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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”

#261

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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.

Capitalism is based on competition, but the rules of said competition are largely written by the winners of said competition - this isn't a perversion of capitalism, this is capitalism as it has always functioned in reality. Like, oil companies get significant political sway over our policy on climate change , which is why over the last 40 years, the biggest sources of emissions reduction were the 2008 GFC and the 20…

Lobbying needs to be rate-limited to match what individuals can say.

Level the playing field by making the largest possible political contribution equal to a multiple of the minimum wage which one could reasonably expect someone earning that to donate in a given year, then require that each contribution be made using a check or money order mailed with a hand-written note in a first-class envelope.

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

#262

HotTake: the result of this should be to nationalize Amazon to be the defacto national provider of AWS services, delivery, logistics, and backstopped retail services.

But that would nationalize profits as well. What kind a world do you think that's a good thing??? /s

Make it into a non-profit co-operative?

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

#263
post #191

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Nice, looks like I have an actual reason to convince my wife that we switch to Instacart next year.

Is Instacart an Amazon replacement for you? Generally, if I can buy something at a store within 15 minutes of me I'll usually just make the drive to buy it rather than going to Amazon. I use Amazon for the things that I generally can't get locally (such as heavy duty floating shelf brackets that I bought recently. No idea what store sells those near me). But the idea of replacing Amazon with Instacart is definitely i…

> such as heavy duty floating shelf brackets

Try a local hardware store, not a big-box like Home Depot or Lowes, though they’re likely to have it too! I’ve found that so long as I am patient, local hardware stores are happy to order things for me.

Amazon is great at instant gratification and that’s about it IMO.

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

#264

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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.

I love the take that talking about a sponsor isn't an ad. Even the lame concept of throwing up Pateron supporter's names on the video for mere frames scrolling by is just moronic to me. Do people really think they are special for having their username flashed on a screen? What value/meaning is derived from this?

> What value/meaning is derived from this?

Someone is supporting a creator whose content they like and the creator is publicly saying thank you.

How is this confusing to you?

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

#265

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Might as well just shut it down in that case. Amazon would be abandoned in mass if it was government run. People groan every time they see that the USPS is handling their delivery. I can't imagine how bad it would be if that same level of government competence was applied to all of Amazon's operations.

Maybe Amazon is popular enough that one party wouldn't insist on constantly trying to ruin them.

Come on. My interactions with the IRS, TSA, Social Security Office, Passport Office have all been slow and arcane. It is a total fantasy to think the Government could run Amazon well.

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

#266

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

Make corporation tax progressive, resulting in it being easier for small companies to compete with big ones, without requiring the government to decide what is and what isn't a monopoly.

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

#267
post #8

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> 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.

This never bothered me much since I can skip them immediately. I've been trained at this point to immediately skip a minute or so into every video

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

#268
post #6

This has been pretty obvious for a while. Whenever I do product searches on Amazon the prime eligible results are more expensive by exactly the shipping costs of the non prime vendors. The only reason I keep it is for the video service which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of people.

While this varies by territory, I'm UK based, I find the main benefits of Prime to be the next-day (even weekend) delivery, Saturday (even if not next day) delivery, and sometimes the locker delivery option.

Even where prime price is the same as other+delivery this wins out. Though at each price rise or other change I have to rethink if I consider I'm getting a good deal.

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

#270

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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.

You can’t open source it but the government could nationalize it and make it a benefit to small businesses everywhere without the anti competitive profit seeking motives of a private business controlling it.

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