Marc Andreesen getting trolled by Paul Krugman, a modern master of trolling.
Marc Andreessen Annotates Paul Krugman's Amazon Op-Ed
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Re: Marc Andreessen Annotates Paul Krugman's Amazon Op-Ed
#22Wow. Talk about an advertisement for the ineffectiveness of annotations. I've got comments from multiple different authors on here simultaneously - who are all these people? I was interested in Marc's annotations - talk about bait and switch. For complex subjects, this is a great example of why single-author critiques are best, so you can follow a single person's train of thought and their logical conclusions (or err…
you can see only Marc's annotations on his profile page: http://genius.com/MarcAndreessen
Re: Marc Andreessen Annotates Paul Krugman's Amazon Op-Ed
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Marc gets "closest to the pin" for me when he says "if Amazon was a monopoly, it would be raising prices." That's not really what he says, he said that if they raised prices, Krugman would take that as evidence of monopoly behavior as well. Monopolies don't always raise prices; sometimes they keep them quite low.
Marc should know about monopolies. Microsoft started giving web browsers for free to undercut Netscape's business model. Once your competitors go out of business, you would be free to raise your prices.
But the question is, when have companies manage to kick their competition out of business and raised prices?
More importantly, if the theory is: "Amazon/Microsoft/ETC is trying to underprice and drive its competition out of business, and not just doing good business.", then what is the falsifiability test of this theory?
How do you know whether Amazon isn't just the best and cheapest service provider out there?