Amazon's Whole Foods deal under scrutiny | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's Whole Foods deal under scrutiny

bbc.com

<Quote> "While we do not oppose the merger at this time, we are concerned what this merger could mean for African American communities across the country already suffering from a lack of affordable healthy food options from grocers," </Quote>

Did the Democratic representative forgot the grocery in question is Whole Foods? Affordability is not the strong suite of Whole Foods, and the representative from Ohio should know that! This merger means nothing to people looking for affordable grocery. NOTHING.

It's a near certainty that Amazon will lower prices at Whole Foods (by accepting lower margins and targeting faster growth and expansion), so if anything, it'll improve affordability.

This is correct; and, it helps eliminate the issue of so-called "food deserts"[1], because geography/neighborhood will no longer be a barrier to higher-quality foods.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

You need to afford a computer of some kind, afford the premium for food delivery, and have a debit card in order to have fresh food show up in your food desert. Most people for whom living in a food desert is a problem are impoverished, and therefore don't have a car, don't have a phone/tablet/computer, and often don't have a debit card, and certainly won't pay the delivery premium. So this is not in any way going to help those living in fresh food deserts.

Poor people have smartphones at a rate far higher than you would expect, partly because it's practically necessary these days, but also because you can get one on a plan from your carrier.

Delivery costs are a real issue, but I have a hope that we will get self-driving trucks in the near future and delivery prices will fall.

Amazon has a gift card system (Amazon Cash I think?) and as a full blown grocery store could accept EBT.

Doubtful.

The kinds of foods needed in those areas are fresh, cheap, high spoliage items aka unprofitable to touch unless in bulk.

by accepting lower margins

That is, by lower quality standards and working conditions.

If its own internal (non technical) sectors are to be taken as any indication.

That's not how it works.

If Whole Foods is currently getting a 10% margin on a product and Amazon says we'll sell it for a 5% margin, nothing else has changed in the store or the product, but the price and margin are lower.

Haha yeah I was thinking the same thing. What does any of this have to do with your average consumer. Whole Foods was never about that.

Regardless, Amazon might cut Whole Food prices if they do anything with prices. There's no way they'll ever raise them.

Even though Trader Joe's* has so far catered to certain people, if that was the company in question of merging, there would be a case.

*I know Trader Joe's is a subsidiary of one of the Aldi companies.

That statement had nothing to do with the investigation, it was a chance to play up her constituency - this is what politicians do.

Here, let me translate for you:

"I, as a representative of a majority African American district, am making the public and my voters aware that I am involved in a popular issue that they will remember. I can also tie this to the real concern of food deserts because Whole Foods is a grocery store, and it allows me to find relevancy even if only marginally."

I'm not African American/Black, but Amazon already partners with a similar grocery store in my area called Sprouts. I.e. I can order through Amazon Prime Now my groceries from Sprouts. I don't have a car and the nearest store to me would be a long bus/Uber ride, so having Amazon's help to deliver my groceries saves me not only a lot of time, but money, too. I am very grateful for it

I would imagine the argument for concern (not saying I agree with it) goes like this:

If Amazon Whole Foods is freed from the need to be profitable (like the rest of Amazon), and has the access to all of Amazon's other infrastructure, it will have a powerful competitive advantage against all other major grocery chains. Even if Amazon Whole Foods continues to focus on the upper end of the grocery market (which they may not), that will still make it even harder for other chains to compete in those markets, which I assume are more profitable than markets full of poor people.

If a given chain is only able to compete in the markets with the least purchasing power, that could have the effect of causing those chains to go out of business, which would in turn mean store closures in the poorest places. If I'm in charge of Ralph's as they're getting outcompeted in wealthier urban areas with high rents, I have to make up that profit by closing the least profitable stores, right?

Also, why assume that Amazon will keep Whole Foods' pricing or even brand alignment? Maybe they are simply buying a massive infrastructure for Amazon Fresh or whatever, and they intend to compete further down the line? I don't think there is any reason to assume that Amazon Whole Foods will have the same price range as Whole Foods.

