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Amazon Is a Monopoly

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Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#321

Post by ernst_klim »

coliveira wrote: post #304
ernst_klim wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company. Then articulate your point more clearly. Sure, many the American megacorps are using the government for their own sake. That's exactly proving why US is such a crony state, where big corps are protected from competition by a hug…

You point is moot because there is no capitalist society where big companies will not interfere with government. If government is too big, they will lobby the government. If government is too small/inexistent, they will run monopolies by direct financial control and other "standard" practices: buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence.

> buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence.

You can't buy a competitor if he don't want to be sold. Neither can you threat somebody with violence if the government does its job. I don't even comprehend how the absence of interventionism presume allowance of such violent measures. Don't confuse violence with "non-competitive practices". The latter are seldom harmful, or at the very least much less harmful than those leveraged by the allowance of interventions.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#322

Post by tk75x »

metalliqaz wrote: post #311
turc1656 wrote: post #282

Solid interview. But one thing I saw that was missing was that Amazon also doesn't charge itself the 15% marketplace fee (it varies slightly depending on category but most are 15%) that it charges 3rd party sellers. Since Amazon directly sells tens of millions of items, it had at least a 15% head start on every single one of those products in terms of price competition. Since we're talking retail here, the margins on…

Amazon doesn't have to pay the 15%, but they DO have to pay for the massive web infrastructure of their retail storefront and for the massive order fulfillment infrastructure.

That's what the 15% fee is for. I can envision splitting up amazon into its retail, web, and logistics branches where the retail branch pays the logistics branch the 15% fee to use their network.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#324

Post by thfuran »

sutterbomb wrote: post #274
5trokerac3 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A client was on track to be selling $X-million this year of some appliances. Our client was forced to to stop selling because of trump tariffs. Amazon won't accept a "higher price" from our little company that only sells $Xm/year. A devil's advocate view: perhaps the supplier was buying low cost appliances from China, built in factories with who knows what labor standards or whether the work was compulsory, made al…

The devil usually knows a thing or two about what they speak of.

Are you trying to agree or to say that the parent commenter doesn't know what they're talking about? Or maybe to make some kind of religious statement?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#325

Post by perl4ever »

Alupis wrote: post #132
perl4ever wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Until recently, Walmart hasn't had a Marketplace" No? When exactly did they start selling large numbers of items on their website that aren't in stores?

"Marketplace" refers to 3rd parties selling on the platform. Until recently, Walmart.com was exclusively products sold by Walmart - now they let 3rd parties list and sell products too (just like Amazon).

So if Walmart.com has a million products that are drop-shipped from whoever, those would be/could be still considered "sold by Walmart"? Or are you saying this is equivalent to Amazon, but only started yesterday

Something sounds odd, because I interviewed with a no-name company that handles this sort of thing close to a decade ago, and while I don't remember if they did it for Walmart, they provided similar fulfillment services for several large e-commerce websites.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#326

Post by kevinsundar »

__jal wrote: post #316
kevinsundar wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is a reasonable restatement of parts of the Bork doctrine, yes. Suffice to say this is a recent legal innovation, and many, many people believe ignoring other monopoly effects is myopic.

Agreed. It basically comes down to if you agree with his viewpoints on M&A and monopolies. Looks like thats where we differ :)

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#327

Post by skinnymuch »

ernst_klim wrote: post #321
coliveira wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You point is moot because there is no capitalist society where big companies will not interfere with government. If government is too big, they will lobby the government. If government is too small/inexistent, they will run monopolies by direct financial control and other "standard" practices: buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence.

> buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence. You can't buy a competitor if he don't want to be sold. Neither can you threat somebody with violence if the government does its job. I don't even comprehend how the absence of interventionism presume allowance of such violent measures. Don't confuse violence with "non-competitive practices". The latter are seldom harmful, or at the very least much less harmfu…

I gave the Diapers.com parent company example elsewhere. They were doomed with Amazon’s relentless price cutting and marketing. Either they sell or they’ll become worthless. You can say they have a choice, but did they really? I don’t think they did.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#328

Post by skinnymuch »

ernst_klim wrote: post #285
skinnymuch wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company.

> It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company. Then articulate your point more clearly. Sure, many the American megacorps are using the government for their own sake. That's exactly proving why US is such a crony state, where big corps are protected from competition by a hug…

> Then articulate your point more clearly.

I don’t buy that you didn’t know I didn’t mean everyone because of articulation. As if such a basic point needs to be specified so much.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#329

Post by scarface74 »

bduerst wrote: post #292
scarface74 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's a difference between enforcing a TOS for everyone and specifically banning someone who is a competitor.

So if CVS wanted to sell their store drug brands at Walmart and Walmart refused, would that be anti competitive?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#330

Post by snarfy »

sjy wrote: post #169
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.

Is that right? Shouldn't the reinvestment involve a significant amount of capital expenditure which is not immediately deductible?

It's a fairly common tactic with farmers. Buy next year's supplies using this year's profits and pay no taxes on profits.
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