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Amazon Is a Monopoly

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Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#221

Post by riffraff »

joe_the_user wrote: post #195
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…

That sounds pretty terrible but I'm not sure if it relates to Amazon being a monopoly in the usual sense. Ford motor company is huge and may have, for all I know, abusive practices towards it's suppliers. But Ford is certainly in the oligopoly, not monopoly category. Ford could be absolutely the only game in town for a given small or medium sized company but this doesn't mean Ford controls markets on the supplier end…

isn't that monopsony? I think the situation for Amazon is different that for Ford, but I'd agree it seems `single buyer` rather than `single provider`

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#222

Post by Dylan16807 »

Alupis wrote: post #42
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'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…

> They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then dominate all sales of that products on the Marketplace, raising prices to profitability when they feel like it.

This has actually happened? Can you point me to examples with price charts?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#223

Post by xmprt »

scarface74 wrote: post #176
bduerst wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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?

All of those scenarios are where there was a terms of service violation. When Google or Apple decide to ban their competition for no reason other than it being competition, it's anti-competitive.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#224

Post by kortilla »

headsoup wrote: post #216
mikeash wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be really bad, but we're very far from that point.

Depends on what products you want doesn't it? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I've noticed an increasing tendency to not be able to find some products online outside of Amazon, or there is a significant price difference.

If your example is amazon is the only place to buy products and at a super cheap price, it sounds like amazon is great for the consumer for that product.

Even ignoring that, do you have an example of products that don’t exist outside of amazon (other than amazon labeled products).

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#225

Post by Dylan16807 »

coding123 wrote: post #122
whatshisface wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is probably not a monopoly in the advertising market, but Alphabet doesn't run an online store.

How about we meta-compare instead: http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/amazon-to-take-almost-50-per... And that's e-commerce, if you add in offline shopping: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/compare-brick-and-mortar-store... So yes, Google has a much larger market share of "search" than Amazon has a market share of "commerce".

So you agree that you're not pointing out a competitor. You're just naming another company that does bad things, serving no purpose except distraction.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#226

Post by kortilla »

jnbiche wrote: post #186
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.

> So don’t sell on Amazon. Whether or not any individual sells on Amazon has absolutely nothing to do with their anti-competitive practices.

But it has absolutely everything to do with determination of monopoly status. If a seller can simply stop selling on amazon and sell with Walmart/EBay/whatever instead, amazon clearly has no monopoly. Same on the customer side.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#227

Post by alexgmcm »

Findeton wrote: post #219
dylan604 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I've worked for a company where Walmart was the largest retailer for their product (DVDs). They were constantly being beat up to lower their wholesale prices while also demanding a separate SKU with edited content. Amazon is no different in this case (except not demanding edited content). Whenever I asked about this, they said you still had to provide product for sale wherever the customers were. The la…

Yeah, there's nothing inherently bad about monopolies. The problem only arises when monopolies are forced into people by the government. Instead, people choose Amazon on their own.

But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies without government forcing people.

I mean there are areas where peoples only choice of ISP is Comcast and equally the Government wasn't forcing people to buy Standard Oil.

Any monopoly is bad because it allows them to ignore consumers as there is no competition.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#228

Post by dodobirdlord »

scarface74 wrote: post #187
NeonVice wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

More or less. In a competitive system profit margins should trend downward. They won't necessarily reach 0 in the limit, because at some point you'll reach the point where everyone has something better to do with their resources than move into your market and undercut you (and you have no better prospect by undercutting anyone else). A profit margin of 0 is a stable equilibrium, but equilibria can also be reached when everyone's profit margin is sufficiently low that the fixed costs of starting a competitive business are larger than cumulative expected profits over a long time horizon.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#229

Post by arkh »

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.

> A huge share of people shop exclusively on Amazon

People should ask why. Is it the prices? No. Is it the discoverability? No. It's because when you have a problem with whatever you bought you get reimbursed. No "call Samsung hotline", no "we'll add this totally not free warranty package in your cart".

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#230

Post by lanevorockz »

bduerst wrote: post #88
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?

For years Amazon had banned Chromecast and AppleTV devices from it's entire marketplace when they competed with their Firestick device. Not only did Amazon not carry it, but Amazon also prevented third party sellers from listing the competing devices as well. That is textbook anti-competitive behavior, which is probably why Amazon finally started selling them again recently.

Amazon can behave like that because they act as a store, by taking responsibility for the delivery and covering returns/refunds. It means that amazon incurs in Losses to be classified as such. To be honest, that is the genius of amazon. A store backed ebay.
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