By definition, there is no great business to be had selling groceries in poor areas. That's why there are food deserts now. If Amazon drives down margins and helps consolidate the grocery market, there may be even less likelihood that stores in poor areas will open or stay open.

Edit: read the actual letter, which makes very direct points about the potential pitfalls and merely asks for them to be studied (not for the merger to necessarily be blocked):

http://www.ufcw.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/61/files/2017/07/Lt...

Driving down costs isn't an argument against a merger.

It is the opposite. It is the argument that Amazon would make IN FAVOR of the merger.

I'm not talking about driving down consumer costs, I'm talking about driving down profit. In addition to the usual benefits of any consolidation, Amazon is generally not expected to be profitable in the way that grocers are. How can a company trying to maintain profitability compete with a giant who doesn't have to?

But it DOES drive down consumer costs. Less profit for for-profit businesses means more money for consumers because prices are lower.

I don't care about if a bunch of for profit businesses lose money.

What I care about is consumers and low prices.

It doesn't matter if it is fair. What matters is what is best for consumers.

What you are effectively arguing is "Amazon is too awesome, and too good for consumers. Their prices are so low, that other companies, that offer a WORSE product for a WORSE price, are unable to compete". And that to me makes no sense.

Oh i'm sure consumers will love getting their expensive whole foods groceries at bargain prices for 5 years, until amazon has pushed everyone else out of the business, solidified a monopoly, and jacks up prices.

People keep saying that the inevitable Amazon price raise will happen.

Amazon has been around for 20 years "monopolizing" every market that it enters. And those doomsday price raises have yet to materialize.

Wait, but here's the argument:

- Whole Foods no longer needs to be profitable because it's a subsidy of Amazon

- Whole Foods will thus drive down prices

Hold on, why? Because driving down prices will drive out competition. There's ample historical evidence for the inevitable result of this, which is

- Whole Foods leverages its new monopoly after murdering all competition by raising prices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

Can you provide a few examples of the ample historical evidence for that "inevitable result"? I'm looking for one or two cases where a private monopolist entered a competitive market, managed to shut down competitors with predatory pricing, and then raised prices afterwards to higher levels than when they entered the market.

This is one of those claims that sounds plausible, but I've yet to encounter a historical case of it actually occurring.

Microsoft and Internet Explorer is pretty close. Browsers sold for money. Microsoft entered the browser market and undercut it. Through market dominance they owned the market requiring anyone that wanted to access some parts of he web intact on Windows.

As a consumer now, is the problem that I have to save up my money and carefully choose which expensive web browser to "buy"?

At most, that's evidence of a new dynamic coming to a market, but I don't see the evidence of consumer harm from the phase 2 raising of prices in the browser market.

Ok, internet explorer.

At what point in history did microsoft drive out all its competitors, and then raise prices?

Oh wait. Never. They never raised prices and kept internet explorer free forever.

That's because it hasn't happened. It is simply a highly-plausible fantasy used to justify government interventions in fully-functioning markets. Economist Thomas DiLorenzo has actually studied this, and has found that, in the vast majority of cases, monopolies are associated with a dramatic (edit: permanent) reduction in prices. He found only two cases that actually followed the "predatory pricing" script (edit: that is, where prices dropped over time and then rose when monopoly power was achieved) — and those were trivial monopolies in the markets for matches and castor oil in the early 20th century.

(Edit: remove FTC comment, as it is besides the point and not strictly accurate)

This can apply to any monopoly that undercuts on price to destroy competition. Can't you imagine the danger of a scenario in which super-high capitalization + magical shareholder expectations = "awesome" enough to destroy competitors? Is regulating markets to protect competition ever a good idea?

Also, the premise that "consumers" are a monolithic group is mistaken. What's good for comfortable consumers in wealthy places is not necessarily also good for poor consumers. Is Amazon Whole Foods going to serve 100% of the United States? Can you imagine them destroying the business of a company and then choosing not to serve all of that company's customers?

