Tim Bray told a union meeting Amazon should be broken up
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
The ironic part of this is that the same large companies they are showing solidarity with are implementing anti-competitive practices to prevent smaller entrants from standing a chance. Between google and facebook's unknown algorithms, Apple's secretive approval process for iOS apps, and Amazon's practice of pushing their products up and pushing new entrants out, the large companies already act as gatekeepers for their dominion.
Perhaps it's marketing, maybe it's brand loyalty, but it seems bizarre that people are more willing to give control of their lives to a large corporation than to have any government intervention.
Start voting for people you want in power.
Stop voting for the lesser evil.
Yes you cant always avoid it but a functioning democracy involves a forcing of ideologies to work together through multi party systems and the resulting coalitions.
I can do that, but I can't make other people do that. So your "advice" isn't really actionable is it?
I consider myself a bleeding heart pro capitalist pig. In other words I believe in a social safety net funded by taxes and the free market.
Given the way our various systems interact, "multi-party systems" and "coalitions" are simply not possible.
> Stop voting for the lesser evil.
This is tantamount to calling for individuals to write-in their fave candidates. Do you actually think that will work?
Scroll down to “In general, do you think there is too much, too little or about the right amount of government regulation of business and industry?“ Well over 2/3 of Americans thing there is the right amount of regulation of businesses, or that there should be even less.
Scroll further to: “ In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future -- big business, big labor or big government?”
Just 26% say “big business” is the biggest threat, while a whopping 67% say “big government” is the biggest threat.
As stated by Buffett in Bray's article, anti-trust enforcement has fallen so far into the favor of large corporations the past few decades that the average age of public companies has increased. One would think that public opinion should reflect the swing of the pendulum, but this hasn't entirely been the case.
How is this any different from supermarkets that have their own generic, no-label brand that they push?
If a grocery store consistently made you dig to the back of a shelf to find a Smuckers product but not it's own, I imagine there would be a similar lawsuit.
Why? Did grocery stores sign some kind of contract to be neutral platforms?
Ikea, Costco, Target all push their own brand. Oftentime, at Walmart, Mainstay will be your only option for some items.
ß: supermarkets have spent decades optimising the customer travel patterns inside their stores so they know very well which way majority of the traffic flows on any given aisle.
0: https://qz.com/807723/inside-the-secret-backroom-deals-big-b...
So of course they’d sue —- for breach of contract. But don’t think for a second that grocery stores are just trying to be fair with the shelf space. They of course don’t charge themselves for placement of their own brands.
Everyone uses Amazon, but there's always an underlying belief that they are evil (even from employees). Trying to defend their practices isn't wise.
Yet the city council bends to their will rather than the will of their constituents... No surprise that Seattleites find them oppressive.
If the govern doesn't go after Aamzon, Amazon will probably come after your small business.
on the other hand, it's different: amazon spans so many kind of items that it's killing a huge kind of mom an pop stores. Amazon has enough revenue that it can adjust its pricing, even with losses, to drive away customers from competitors.
This is like the corporate / upper class version of the "everyone in America is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" trope. Maybe American millionaires are temporarily embarrassed billionaires?
If you are not in the Fortune 100, the idea of anti-trust ever applying to your business should never cross your mind. It's absurd. If you are in the Fortune 100 and anti-trust comes up, ease your mind by going out on your favorite yacht.
In fact history shows that breakups often increase shareholder value in the long term, so just make sure you own some of all the shards and you'll probably get richer.
As far as the government messing with you: yes, they can, but it won't be with anti-trust. There are a million ways the government can mess with you without ever going there.
I’m familiar with the phenomenon of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire,” but I’ve never heard of anyone seeing themselves as a temporarily embarrassed oligarch before.
No, they won’t come after your small business.
> I often see many people show immediate solidarity with Amazon as soon as the ideas of anti-trust or monopoly are brought up. "If the government is allowed to break up a large corporation then where does it stop? Will they come after my small business next?"
While, I believe that Democrats who want to involve themselves in the private markets have good intentions - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Neither side knows enough nor things deeply enough to understand that everything has tradeoffs and especially in tech. The former generation of tech giants fell as technology changed and through disruption - not government intervention
2. Amazon both drives costs down and is a lead innovator and the fear with monopolies is that they raise prices and hinder innovation. Amazon probably captures 90% of my non-food consumer spending simply because nobody else seems to be trying to improve except them.
