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Amazon Is a Monopoly

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Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#171

Post by kevinsundar »

__jal wrote: post #141
kevinsundar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but EVERY retailer does this. Every single store brand product you see (Costco, Target, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, etc.) is a result of this. Cheaper products that meet the same demand as brand name vendor goods. In fact customers are already trained for this. I walk into a store and I immediately price compare against the store brand. So if people doing the same on Amazon, why shouldn't Amazon be allowed to fulfil…

> why shouldn't Amazon be allowed Antitrust law used to address this. Monopolies are not allowed to do things that non-monopolies are allowed to do, because the effects of monopolies doing them are different than the effects of non-monopolies doing it. Of course, Bork rewrote monopoly policy in a way that opens the door to exactly the sort of monopolies we now have. But it isn't as if this is some new notion invented…

Monopolies weren't allowed to do things that non-monopolies are allowed to do because they would have an outsized ability to harm consumers as a monopoly. But Amazon has repeatedly shown that it isn't harming consumers. In fact, it's pushed other retailers to better the customer experience or go out of business. Should a company be split up just because it's doing its customers good and got too big because... they're doing their customers good and people like that and want to give them their money?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#172

Post by weddpros »

scarface74 wrote: post #145
blairanderson wrote: post #120

I run a consulting company for Amazon suppliers. We have roughly 2-dozen Amazon suppliers and our first-hand experience is that Amazon is absolutely stifling competition/business to the detriment of customer. The biggest problem is `agreements that restrain trade` is a monopoly practice that happens across the board. They're a black box AND have tiny support systems for their marketplace. One recent example. A client…

People have been complaining about basically the same thing with respect to Walmart for decades.

and the same goes abroad, in Europe and everywhere else

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#173

Post by sjy »

theturtletalks wrote: post #63
jdietrich wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google were sanctioned in 2017 for exploiting their dominance in the search market to promote their other services. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15872354/google-eu-fine-a...

This is the EU. What has the US done to limit or sanction Google? Why was Microsoft pursued and Google not? Both were using one market dominance to push another.

Google wasn't a dominant search engine at the time of the Microsoft litigation, and different people were in charge of the Justice Department by the time that it became one. Not every potential crime is or can be prosecuted – especially when there is a lot of room for legal debate as to whether the conduct was criminal, and the defendant is well-resourced.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#174

Post by [deleted] »

perl4ever wrote: post #133
crazygringo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're each (arguably) a monopoly in their own principal market(s) which (mostly) aren't the same. 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).

I'm not buying toilet paper from Amazon or searching the internet with Apple!

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#175

Post by bko »

Alupis wrote: post #121
mikeash wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don’t sell on Amazon. There are tons of other options. Amazon is merely the largest, not the only.

Is that really still an option the bigger Amazon gets? At what point is it a defacto monopoly? A huge share of people shop exclusively on Amazon, particularly when compared to 10 years ago. There's no sign it'll stop growing any time soon. Choosing not to, or being prohibited from selling on Amazon effectively blocks you out of a significant share of ecommerce sales. There's no way around that.

Considering that e-commerce sales only make up about 12% of retail sales in the US, I think Amazon and e-commerce would have to get a lot bigger.

> The first quarter 2019 e-commerce estimate increased 12.4 percent (±1.1%) from the first quarter of 2018 while total retail sales increased 2.7 percent (±0.4%) in the same period. E-commerce sales in the first quarter of 2019 accounted for 10.2 percent of total sales

I don't think e-commerce is the right market. Most companies selling widgets just want to get their goods in consumer's hands. They don't really care how. Amazon makes it easy and does a lot of the work but sets the terms. Otherwise they'd be going after that 87.6% that's not done through e-commerce.

[0] https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.p...

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#176

Post by scarface74 »

bduerst wrote: post #167
scarface74 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren’t you kind of making the opposite point? While Amazon wouldn’t sell AppleTVs and Chromecasts, neither Apple nor Google had any trouble reaching customers. If Amazon was a monopoly that wouldn’t be the case. Apple also sells third party hardware on their site. Should they be forced to sell Dells besides their Macs?

- If Google removed Amazon from search results, then that would be anti-competitive behavior. - If Apple banned the Amazon app from iTunes, then that would be anti-competitive behavior. You can still access Amazon in all these situations at amazon.com, and just like with the chromecast and Apple TV, whether or not there is access somewhere is irrelevant to the nature of the behavior being anti-competitive. Amazon was…

Apple bans all sorts of apps from their store. Is every app that Apple bans “anticompetitive”?

Google removes and deprioritizes sites all the time that breaks rules. CVS stop selling cigarettes in their stores.

CloudFlare just kicked off 8Chan.

Spotify bans musicians. Which one of these are anti competitive and which ones aren’t?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#177

Post by KingHenryVIII »

disposition2 wrote: post #78
Alupis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that it can control prices Amazon very often competes directly with sellers on the Marketplace, and often undercuts them on price. There are products they sell below the purchase cost, sometimes below manufacturing cost. You can't compete with that unless you have piles of money to burn. They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then dominate all sales of that products on the…

Are the actions of Amazon any different from what Walmart has done in the past? Just about all you describe, Walmart has been doing for 20+ years (probably closer to 30)

If you read the article, it implies that Walmart is also due for scrutiny.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#178

Post by OrgNet »

Arrezz wrote: post #2

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?

> I agree that Amazon engages in anticompetitive behaviour but I'm not sure that it can control prices

https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/08/05/2129248/amazon-sque...

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#179

Post by mbesto »

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.

If what you're suggesting is so exploitable (e.g. government subsidized growth) then why don't their competitors do the same? You're aware that most F500 don't pay taxes right?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#180

Post by daveFNbuck »

higherkinded wrote: post #168

No it's not, and you still have a burden of a proof on your shoulders. It probably is, indeed, kept up by some degree of anti-competitive practices but it's still not a monopoly but a member of what you call oligopoly, providing a lot of cheap stuff in every of its areas of competition. I'd like to point out as well that sanctions (not necessarily well-deserved) against Amazon will just destroy some workplaces, mostl…

The interviewee didn't define monopoly by anti-competitive behavior.

> Is Amazon a monopoly?

> Yes, monopoly power is defined as the power to control prices or exclude competition. Amazon has the power to do both. But being a monopoly on its own is not illegal under the antitrust laws. Illegal monopolization requires both 1) monopoly power and 2) that the firm acquired, enhanced, or maintained that power by using exclusionary conduct.

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