Earlier quoted context omitted.
"all the monopolies"
The precise term would be the oligopolies.
There is no oligopoly in retail (online or brick and mortar). It's cut throat competition, razor thin margins, players coming and going.
The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
551–560 of 653 posts
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate that every discussion of reigning in abusive companies has to come with 1000 comments about how other companies are also being abusive, which should apparently make us just wave the white flag. Nah, let's deal with all the monopolies, and Amazon is a good place to start since like you said, they are just incredibly blatant.
It's a very strong argument to say that the practice currently being pursued by the FTC has been a long standing and generally accepted as legal practice in the retail industry. The fact that they are going after Amazon for this, but have not ever gone after anybody else who has been doing it for decades leads me to the conclusion that this is not about the actual trade practice it claims to be about, but rather a po…
I checked, Amazon does indeed sell tiny violins. They are keychains that make sounds. Unless there's a claim here that the FTC is working directly for, say, Walmart, everyone else benefits from Amazon being brought down a handful of pegs.
Sorry if it makes things hard for some AWS customers, but eggs, baskets, etc.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#553Much of what Amazon does is what other retailers already do. Amazon just does it more overtly and with smaller businesses. In fact, various aspects of this where pioneered by WalMart and Costco. 1. WalMart determines the expected product and expected price and tells vendors to take it or leave it. The agreement often has a stipulation that the same product can never be cheaper elsewhere which is sometimes easy as Wal…
I hate that every discussion of reigning in abusive companies has to come with 1000 comments about how other companies are also being abusive, which should apparently make us just wave the white flag. Nah, let's deal with all the monopolies, and Amazon is a good place to start since like you said, they are just incredibly blatant.
Legal precedent exists for a reason. It's not waving the white flag, it's having actual standards and rules. I think Amazon is a shithole of a website and one of the worst examples of downward spirals into mediocrity, but there has to be some semblance of fairness.
Targeting amazon for something Walmart or Target does, but without targeting them too is just wack. You can't just handwave that issue by saying that we can just start there! Because it's been decades, it's standard industry practices, and the law hasn't changed (I know that the FTC has a wide executive mandate, but conjuring a rule is still not great).
Even if you want Amazon broken down, you don't want such a process to start on super shaky grounds like this. I don't know how to explain exactly what I mean here, but it just feels off!
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#554This strategy has been adopted by eBay as well and artificially drives up prices. Let me elaborate. Recently, eBay has made it so that only the products with paid ads are shown in places where customers click. This drives up the cost of everything by more than 10% which is eBay's ad fee. I refused to buy a paid ad to sell my MacBook. It sat on the site for a month, which is highly unusual for an in-demand and rightly…
> Finally I lowered the price enough to get it sold.
How much did you have to lower the price by? How did that compare to the ad-ransom you would have had to pay?
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate that every discussion of reigning in abusive companies has to come with 1000 comments about how other companies are also being abusive, which should apparently make us just wave the white flag. Nah, let's deal with all the monopolies, and Amazon is a good place to start since like you said, they are just incredibly blatant.
It's obvious astroturfing. The top two posts with the most upvotes are "Ebay is just as bad" for the startoff line, and "Everybody's just as bad as Amazon. Why are you being so mean and cruel to Amazon?" Obvious astroturfing, just like the entire Amazon review ecosystem. Surprise? No. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Bezos' wealth relative to "normal" shown as 1-pixel comparisons. Be careful once you get…
I LOVE that link, but I think serious accusations like that need better justification/explanation.
Are you saying that Amazon is buying upvotes for comments they like, or that that comment was written by a shill? The former is very possible but hard to prove either way, but the latter seems really unreasonable. In this example, it's a poster that's been here since 2017, talking about things like startup culture, Covid-19, and investment banking. They even say they're ex-AWS in their HN bio, which would be a very unconventional move for an Amazon-corporate-operated fake account.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a strawman because GP wasn’t commenting on whether or not there is a technical way of reaching the public, but rather that media consolidation hurts the public. Those are orthogonal issues.