Amazon's "awesome" prices are artificially low (like Uber's, for example) due to subsidy from investors. This indicates an intent to compete and then raise prices.

Amazon has been monopolizing markets with low prices for 20 years.

And people have been saying that the inevitable price increase is just around the corner.

And yet those price increases have yet to come.

So tell me, when will THESE price increases come around?

Maybe in Another 20 years?

> I don't care about if a bunch of for profit businesses lose money.

> What I care about is consumers and low prices.

You are being short-sighted then. Come in, drive the others out of business, then feel free to raise prices with no competition. It has happened multiple times before.

Your statement only makes sense in with the US antitrust laws. The proxy for consumer harm the US uses is prices which is a very narrow view. This is the reason why Amazon with 90% of the ebook market could be the victim of Antitrust vs Apple. Long term competition matters even if consumers have low prices right now. EU for example works differently. These articles will give more nuance: https://stratechery.com/2016/antitrust-and-aggregation/ https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and-monopolies/

> Driving down costs isn't an argument against a merger.

True, but the restriction of choice is. And Amazon is NOT going to stay upmarket long. They're going to wipe out smaller players.

This merger drives down some consumers costs (generally the wealthier who already have plenty of choice) while increasing the costs of others (wiping out marginal stores in areas that are less affluent).

WalMart is a good analogy. When WalMart comes into an area costs go down--until all the alternatives are driven out of business. And, quite often, WalMart isn't even the cheapest. In addition, by wiping out those businesses WalMart wipes out jobs and those people don't care that groceries are 10% cheaper because they now have no income at all.

So, it basically boils down to the people who already have plenty, get things cheaper, while the people already hurting, hurt worse.

> If a given chain is only able to compete in the markets with the least purchasing power, that could have the effect of causing those chains to go out of business

This is the status quo today, it's not like we have incredible diversity of grocery chains serving each and every market out there. Whole Foods, Wegmans and Bristol Farms dominate the top tier, Costco inserted itself to serve upper middle class suburban communities, Safeway and equivalents vie for middle and lower-middle markets, while Walmart Supercenters, 7-11s, corner bodegas and Chinese/Korean grocers operate in lower-income markets.

Reminds me of how the Congressional Black Caucus pushes for billionaires' repeal of the estate tax under the guise of racial equity. I think they try to make it into social issues, racial justice, just to divert the conversation from the indefensible root of their positions.

> “Full repeal of the estate tax would allow African Americans to pass the full fruits of their business success to the next generation and thereby laying the foundation for a permanent minority ownership class that can contribute to the economic growth and development of the United States economy,” Robert Johnson, whose worth has been estimated at more than half a billion dollars, wrote to the House Ways and Means Committee last week.

While I agree that happens, in your quote just to be clear, Robert Johnson isn't a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (or of Congress), he's just a very wealthy black businessman (founder of BET) who wrote his opinion opposing the estate tax in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee. I haven't been able to find whether any members of the CBC actually agree with it. Most of the Caucus's members tend to vote fairly "left" on taxation-related issues.

I'd like to see a 50-year hiatus on inheritance taxes for black people.

In limited, specific markets, Whole Foods is definitely entering markets with a lack of affordable, healthy options:

>Since it was announced in 2013, Whole Foods' plan to open a store in one of Chicago's most economically depressed South Side neighborhoods has drawn praise, excitement, scrutiny and some doubt. The big questions — Will the community support it? Will the store be affordable to residents but still turn a profit? Will it work? — won't be answerable for months or even years.

>But Wednesday was reserved for exuberance and unchecked optimism. Many shoppers applauded the store's presence in a community with few options for fresh, healthy food. And more than 35 South Side vendors sampled their wares that will be sold in the store. Whole Foods is hoping that local connection, plus significantly lower prices on select items, keeps shoppers coming back after the hoopla has died down.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-whole-foods-englew...

