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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”

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most disagrees with you here, including those who makes the laws and the courts.

> Most disagrees with you here, including those who makes the laws and the courts. Downvotes don't mean anything. Most of the folks on here have no idea how e-commerce works. Amazon will win. It's simple to see - them losing would imply they are obligated to feature higher prices, which is clearly worse for customers and inherently at odds with what the FTC is supposedly trying to accomplish.

To be clear, you disagree because you fundamentally don't understand what's going on. I'll explain it to you.

A company makes a product - it costs $10 per unit to make. To list and sell with Amazon, they are charged $12 per unit. To make a profit the company adds and additional $1 per unit. They sell the product on Amazon for $23 per unit.

Online retailer Foo also has a store, and provide the same services that Amazon for their online shop at $5 per unit. The online retailer adds a profit of $2 per unit. Total price $17 per unit. Retailer Foo is more $ efficient for those services as a result customers price compare. Foo is rewarded for their effi with higher volume, manufacturer is rewarded with higher profit and consumer is rewarded with lower prices. Enforcing market competition led to all 3 parties involved being rewarded. Retailer Foo over time grows a larger customer base as people learn to price compare with them and forces Amazon to stop rent seeking.

But the above doesn't happen in the real world. Amazon enforces that the retailer lower their price on Amazon to $17, while still collecting $12 per unit. The company now can sell on foo, but only by selling on Amazon at a loss. They can't afford that amount of loss from Amazon and stay in business. So Amazon avoids competition. They can't pull their product from Amazon because not enough customers vist Foo retailer yet to make up the volume.

So in the end Foo retailer is more dollar efficient, but is prevented from growing and benefiting the marketplace. Amazon leverages its outside market size to avoid competition. Market participants preventing competition is against the benefits of capitalism and harms the consumer. So, it benefits the consumer to ensure Amazon has to actually compete with the more efficient competitor and stop rent selling behavior.

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

#142
post #35

FTC should go after other industries that are far more harmful to customers than tech. ISPs, healthcare/insurance, etc. Tech should be no where near the top of concerns for the FTC. This is a political stunt. If Lena Khan and the FTC were actually interested in consumer protection, they would go after other industries first.

Tech is omnipresent, is flush with cash that it frequently uses to disrupt (drive existing businesses out and then monopolize) and has an outsize influence on people. It absolutely should be first on the list for anti trust action. and it’s Lina Khan.

The only actual monopoly in the tech industry is Google search. There is also a very concerning duopoly with Google / Apple app stores controlling all software loaded on mobile OS that needs to be forced to allow alternate channels. Besides that, I can't think of anything in tech that is actually a concerning monopoly. Amazon has no such monopoly position in e-commerce. The market share really isn't that big.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more charitable take is that Amazon is raising the price (for the nth time) of prime, and introducing a small discount if you put up with ads.

Amazon doesn't need charity; they can afford to pay.

The shareholders (me, you, our 401ks) demand growth.

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

#144

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.

And media companies...

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

#145

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.

Oh but remember: "Bigger is better!" and "Economies of scale"/s

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

#147

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

You have to add Microsoft to this list unless you live in complete denial about the massive monopoly that they have in office IT. And they are actually the first that should be broken up, splitting the office suite from everything else.

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

#149
post #42

An excerpt from: https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/ Amazon binds its sellers over to something called Most Favored Nation status. That means that sellers can't offer their goods more cheaply than they do on Amazon – even if it costs them (lots) less to sell in Target or direct from their websites. This means that every time a seller adds a dollar to their Amazon sale price, they have to add a dollar to…

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.

What I've commonly seen is that the manufacturer offers a store-wide 20% or 30% off coupon, as a temporary promo and/or for email signup.

So the item price matches Amazon's, but you pay less in the end, if you're even remotely paying attention.

At least for the $200-300 items I've seen (like dehumidifiers, fancy computer accessories).

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

#150

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.

It doesn't really matter because Amazon isn't going to be broken up to begin with.

People said the same about Bell.
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