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New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

theguardian.com

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Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#31

Post by blackjack_ »

SilverElfin wrote: post #12

We need all new antitrust laws. The size of these companies is itself a problem. They have so much power that there is no possibility for fair competition. Maybe we can start by taxing companies that are worth more than 1 trillion at an extremely high rate.

Luckily, Lina Khan has just announced The Center for Law and the Economy at Columbia University, which is going to be training the next generation of antitrust lawyers for the US. If we are lucky, she will also be working on much bigger things than that at the same time. If we are doubly lucky, she will be training hundreds of new lawyers as good as she is.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#32

Post by blackjack_ »

vondur wrote: post #11
fmajid wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Antitrust law was effectively neutered by the Chicago School and their agent Robert Bork. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/robert-borks-america... (BTW that source is right-wing and can hardly be said to be biased against Bork).

That's fascinating. Bork was denied being on the supreme court but his ideas shaped current antitrust laws. It feels a bit like the old Standard Oil argument: It's ok to have a huge market share so long as pricing for goods gets cheaper even if it hurts competition overall. *edited* for grammar.

Yeah. Heather Cox Richardson was arguing about this today, saying that historically the job of the government was to decide that cheaper but gutting a local economy, or cheaper but taking enough market share to be able to heavily raise prices in the future was bad. But due to Bork that capacity of the government to actually help drive good outcomes for the bulk of the population has been gutted.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#34

Post by SilverElfin »

cogman10 wrote: post #30
foobarian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder who would prosecute them. What about an AG who, when confronted about doing a bad job, deflects by pointing out that Nasdaq is "smashing records?"

I'd be in favor of giving Lina Khan a lifetime appointment to heading the FTC along with 10x their current budget to tackle exactly this problem. A major part of the problem isn't even that we don't have laws on the books, it's that funding to the enforcement agencies has been gutted to the point where they can mostly just go after extreme egregious violations or very easy to win cases. The IRS is in exactly the same…

That would be great, but I think even her job needs new laws. Otherwise, one of the problems is even hardcore enforcement takes years and huge amounts of taxpayer expense. We need to make it simple, cheap, and quick to improve competition.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#35

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #24
thayne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of retailers (both physical & online) have similar requirements My understanding (IANAL) is that that is illegal, and those retailers should be prosecuted as well. That is essentially price fixing, because the retailer is enforcing their competitors have the same price, using the supplier as an intermediary. > many manufacturers have similar requirements That is a different situation, and is AFAICT legal in th…

Is that actually bad for consumers? Wouldn't deranking the "not lowest" price make it easier for customers to find the lowest price (whether that is a different product on the same storefront, or the same product on a different storefront), and hence be good for customers?

It would expose distributors who are getting better deals than others when they can undercut the competition.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#36

Post by cogman10 »

SilverElfin wrote: post #34
cogman10 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be in favor of giving Lina Khan a lifetime appointment to heading the FTC along with 10x their current budget to tackle exactly this problem. A major part of the problem isn't even that we don't have laws on the books, it's that funding to the enforcement agencies has been gutted to the point where they can mostly just go after extreme egregious violations or very easy to win cases. The IRS is in exactly the same…

That would be great, but I think even her job needs new laws. Otherwise, one of the problems is even hardcore enforcement takes years and huge amounts of taxpayer expense. We need to make it simple, cheap, and quick to improve competition.

I don't disagree. I think she's about the perfect person to be involved in writing those new laws in some fashion.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#37

Post by recursivecaveat »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #24
thayne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of retailers (both physical & online) have similar requirements My understanding (IANAL) is that that is illegal, and those retailers should be prosecuted as well. That is essentially price fixing, because the retailer is enforcing their competitors have the same price, using the supplier as an intermediary. > many manufacturers have similar requirements That is a different situation, and is AFAICT legal in th…

Is that actually bad for consumers? Wouldn't deranking the "not lowest" price make it easier for customers to find the lowest price (whether that is a different product on the same storefront, or the same product on a different storefront), and hence be good for customers?

In the long run it is bad for consumers. If you sell widgets on amazon for $10, and amazon charges $2 or whatever, you pocket $8. Maybe you also want to sell your widgets on your own site where your overhead is only $1. The "most favored customer" clause prevents you from passing that savings on to the customer and charging $9 on your site (or any marketplace where you might prefer to sell things compared to amazon). It promotes stasis or growth of large sellers and prevents new ones from offering price competition.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#38

Post by parineum »

jmyeet wrote: post #23

The entire use case of dynamic pricing is to raise prices. Airlines were really the first to do this but there it kinda makes sense. You have a plane. It's going anyway. You want to fill it. At the other extreme is RealPage, which is explicitly designed to raise rents and it's used by enough people that you can view it as the last frontier of anti-trust, anticompetitive behavior and price-fixing. It's also state-sanc…

> It's also state-sanctioned violence because your price-fixing scheme has the threat of you being homeless attached to it.

Explain "violence", please.

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#39

Post by wombatpm »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #15
fmajid wrote: post #4

[flagged]

That would be like showing up for the battle of Kursk with an M18 battalion. Might go well at first, you might score some big flashy wins, but....ugh... things are gonna get worse as the party goes on and it's generally an ill advised strategy. Rico as written and enforced walks right up to the limit of constitutionality in a dozen ways. It's built for speed. It's never really been thrown into a knock down drag out l…

I’d be ok with civil asset forfeiture for corporate officers

Re: New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims

#40

Post by dmix »

reenorap wrote: post #22

How is this not a complete violation of anti-trust laws? If the federal government won't pursue it (questionable in this environment), surely there's more than enough to go after it state-by-state. And can't we do a class-action lawsuit against Amazon at this point?

You're replying to an article about an anti trust investigation into Amazon that is currently in pre-trial preliminary stages. Which is why the article is talking about information they discovered during the course of it.
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