Abusing a monopoly is when you increase prices because you can. Offering lower prices is the opposite. If you can’t compete, then you’re in the wrong business.
To a first approximation, yes, but this also forces things like small farmers and retailers being unprofitable, and all the societal changes that come with that, and of course then the tendency for consolidation and the inherent risk of more monopolisation from that.
Free market is great when it's full and noisy and no-one is large enough to control or manipulate it, the aim should be to keep it in this state (because then keeping prices low falls out naturally without terrible second order effects)
Nobody is "forced" to be unprofitable. If a business is unprofitable it can shut down. You're putting half the no-win argument - when Amazon makes a big profit people complain they are too powerful. When they don't make a big profit, this is an argument that they've squeezed the supply chain too much. There is a tiny line here that is theoretically acceptable, and I doubt either side of the no-win argument agrees where it is.
And this isn't what is driving the consolidation, the monopolisation is probably being driven by credit. Big players get much sweeter deals when dipping into the pool of printed money. If credit was not the driving force then it'd be much less common to see big conglomerates and small nimble players would have an easier time. Like how in housing credit booms tends to put smaller buyers in a worse position because they only end up living in about the same house as they already would have managed anyway but they have to sign away more of their life to get it.
Check out the state of chicken farming, where chicken producers corral farmers take on huge amounts of debt to grow bigger to meet their requirements, then squeeze them hard, to the point of bankruptcy. The only winning move is to not play, but that means not selling to the buyers who control the market so likely losing the family farm. It's become just a matter of whether you lose it this year, or after a few years of churning under the producer's debt load.
There are numerous ways that a large monopoly can abuse their position of power such that the only real choice for smaller players is to play along in a losing game.
I’m not saying any or all of this applies to Walmart or Amazon necessarily, but it’s not an unambiguous good to lower prices when it is not supported by all the reality around it.
I don't see how this is a bad thing. If people want to buy cheap low quality products they should be able to.
It is not okay for a manufactured product built on the backs of slave/child labor/conflict to be sold in a market. There's a reason Conflict diamonds are verboten. There's a reason why it should be a big deal when a large industrial actor is found to be using these things as part of their production chain.
We cannot allow those that would sacrifice other's humanity to participate in our economy. Once you accept them, you've set the bar everyone else will quickly clamber to meet.
Edit: Found the previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36630612
I don't. Our collective fetish to reduce prices to an absolute minimum has had nothing but terrible effects on pretty much everything.
It has increased poverty, it has decreased product quality, it has reduced the vibrancy and competitiveness of our economy, it has encouraged the worst aspects of our society.
And it hasn't made anything better for anybody. It's nothing but a collective self-destructive race to the bottom.
Talk is cheap. Show me the maths.
The traditional endpoint-consumer-facing side of the market is just one part of the transaction web.
In absolute terms, no, it isn't! Think "race to the bottom".
Coupled with the proper checks, low prices can be great.