Hacker News Reader

Comment by stale2002 | Hacker News Reader

stale2002

Amazon has been around for 20 years, and the only thing it has used it market power for is to crash prices, which is good for consumers.

Amazon is directly responsible for ebooks being so cheap today. The publishers and Apple wanted prices for ebooks to be high.

If Amazon's monopoly power results in low prices for me forever, then I say bring it on.

The ONLY purpose of monopoly laws is as a consumer protection. And if prices are permanently low, like they are in the ebook space, that is GOOD for consumers, not bad.

In another 20 years, those "inevitable" price increases aren't going to come either.

View on HN

> Amazon is directly responsible for ebooks being so cheap today.

Blimey, here I thought ebooks are ridiculously expensive, often costing more than trade paperbacks, especially after a year or two.

Amazon wants lower ebook prices while book publishers want higher prices.

The ONLY purpose of monopoly laws is as a consumer protection.

No, it's about protecting the marketplace. Consumer protection is a second order effect. Here's a quote from the U.S. Supreme Court with respect to the Sherman Act:

The purpose of the [Sherman] Act is not to protect businesses from the working of the market; it is to protect the public from the failure of the market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself.

As you can see, the court concluded that anti-trust law is about policing market failures, and specifically about the destruction of competition.

I agree partially with what you say. It actually changed my feeling towards it a bit and had to pause for a second.

There's another player being squeezed in a theoretical e-book dumping. Writers. Amazon doesn't do for them what publishers do(editing to marketing), and taking out the competition could benefit consumers at the expense of the writers.

That's a fairly bold prediction. Why is it ok to apply your logic to Amazon but not other monopoly situations?

Monopolistic behavior, like buying out a competitor when there are very few players, CAN be bad for consumers, and should be stopped.

But price dumping to drive out competitors is fantasy boogieman strategy that basically never works. There has to be huge barriers to entry, for it to work. Because if there aren't, then a competitor can just jump back into the market when the prices rise again. It is just not a profitable strategy for a monopoly to engage in.

Price dumping just result in lower prices for consumers.

Price dumping is a great way to destroy competition and has worked effectively in the airline industry (presumably this fits into your high barrier to entry category). The ebook market is presumably easier to enter but far from easy.

The airline industry is f'ed up because of geographic barriers to entry and local monopolies.

IE, even though there are a dozen or so big players in the airline industry, there is often only 1 carrier going from X to Y.

Other examples would include the telecom/internet cable industry, electricity/water.

That is the definition of price dumping.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com