Ironically, I feel like they are acting in some ways like a union of purchasers, imposing the consumer will on merchants. Not sure if it is possible to achieve this without centralization.
I also think shaking the "machine learning" stick at the counterfeit problem is going to be fraught with newer problems that expose the deeper monopoly issues on the logistics and seller platforms that would also be the back end for what this article proposes.
If you care about the products you buy, and they have actual value to you, you're harming your own interests by using the Amazon monopoly power to "impose consumer will on merchants." Functional marketplaces don't and probably can't operate like that.
Most merchants don’t, and won’t, which is why regulators step in on the customers’ behalf, with e.g. lemon laws, right to return laws.
Costco, Amazon, Apple, some others, step in on the consumers’ behalf, which creates (as comments you are replying to) consumer loyalty and a kind of “brand halo” of consumer trust that the merchants all benefit from.
To say the marketplace platform shouldn’t be allowed to empower customers at the expense of sellers is to say markets shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much service customers can have and how much profits merchants are willing to forgo to be where customers want.
You're implying that regulators just show up out of nowhere and make tasteful decisions for a market. That's not at all how it typically works, and you should look into the history of the "lemon law" you reference. Customers have remedies of their own that don't require regulation or monopolies to exist.
> Costco, Amazon, Apple, some others, step in on the consumers’ behalf, which creates (as comments you are replying to) consumer loyalty and a kind of “brand halo” of consumer trust that the merchants all benefit from.
Costco is membership based. People have lost their memberships for gaming the return system. Amazon just passes the costs on. And Apple mostly manufactures their own devices. And, I can guarantee you, every single one of them has been sued by their customers at some point because of one of their practices.
Arguing that monopoly power is the "secret sauce" to achieving this is absurd.
> To say the marketplace platform shouldn’t be allowed to empower customers at the expense of sellers
The purpose of a marketplace is to create beneficial arrangements for everyone involved. Amazon interferes in this arrangement and then tilts it solely in their favor at the expense of both the customer and the seller.
> is to say markets shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much service customers can have and how much profits merchants are willing to forgo to be where customers want.
Markets should do this. A single monopoly player controlling a market shouldn't. You're splitting the argument right at it's fundamental point.
I thought it is the other way around. Because they are really a pro-consumer platform, they became this big.
This effectively gave Amazon a ~7% pricing advantage against businesses with physical presence in a state, and Bezos has mentioned it was a factor in choosing to be based in Washington rather than California, so as to not have to collect and remit sales tax to California’s 40M residents.
The Supreme Court changed this in Jun 2018 when it ruled that states could collect sales taxes from sellers without physical presence in the state.