Amazon has been selling books at a loss for decades, and it has absolutely killed a large chunk of their competition for physical books in the US.
Buying a book for $10, selling it for $12, then spending $5 on a new warehouse is cash flow negative but not selling at a loss. Amazon isn't even cash flow negative anymore.
MS had something around 97% market share with Windows alone. They used that position to release their free, and largely broken if you go by the standards, IE browser. By pushing that free browser, which cost them over a billion in marketing and development, they cut into the markets of the cross-platform browsers. This was their game plan. Web applications (even the rudimentary versions in the mid-90s) offered a chance for companies to leave Windows, to remove the need for dedicated applications on thick client-styled machines. The OS would be come irrelevant, and this is something MS feared.
But that wasn't the only product market that they did this with. They straight up bought competitors and either closed their product lines or sold them themselves. They threatened to penalize OEMs who sold non-Windows OSes by taking away their OEM license cost (much lower than the shelf price) for Windows, with the margins of that market that killed many alternate OS efforts. They just couldn't get into the market, why pay $50-200 for a new product when you already have Windows on your computer?
In what market does Amazon have a defacto monopoly in? Apple is another one often brought up for antitrust related to App Store policing.
In the late 90s, early 00s, Microsoft sold 90+% of desktop operating systems (their monopoly). That’s fine, great success! However, they used that monopoly to harm competitors: bundling a competing product with their earned monopoly (IE/Netscape), threatening vendors which attempted to also sell a competitor’s product (Sony/BeOS), locking in customers by extending common platforms and making them incompatible with competitor’s products (Java).
Had they not had a monopoly, those actions probably wouldn’t be considered abuse. It’s the combination that’s the problem.
The only company that's even close is Walmart, and Amazon still dwarfs their e-commerce sales.
There can be more reason to be concerned about a monopoly than just consumer price harm.
Yes, but it doesn't mean they're economically-well-informed reasons.
"In effect cloud computing is providing the resources that Amazon is using to crush whole sectors of the retail economy."
See the tariffs the past couple years and their impact on US manufacturing.
We still haven’t become an authoritarian government like China.
I don’t know what the answer is, but rewarding corruption and discouraging success are not feasible in the long term. Both arguments above seem legitimate.
>I don’t know what the answer is, but rewarding corruption and discouraging success are not feasible in the long term.
Maybe the answer is limiting the government's ability to pass laws that unfairly privilege one company over others. Power that doesn't exist can't be misused.
The same government led by a president who threatened to “shut down Twitter”?
The further American companies fell behind technogically, the more it would hurt to ban foreign technologies. And the more that large US technology companies were broken up, the slower America would advance technologically. A huge percentage of RND is currently funded by FANG and the like; being somewhat monopoly-like (and having huge economies of scale) is actually what allows them to fund this: in a perfectly competitive market, where margins are razor-thing, nobody has any money to invest in research or moonshots.
Even if it did, that still wouldn't stop the Chinese company taking a dominant place in the rest of the world, like Google, Facebook and Amazon do now. Which would represent a massive loss to US intelligence-gathering capabilities and soft power.
So what happens if China gets more powerful because they’re authoritarian? Does that mean US authoritarianism is OK if it keeps the US #1?
It’s a slippery slope and I’m not on board.
Outcomes matter, not intentions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
And there are much more disturbing historical examples of unrestrained corporatism:
The solution then is to fix that problem through mandatory reporting and unions, not to break up the company.
"Why on earth should an online retailer, a cloud computing company, a smart speaker company, an organic supermarket company, and a video production company all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?"
Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you?
Also because an economy of scale helps consumers. Amazon Prime gives access to music, books, delivery of home goods, delivery of groceries, and much more. Break it up and you will have Prime Music, Prime Books, Prime Home, Prime Market subscriptions, each for nearly the same price - one sub for each piece you break the company into.
I agree something must be done - the stories of the workers read like Bram Stoker award-winning horror novels, but swinging the needle the other way and completely breaking the company apart is over-reaction.
My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers.
So now monopoly power is not a concern anymore? How did we get to this point?
