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Amazon Is a Monopoly

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Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#341

Post by erikpukinskis »

digitaltrees wrote: post #334
5trokerac3 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A client was on track to be selling $X-million this year of some appliances. Our client was forced to to stop selling because of trump tariffs. Amazon won't accept a "higher price" from our little company that only sells $Xm/year. A devil's advocate view: perhaps the supplier was buying low cost appliances from China, built in factories with who knows what labor standards or whether the work was compulsory, made al…

Why is amazon setting the price rather than letting the supplier and the market?

He who takest the buyer’s money dost set the price.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#342

Post by erikpukinskis »

xmprt wrote: post #223
scarface74 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple bans all sorts of apps from their store. Is every app that Apple bans “anticompetitive”? Google removes and deprioritizes sites all the time that breaks rules. CVS stop selling cigarettes in their stores. CloudFlare just kicked off 8Chan. Spotify bans musicians. Which one of these are anti competitive and which ones aren’t?

All of those scenarios are where there was a terms of service violation. When Google or Apple decide to ban their competition for no reason other than it being competition, it's anti-competitive.

Easy, Amazon just adds “no devices may be sold that compete with ours” to their TOS.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#343

Post by Dylan16807 »

skinnymuch wrote: post #266
Dylan16807 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then dominate all sales of that products on the Marketplace, raising prices to profitability when they feel like it. This has actually happened? Can you point me to examples with price charts?

They famously did their whole competition with Diapers.com and their parent company. That wasn’t an Amazon marketplace competitor though. But it was pretty ruthless of Amazon.

But what was the lowest price, and how much did they raise it from that point?

If I look at this article[1], they have a screenshot of size 4 pampers for 22 cents each, in 2010. In 2019 dollars that's 26 cents. The current amazon brand is 23 cents each, and the same pampers are 26 cents.

It doesn't seem like they've abused any dominance here. It's very possible they could do it in the future, but that's not the same thing.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-diapers-price-war-201...

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#344

Post by ernst_klim »

skinnymuch wrote: post #327
ernst_klim wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence. You can't buy a competitor if he don't want to be sold. Neither can you threat somebody with violence if the government does its job. I don't even comprehend how the absence of interventionism presume allowance of such violent measures. Don't confuse violence with "non-competitive practices". The latter are seldom harmful, or at the very least much less harmfu…

I gave the Diapers.com parent company example elsewhere. They were doomed with Amazon’s relentless price cutting and marketing. Either they sell or they’ll become worthless. You can say they have a choice, but did they really? I don’t think they did.

> They were doomed with Amazon’s relentless price cutting and marketing. Either they sell or they’ll become worthless. You can say they have a choice, but did they really?

So they've provided a worse service? I'm fine with it, if it means lower prices.

Of course they had a choice. And not only "to sell or become worthless", but also invent or innovate, as Amazon did, when it swallowed a huge chunk of Walmart's pie.

I don't know if Amazon is good or bad, neither myself nor anybody around ever used it, but if its service would not be good enough, any competitor could easily use it to conquer the market (as Amazon itself did), until Amazon would protect itself via regulatory capture.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#345

Post by 5trokerac3 »

digitaltrees wrote: post #334
5trokerac3 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A client was on track to be selling $X-million this year of some appliances. Our client was forced to to stop selling because of trump tariffs. Amazon won't accept a "higher price" from our little company that only sells $Xm/year. A devil's advocate view: perhaps the supplier was buying low cost appliances from China, built in factories with who knows what labor standards or whether the work was compulsory, made al…

Why is amazon setting the price rather than letting the supplier and the market?

In this instance, Amazon is a traditional reseller, buying wholesale and selling it as a Prime item. It sounds like Amazon is telling the supplier what they're willing to pay for the item wholesale (the same price they're currently paying) and the supplier is unable or unwilling to meet that.

OP is framing this like it's wholly Amazon's fault and not just a common failed negotiation.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#346

Post by thirdsun »

tk75x wrote: post #322
metalliqaz wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't have to pay the 15%, but they DO have to pay for the massive web infrastructure of their retail storefront and for the massive order fulfillment infrastructure.

That's what the 15% fee is for. I can envision splitting up amazon into its retail, web, and logistics branches where the retail branch pays the logistics branch the 15% fee to use their network.

I don't think it's the government's job the dictate the structure of a company, which, frankly, isn't anywhere near monopoly status in my opinion. I can order most products from countless other stores, which allows me to easily avoid Amazon if I wanted to.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#347

Post by specialist »

dredmorbius wrote: post #307
specialist wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support their emphasis on anti-competitive behavior. Versus the Borkian focus on just consumers. (How would "the market" know the fair price without healthy competition?) Someone (you? chubot?) previously equated laissez faire with pro-monopoly. Facepalm. Terrific insight, framing.

Looks like I've made similar points at least a couple of times: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dredmorbius%20laissez%20faire%... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11677735#11681574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261411#8278705 What I'd just (re?) realised is that the term laissez faire itself originated with Quesnay, though arguably in a different context -- he was arguing against merchantilist tarrifs and p…

hn.algolia.com FTW.

"...subsequently published by the anti-regulation, pro-monopoly Cato Institute, and earlier, judge Robert Bork, dating to earlier."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18436387#18436772

"...pursuing the old question of cui bono..."

You're made of sterner stuff than me.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#348

Post by dredmorbius »

specialist wrote: post #347
dredmorbius wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like I've made similar points at least a couple of times: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dredmorbius%20laissez%20faire%... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11677735#11681574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261411#8278705 What I'd just (re?) realised is that the term laissez faire itself originated with Quesnay, though arguably in a different context -- he was arguing against merchantilist tarrifs and p…

hn.algolia.com FTW. "...subsequently published by the anti-regulation, pro-monopoly Cato Institute, and earlier, judge Robert Bork, dating to earlier." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18436387#18436772 "...pursuing the old question of cui bono..." You're made of sterner stuff than me.

Good find. I like that ;-)
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