(edit quote marks)

Yeah... I don't get it. Maybe I'm not seeing it from disadvantaged/poor communities, but I don't actually see how this would impact them. The Whole Foods-Amazon merger will do either one of the following:

1) Whole Foods will continue to keep its prices as high as it does. Poorer/disadvantaged communities will continue to not shop at Whole Foods as it is out of their price range.

2) Amazon lowers Whole Foods prices. Whole Foods becomes affordable for more communities. If Whole Foods expands into poorer communities with these lowered prices, it will give poorer communities more access to groceries. If Whole Foods does not expand into these poor communities, storefronts like Smart & Final, Walmarts, Big Lots!, Ralphs, VONS, etc will continue to exist.

I really fail to see the problem here.

And wouldn't the merger increase delivery options?

Considering how Walmart is the only option for many Americans to buy groceries I wouldn't worry about this deal at all.

What if it's Walmart that is pushing for scrutiny and not the average american.

Judging by the clout the average american has in the political system vs the average corporation it's not much of a stretch.

Is there a way we can quantify that? Is there any publicly available geospatial database of buildings sorted by type (residential, grocery store, etc.)?

Can someone explain to me how this could be considered "consolidation"? Is amazon buying multiple grocery store chains? The entire point of this article seems extremely far fetched.

Amazon had a grocery delivery service and is purchasing a grocery store.

Amazon is already in the grocery retail business.

Whole Foods is in the grocery retail business.

The consolidation is kind of obvious.

They have 1 store iirc, and it's not even ready for prime time yet (the automated one). I'm not sure I'd call that industry consolidation...

EDIT: Is delivery even relevant to the topic at hand? It's basically a completely different type of business.

Amazon's grocery retail is not limited to, or even primarily conducted via, the one brick and mortar store.

EDIT:

> EDIT: Is delivery even relevant to the topic at hand? It's basically a completely different type of business.

I think it's pretty clear that people do substitute between in-person and online retail based on price and other competitive factors, so they aren't isolated, unrelated businesses.

Hell, Albrrtson's/Safeway offers delivery and Kroger brands plus WalMart have pickup options - that's a large majority of grocery brand in the US.

It's not just about the physical store - Amazon sells quite a few grocery products online.

They do grocery delivery. In various ways, namely Pantry and Fresh. But I essentially do some grocery shopping through Subscribe & Save. We don't know how big of a share they have in groceries sold. The one test retail store isn't the issue here.

It's kinda weird because they both just occupy small niches in the business. My guess is that even if they combine they won't occupy a huge part of the market.

Both are in the grocery business. However, both are effectively "bit players" in the business: Whole Foods has about 1.7% market share, while Amazon has 0.8%. For comparison, Walmart, plus its subsidiary Sam's Club, has over 20% market share.[1]

Generally, in the US, competition inquiries focus on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for a quantitative evaluation of industry concentration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl_index). A potential combination with market shares such as Amazon's and Whole Foods' usually won't be seen as dangerous using that metric.

There are other concerns as well, of course, but the HHI is a critical one.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/240481/food-market-share...

If you're going to let Comcast buy half the goddamn content companies like Universal, NBC, etc. You can't block something like this. Just sayin'.

Nitpick: NBC Universal was a single company when Comcast bought it.

I think our government has long ago left behind the "pretending to care about the constituents" mentality. If this merger is blocked, it's because someone standing to profit more from the merger being blocked had more political clout than those who stood to make money from the deal going through.

Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, Amazon probably has too long of fingers. On the other hand, if we (the US) are going to be bad at enforcing anti-trust laws, we should at least be consistent about it.

That's how I feel too. I dislike Amazon's power and potential future power quite a bit. But the US at least isn't consistent with how it's going about things.

Speaking of which, I haven't heard much about the At&t and Time Warner merger in some time. Campaign Trump did say he wouldn't allow it :p

Frankly, Amazon is in a league of its own. Amazon has been allowed to acquire and expand until now, far exceeding whoever you have in mind. So I don't think there's an inconsistency.