Does anyone believe that the fact that a founder can only have, say 10 billion and not 100 prevent anyone from starting a startup?
I don‘t think so.
Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups.
Also, 10 billion vs 100 is arbitrary and could easily vary from market to market, and is determined by who?
Here we edge into the moral question of whether it is ok to be a billionaire, and the discussion taps into the current outrage against the 1%.
I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately - something like a 50% flat income tax (no deductions, applies to all income including investment earnings/interest) if your net worth is over 1 billion.
How is it even remotely your business how much money other people have given somebody? A billionare (assuming they didn't inherit it) has already given way more back to the community than the average person, because they brought into existance something that collectively brought billions of dollars of value to people.
With what goal? More gigantic conglomerates? Or after ten years, they get rolled up into an existing one? To me, this sounds like it would make the problem worse.
What is your concern with negative reinforcement? Pretty much our entire legislation is based on the concept of fines and punishment.
What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Its extremely unbalanced and lets them really crush any rising opposition unless you trust they won't unfairly wield that power.
Are there any examples of them actually doing this?
The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers.
>The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers.
Antitrust law (at least in the US) is conducted on the basis of harm to consumers. If Amazon's negotiating power with suppliers results in better prices/outcomes for consumers, then there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. As a producer, nobody is obligated to buy what you're selling.
http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastia... is a nice argument why laws should try to benefit consumers, not producers.
This is far from a consensus view amongst lawmakers and economists.
I don't know but, there are two potential cases that pop up that could be such as them leveraging internal data on their third party sellers to out compete them and putting their products first in line which as we know from search carries a lot of weight for what people click.
And then there's the part where this has to be bad for consumers. Sucks for competitors but anti-trust has also historically been used when a companies practices are bad for the consumer. My life has only gotten better using Amazon services I don't know about you.
My point being is that there are things that legally could be construed as anti-competitive but I as a consumer am not hurt and third party sellers and other competitors generally speaking and in my opinion, suck. I'm not in the business of breaking up companies simply because they're better.
Those are all different issues though with different potential regulatory tools to apply against them vs a monopolist simply outright raising prices for buyers. I'm definitely concerned that way, way too many people have started to just reach for the big BREAK 'EM UP hammer for any problem they see, despite the potential for nasty battles delaying effectiveness and enormous and unpredictable side effects. I'd really like to see much more focused efforts tried first, particularly since a big central target can actually be easier to regulate and check for certain things. There is plenty of low hanging fruit at Amazon like their commingling practices, but such things tend to be more technocratic.
I'm concerned that focused efforts like that are seen as "boring" and in turn not getting the attention they should. This is similar to how I feel about other areas like secure hardware stacks. Rather then "break up Apple/Google!!!" I'd much, much rather see things like "devices owners must have the option to load their own crypto roots with equal power as any manufacturer roots" or "devices must be warranted for 1 month/$20 retail price up to 60 months" or the like done. They're not as catchy politics but they'd be really directly useful without risking a lot of the value scale can bring.
The concern is how effectively a company like this could reinvest into their other verticals. Grocery stores are low margin. Cloud computing is one of Amazons highest profit sectors. Is it fair to smaller(smaller being relative in this case) grocers such as Meijer, Publix, or Kroger to compete against Whole Foods which is a company that can actively lose profit due to backing from other Amazon verticals such as AWS?
Though the parts of the "supply chain" are really different verticals they can use the revenue from to compete in their other verticals. The consequences are likely different but I haven't seen how it's bad yet at least against other large companies.
Amazon has so many different components in their conglomerate that there are many ways to draw lines.
Examples, from light walls where light is used to guide placement to pickup, indicator lights on bins for the same, to voice prompts in language of choice, all guided by computers because they know exactly where the gun/scan device the employee is holding.
Still I find it disappointing people only concentrate on the warehouse worker while completely ignoring other low wage workers they are likely working around but tend to be invisible to you, from mail clerks, building maintenance, and even the security guard at the front desk.
