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Amazon Is a Monopoly

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Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#231

Post by dodobirdlord »

Alupis wrote: post #131
toasterlovin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not your lawyer. They're allowed to have a conflict of interest. Especially one that you are fully aware of going into the relationship. I just don't get it. Do you think someone selling a generic product that only differentiates on price has some unalienable right to make money on Amazon.com? Or that some wholesaler buying branded products has an inalienable right to somehow not get squeezed out when the onl…

We're discussing anti-competitive behavior, and it seems this is a clear exhibition of that. It's not about what intrinsic value any particular seller can bring - it's whether or not Amazon has become a defacto monopoly and/or practices anti-competitive behaviors.

> We're discussing anti-competitive behavior, and it seems this is a clear exhibition of that.

It's not anti-competitive behavior, it's just ordinary competitive behavior. Sometimes Amazon decides to compete with the sellers on its platform, and woe betide them when it happens because Amazon is an extremely competitive business.

Anti-competitive behavior is when you interfere in someone else's ability to compete with you. No amount of outcompeting competitors can make a business anti-competitive. It's almost a tautology.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#232

Post by dodobirdlord »

losteric wrote: post #18
kevinsundar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion why are behaviors that reduce competition bad? If the answer is it harms consumers... Amazon isn't hurting consumers so you should be okay with it? Amazon got this big because no one wanted to be as customer obsessed as Amazon. Not because they stifled competition.

If they are reducing competition, they are hurting consumers. Competition breeds innovation - lower prices, better customer service, new ways of doing things... none of those things happen without competition, because there is no incentive to improve. Look at Comcast / AT&T regional monopolies, which started out promising lower prices until they cornered markets then started raising prices while lowering service qual…

> If they are reducing competition, they are hurting consumers.

Not if they are reducing competition by virtue of causing less-competitive businesses to lose market share. I feel like there's some cart-before-horse going on in your perspective on this. Competition is wonderful. Competition is amazing. Competition is good for consumers because competitive businesses drive less competitive businesses out of business. Amazon is a perfect example of everything we want to see, panning out in just the way we want. Amazon has materially raised the bar of customer satisfaction, and if Amazon's competition wants to stay in business, they will have to do even better. I look forward to seeing what they come up with!

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#233

Post by ernst_klim »

alexgmcm wrote: post #227
Findeton wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Telecoms were totally built by govs. Back in the days govs were obsessed with controlling the means of communication, so all the related biz was due to the monopoly right.

> AT&T established a network of subsidiaries in the United States and Canada that held a government-authorized phone service monopoly, formalized with the Kingsbury Commitment, throughout most of the twentieth century.

> With $18.8 million spent in 2013, Comcast has the seventh largest lobbying budget of any individual company or organization in the United States.[62] Comcast employs multiple former U.S. Congressmen as lobbyists.

Sure, nothing to do with the government. Go ahead, try to bypass FCC and establish a new telecom company. It's literally pushed by the gov, as in any heavily regulated domain with patents and other monopoly rights.

As for robber barons, that's mostly an antitrust myth to scare people

> After 1900 it did not try to force competitors out of business by underpricing them.[37] The federal Commissioner of Corporations studied Standard's operations from the period of 1904 to 1906[38] and concluded that "beyond question ... the dominant position of the Standard Oil Co. in the refining industry was due to unfair practices—to abuse of the control of pipe-lines, to railroad discriminations, and to unfair methods of competition in the sale of the refined petroleum products".[39] Due to competition from other firms, their market share had gradually eroded to 70 percent by 1906 which was the year when the antitrust case was filed against Standard, and down to 64 percent by 1911 when Standard was ordered broken up[40] and at least 147 refining companies were competing with Standard including Gulf, Texaco, and Shell.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#234

Post by StreamBright »

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.

Pretty much how Apple does not sell other phone brands? Stores have the power of deciding what they sell and what they do not sell. This is not anti-competitive by default.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#235

Post by nickik »

No it is not. Unless you can't buy basically the same stuff from lots of other places this is simple the usual whining about 'big cooperations'.

The reality is that amazon overs good prices and people like to shop there.

And yes, suppliers are gone complain, that amazon is evil, just like suppliers complain that walmarket is evil, just as suppliers always claim whatever larger reseller they sell to is a evil monopoly.

The definition of a monopoly in economics is if that seller can essentially employ monopoly pricing, but amazon prices are not incredible higher compared to the competition.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#236

Post by nickik »

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…

> Tesla can price lower than Ford/Toyota/Merc, lose money every year while the competition slowly dies.

That is just wrong. Tesla can lower prices (or rather get more profit from EV) because they have strategically invested in the necessary supply chain.

The idea that Tesla is systematically losing money from their sales and thus undercutting the competition is seriously wrong.

I don't know about those others, but the idea that all those companies are just living of debt sound pretty wrong to me. These companies are more efficent, and that is where they make up the difference.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#237

Post by c2h5oh »

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…

> 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.

1. Amazon requires you to sell your products at the price that is not higher than at any other channel you use to sell.

Even if there was a competitor that allowed you to offer a lower price because of lower fees (important on high price, low margin stuff like computers) you can't.

2. Access to many traffic/buyer driving features of Amazon is conditional on the product being offered at the lowest price it was ever sold

3. Buy box algorithm, which is a black box, is known for kicking out sellers who raised their prices.

Sellers are forced to cut deeper and deeper into their margins to account for inflation, new duties, new requirements from Amazon (prepaid return shipping) and Amazon fees (new long term storage fees, being charged a refund fee, even if Amazon shipped your product late from their warehouse).

> 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.

How about creating a better mobile carrier or ISP? All US options are inferior and much more expensive than what you'd get in Europe.

Haven't happened because it's next to impossible to compete with big guys without first sinking many billions in infrastructure? who would have guessed..

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#238

Post by dodobirdlord »

mrtksn wrote: post #217
IloveHN84 wrote: post #211

Well, years ago, when Amazon wasn't a monopoly, who had the choice to make it one? The final user. Personally, I've never used Amazon before seeing a friend ordering a fairly huge amount of stuff from there. Prior to that, I was a not-so-obsessed-from-ecommerce eBay user, where I placed an order maybe every 4-5 months. I've started using Amazon because of its returning policy, which is better that eBay's, but by doin…

Aren't they playing really nice and even operating at loss until they become a monopoly? It's not really a choice if a company is giving you free stuff. Probably it's the same idea with Uber: We can have really nice rides at good prices because rich people are co-paying our rides. When it's only Uber out there, they can start testing our patience while maximising the profits. Amazon and Uber are not really selling so…

> Aren't they playing really nice and even operating at loss until they become a monopoly?

No, they aren't. They publish their financial statement every quarter. Generally their revenue is very close to their expenses. Given that, it's impossible that "operating at loss" is an accurate characterization of their business strategy. Jeff Bezos has a saying; "Your margin is my opportunity." It lays out pretty clearly what Amazon's actual business strategy is, and it lines up well with their financial statements. Target a very small profit margin, move into every possible market by accepting a lower profit margin than incumbents, make money by leveraging scale and network effects to drive down costs in ways that other businesses can't replicate.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#239

Post by catmanjan »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #222
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…

> 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?

If he could amazon would be getting a spanking in court right now, I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, but as for evidence...

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#240

Post by Nursie »

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.

Utter, utter bollocks. See - Microsoft and the stagnation of the web around IE 6.

There's plenty of problems with market capture by a single entity, government or no.

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