I could expect inconsistencies, however, for two reasons. First, lobbying. Second, because the corporate entity is important to national interests in some way where breaking it up would detract from those interests. I don't think any of these apply in the case of AMZN. So if we're going for consistency, we should have really gone after AMZN quite some time ago.

Actually yeah I agree.

What would they have gone after Amazon for before? Not for acquisitions, right? Unless Zappos or Goodreads were too far. Or some AWS acqsitions.

The first thing I can think of is the BS they pulled when going against Quidsi. Lowering prices for things like diapers far too low among other things. Then being able to buy Quidsi when they were weakened.

Does the Consumer Watchdog claim only apply to Amazon?

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/ltrftcdojamzon0706...

I just checked Walmart's site, and they seem to do the same kind of "Was" style price points.

Trump tends to frequently call the Washington Post "the Amazon Washington Post." I wonder if this anti-trust scrutiny could be a way to leverage Bezos into toning down WaPo.

If it did, that would be bezo's plan in buying the paper backfiring spectacularly.

Bezos never intended to leave the paper alone. The fact that Wapo abandoned Snowden is evidence of that. Bezos is the biggest liar. Just read any of his company wide emails and you'll see how bad of a liar he is.

I ain't even mad. Life is about finding out exactly how much you can get away with.

You don't have to destroy everyone around you to have a good time ;)

Might makes right!

Bezos' plan was always to have a mouthpiece to spout propaganda. Why else invest in a dying medium?

Same with Carlos Slim and the NYT. This isn't rocket surgery.

Would the same argument apply to Rupert Murdoch and Fox News?

Can you link to some specific examples that to you demonstrate that Bezos is a liar?

For example, when he pretended that he didn't know about the working conditions of the warehouses. He knows exactly what's going on with every detail of the company. He personally oversaw the design of the entire Amazon system, including the warehouse. His letter is absurd on its face.

http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-responds-nyt-repor...

The crazy thing is, the deal should be getting scrutiny anyway. This would be Trump doing his job.

The thing that should worry us more is the concentration of power of a single individual owning Amazon and the Washington Post represents. Why should a corporate deal affect a newspaper watching out for the interests of the public? It seems insane. That's because it is.

Well the President is also flat out wrong when he calls it the "Amazon Washington Post" because Amazon doesn't own the Washington Post. Perhaps we should fix the President's blatant misinformation ability before we go preventing someone from founding/buying/inheriting particular businesses.

Jeff is CEO of Amazon and owns the Post. While the President is technically inaccurate, I'm not sure he is de facto inaccurate.

Facts or accuracy are not a strong suit of the current guy in office. /s

Also, he doesn't seam to care much for independent journalism... which WaPo is. Anytime Amazon is discussed in the WaPo, they do mention in interest of disclosure that Jeff Bezos is the owner of WaPo and Amazon.

Got karma to burn so why not.

> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Remember Trump also accused Amazon of "not paying internet taxes," so facts are not his strong suit. (Although he is correct only in that there is no such thing as internet taxes)

well basically wasn't that one of his better political sentences? Saying something like "x does not paying internet taxes", could've come from every political person, since this sentence is extremly clever and not incorrect at all. amazon did in fact not pay internet taxes. (because they don't exists) Isn't that speech which every politican uses?

I think the President is committing fraud by implying as President to the American public that AMZN holds an asset that it does not. How’s that for technical accuracy?

Have you always been this literal minded? It's simplistic to think that AMZN is hermetically sealed off from the WaPo because legally the two entities have nothing to do with each other. Trump's insinuation isn't as strong as what you claim it is. He is at most suggesting that WaPo may be serving AMZN interests in a de facto, not de jure, capacity. Frankly, I think that he's just using Amazon as a symbol for Bezos because people know what Amazon is and what it means for businesses. They don't necessarily know who Bezos is. It allows him to associate whatever negative associations Amazon may have in his electorate with the WaPo. On the other hand, it may have been as simple as a humorous quip. In any case, you should relax.

