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FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

ftc.gov

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Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#681

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

duped wrote: post #626
nerdponx wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently there are calls for her recusal on the grounds that she held a critical stance before her current appointment. Which is an odd thing to ask for in my opinion, but I guess it's worth trying if you're on the losing end of this.

They want to muddy the waters by arguing the FTC is impartial towards Amazon. But the problem with that argument is that it's not the job of the FTC to be impartial. Their mandate is to protect competition and consumers, which is naturally impartial to individual companies.

I think you meant the opposite of impartial towards, i.e. biased against.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#682

Post by ToucanLoucan »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #647
22289d wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon does 100s of billions of 1st party sales. And the remainder is not scalable. All of that done by their sellers. As evidenced by the fact that they are not doing it themselves. I'm beginning to think this thread is being astroturphed. All of you are employing an identical strategy of latching onto minor issues with how things are phrased. A standard PR tactic. And Amazon has a long documented history of astro…

Yes. Anyone who disagrees must be engaged in nitpicking, PR tactics, and astroturfing. This all seems very rational. Lina, is that you?

Do you know when the astroturfing checks come in by the way? Also is that W-4 income or am I contractor?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#683

Post by OnlineGladiator »

afavour wrote: post #674
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course breaking a massive story is going to lead to you being well known. My argument is the opposite. You can break a massive story and people can still not care. That was why I brought up the Panama Papers. Anyway, let's just agree to disagree.

But again your definition of “people” is the general population and they aren’t the ones hiring and firing journalists. The Panama Papers were a huge story, they won a Pulitzer! If you’re a journalist of course a story like that is going to open doors.

You're completely ignoring my point. The journalist was rewarded with murder.

I feel like you're not actually considering what I'm saying and I'm exiting this conversation.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#684

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

nerdponx wrote: post #603
duped wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current FTC chair wrote the ~~book~~ essay on Amazon's monopolistic business practices (1) and has spoken so much about it that the only reason we'd see the government take their foot off the gas here is if Amazon's lawyers can claim that her previous advocacy biases the case against them. (1) https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...

Apparently there are calls for her recusal on the grounds that she held a critical stance before her current appointment. Which is an odd thing to ask for in my opinion, but I guess it's worth trying if you're on the losing end of this.

It's like the GOP currently trying to impeach a newly-elected judge in Wisconsin because she previously described the state's maps as gerrymandered, ergo she will not be able to rule fairly on the matter when it comes before the court. Obviously both examples are cynical and disingenuous, since the implication is that the only person qualified to do a job "fairly" is someone who has never thought about the relevant subject matter at any point in time.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#685

Post by Centigonal »

_2d30 wrote: post #675
duped wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current FTC chair wrote the ~~book~~ essay on Amazon's monopolistic business practices (1) and has spoken so much about it that the only reason we'd see the government take their foot off the gas here is if Amazon's lawyers can claim that her previous advocacy biases the case against them. (1) https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...

I’d encourage everyone to read at least the abstract of this link and then consider the case the FTC is trying to bring to see if they notice anything odd! HINT: there is something very odd about the two taken together.

I read both - I don't see anything odd here. Seems like like the thesis of the FTC's case includes the natural continuation of some of Lina Khan's ideas, plus additional focus on the Amazon Seller economiy.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#686

Post by _2d30 »

Centigonal wrote: post #685
_2d30 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d encourage everyone to read at least the abstract of this link and then consider the case the FTC is trying to bring to see if they notice anything odd! HINT: there is something very odd about the two taken together.

I read both - I don't see anything odd here. Seems like like the thesis of the FTC's case includes the natural continuation of some of Lina Khan's ideas, plus additional focus on the Amazon Seller economiy.

The abstract of the link is that Amazon’s monopoly power has manifested itself in _under_ pricing products.

The FTC claim is that Amazon _over_ prices products. They are in direct opposition.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#687

Post by arbuge »

dnissley wrote: post #476
YeBanKo wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about shipping logistic and warehousing? Afaik this is something what Amazon FBA helps with as well?

Hm, all of a sudden the seemingly outrageous fees don't seem so outrageous anymore.

There are additional fees for using FBA...

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#688

Post by viking1066 »

FTC is misguided.

They just punish Amazon for being successful.

On the other hand, they (DOJ) should use the maximum might of the criminal law to prosecute using fraud statutes for sellers (and Amazon itself) when ratings have been manipulated, resulting in decades in prison.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#689

Post by genewitch »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #576
genewitch wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

egress fees, inter-DC transfer fees, IP fees, ebs storage fees, transactional fees on things that are transactional. If you don't carefully engineer everything you'll get left with a $15,000 AWS bill. This doesn't cost Amazon anywhere near $15k to provide, so they just "waive" the fees if you promise to be a good little user.

Don't disagree with this, but this is the same in almost all cloud providers. Want to get started with Digital Ocean's app platform? You're paying for Container Engine to store your containers, then App Platform Business just to support scale-outs, then multiply this for the number of services you're deploying and make sure you don't have egress overages etc etc.

I've never gotten a grand for deleting digital ocean block storage devices, though!

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#690

Post by afavour »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #683
afavour wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again your definition of “people” is the general population and they aren’t the ones hiring and firing journalists. The Panama Papers were a huge story, they won a Pulitzer! If you’re a journalist of course a story like that is going to open doors.

You're completely ignoring my point. The journalist was rewarded with murder. I feel like you're not actually considering what I'm saying and I'm exiting this conversation.

Your point is that because one journalist was killed for a story that no other journalist could ever possibly be rewarded for breaking a huge story?
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