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Where Warren’s Wrong

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Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#241

Post by scarface74 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #237
scarface74 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them? Coke has pricing power on Coke and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola. Does that make Coke a monopoly?

> So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them? No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors. > Coke has pricing power on Coke That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for. > and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola. A premium price alone does not establish pricing power (in…

No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors.

Unless you have an essential good. No company has complete pricing power. If Apple tripled the price of Macs, no one would buy them. The Mac’s demand is far from inelastic.

> Coke has pricing power on Coke That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for.

Have you compared the price of a Coke to a generic cola?

A premium price alone does not establish pricing power (in fact, that the sustainable price is some additive or multiplicative premium of the price of competing goods would be evidence against pricing power.)

And this is different than Apple charging a premium how?

If Coke actually had pricing power such that increases in price did not produce movement to competing products, then, yes, it would mean it was a monopoly, because the descriptively similar products would empirically not be competing with it

And this is different than Apple?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#242

Post by azeotropic »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #25
anon0000 wrote: post #14

Noticeably absent from Warren's target list is Comcast. IMHO, they are more anti-trust than any of the tech companies she is targeting. Comcast also happens to be the 15th biggest donor to her campaign. https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors...

That’s a great point. I hope someone asks her about that. The fact that Comcast can institute data caps on broadband while offering a similar service, on-demand video over cable, without caps is absolutely insane.

Especially since it has a bunch of (local) government-granted monopolies. Let's eliminate those.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#243

Post by AnthonyMouse »

scarface74 wrote: post #239
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you forgotten what happened with Cambridge Analytica? That was Facebook giving a third party everyone's information without consent. This is your friends having the information you shared with your friends. > A “Facebook cookie” doesn’t have all of the information to all my friends information It allows you to get all of the information that your account has access to on Facebook, which is all such a client wo…

Facebook did not give “everyone” information without consent. One person gave access to their information - including their friends information (their social graph). This is the same thing. My account has all of my friends’ information.

The browser with your Facebook cookie already has access to that information. In what way is some other piece of software different? How is Thunderbird or Signal different than Firefox?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#244

Post by pixl97 »

scarface74 wrote: post #168
pixl97 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out? Microsoft is a goddamed convicted monopolist . The conviction significantly changed their internal processes and they were much more careful after that point.

And how did them “being careful” affect the rise of Facebook, Apple, Amazon or Google? They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed. They are still trying to compete in search.

>They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed.

Yes, they tried to compete, not just buy whoever they could and abuse the rest of the market which means the conviction had the intended effect.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#245

Post by scarface74 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #234
scarface74 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple was charging 30% and there was a competing Mozilla App Store for iOS charging 5%, There was nothing stopping Mozilla from making a “Firefox phone” and having a fully integrated experience. Well they did try and failed to execute. As did Amazon, Ubuntu, and Facebook. Apple was nowhere near the behemoth it is today when the iPhone was introduced. A company shouldn’t come under government scrutiny because compe…

> There was nothing stopping Mozilla from making a “Firefox phone” and having a fully integrated experience. Well they did try and failed to execute. The whole issue is that you shouldn't have to succeed in the phone market before you can operate an app store . Tying the phone to a specific app store is the problem. "Integrated experience" is the argument Microsoft failed to convince with when it tied Internet Explor…

In other words, Apple has a monopoly over 20% of the app customers, in the same way that Charter may have a broadband monopoly in 20% of the country even if there are other providers in the other 80%.

I can walk into any mobile store and have a choice between dozens of phones. Most people can’t choose their homes internet service provider.

Notice that this isn't the same thing as saying that Walmart has a monopoly over its own shelf space, because customers can trivially switch from Walmart to Amazon or vice versa at any time but to buy a $1 app from Amazon or Google Play instead of Apple you would first have to replace your $1000 phone. To reach the same position as Walmart, the issue isn't that they control what's in their own store, it's that there are no competing iOS app stores.

People can choose whether they want to spend money on an iPhone or an Android phone knowing the trade offs just like people can choose whether to buy an Xbox or PS4.

it's that they can reject your app for entirely opaque reasons without recourse, explicitly including because it competes with one of theirs.

Seeing that there are competing products for everything that Apple sells, this is a boogeymen that doesn’t happen anymore than it happens for the console makers.

You do realize that no software can be sold for consoles without the approval of the console makers - including physical sells.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#246

Post by dragonwriter »

scarface74 wrote: post #241
dragonwriter wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So every company is therefore a monopoly on their products since competitors can’t sell them? No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors. > Coke has pricing power on Coke That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for. > and can sell it at premium over Generic Cola. A premium price alone does not establish pricing power (in…

No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors. Unless you have an essential good. No company has complete pricing power. If Apple tripled the price of Macs, no one would buy them. The Mac’s demand is far from inelastic. > Coke has pricing power on Coke That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for. Have you compared the price of…

> No company has complete pricing power.

Pricing power doesn't have to have an unlimited range to demonstrate a monopoly in the sense of interest to anti-trust law.

> Have you compared the price of a Coke to a generic cola?

Again, a price premium is not even a related concept to pricing power.

> And this is different than Apple charging a premium how?