It’s not orthogonal, consolidation of media is only important if it keeps people’s messages from getting distributed broadly. Is that really a problem in 2023? The “media” - ie ways to reach people is less consolidated now than any time in history.
I can invent a new protocol and app right now thats 100x easier to publish on and access. No one is using yet, is the harm of propaganda stories in corporate media lessened in any way by the fact of that tools availability? No
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
The math absolutely does check out, lets say, for an addressable market of 100k purchasers: (and I'll be generous and I'll pretend Walmart has zero fees) Amazon: ($5 selling price - $3 fees - 0.80 COGS) * (100k * 35%) = $42,000 Walmart: ($2 selling price - $0 fees - 0.80 COGS) * (100k * 7%) = $8,400 And even if they price the same on Walmart as they would on Amazon: ($5 selling price - $0 fees - 0.80 COGS) * (100k *…
Walmart is not all-non amazon customers. If Amazon's market share is 35%, then the non-amazon customers comprise the other 65% (which, being greater than 50%, constitutes "most"). Amazon: ($5 selling price - $3 fees - 0.80 COGS) * (100k * 35%) = $42,000 Not-Amazon: ($2 selling price - $0 fees - 0.80 COGS) * (100k * 65%) = $78,000 If a seller raises prices to match Amazon, they can be undercut elsewhere by those willi…
There are two reasons why that 65% number is wildly unrealistic:
1. We're ignoring fixed costs associated with onboarding with an ecommerce platform. Selling on one website has significantly lower fixed costs than it is to sell on every ecommerce site on the internet minus one. We're talking thousands upon thousands of retailers, not a handful. If what you were thinking is that they could sell across the next 5 to 10 most popular ecommerce marketplaces, you're somewhere between 15% and 20% marketshare.
A more realistic number for that strategy is:
Not-Amazon: ($2 selling price - $0 fees - 0.80 COGS) * (100k * 17%) = $20,400
https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t...
2. Not all ecommerce sites represented in that 65% permit third party sellers. You can't just sign up and sell your stuff. You may have to convince their buyers to stock your product. This is not easy or cheap.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetitive offers Sounds to me like Amazon has found a loophole in the law. It agrees to list anything for sale, with no anti competitive conditions, but then only recommends customers buy things that it believes are in the customers best interests. The FTC will struggle to argue that is illegal. Amazon can't be compelled to recommend stuff. (free speec…
> what they recommend is in the consumers immediate best interests. How? Amazon routinely recommends products to me that are objectively inferior compared to other products. For example, I just searched for "peak design travel tripod" and the number one result, which is also marked with "Overall Pick", is a tripod made by a company with the name of KINGJUEEQUESTER that looks like it's made out of cardboard tubes, but…
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Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's obvious astroturfing. The top two posts with the most upvotes are "Ebay is just as bad" for the startoff line, and "Everybody's just as bad as Amazon. Why are you being so mean and cruel to Amazon?" Obvious astroturfing, just like the entire Amazon review ecosystem. Surprise? No. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Bezos' wealth relative to "normal" shown as 1-pixel comparisons. Be careful once you get…
I LOVE that link, but I think serious accusations like that need better justification/explanation. Are you saying that Amazon is buying upvotes for comments they like, or that that comment was written by a shill? The former is very possible but hard to prove either way, but the latter seems really unreasonable. In this example, it's a poster that's been here since 2017, talking about things like startup culture, Covi…
Almost every claim of astroturfing is from someone who doesn't understand the basic argument opposing their position.
Re: The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a very strong argument to say that the practice currently being pursued by the FTC has been a long standing and generally accepted as legal practice in the retail industry. The fact that they are going after Amazon for this, but have not ever gone after anybody else who has been doing it for decades leads me to the conclusion that this is not about the actual trade practice it claims to be about, but rather a po…
I checked, Amazon does indeed sell tiny violins. They are keychains that make sounds. Unless there's a claim here that the FTC is working directly for, say, Walmart, everyone else benefits from Amazon being brought down a handful of pegs. Sorry if it makes things hard for some AWS customers, but eggs, baskets, etc.
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