazon is otherwise doing a masterful exercise of long term planning and competition.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#157

Post by scoofy »

mikeash wrote: post #146
scoofy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at it as the customer being the people buying things off of amazon. They are in a sense, but not the sense that is important here. The the sellers on amazon are customers of their marketplace. Much like Colgate and Crest might fight over ideal shelf space in a supermarket (and be changed accordingly by the market), the sellers on amazon must pay the price to be on amazon. Amazon has the power to set pr…

There are plenty of alternatives to Amazon for sellers too. None of them are as big, but they are there. If Amazon has the power to set prices, why are their prices the same as everyone else’s?

We don't see the price to use amazon to sell things. We only see the retail price. A marketplace can be using monopolistic-pricing to capture returns from the retailer.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#158

Post by AmericanChopper »

abakker wrote: post #134
pessimizer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's a good strategy to wait as long as it took Uber to supplant taxis for something to supplant Uber. If it follows that pattern, you won't live to see it, so "easy-out" is probably not the greatest descriptor. That being said, your individual boycott will have a minuscule effect, and money in your pocket is good. I just can't imagine that capitalism is meant to work like this; paying people to use y…

A cynical person might say that it is meant to work exactly like this. Killing off older companies seems likely to be a service to progress and the economy. (not to the employees, which is a reason why I'm not a genuine advocate of pure capitalism). nevertheless, There are organizational, bureaucratic, and process debts in addition to technical debt, and I think capitalism acknowledges that in the end, those debts ne…

Every dollar of funding that Uber receives comes from an investor that believes there is a long term business model in Uber. Even the short horizon investors have to believe that, otherwise they would have nobody to sell their shares to in the short term.

In terms of killing competition, price wars almost always benefit consumers. Prices go down during a price war, and if the industry is susceptible to them, then another one will occur after the war is over. Look at the airline industry, it’s full of price war cycles. A carrier will try compete on a route, drive prices down, and sometimes this will result in carriers leaving the competition, and prices going back up again afterwards. When that happens, some time will pass, and it will happen again.

The worst outcome for consumers is that the market returns to a non-competitive state when the dust settles. In that case, consumers are just back where they started, after having temporarily enjoyed the benefits of the price war. If the market ends up in an unreasonably non-competitive state after the price war, then the victor has just set themselves up for anti-trust action.

Every mainstream capitalist economist I’ve ever heard of has firmly believed that regulating competition is an essential part of a capitalist economy. So if you think that’s not happening, it would seem to be a failure of government more that a failure of capitalist economics.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#159

Post by watertom »

jdietrich wrote: post #32
theturtletalks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Chromebook does the same thing without consequences It's not the same at all. Microsoft were forced to unbundle IE from Windows because they were using their market dominance in one area (operating systems) to give themselves an artificial advantage in another area (web browsers). This bundling shielded IE from competition and squeezed other players out of the web browser market. Apple are within their rights to bun…

Once Microsoft unbundled the browser they started using their monopoly position to force OEM's to include the browser or facing increased costs for the Windows OS, and since and OEM couldn't sell a computer if it didn't have windows installed it left the OEM no option but to add the browser the OS.

Microsoft's grip was so tight that they prevented IBM from bundled OS/2 on IBM pc's, windows was alwasys installed and OS/2 needed to be a separate line item.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#160

Post by nine_k »

parasubvert wrote: post #156
snarfy wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you reinvest your profits back into the company, your net profits are zero and you don't pay any taxes. This is where the distortion comes in. It's government subsidized growth. At this point it's grown over all the competitors and affects the market.

Re-investment for the long term is government subsidized growth? That's a new one. I have to disagree pretty strongly that this is a distortion of anything, it's capitalism 101 in the face of a progressive corporate profit tax. If the US government wants to tax all business activity regardless of profit, they can do what the rest of the Western world has done and introduce a VAT. Amazon is otherwise doing a masterful…

They are financed by investors initially, and are not paying back in cash. They re-invest their profits, in other words, keep them to themselves.

The investors are paid back by the rising stock, which means by more investors who want to buy the stock and raise the price by their demand.

This is indeed brilliant, and overpowers any org that needs to return part of its profits back to investors, lenders, etc.

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