I've never made a claim about whether Apple has pricing power or merely a premium price; I've only said the existence of other sellers in the descriptive category of “computers” is not inconsistent with he characterization others made of Apple having a monopoly, because monopoly is designed by empirical evidence of competition (e.g., whether or not pricing power exists), not by whether or not their are other players in a descriptive category.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#247

Post by scarface74 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #246
scarface74 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not every company has pricing power, which is the ability to raise prices without losing sales to competitors. Unless you have an essential good. No company has complete pricing power. If Apple tripled the price of Macs, no one would buy them. The Mac’s demand is far from inelastic. > Coke has pricing power on Coke That's an interesting claim, but not one I've seen the evidence for. Have you compared the price of…

> No company has complete pricing power. Pricing power doesn't have to have an unlimited range to demonstrate a monopoly in the sense of interest to anti-trust law. > Have you compared the price of a Coke to a generic cola? Again, a price premium is not even a related concept to pricing power. > And this is different than Apple charging a premium how? I've never made a claim about whether Apple has pricing power or m…

Pricing power doesn't have to have an unlimited range to demonstrate a monopoly in the sense of interest to anti-trust law.

So how does Apple qualify and Coke doesn’t? How do you decide what the “right” amount of pricing power a company should have?

I've only said the existence of other sellers in the descriptive category of “computers” is not inconsistent with he characterization others made of Apple having a monopoly, because monopoly is designed by empirical evidence of competition (e.g., whether or not pricing power exists), not by whether or not their are other players in a descriptive category.

What exactly does Apple have a monopoly on then? Computers? Phones? Lightning adapters?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#248

Post by root_axis »

zepto wrote: post #238
root_axis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has a giant stash of patents related to search Patents are not an antitrust violation. Breaking up google doesn't revoke their patents. > On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach. Breaking up google doesn't mean all this insight disappears. We need better data privacy laws to address this. > Th…

A barrier to entry is something a competitor cannot acquire. I have clearly described multiple of those. It’s not just difficult to compete. It is impossible for competitors to acquire the insight that Google has amassed, since it is based on historical data that is not available anymore. Breaking up google wouldn’t make this insight disappear, but the fact that you acknowledge it exists proves my point that barriers…

> A barrier to entry is something a competitor cannot acquire.

This is 100% incorrect. By that definition every company's private source code is a barrier to entry for their competitors. Clearly this is wrong.

> It is impossible for competitors to acquire the insight that Google has amassed, since it is based on historical data that is not available anymore.

I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong about what constitutes a barrier to entry. "The product is so advanced that nobody can compete" is not a barrier. "All you have to do" is produce a better product; just because that is hard does not make it a barrier.

> I am arguing that Google has critical resources that cannot be replicated by this mythical group of genius polymaths because they are now owned by Google exclusively

I am just going to repeat myself with emphasis since you don't seem to be understanding that patents are not an antitrust violation. I am going to repeat it again: patents are not an antitrust violation. If you want to discuss the ethics of software patents that's a different topic where I likely agree with you, but within the context of anti-competitive behavior owning patents does not qualify. By your logic I suppose you want to break up Tesla since they are a market leader with a massive patent-warchest. If not, why not?

> it is ridiculous to suggest that the only thing preventing this is ‘brand awareness’.

This is a misreading of what I wrote. I'll assume it wasn't deliberate. What I said was that if a group of engineers produced a better product, the only thing that would prevent their product from being successful is google's ubiquitous branding, there is nothing about google's business practices that would prevent a superior product from being successful. Your argument is that google is so advanced that nobody can produce a superior product, but even if thats true, producing a superior product is not anti-competitive.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#249

Post by scarface74 »

pixl97 wrote: post #244
scarface74 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how did them “being careful” affect the rise of Facebook, Apple, Amazon or Google? They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed. They are still trying to compete in search.

>They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed. Yes, they tried to compete, not just buy whoever they could and abuse the rest of the market which means the conviction had the intended effect.

You mean they didn’t spend $7.6 billion on Nokia and before that $500 million on Danger?

They tried to buy Yahoo.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#250

Post by dragonwriter »

scarface74 wrote: post #247
dragonwriter wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No company has complete pricing power. Pricing power doesn't have to have an unlimited range to demonstrate a monopoly in the sense of interest to anti-trust law. > Have you compared the price of a Coke to a generic cola? Again, a price premium is not even a related concept to pricing power. > And this is different than Apple charging a premium how? I've never made a claim about whether Apple has pricing power or m…

Pricing power doesn't have to have an unlimited range to demonstrate a monopoly in the sense of interest to anti-trust law. So how does Apple qualify and Coke doesn’t? How do you decide what the “right” amount of pricing power a company should have? I've only said the existence of other sellers in the descriptive category of “computers” is not inconsistent with he characterization others made of Apple having a monopo…

> So how does Apple qualify and Coke doesn’t?

I have neither said that Apple does or thar Coke doesn't; I've never said that either of the two does or does not have pricing power.

> How do you decide what the “right” amount of pricing power a company should have?

It's not a question of “should have”; an anti-trust monopoly (which is not itself illegal, but may make other behavior illegal) exists where pricing power exists in any price range.

> What exactly does Apple have a monopoly on then?

I haven't said Apple has a monopoly, only that, again, the fact that other people sell computers doesn't mean that Apple's computers are not a monopoly (and the same would be true of any other product category besides “computers”.) Whether they have a monopoly is determined by empirical evidence of whether consumer substitution occurs between products, not as to whether products fit into some taxonomic category where there are other products.

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