Comment by awakeasleep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by awakeasleep | Hacker News Reader

Seems like an effort to dismiss the new antitrust movement's goal of helping people realize the problem presented by these enormous companies is a political problem that needs to be analyzed across the many ways society is affected.

The author doesn't make a very spirited defense of his main point, because he distorts the neo-Brandeisian analysis of the effects of Amazon on business and employment into a question of whether the means Amazon used to achieve those effects are legal.

Modern Anti-trust is looking to see whether new standards should be applied to anti-competitive behavior, based on how the most powerful companies are affecting society. They're not trying to litigate whether our current megacorporations broke any rules to get where they are.

But even conceding that point, let's return to the introductory paragraph, What does it mean for a company to be Too Big? There are obvious answers, like how a company that is "too big to fail" holds the government and citizens as collateral when it gambles.

But what about something that applies to the tech monopolies more directly? Too Big to Manage. It's an absentee landlord type situation. Facebook allowing people to sell oxycontin and meddle with the US election comes to mind, but what about:

1) Good faith usage of Amazon can get you put on restricted traveler lists. https://lifehacker.com/your-amazon-order-might-lock-you-out-...

2) Amazon facilitates the sale of counterfeit goods, including pet food. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16448001

3) It seems to be facilitating money laundering. http://fortune.com/2018/02/22/money-laundering-books-amazon/

4) And we've all seen the rest of the articles, about illegal drugs on amazon, about fake review scams, and more

Those are the points the author should address to counter anti-trust's uneasiness about amazon

This was the tipping point for me, actually, when I went through this same experience about a year ago:

https://consumerist.com/2013/06/18/amazon-cancels-my-6000-or...

It sounds like a minor bizarre Kafkaesque corporate nightmare, but the whole experience was so surreal I can't begin to convey it. Amazon demands, out of the blue, with no explanation, copies of sensitive financial documents to immediately be sent to strange unknown numbers over fax, or they will shut your account down. And when you do comply, they assert completely capriciously, that you have not, without explanation. And then they shut your account down. The whole thing seems like some obvious scam, except that Amazon representatives can confirm for you that it is real, even though they themselves cannot actually communicate with anyone involved.

I mention this here because of the sense of impunity involved. It was so absurd that any other corporation wouldn't think about doing something like this because of the obvious consequences that would occur.

I've generally felt positive toward Amazon over my lifetime, but in the last couple of years I've soured on them, and it's directly related to a large list of factors that in aggregate suggest Amazon is too large and is abusing its position.

The article undermines its own arguments by pointing out things like Amazon represents "less than half of all online commerce," that "(44%) takes place on its platform." The author is attempting to argue this is not too much, but to me their argument only proves the point.

I'm not sure what to do about it, but Amazon has become a problem, and they are abusing their monopoly.

Yes, it is about antitrust and monopolies. Many of us want competitive free markets. We need policies to fight the natural monopolies of the recent past, with a recognition that network effects and financial concentration have made monopolies and oligopolies much more dangerous.

Alas, the government has largely been captured by these financial interests. And the consumer is giving up freedom of choice for convenience, and not paying attention to this seemingly abstract problem. Thus the outlook for fighting these interests is gloomy.

Too me it's all about bundling. You need to take a lot of crap offerings because they've bundled it together with the one or two things they're really good at. To the point where it's take it or leave it proposition.

I don't propose to have an answer. But, bundling products, services and contract clauses into "take it or leave it" propositions make competition difficult.

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