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The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

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Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#91

Post by Jensson »

endisneigh wrote: post #82
wallaBBB wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can repeat that comment here as many times as you want but it will not make it a valid one. Amazon is practically a monopoly, and they have reached that position by often selling goods below COG prices, incurring losses but outliving the competition. Now without a competitive marketplace for quite a lot of stuff they can dictate the prices at a loss for everyone except them. If somebody was to challenge them with…

Amazon isn't a monopoly by any definition. There are plenty of places to buy things. Repeating it over and over again won't change reality. Feel free to bookmark this and come back to it 10 years from now. Amazon won't be broken up, either. Customers are so lazy they want the government do everything for them. If you don't like Amazon, close the tab and go to eBay.com or Walmart.com. It's very easy, and can be done i…

For b2c monopolies matters, for b2b it is enough to be a dominant player to engage on a lot of harmful anti-competitive practices. This is a b2b situation that harms consumers, in that situation it doesn't matter that there are competitors, what matters is how much power Amazon has over vendors.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#92

Post by proamdev123 »

fortran77 wrote: post #7

Good! Though, to be fair, the switching cost for a consumer to start using Target.com (for example) isn't that high. I go to vendors like Target.Com, HomeDepot.Com, BestBuy.com and AliExpress.com for most of the things I used to use Amazon for.

Thanks for the list of alternatives!

Have you experienced any unexpected pros and/or cons from using those vendors instead of Amazon?

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#93

Post by endisneigh »

Jensson wrote: post #91
endisneigh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon isn't a monopoly by any definition. There are plenty of places to buy things. Repeating it over and over again won't change reality. Feel free to bookmark this and come back to it 10 years from now. Amazon won't be broken up, either. Customers are so lazy they want the government do everything for them. If you don't like Amazon, close the tab and go to eBay.com or Walmart.com. It's very easy, and can be done i…

For b2c monopolies matters, for b2b it is enough to be a dominant player to engage on a lot of harmful anti-competitive practices. This is a b2b situation that harms consumers, in that situation it doesn't matter that there are competitors, what matters is how much power Amazon has over vendors.

I disagree. Demanding the lowest price does not harm consumers. Overstock, Wayfair, Walmart and others do the same thing. The result is the lowest price for a given product on all sites. This is unquestionably good for consumers.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#94

Post by dwallin »

endisneigh wrote: post #62
dwallin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pro-consumer in any way. If the seller can profitably list it for a given price on a given platform, competition will almost certainly drive their price down to that level. The only time a policy like this becomes significant is if another platform, or the sellers own platform, can offer the product for cheaper than Amazon (eg. maybe they can ship straight from the factory), in which case this policy would f…

Your assumption here is that they have to sell on Amazon to begin with, which they do not. There are plenty of products that you cannot buy on Amazon, so your entire post is ridiculous as it shows again, you don't need Amazon to succeed to begin with.

You are a seller. Amazon makes up 40% of your sales. You have your own first party website where you can profitably offer your product for 5% less and still make an additional 10% profit but it only makes up 5% of your sales currently.

What's your move in this position?

You can't just imagine all companies as perfect frictionless spherical interchangeable cows. In reality companies as large as Amazon can have significant market distorting effect, while much smaller companies might have to choose between their principles and going out of business.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#95

Post by endisneigh »

ARussell wrote: post #90
endisneigh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And which law dictates a company must allow people or sellers on its platform?

I'm not GP. I didn't make that argument. I agree that Amazon is not obliged to allow just anyone on their platform. Sellers must abide by the rules that Amazon sets in place. At the same time, Amazon must abide by the laws of the locations at which it wants to sell. So if a state says that they cannot force a seller to keep their lowest price on Amazon, then that's the way it is.

> So if a state says that they cannot force a seller to keep their lowest price on Amazon, then that's the way it is.

Yes, but at the end of the day Amazon to remove the seller for any reason, so even if the FTC succeeds here, Amazon will simply purge those sellers who are not offering the best price, even if not explicitly stated.

There is no reality where Amazon allows their site to be inundated with higher priced goods compared to competitors.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#96

Post by jasonjayr »

Jensson wrote: post #31
endisneigh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem with this. They don't have to sell on Amazon to begin with. Amazon obviously wants their customers to have the best price available. Sellers can just go off Amazon if they don't like it. If sellers end up raising the price on other platforms as a result of this rule, then that says more about them than Amazon. Demanding the lowest price does not harm consumers. Overstock, Wayfair, Walmart and…

It is none of Amazons business what prices they put when they list their wares on other services, the only reason they care is that they want to crush the competition. Dictating how retailers can interact with your competitors is anti-competitive. Dictating what prices they can offer when they put up listings is a part of that, it is anti-competitive.

Overstock & Wayfair scan + compare identical & similar listings at Amazon and other sites, and will message sellers if their price is not the better price.

It's annoyingly a pretty standard practice. And they will see through the "different SKU" trick simply by comparing the product images.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#97

Post by makestuff »

temporallobe wrote: post #30
elashri wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason I keep it is for the video service which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of people. Which will start having ads unless you pay a fee for the ad-free experience starting next year [1] [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201028854/amazon-prime-video...

Tangentially related, even in YouTube Premium you can still see ads if the content creator embeds ads as part of their content. This seems like double-dipping to me and I am seeing more and more of this.

Yeah I have zero issues skipping host read ads as a YT premium subscriber. I'm already paying not to see ads.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#98

Post by smoldesu »

endisneigh wrote: post #84
smoldesu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, with this reasoning there is literally no world in which Amazon can be implicated for monopoly abuse of power. Apparently, having any other option (even if it is damaged by monopoly abuse) is good enough for you. Clearly the FTC disagrees with your logic, and I'm glad they do. FedEx, UPS and USPS should be sued too if they did what Amazon is doing.

The FTC disagrees, but they will lose, as they've lost before.

It's definitely not just the FTC. 3 years ago, the European commission launched an investigation for the same thing: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...

If the FTC doesn't get them, rest easy. At least Europe knows how to keep their market on a leash.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#99

Post by ezfe »

someonehere wrote: post #54

What does breaking up Amazon look like? I’m genuinely curious because half the comments I see in here are “break up Amazon!” or “break up FAANG!” What does that look like? What would Amazon look like if broken up? In the end we all know lobbyists from Amazon will somehow influence their outcome.

Here are some possibilities (not claiming these are practical or a solution):

The first is splitting Amazon-retail from their other products (Alexa, Ring, AWS, etc.)

The second is splitting Amazon-logistics out. I'm not exactly sure how this would work, but it could be argued that Amazon logistics could operate standalone.

Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”

#100

Post by fzeroracer »

endisneigh wrote: post #58
tartuffe78 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is abusing it's monopoly power to hurt competition, when Amazon is the only place to certain things, consumer cost will go up.

> when Amazon is the only place to certain things No seller is obligated to sell on Amazon to begin with, so this entire premise is false.

I assume you're not familiar with Walmart or how they operate?
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