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Comment by skystarman | Hacker News Reader

Again, how does this harm consumers?

As one example, I used to sell textbooks on Amazon. Our account would be suspended at ANY report of potential issues with a book, despite a 98%+ positive feedback rating. It was a constant battle against the platform, despite doing everything under the sun to ensure our customers had a perfect experience.

Meanwhile, Amazon Warehouse was slinging hot garbage and getting constant negative feedbacks (80% positive range) and they never got suspended. Amazon Warehouse even cancelled a massive number of their own negative feedbacks by blaming Amazon Prime for things that had nothing to do with shipping.

We were undercutting Amazon on price for a long time, but in the end we threw in the towel because it was just an impossible marketplace to participate in. Interestingly there was another textbook seller that had a similar experience that got their testimony read to Bezos by Congress.

https://www.theverge.com/21349440/amazon-marketplace-third-p...

By destroying competing businesses and reducing consumer choice, isnt it obvious?

But just offering better service for a lower price destroys competiting businesses. There is a reason competitor harm wasn't the standard for anti-trust despite it being about competition between companies.

it's in the title?

What are some examples of behavior you would accept as being actual harm to consumers?

Under the Bork standard, to which skystarman is alluding, rising price is the only concern. "Consumer harm" doctrine.

This was invented from whole cloth by Robert Bork, Richard Posner, and Aaron Director, at the University of Chicago, as part of a decades-long project and organisation to redraft US antitrust policy. It was devastatingly effective.

It also has little if any basis in the legislative rationale of original antitrust legislation in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox

Thanks for clarifying! That "consumer harm" is a term of art here, and not a catch-all for all downsides the consumer experiences is exactly the kind of confusion I was hoping to clear up.

I apologize to whoever I apparently offended by being curious.

Smaller businesses get eaten up, resulting in a bigger Amazon with greater monopoly powers, that harms consumers with shittier goods and less choice.

Amazon squashes competitors and raises prices or reduces quality/costs safe in the knowledge that consumers have few alternatives.

It's weird asking "how does killing off the competition hurt consumers?" when literally all economic growth depends upon it.

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