Hacker News Reader

Comment by Invictus0 | Hacker News Reader

The problem with these new giants is that people really want them around. People don't care so much that their neighbors are going out of business; they just want their crap cheap and as soon as possible. The current legislative environment is entirely ill-equipped to deal with these companies, and moreover, no one even knows how to deal with them. What is clear, though, is that the proliferation of supercompanies like Amazon is repugnant to the ideals of the free market and must be stopped.

View on HN

What small businesses? Local business competing with Amazon were killed off more than a decade ago by Walmart.

If the status quo when Amazon started was a high minimum wage with strong unions and employee (or at least local) ownership, this might be a more compelling argument. As it is, the capitalists in Bentonville are losing out to the capitalists in Seattle because the former rely on massively state-subsidized labor while the latter just axes the labor all-together.

I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but this isn't something that was created by (or even made worse by) Amazon. This is an important point because without a proper diagnosis, we'll never find the cure.

Also, Amazon beating Walmart is an exemplar of free markets at work -- one competitor besting another on merit alone (actually, even DESPITE massive federal and state tax incentives propping up the losing side!) Maybe the conclusion you should be drawing from your dislike of the status quo is that free markets aren't a panacea after all?

Finally, I'll note that Amazon distribution facilities -- for all the valid criticisms -- at least pay a (barely) living wage in many areas. Walmart pays substantially less.

>Amazon beating Walmart

Let's not get carried away here. In the most recent quarter, Walmart had revenues of $123B vs Amazon's $38B. Walmart still has time to figure out the ecommerce game.

Point is, Walmart is Amazon's primary victim. And it's a victim I have trouble empathizing with.

The current legislative environment is entirely ill-equipped to deal with these companies, and moreover, no one even knows how to deal with them.

The former may be true; not sure about the latter. Existing anti-trust law could be sufficient to deal with them, if the powers that be had the will to use it.

I think there is a challenge in applying current anti-trust laws to a company like Amazon because Amazon's reach is more wide than it is deep. AT&T owned almost the entire telecom network in the United States, Amazon doesn't have anywhere near that kind of influence in any of it's businesses. What Amazon does have is a significant presence in many different (competitive) businesses. I can't think of an example of antitrust being applied in a similar situation in the past but I could be missing something obvious.

I have a lot of sympathy for this argument, but I don't think it's fleshed out enough. What happens to this argument if you do s/Amazon/Walmart/? I would generally hold Amazon is better than Walmart due to the relative decentralization of Amazon's sources (third parties can easily sell on Amazon, but not at Walmart). Your argument says Walmart is also unstoppable, at least without further tweaks --- and yet, we figured out how to solve the Walmart problem. Walmart is struggling --- a nimbler, more convenient competitor came along, and society also has a greater appreciation for specialty stores now. Will that happen to amazon too?

I think that is part of why Amazon is so eager to automate all they can, because any newcomer will have to pay actual people, and won’t have the ability to invest in robotics.

> Your argument says Walmart is also unstoppable, at least without further tweaks --- and yet, we figured out how to solve the Walmart problem.

You're proposing that the solution to "the Walmart problem" is to create a company even worse than Walmart, a company that drives other, larger companies out of business? Whereas Walmart put out the mom and pops, Amazon is putting out the Bestbuys and shopping malls. There is no difference. But people are celebrating this, and heralding a coming age where no one has to work (caused by Amazon-like processes and robots replacing retail workers and other jobs), without really considering the complete disaster that this would entail. The solution is not even more supercompanies.

To which ideals is Amazon's success "repugnant"? It seems to me that Amazon is facilitating demand much better than its competitors, which means, according to the rules of the free market, it should win. Or am I misunderstanding?

Free markets aren't a guarantee that things aren't repugnant (and likely the opposite -- most winners in free markets are repugnant in various ways).

Free markets are a travesty of economics; bring back competitive markets.

The GP said that companies like Amazon are repugnant to free markets. Not to the moral perspective of some third party observer.

Can you provide some explanation of why a supercompany is repugnant to the ideals of a free market? It seems to me free markets favor supercompanies. That's why we have anti-trust laws.

What exactly is repugnant?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com