If Amazon really did undercut Diapers.com by selling at a loss, that sounds like a perfectly good case for existing antitrust laws, not something that requires executive action. For the rest, I'm happy to reap the benefits of what Amazon gives us.
Amazon Must Be Stopped
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#22I think that our 20th century paradigms have failed to understand and shape these institutions, each with their own trappings. Labour unionism, which was deeply rooted in man labour cultures and many countries' political systems was amazingly corrupt. They became their own institutions layering their own dynamics and interests into the already impossible mesh. The results were far from unanimously positive.
Liberal-capitalism nurtured the concept of non natural person, corporate entities. The cultural relationship between individual, employers, consumers and investors and the institutions is grafted onto the idea that the institution is a legal person. At this point, companies are far more than risk sharing and limiting devices. They are institutions of the same gravity as churches, bureaucracies, aristocracies and such. They are entrenched. I don't mean that in a strictly accusatory sense. They are just part of the web of culture, laws, economies and everything else.
First of all, we all need to have the humility to understand how little we know about how these things work. We are designed to operate within social institutions, not to build and destroy them each generation. No one built feudalism or poleis. No one really designed the international system of nation states. No one created Danish national identity. These things just evolved. Those are the kinds of things we're dealing with.
I don't know what is the right way of dealing with Amazon, Google or Walmart as a (global) society. I think I would be more comfortable if the times brought around a period of miniaturization, where these mega institutions gave way to hundreds or thousands of smaller ones.
For Amazon, what's keeping them huge is (a) dispatch & postal delivery is surprisingly hard. (b) The chain between design, manufacture, marketing and delivery is surprisingly cumbersome. Amazon is a company that does what a market would do in a world fewer impediments.
Maybe the next few decades will make global delivery trivial. This would enable products to come directly from suppliers and simplify the chain. Software developers once had to sell software through software stores. The modern incarnations of software store is a relatively thinner layer. Producers are closer to consumers and the intermediaries are really just market makers.
PS: Price controls have a bad track record dating back to Roman times.
Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#23Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#24At least for ebooks it recently occurred to me that it will probably be difficult for any ebook vendor to establish a monopoly. After all, everybody can just offer ebooks on their web site.
Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#25The problem is really not about monopoly, but whether the beneficiaries of these business contain a larger population.
Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#26Hmm, then we also need to stop Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Dropbox, TimeWarner Cable, military industrial complex, some big oil companies, a few hedge funds, a few banks, etc. Probably might as well call it quits with this whole capitalism thing. In all seriousness though why don't any of these articles ever address the underlying issue of why this stuff happens. If you have a certain kind of economic system then so…
that's why anti-trust laws exist. If we break them up as they grow, we still reap the benefits of economic growth without the dangers of the monopoly.
Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are those the same people whose jobs were lost due to Walmart and Amazon? Or who prefer to have a vibrant local downtown?
If you want a job, why not just dig a hole in the street and try to get paid for it? That would not be different from keeping a job that is not needed anymore alive just for the sake of the job. If you feel bad about Amazon, donate 10% of what you buy at Amazon to a "hole digger foundation" which pays people who lost their jobs because of Amazon to dig holes.
Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#28Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#29Are we really facing "less variety of products and lower quality of the remaining ones"? I see more variety in Amazon's kindle store than I ever saw in a traditional publisher's range, and while the average quality may be lower the peaks are as high as ever. If Amazon really did undercut Diapers.com by selling at a loss, that sounds like a perfectly good case for existing antitrust laws, not something that requires e…
Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are those the same people whose jobs were lost due to Walmart and Amazon? Or who prefer to have a vibrant local downtown?
If you want a job, why not just dig a hole in the street and try to get paid for it? That would not be different from keeping a job that is not needed anymore alive just for the sake of the job. If you feel bad about Amazon, donate 10% of what you buy at Amazon to a "hole digger foundation" which pays people who lost their jobs because of Amazon to dig holes.