There's a lot.
The section on Amazon begins on page 248, and is very readable.
[0] https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...
Too many senators / congress people have Amazon warehouses with 1000's of jobs in their backyard, and would never support breaking them up on weak committee recommendations.
Right now one party wants to go after the big tech companies for what seem to be the wrong reasons, while the other party doesn't seem to have the will to go after them at all. But in the end, we got a report with good recommendations, so we'll see if bad motives can bring about some good results.
- IT - an average employer at best including salaries, extremely competitive workplace, offices in most expensive cities, I don't think they offer any equity
- warehouses - they were wrecked by German unions and opened 4 warehouses in Poland serving exclusively German market and burdening the brand new EU-funded highways, as if they were shunning from complying with the German labor code and German wages (the market is too lucrative to abandon it)
edit: okay, that was a bit glib. but isn't complaining about this sort of thing at odds with the idea of an integrated european economy?
On top of unions and a desperate neighbour, Germany has saturated retail market including world's 5th biggest Schwarz Gruppe who certainly are not happy with a new foreign competitor, but that's a topic for many dissertations.
Pretty much everything I order from Amazon these days comes from Nevada even though I am in Silicon Valley. I know Amazon has several warehouses in California, but I have never seen any order originate from California. The company probably uses them as local distribution points for its own shipping service.
from across the pond, it looks like the richer EU countries (eg, germany) essentially want to have it both ways. they want to have strong worker protections and prevent poorer EU countries from enabling labor arbitrage, all while having relatively unencumbered trade within the EU. at the same time, they don't want to provide the economic aid to the poorer countries that would reduce the incentive to do this sort of thing. seems like a "pick one" type of situation.
- French (and German) companies own most of supermarket chains in Poland: good.
- Polish long-distance truck delivery companies are among the most competitive in EU due to lower costs of workforce: bad, France has been lobbying hard against them for years.
The countries where labor is cheaper benefit by getting more work and ultimately they uplift themselves.
Now, if it comes out that such labor is abused or managed corruptly and so forth, that is a product I will not knowingly or willingly buy.
And that efficiency and effectiveness benefit an elite few. If people continue to "wake up" globally, becoming increasingly empowered by technology and democratizing philosophies, they will come to the logical conclusion that they can "vote" with their currency. Companies will definitely fucking pay attention if people stop buying their shit.
For example, I've taken the "buy local as possible" ethic to its logical extreme, realizing for example that I have to make compromises for things like consumer electronics. "The real world", as you say. But I think it's defeatist to just buy the cheapest junk you can afford in complete disregard of its means and origin of manufacture unless that's the only solution.
Just today, I was shopping around where to buy Sid Meier's Memoirs book since I just learned about it today on HN. I could elect the easy, lazy, one-world-ruled-by-Bezos path and click Amazon to save a few cents and get it delivered a day less, or I could go the slightly less convenient but more positive route of Indiebound.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to make ethical choices and just wait to regulation. But it is rarely sufficient. Boycotting a company as an individual has very little effect on the company but does inconvenience the individual. Doing that can feel good but it's actually pretty irrational. Organized boycotts are much more effective. And regulation is the ultimate (threat to) boycott.
If technology turned people into enlightened, selfless beings things would be different. I don't see that happening, to the contrary.
Furthermore, people have limited time and energy. They can't investigate in detail every product they consume.
So from a consumer standpoint, perhaps it is good now, but we also don't know how much better it could be if there were competition. From a competitor standpoint, it sure doesn't sound fun. I have friends who sell things on Amazon and if they get too big, sometimes Amazon even squeezes them out of their business.
I wonder if antitrust law is to protect consumers or to protect other potential producers. Regardless, I imagine some of the idea behind it is that monopolies have relatively unchecked market power and while they can be good to consumers, they can also turn bad for consumers with little freedom for consumers to leave.
This has nothing to do with anti-trust but out of all the major tech corps Facebook really seems the most like a big tobacco company- sure they are adding value to the economy and ostensibly giving individual consumers something they want, but as a society we'd generally be better off if it just kind of went away.
>The Subcommittee’s investigation identified several instances in which a dominant platform was pricing goods or services below-cost in order to drive out rivals and capture the market. For example, documents produced during the investigation revealed that Amazon had been willing to lose $200 million in a single quarter in order to pressure Diapers.com, a firm it had recognized as its most significant rival in the category. Amazon cut prices and introduced steep promotions, prompting a pricing war that eventually weakened Diapers.com. Amazon then purchased the company, eliminating its competitor and subsequently cutting back the discounts and promotions it had introduced.
I'm curious... After reading that, do you still feel the same way about Amazon?
Price might not mater to many on HN but to millions of people it does.
There could have been several other sites all worth billions of dollars without the need for a single one stop shop.
Precisely quantified utilitarianism is the way? Quantified by who? Is our math, purposefully constrained for consistency, the right tool for that job?
What long term impact on those workers and society does creating so many low-effort monotonous jobs have?
Is there an upside besides expansion of low effort consumption and criticism of real effort?
A world where I optimizer for myself is very different, from one where I optimizer for society.
Who is we?
What common path are you referring to? What are its attributes in terms of maximizing individual time economy?
IMO that’s what the sharing through social effort is. Maximizing each individuals time economy.
Instead we seem to be maximizing time economy for people who can pay to externalize effort.
We’re really not optimizing for self by taking on more hours for less pay to keep Wall Street up.
Which to me ties right in with creating low effort jobs. Rather than decrease the amount of real work by expanding access to that work.
Let’s just hand out mops and brooms. Heard there’s coal to shovel out east!
Who knows, having more time may make things like cleaning a toilet and picking up packages seem less onerous.
We’re optimizing for a minority to be coddled by the effort of the majority. And being paid off with a fraction of the real output given the math I see.
Based upon hand me down stories from people with a very different intuition for quantification and science.
Would someone explain to me how kowtowing to such a social reality makes any sense scientifically?
Westerners all on about “science!” could stand to take a long look at their actual beliefs and application of agency.
A company that is predatory to literally everyone would not survive long. Obviously any predatory company must benefit one or more groups at the expense of others, or else how could they exist?
I mean, I think Facebook is terrible, but clearly many people find some benefit, or Facebook wouldn't have the billion-plus users they do. I don't deny that some people find benefit from Facebook, I just don't think that benefit outweighs the cost to society.
So Amazon is not predatory to parent commenter. In many ways, they're not predatory directly to me, either! I order goods from them at times, I use AWS, and overall I might argue that my life is better with Amazon than without. But my personal experiences aren't definitive. In order to benefit me, Amazon, by all reports, is preying on others. Competitors, suppliers, employees, and so on.