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Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

politico.eu

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Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments get fired fairly regularly.

Through multiple layers of indirection and obfuscation. A democratic vote every 4 years is noisy when it pertains to one specific outcome (say, Amazon's performance right now) since that vote also contains information for numerous unrelated things. Private ownership means a very tight feedback loop between performance and governance. It's basically why collective ownership of complicated things has never worked. Exce…

>"It's basically why collective ownership of complicated things has never worked"

Except also the roads, railroads, airports, ports, oil pipelines, nuclear weapons and reactors, GPS and weather satellites, chunks of the energy grid, NASA, a national postal service, social security numbers, and so on

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#332
post #302

The most interesting part of the HN discussion is not about the definition of what Amazon is doing, but the occasional misunderstanding of how large brick and mortar retail businesses operate at scale (see: buying shelf space/payment dependant on sales/etc). There are lots of folks on here that understand what Amazon is doing, less who understand retail businesses mechanisms. I'm not sure what Amazon is doing is lega…

It's less doing it at "scale" and more doing it as a monopoly/monopsony. Walmart has faced similar questions as well, but as much of a monopoly/monopsony as Walmart is, it's far less than what Amazon is. Moreso in non US advanced countries that actually enforce the anti trust regulations in their laws.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon has issues, but "nationalizing" it would not ease those issues in fact in most ways it would make them worse. Change my mind then? What would be worse in that situation?

Interop requirements may serve better than direct government control. At the very least, it’s worth being clear eyed with respect to the quality of government run services. What would be necessary for the government to run a service like Amazon successfully? Is our government today capable of doing such a thing? I think the answer is clearly no.

The GPS has like no downtime, same for the enrgy grid and the post office.

Not that i see calue in nationalising Amazon, but i thi k it would be fine

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#334
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be necessary for the government to run a service like Amazon successfully? Anti-corruption measures to stop politicians from sabotaging those services. E.g., USPS.

Idk if USPS is truly an example of excellence, even if they are an example of govt excellence. In 2020 they shipped 70 billion packages, of which 90% was spam.

Well 90% of products on amazon are shit too, maybe some made with child labour. Are you sure this comparisom will be favourable?

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#335
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is generally not how grocery operates today. Most large grocers: - Sell shelf location slots to the highest bidder. - Include a consignment clause in their vendor agreements requiring vendors to take back spoiled, customer-damaged, and unsold inventory at X point or on-demand. - Require merchandisers to keep inventory in-stock for as many products as they can get vendors to manage (e.g. the coke delivery person…

Are you maybe describing US practices? Some of these practices has been prohibited for a decade in EU and it was recently broadened to include agricultural and perishable products: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Yes, US.

Possibly related is that EU grocery margins are amongst the lowest in the world.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#336
post #231

Lots of comments here of the format "every store does this." No, no other store operates this way. Walmart and Costco do not have a little flea market of third party sellers inside their stores who run their own logistics. This would be more like Amazon being both an anchor tenant and owner of a mall, and requiring that every other store within the mall provide all their sales information, then rapidly evicting all t…

> Walmart and Costco do not have a little flea market of third party sellers inside their stores walmart.com does

That is true, I picked a bad example, although Walmart Marketplace is a very high touch service which is expressly targeting sellers that they don't want to cover themselves.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#337
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon has issues, but "nationalizing" it would not ease those issues in fact in most ways it would make them worse. Change my mind then? What would be worse in that situation?

> What would be worse in that situation? It would be by far worse to not have Amazon, or dump their market share to shady chinese competitors like ali express.

Aliexpress is Ebay, not amazon. That being said, both feature a decent return policy, shitty and invariably wrong item description, no ability to properly filter goods and fake reviewes.

The only dailight I see between them is the shipoing time and language.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#338
post #58
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a USPS job compare to the job of an Amazon delivery driver?

How often are USPS on time for deliveries vs Amazons drivers?

At face value, you argument amounts to "brutally exploiting workers produces better results".

You might be right, but...

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#339
You can't square access to "aggregate sales data" of inventories that are not yours with having a policy not to use third-party sellers info for personal/internal sales gains. In this case Amazon went from being a decent host and service provider to a malicious, unfair competitor.

Either they divest themselves from being an active participant in their marketplace, or they put out their eyes and sequester Third-Party sales and transaction records into a bin to never get looked at except for reports to third-party sellers themselves. That's about the only way I can see for Amazon to ethically move forward.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Through multiple layers of indirection and obfuscation. A democratic vote every 4 years is noisy when it pertains to one specific outcome (say, Amazon's performance right now) since that vote also contains information for numerous unrelated things. Private ownership means a very tight feedback loop between performance and governance. It's basically why collective ownership of complicated things has never worked. Exce…

>"It's basically why collective ownership of complicated things has never worked" Except also the roads, railroads, airports, ports, oil pipelines, nuclear weapons and reactors, GPS and weather satellites, chunks of the energy grid, NASA, a national postal service, social security numbers, and so on

> NASA

Which proves my point. Look at the innovation that SpaceX has created with VTOL rockets. If it was left purely up to nationalized bodies this would have never happened (or maybe, it would have taken 50-100 years). The incentives and desire for economic efficiency just simply aren't there. Government wants flashy one-off wins that generate publicity and votes, if it wastes a few billion and doesn't scale there isn't any consternation. The entire mindset top to bottom is completely inconsistent with VTOL rockets.

> roads, railroads, airports, ports, GPS,

The argument for these being nationalized is that these are goods that are prone to natural monopoly and some of those are largely non-excludable in the case of roads.

None of those arguments apply to Amazon. eBay is a substitute for marketplace, Azure is a substitute for AWS, etc.

These are also much simpler than Amazon. Could a government have created AWS? Could a government create an iPhone? It's a rhetorical question because all know that the answer is no. Even if they could in terms of capability, they won't because the incentives aren't right. And if they tried, they'd do it incredibly inefficiently and be outcompeted in am embarrassing fashion by a private alternative (e.g. eBay), with the difference being subsidized by the taxpayer.

> nuclear weapons

In the case of nukes, the argument is that the government has a monopoly on force (which is also why the army should be nationalized).

And I already conceded that the army was well-run, although at a ridiculous level of cost (which is another byproduct of nationalization).

> weather satellites

Built by a private company.

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