Let’s see... the President tweeted several times last night about Amazon and WaPo. No, it doesn’t look like a humorous quip to me. It looks like he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s inventing a narrative and using that nonsense to interfere with an acquisition.

Trump doesn't get the benefit of the doubt, here. He's long, long, long since lost that.

It might as well be owned by Amazon

Are you sure you aren't the one spewing blatant misinformation? The CEO (and founder) of Amazon owns the WaPo. Although, WaPo isn't owned by Amazon it doesn't take someone of extraordinary intelligence to come to the conclusion that the WaPo and Amazon have a special relationship, considering how they are both managed by the same person.

I’m 100% sure I’m not spewing misinformation, thank you. Amazon is a publicly traded company and WaPo is owned by Jeff Bezos, most literally NOT Amazon.

Yes, technically true, but it probably was intentional. Think of the alternatives. The Bezos Post? The Bezos Washington Post? Think of his audience. Most people know what Amazon is, not who Jeff Bezos is. Spelling bee winners like you are not Trump's target audience. Instead of nitpicking, try asking why Trump may have said what he said. It's this refusal or inability to see things from other perspectives that was a major reason for the shock Democrats experienced when Trump won.

I'm pretty amused that you guys think I'm advancing a pro-Trump position here. The reason he's doing this is clearly because he's a vindictive authoritarian that wants to suppress the free press. There's no way he cares at all about anti-trust law.

The point I'm trying to get across is that the independence of the free press is threatened by concentration of power. Trump should not even be able to attack the Washington Post in this indirect fashion. In this case, he's probably doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Let The Post be independent of enormous corporate interests and reduce its attack surface.

Also, I might have to watch A Few Good Men tonight. Thanks for the reminder.

"DON'T YOU KNOW THE PRESIDENT LIES?!" "SON. YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH."

If you read the article, you'd see that Democrats are the ones pushing for more scrutiny.

Marcia Fudge, quoted in the article, is also anti-net-neutrality. Minority leaders are often the targets of strategic influence campaigns on issues like net neutrality. It's possible this is a similar situation.

Possibly -- but AFAIK liberals are generally the ones who favour busting up large corporations.

link?

"In April of 2011, the House voted on a measure to prevent recent FCC rules regarding net neutrality from taking effect. The measure passed 236-174. Marcia Fudge voted against the resolution and therefore approved of the FCC rules regarding net neutrality."

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/newsfromunderground/dv...

It's possible she was successfully pressured to change her position. My point was more about corporate efforts to drive wedges between Democrats.

Trump does not like Bezos due to his ownership of the Washington Post. I would like to hope this does not affect the final decision.

As another poster said, in regards to the Democrat raising concerns, she is attempting to leverage a national story for votes.

Taken as a standalone purchase removed from politics I see this as a potential boon to many; with the chance for Amazon to leverage it's many expertices to provide lower cost higher quality food to people who otherwise could not afford it.

> a potential boon to many

While I believe the right decision will eventually be made, I'm not quite sure that positive language really holds up to scrutiny. Whole Foods fits a niche in selling a particular type of food, and shoppers are willing to pay a high premium for that food. With the exception of possibly Trader Joe's [0] there's no place near me that fills that niche besides Whole Food's. My understanding of Amazon's intent in purchasing the store is that they have no intention of preserving that niche, and want to turn it into an everyman's grocery store with some Amazon-specific gimmicks.

If Amazon is correct in believing the assets of Whole Food's are more valuable as a general grocery store, then the sale is a net positive for consumers. But there's still other anti-trust considerations at play and sometimes minorities do get what they want at the cost of net benefit.

Of course I don't know what that congressman's going on about. Whole Foods only exist in places where people can afford to go to Whole Foods. If you're poor the outcome of this deal is absolutely meaningless to you.

[0] For the record, the one near me closed down a couple years ago, before the Whole Food's even opened.

Trump's invisible hand?

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