Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Is a Monopoly

marketplacepulse.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 348 posts

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#181

Post by shkkmo »

indopedia wrote: post #80
blairanderson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ostensibly correct but basically incorrect. If you sell a product on Walmart and Amazon, Amazon forces you to sell it at the same price or they will not offer it immediately for sale. They change the page to make it look entirely out of stock.

More like "if you sell a product that they already have because it's from the same distributor and is the exact same product". Well then what do you bring to the table for their consumers and why on earth would they pay more for yours. Don't like it? Try ebay.

> More like "if you sell a product that they already have because it's from the same distributor and is the exact same product".

"More like"? That is a completely different scenario.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#182

Post by trappist »

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?

Economist Israel Kirzner insisted that monopoly analysis is only applicable when the possibility of competition is eliminated, either legally or by the producer's sole control of the total supply of a resource necessary for the production of a good or service, and that the term should therefore be defined as such. In which case Amazon is not a monopoly, and we shouldn't be surprised to see continually falling prices and increasing quality.

http://rationalargumentator.com/issue118/Kirzner3.html

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#183

Post by NeonVice »

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.

This can benefit the consumer at the expense of the supplier. The lower Walmart can lower the price, the lower Walmart can offer the product.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#184

Post by AnthonyMouse »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #180
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 exc…

> Amazon has the power to do both.

No they don't.

If Amazon significantly raises prices it charges customers, or lowers prices it pays suppliers, to above/below what Walmart or a hundred others do, are the customers and suppliers going to stay with them? No. When they don't put you in their store, can they also prevent you from reaching the same customers through any other store? No.

The fact that they can choose not to buy from you, or won't pay more than a given price, doesn't make them a monopoly. Anybody can do that. The mom and pop coffee shop on the same corner with six other mom and pop coffee shops, a Dunken Donuts and two Starbucks can do that. But the fact that they won't do business with you doesn't mean you can't sell your goods for a similar price to the same end customers through a hundred competitors, which is why they're not a monopoly.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#185

Post by christiansakai »

indopedia wrote: post #45

She forgets that the Amazon marketplace is made up of sellers and the prices aren't controlled by Amazon for a lot of their products. These are inherited from the distributor in most cases. Sure Amazon fulfills the orders but it's not like Walmart that controls the entire process. There is more freedom in Amazon. Anyways, this is just the hip thing of today. How about making a service better than Amazon? No that's im…

Burner account? Shame on you.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#186

Post by jnbiche »

mikeash wrote: post #114
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…

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

> So don’t sell on Amazon.

Whether or not any individual sells on Amazon has absolutely nothing to do with their anti-competitive practices.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#187

Post by scarface74 »

NeonVice wrote: post #183
scarface74 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This can benefit the consumer at the expense of the supplier. The lower Walmart can lower the price, the lower Walmart can offer the product.

Isn’t that basically Adam Smith Capitalism 101 that any commodity good’s profit tends toward $0?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#188

Post by [deleted] »

ehsankia wrote: post #165
themagician wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyways, this is just the hip thing of today. How about making a service better than Amazon? No that's impossible?? Well you can bet there are a million people trying right now so there are and will be plenty more alternatives. Someone did try. Jet.com. Walmart bought them almost instantly.

Google has been trying for years with Express and has barely made a dent. If Google can't, then I honestly don't know who can...

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#189

Post by shard972 »

mikeash wrote: post #150
Alupis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It takes more than “a significant share.” Being excluded from Walmart blocks you from a significant share of retail sales but they’re not a monopoly. If the argument is that Amazon might become a monopoly in coming years, I can totally see that. But I don’t see how it is one now.

nice dodge, how about answering the question, how do you define a monopolly?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#190

Post by shard972 »

kevinsundar wrote: post #171
__jal wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> But Amazon has repeatedly shown that it isn't harming consumers.

Oh so that whole dash buttoon thing where they doubled the price of your items without telling you, that wasn't harming the consumer, it just knew they wanted to spend double on those amazon basics batteries.

Post reply on HN