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

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

#211

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

ezfe wrote: post #99

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.

The first one seems obtuse. If here were some 1960s-style comglomerate that sold shower curtains and offered professional bowling ball waxing, with a 95% monopoly in both...

Why would splitting it out into two monopolies improve anything? Even if there are some unknown, misunderstood synergies between the two businesses, will they not just collude in that way that bridge players do, without any overt actions that could be punished?

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

#212

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

ct0 wrote: post #42

thelastgallon wrote: post #17

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.

Big box stores have a lot more leverage than a small seller on Amazon, who'll just get the "that violates our policies, we're nuking your business, no appeals" treatment.

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

#213

Post by jononomo » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

I don't understand the people in this thread defending Amazon. They're just an impersonal corporate conglomerate that doesn't give a *&$! about you. Capitalism is about competition and the more competition the better.

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

#214

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #154

lotsofpulp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the thing people don't get about making competitors to Facebook, Twitter, and other centralized platforms as well. You don't need to boil the ocean in order to serve a single community. For example, Facebook started in Harvard and its value to everyone in Harvard was based on how many people in Harvard used it, not how many people in the world used it. Similarly, if a single product vendor and their customers…

> Similarly, if a single product vendor and their customers form a community, then a free market of fulfillment companies can spring up to stock that specific product, and then partner with the delivery companies (who have their own networks) to deliver the package.

One thing that gets overlooked in this is returns.

One of the big draws of Amazon is easy returns.

Whenever you have decentralized fulfillment centers, returns become a huge pain, because the fulfillment center that is happy to take your money and ship you the product, doesn't want the liability of dealing with returns.

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

#215

Post by keepamovin » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

I think the general idea across many companies in the U.S. is a good one: breaking up monopolies that are more vulnerable to external, globalized forces. The goal is to fertilize the business landscape with their metaphorical "whale-fall carcasses," enabling a flourishing of smaller, competitive entities. This strategy aims to revitalize and fortify the American economy against the looming tidal wave of foreign competition. Although this approach may be painful on a local level and even humiliating for some individuals, it's ultimately a sound strategy for macroeconomic management.

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

#216

Post by billjings » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

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.

An obvious choice would be AWS. AWS operates fairly independently of the rest of the company, and its huge profits subsidize the retail wing.

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

#217

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #119

EGreg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by OGWhales » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #86

woooooo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The rules at the place you're trying to sell. Dictating how you sell elsewhere is a clear step beyond that.

They are not dictating how they sell elsewhere. They are saying they need to offer the best price on their site. It is easy to detect whether or not they actually are, and sellers are simply being called out. There is no obligation to sell on Amazon, nor a requirement for them to raise prices on other platforms. They could simply offer the lowest price everywhere. The result? Lower prices for Amazon customers. If the…

> There is no obligation to sell on Amazon

While true, this ignores the important point that Amazon is only able to do this anti-competitive practice due to their market dominance that effectively forces many sellers to sell on Amazon.

> nor a requirement for them to raise prices on other platforms.

That is what this whole thing is about. Sellers that sell on Amazon aren't allowed to sell for lower prices on other platforms that are cheaper to sell on.

If Amazon was able to offer lower prices for its customers by offering sellers a marketplace with lower costs compared to competitors that would be great. Instead, they abuse their market dominance to prevent any competitors from offering lower prices by being more cost efficient for sellers. This is extremely nasty as it effectively prevents any competitors to Amazon from building a market share since consumers will have no price incentive to switch and sellers will not want to switch due to the smaller market share on those competitors' platforms.

It could not be more clear that this is anti-competitive behavior achieved through abuse of a dominate market position.

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

#219

Post by kimbernator » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #161

satvikpendem wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a classic programmer response. The problem is not Amazon's software, it's their marketing, distribution network, huge audience that searches for products exclusively via Amazon, "free" and very fast Prime deliveries, etc. That doesn't all happen via simply open sourcing some code.

[flagged]

It's trivial to create a website (frontend and backend) that offers similar functionality to Amazon. There's nothing special about their software platform.

You can't open-source marketing and the insane delivery network Amazon has. Those, among other things, are the reason they are successful. They could release all of their software completely open source and literally nothing would change.

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

#220

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Oct 04, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #161

satvikpendem wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a classic programmer response. The problem is not Amazon's software, it's their marketing, distribution network, huge audience that searches for products exclusively via Amazon, "free" and very fast Prime deliveries, etc. That doesn't all happen via simply open sourcing some code.

[flagged]

No need to open source. Just to pick some examples to build something similar to Amazon's fulfillment part as it was like 6 years ago:

Shopify as the front end

CargoWise for transportation, warehousing and everything logistics

Which leaves some of the more sophistiticated stuff like demand ballancing across the network, but that is doable by either developing something in-house or throwing an ERP system into tue mix.

All available off the shelf as we speak. There are other reason why nobody manages to seriously challenge Amazon.