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FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

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Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#261

Post by vasilipupkin »

kmeisthax wrote: post #253
vasilipupkin wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

absurd. Nobody is forcing anyone to work for AMZN or Google or Uber. People would simply quit if these companies were actually abusing them

Yes they are forced to work. If you don't have a job you starve, that's how our economy works. That's a very soft form of force (specifically, a sin of omission), but it is still force. Likewise, quitting your job is extremely disruptive and carries risk of bankruptcy if you can't get on to another employer in time. It's not simply a matter of "switch to the best offer available".

I was alive before Uber, AMZN existed and nobody starved, people just worked elsewhere, so this assertion is just not true. People have to work, but they don't have to work for AMZN, they didn't before it existed. Sure, quitting is disruptive, but people are not actually forced to work for any company, come on.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#262

Post by taeric »

arielcostas wrote: post #236
dartos wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo: Sony has about 50% market share and Microsoft and Nintendo have about 25. That’s a very different (I’d argue healthier) world than online retailers where Amazon has like 36% but the next largest (Walmart) is like 6%. You need to weigh the market share against the number of players in the space. Also that’s not to mention how all 3 major game console players have some kind of moat…

And even in consoles, you have the option of never buying one: you can play videogames on PC, on a tablet or on a mobile phone. And now you even have the cloud option with NVIDIA or MS' Game Pass Ultimate. With Amazon however, it's more complicated since they control so many businesses. Visiting a website? Very probably it's hosted on AWS, or on a platform that runs on AWS. Visiting a friend with a smart doorbell thi…

Note that AWS is actually not a part of this lawsuit. So that is mostly not relevant.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#264

Post by kmeisthax »

cthalupa wrote: post #184
ihaveajob wrote: post #82

In my opinion, Amazon needs to be split into at least 4 independent entities: - Online marketplace - Consumer products - Internet infrastructure - Delivery logistics Similar to the three-tier distribution system for beer in most states (a brewer cannot be a wholesaler or a retailer). This makes it easier for smaller players can compete with the big ones on quality at least, if not price or recognition. (Edit: format)

The three-tier system is absolutely awful in a lot of states for smaller breweries. It has been used to severely reduce their ability to sell on-site for off-site consumption, which is key for smaller breweries. Many states set the revenue/volume cap too low before you have to cut off on-site sales of off-site consumption for you to not take a significant hit to your profit swapping to a distributor. It also makes it…

The thing with the three-tier system is that it only partially disaggregates the system. Market consolidation has a certain gravity to it: once one market is consolidated, they start stripping the margins off their suppliers and increasing prices for their customers. The only defense against this is to consolidate yourself to maximize your negotiating leverage. If wholesalers and retailers were horizontally disintegrated then it'd be a better system.

This is also why businesses are furiously and unanimously anti-union. Labor is their biggest cost and they get ahead if they can keep labor fragmented while they consolidate.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#265

Post by rattlesnakedave »

_uhtu wrote: post #3

I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of other companies who sell on amazon, then put their own results for their own products higher in search results than what they copied off of. It's incredibly blatantly anti-competitive.

As a consumer, this doesn't really hurt me. I get good products for cheap delivered in two days or less. I don't see how the FTC is helping me here.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#266

Post by hrdwdmrbl »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #58

Merits of this specific case aside, I find it really interesting that the FTC is going after Amazon now. They have pretty limited resources (especially relative to a massive tech co which can pour money into litigation) and have to pick and choose their battles carefully... I have to admit I'm a little frustrated that they're choosing to go after Amazon, which yes, imo the case definitely has merits and they do shady…

> PE firms jacking up the cost of housing

They're just profiting off of a supply shortage. Fix the shortage and they won't be able to make money.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#268

Post by YeBanKo »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #52

FBA seller here. A lot of mom and pop businesses (~$20 million) have been built on Amazon over the past 10 years. Most of us are in the $250k to $5 million dollar range. The impact of Amazon’s monopoly power is felt big time by us as we’re being squeezed with no place left to go online especially post-iOS change. Our second option used to be the Facebook/Instagram/TikTok to Shopify connection but with that being dead…

I heard some stores switched to Shopify, would be interesting to learn why it is not an option for stores like yours.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#269

Post by hotnfresh »

bluGill wrote: post #203
gehwartzen wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats exactly what those are. I worked for Reynolds Consumer a while back and the same aluminum foil goes into the brand box as well as the private label box.

The foil might be the same, but that doesn't mean everything is. I've had generic raisin bran cereal that was clearly Kellogg's in a different box, excpet that 1 out of 100 boxes had a slightly different flavor that wouldn't have passed Kellogg's quality controls but since still food safe (so I assume) the generic boxes got it. Of course when doing a private labor you can specify the higher quality controls, but that…

I dunno how it is these days, but the store brand cocoa pebbles used to not taste like chocolate at all, and would fail to turn the milk into chocolate milk like the real ones did. Other cereals had similar problems. A common issue was that the store brand was consistently, noticeably stale, while the name brand almost never was.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#270

Post by runako »

tqi wrote: post #240
runako wrote: post #188

Without engaging the merits of this particular case, I do think there is an interesting takeaway about which companies wield even more power than Amazon (and Big Tech more generally, since Google and Meta are also discussed as likely targets of similar suits). Notably: health insurers. They're an oligopoly whose revenues total something like 4% of US GDP. They engage in anticompetitive practices, and the end result i…

> Lobbying works. Tech will eventually figure this out. Tech is well aware of this, and is spending accordingly[1]. However I think politics are a bigger motivating factor, and taking "tech" to task is viewed as a good way to score points (probably helps that legacy media views tech as direct competitors, and covers them accordingly). [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/23/apple-ramped-up-lobbying-spe...

They kind of get it, but are not at the magnitude yet where it would be effective enough to squash these types of interventions. By comparison, healthcare lobbying spends more every quarter what Big Tech did in all of 2022.
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