Look, not all jobs are equal nor should you assume offense on some other person's part. Believe me, I got the shock of my life working in IT while working for a "rent a cop" company. That some people earned and lived on what some of them made was both amazing and a little disappointing to me. Yet a few I would talk to thought it was fine as they had a job where they didn't have to put much effort into doing to get paid; plus in that line some were fond of being indoors and having a uniform. Basically what we find unacceptable other's will just blow off our opinion as being snotty or worse.
They built part of a logistics chain and acquired the rest.
>skys the limit
Why should those being exploited be limited by amazon? The sky should the limit for every individual not just Bezos.
>Prime books
If you broke up prime you would have nothing. The reason people subscribe is the overlap with multiple markets which is what makes it a monopolistic strategy. It uses loss leaders from one market to destroy competition in other markets with the intent to later raise prices.
Amazon claims it's against their internal policies. But it's widespread and there's no indication those policies serve as anything more than plausible deniability - i.e. managers can tell employees to increase sales, give them access to the seller's data, and just have them agree on paper that they won't use the data but never enforce it.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726...
>As a result, I estimate that producing responsive information to Plaintiffs’ request for sales data for 5,376 ASINs from October 1, 2011 to the present will take between 5,376 and 8,064 hours of Amazon paralegal time. Assuming a 40 hour work week, based on these estimates it would take one paralegal working full time 2.5 to 3.8 years to collect just the sales data Plaintiffs are seeking from Amazon. I calculated this based on my estimate of 60-90 minutes per ASIN for 5,376 ASINs.
I was with you up until this point. So now instead of having one institution that I'm beholden to for my livelihood, I have two. Unions are just another form of institution that can succumb to the same kinds of corruption and bad practices as the company I work for.
Why not start with a higher minimum wage, or incentivizing companies to pay a living wage across all roles, or UBI, or cheaper/universal health care - something so that workers at shitty companies can say "screw this" and leave.
> Because they built it.
This is an entirely fictional idea.
Consider who this language serves. Bezos started the company, but how does it make sense to say he “built” all of the businesses mentioned? They were built by many thousands of people, but they barely own what they created.
Bezos has abused his position as founder to capitalize on their work. If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions.
If they had the opportunity to build things in better conditions, why aren't they already doing that?
Look at it this way, if nobody did what Bezos did, nobody quit their job to try starting a business (bearing in mind something like over 90% of businesses fail, so it's a significant risk), then there wouldn't be any jobs. We'd all still be subsistence farmers. And this is essentially the condition that the world was in before we had a government/legal system that allowed people to create and grow businesses free from molestation.
If not for Bezos, Amazon wouldn't exist, and all the beneft people gained from the superior convenience, prices and delivery speed it offered compared to competitors would have been lost.
Heck, Amazon isn't even Amazon any more. Its a two- or three-removed reinvention of what Amazon started out to be.
It would have happened later, so everybody's standard of living would have been a little lower. The more you discourage people from starting businesses, the fewer people try to start businesses, so successful new business are created more slowly, and the economy grows slower. It's also more likely the company will appear first in another country more friendly to business, and then the original country will lose out on the revenue, jobs and soft power it might have gained from that country operating there.
But Standard Oil did a lot that was shady, too. For example, they shipped so much oil (by rail) that they demanded a kickback from railroads, or they'd take their business to the competing railroad. (This was back when there were enough railroads that there was competition.) That means that Standard Oil was paying lower freight rates (net) than other oil companies. (I think at this time rail rates were controlled by the government, so the kickbacks were probably illegal from that standing, not just from the extortion involved.) Standard Oil then went a step further. They demanded kickbacks not just for their own oil traffic, but for their competitors' oil shipments as well.
If you were a competitor, you weren't going to be able to prosper in that kind of an environment. Then Standard Oil would offer to buy your business...
It can also be done belatedly, or one can be someone like Donald Trump and never admit past faults...
Edit: look at all the pious people downvoting me. Sure, I bet you're all morally superior to him!
When things went too far for him, he resigned in protest. And yes, it is a privilege that he is able to do so and still live comfortably, but that doesn't make it a meaningless gesture.
Now that he's no longer in a position where saying what he really wants Amazon to be/do/have done to it will lead to those around him vilifying him on a daily basis, he's using his privilege, and his voice, which speaks louder than most in the tech world, to try to get that to happen.
These guys make a shitload of blood money, get guilty and think that writing a blog post absolves everything.