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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”

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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…

No, it's an extremely valid point. Government antitrust policy has been heavily shaped by Robert Bork's "The Antitrust Paradox" which proposes that antitrust law should only focus on consumer welfare rather than market structure or number of competitors.

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

#112

Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, break them all up. And for the love of crap, stop approving billion dollar mergers.

This.

Also add most major telcos, ISPs and airlines to the list as well.

We love capitalism. It’s basis is competition. Let’s get us some of that.

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

#113
post #85
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just change the SKU of the product so they are "different". Big box stores do it all the time to reduce the probability of price matching.

Amazon is not a court of law and need not be bound by this technicality.

More than that... there's probably no real recourse. For the same reason you mentioned.

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

#114
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 signifi…

You can lower the product for 5% on both your site and on Amazon. Since Amazon makes up the plurality of your sales you gain more sales both there and on your site. Everyone wins except for you, and such is the life of race-to-the-bottom e-commerce sales. What I'm describing is already what happens, by the way. Look at Anker for an example.

> Everyone wins except for you

Which is why your scenario here wont happen. Thanks for clarifying so well why your argument "there is no consumer harm" is bullshit, what you said here means you know that what Amazon does here increases prices.

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

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If another ecommerce platform wants to compete on price to encourage customers to shop there, they cannot. Any discounts will only go to the seller's bottomline. How is that helping customers?

Amazon wants its customers to have the lowest available price . Their rule ensures that. It's very simple.

Clearly you are not a believer in free markets, because by the theory of free markets these prices would naturally arrive at the lowest possible price all on their own.

You are right that this policy is very simple, it's very clear both mathematically and logically. Companies cannot lower their prices lower than their costs. If costs are variable across platforms but prices are fixed to a single value than this will de-facto result in INCREASED prices. If this policy causes someone to leave a platform, that STILL doesn't result in prices any lower than they would absent the rule.

In fact, the sheer existence of the rule is a clear statement from Amazon that they believe they have significant and durable market pricing power, since if they didn't, this policy would clearly lead to sellers and buyers leaving their platform.

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

#116
Lina Kahn is the worst type of politically motivated bureaucrat. Instead of executing the law, seeks new interpretations so that she impose her world view on others. She's never created or done anything of value other than be a student or a bureaucrat.

Hopefully this case will be another in her long list of failures.

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

#117
post #113
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is not a court of law and need not be bound by this technicality.

More than that... there's probably no real recourse. For the same reason you mentioned.

The real solution is an open source Amazon. What happened to Magento? Does it have any traction?

Why sell on Amazon instead of your own site? Can’t competitors to FBA spring up that have great logistics? Are there any? Can anyone link me to them?

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

#118

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…

I will say that I used to buy stuff from AMZN all the time and now I hardly ever do.

For me the last straw was when Amazon Prime deliveries stopped arriving in two days despite being claimed to arrive in two. It made a difference because in two days it could be a hassle to drive to the store but in five days I can easily find the time.

Not long after that, Prime service became officially five days at my location while Amazon was shouting to the rooftops that other people were getting one day. Around this time it seemed every other retailer was trying to impress me with fulfillment and often shipping is free if you buy $200 of camera equipment or $80 worth of games, even when it isn't it isn't very expensive but it is always faster than AMZN, I even get Ebay packages from Japan faster than AMZN gets me packages from the next state.

There was also the rising problem that the quality of the listings was going down on AMZN; I'm not so concerned that the $24 product is crowding out the $17 product but rather that there are so many junk products that crowd out good products. On top of that there are many product listings that make no sense at all and it all adds up to a stressful process of sifting through a lot of junk and then not knowing if some absolute garbage is going to show up at my door.

So I went from buying something on AMZN probably several times a week to now less than once a month... I canceled my Prime subscription because I couldn't have any self respect if I was paying a subscription for something that was worse than average as opposed to better than average. And boy is it annoying to shop on AMZN now. The only thing you have to click more times than to cancel AMZN Prime is to order something from AMZN without signing up for a free trial of Prime.

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

#119
post #117
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that... there's probably no real recourse. For the same reason you mentioned.

The real solution is an open source Amazon. What happened to Magento? Does it have any traction? Why sell on Amazon instead of your own site? Can’t competitors to FBA spring up that have great logistics? Are there any? Can anyone link me to them?

Sellers want Amazon’s audience

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

#120
post #117
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that... there's probably no real recourse. For the same reason you mentioned.

The real solution is an open source Amazon. What happened to Magento? Does it have any traction? Why sell on Amazon instead of your own site? Can’t competitors to FBA spring up that have great logistics? Are there any? Can anyone link me to them?

You don’t just “spring” up to owning a nationwide network of distribution centers and 1M+ employees. It takes decades of work.
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