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US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

reuters.com

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Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#221

Post by consteval »

tbrownaw wrote: post #66
saltymug76 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think anyone's arguing against generic alternatives of name brand items. The issue here is Amazon using up-and-coming and popular products as fodder for them to generic-ize and push to the top of results, essentially knee capping the original seller.

Yes, how dare they use their scale to make more cost-effective versions of popular things.

It doesn't really count when they:

1. Have access to immense amounts of data about these products that the manufacturers don't. Because they own the marketplace.

2. Can freely advertise, push, or even force their own products as much as possible. Because they own the marketplace.

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#222

Post by megaman821 »

consteval wrote: post #220
megaman821 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that there are less mergers happening is from Khan not Silcon Valley. “Sometimes, you know, the companies decide that they’re going to abandon the merger,” Khan said. Stahl asked if abandoning a merger amid the FTC’s scrutiny was a win, to which Khan said, “That’s right.” https://legal-mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acqu...

Yes, because some mergers are bad. Like really really bad. For you and me, consumers. If adobe merged with figma that would be catastrophic for that domain. Prices would skyrocket, quality would invariably fall off, and innovation would stagnate due to lack of competition. Part of having a free market is maintaining it. You can't have a free market if it's constantly consolidating into a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly.…

I don't disagree with some of the aims of Lina Khan, mostly just the strategy. Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed. It is kinda parallel to overreliance on executive orders over legislative wins.

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#224

Post by BadHumans »

megaman821 wrote: post #222
consteval wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because some mergers are bad. Like really really bad. For you and me, consumers. If adobe merged with figma that would be catastrophic for that domain. Prices would skyrocket, quality would invariably fall off, and innovation would stagnate due to lack of competition. Part of having a free market is maintaining it. You can't have a free market if it's constantly consolidating into a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly.…

I don't disagree with some of the aims of Lina Khan, mostly just the strategy. Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed. It is kinda parallel to overreliance on executive orders over legislative wins.

You can't establish case law if you don't take cases. Companies not wanting to go through with mergers because they are afraid of the FTC investigating them sounds like a side effect and not the intent.

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#225

Post by consteval »

megaman821 wrote: post #222
consteval wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because some mergers are bad. Like really really bad. For you and me, consumers. If adobe merged with figma that would be catastrophic for that domain. Prices would skyrocket, quality would invariably fall off, and innovation would stagnate due to lack of competition. Part of having a free market is maintaining it. You can't have a free market if it's constantly consolidating into a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly.…

I don't disagree with some of the aims of Lina Khan, mostly just the strategy. Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed. It is kinda parallel to overreliance on executive orders over legislative wins.

> Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed

There're a few problems with this:

1. Our lawmakers are incredibly inefficient, and many dedicated their lives to ensuring new laws don't get passed. Doesn't matter what the law is, they're career "blockers"

2. Our courts are not unpartisan, and many are conservative-leaning, and they'll simply continually strike down laws until they make it up and up and then the extremely conservative supreme court blocks it. This has been Texas' strategy.

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#226

Post by jessriedel »

consteval wrote: post #219
jessriedel wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not suggesting the justice system should change. I’m suggesting that civil servants who file and lose a ton of suits should be presumed to be doing net harm. Just as we would for prosecutors in criminal law. And when it’s politically motivated, it is not just harm in the sense of economic inefficiency, but further is unjust and lowers public trust in institutions.

The problem is that what you're suggesting will eventually boil down to useless regulators. And then companies will do a plethora of suspicious things, and then you the consumer will suffer. It's the FTC's job to do this kind of thing. If we argue it shouldn't be their job then what will we be doing? Nothing? We've tried the "do nothing" approach more times than any of us can count, and it doesn't work.

A plethora or suspicious things? If the companies are breaking the law, the FTC can sue them and win. If the companies are complying with the law, the FTC should indeed do nothing. If the law is bad, congress can pass new laws.

What's not OK is for the executive branch to not like the law, but be unsuccessful at passing new law through the democratic process, and then use the FTC to unsuccessfully sue companies in order to punish them (and threaten others) with costly legal expenses.

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#227

Post by consteval »

jessriedel wrote: post #226
consteval wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that what you're suggesting will eventually boil down to useless regulators. And then companies will do a plethora of suspicious things, and then you the consumer will suffer. It's the FTC's job to do this kind of thing. If we argue it shouldn't be their job then what will we be doing? Nothing? We've tried the "do nothing" approach more times than any of us can count, and it doesn't work.

A plethora or suspicious things? If the companies are breaking the law, the FTC can sue them and win. If the companies are complying with the law, the FTC should indeed do nothing. If the law is bad, congress can pass new laws. What's not OK is for the executive branch to not like the law, but be unsuccessful at passing new law through the democratic process, and then use the FTC to unsuccessfully sue companies in or…

It's not that simple, because people don't know if they're breaking the law. The job of the FTC is to clear that up. It's a fallacy that laws can just be followed or not, almost all the time it's in a gray area.

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#228

Post by godelski »

immibis wrote: post #189
godelski wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good old metric hacking. People seem to frequently forget that your measurement is always a proxy. A proxy for what? That's for you to decide. But you can't ever measure anything directly. It's sadly common even in data science but the biggest offenders I see are business people. You can't use metrics without understanding what they're for otherwise you'll just enshitify your product. Be that number of clicks, time o…

Enshittification is a good thing for the business people.

No it isn't, but it looks like it is. The same is also true with (abusive) monopolies. They make less money stagnating. The difference in both is that it's easier to be poorer. But you give up a lot of value for easy money, and let's be real, when you're that rich it's no longer about the (utility of) money but the power and high score/bragging rights.

(Markets can work with monopolies, even efficiently, but it's the problem of benevolent dictators. They're never benevolent and eventually abuse their power. Competition is good for everyone involved because a stagnating monopoly is just one overtaken by bureaucrats who don't know how to make money, i.e. it is already dying)

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#229

Post by immibis »

refurb wrote: post #199
immibis wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how a lot of laws work. There's always an element of subjectivity. Is that guy a murderer? Well, did he intend to kill the victim or was it an accident? The court is supposed to decide whether he intended to, using the available facts, but nobody involved can read minds so it's really a guess. If you didn't want to be convicted of murder, you wouldn't walk right up to the line of what constitutes murder. You'd…

Those are the facts of the case. Whether a murder occurred at all is rarely subjective.

Whether the assailant intended to cause death is unknowable.

Re: US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

#230

Post by dieortin »

resters wrote: post #214
hyggetrold wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some places USPS is unreliable I can live with USPS but what made me actually cancel my Prime account was their use of On-Trac shipping in California. They literally missed every single time and had to come back the next day.

I care less who delivers it than whether it actually arrives in In my zip code there are various blocks (including my own) where virtually nothing gets delivered in I've contacted customer service and gone through multiple escalations twice and nothing has changed and it appears to reach a black hole. Addresses a few blocks away get normal prime delivery in 1-2 days. As much as I love Amazon (I've been a customer sin…

Bezos hasn’t been CEO of Amazon for some years now.
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