And this came out last time they were doing monopolistic inquiries against amazon. Yet...
So I'd love to see something positive come out of it, but I have my doubts.
(1) https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
Amusing trying to see people claiming the opposite.
It was a galaxy brain political move early in the administration and a direct reason why we're seeing these antitrust cases prosecuted.
The article has been discussed around here before:
The FTC claim is that Amazon _over_ prices products. They are in direct opposition.
Further, the essay was written six years ago, and to an audience of legal scholars. This case is about Amazon today and the audience are courts. The facts and arguments derived from them are naturally different.
I would suggest reading the entire thing, especially the excellent summary on the history of legal and economic theory applied to anti-trust to understand the deeper meaning behind the abstract itself. It's hard to boil down a nuanced and complex argument into a single paragraph. There's a lot of meat there.
The Yale article argues that Amazon has avoided anti-trust scrutiny because most anti-trust regulators are laser-focused on price and output (is Amazon fixing artificially high prices? Is Amazon artificially limiting output?), and this approach misses the ways in which Amazon limits competition (mainly predatory under-pricing and vertical integration). The article goes on to suggest that by ignoring these, antitrust regulators are "overlooking the structural weakening of competition until it becomes difficult to address effectively, an approach that undermines consumer welfare."
You're right that the article does talk about practices that aren't mentioned in the complaint, like predatory under-pricing.
However, it also discusses the ways in which Amazon uses vertical integration to create barriers and reduce competition. Here I quote from the article:
>Amazon is positioned to use its dominance across online retail and delivery in ways that involve tying, are exclusionary, and create entry barriers. That is, Amazon’s distortion of the delivery sector in turn creates anticompetitive challenges in the retail sector. For example, sellers who use FBA have a better chance of being listed higher in Amazon search results than those who do not, which means Amazon is tying the outcomes it generates for sellers using its retail platform to whether they also use its delivery business. Amazon is also positioned to use its logistics infrastructure to deliver its own retail goods faster than those of independent sellers that use its platform and fulfillment service—a form of discrimination that exemplifies traditional concerns about vertical integration.
>The clearest example of how the company leverages its power across online businesses is Amazon Marketplace, where third-party retailers sell their wares. Since Amazon commands a large share of e-commerce traffic, many smaller merchants find it necessary to use its site to draw buyers.These sellers list their goods on Amazon’s platform and the company collects fees ranging from 6% to 50% of their sales from them.
These quotes map pretty cleanly onto two of the complaint's allegations:
>Conditioning sellers’ ability to obtain “Prime” eligibility for their products—a virtual necessity for doing business on Amazon—on sellers using Amazon’s costly fulfillment service, which has made it substantially more expensive for sellers on Amazon to also offer their products on other platforms. This unlawful coercion has in turn limited competitors’ ability to effectively compete against Amazon.
>Charging costly fees on the hundreds of thousands of sellers that currently have no choice but to rely on Amazon to stay in business. These fees range from a monthly fee sellers must pay for each item sold, to advertising fees that have become virtually necessary for sellers to do business. Combined, all of these fees force many sellers to pay close to 50% of their total revenues to Amazon. These fees harm not only sellers but also shoppers, who pay increased prices for thousands of products sold on or off Amazon.
At the end of the day, Amazon is a very big company that does a lot of different things at the same time. It could be under-pricing ebooks and overcharging FBA sellers at the same time.
The point of the Yale Law School article is that anti-trust law ignores anti-competitive practices until they significantly distort prices across the company's largest market, but that these practices have a chilling effect on competition far before that point. Khan argues that anti-trust regulators should go after companies using these practices before they cement market leadership and fully edge out competitors.
>On the Chicago School’s [(the pre-existing paradigm's)] account, Amazon’s vertical integration would only be harmful if and when it chooses to use its dominance in delivery and retail to hike fees to consumers. Amazon has already raised Prime prices. But antitrust enforcers should be equally concerned about the fact that Amazon increasingly controls the infrastructure of online commerce—and the ways in which it is harnessing this dominance to expand and advantage its new business ventures.
This is exactly what Khan's FTC is doing now.
The fact that we’ve heard nothing strongly suggests it isn’t happening.
Before Snowden PRISM was considered impossible (even though previous people had leaked it but never got picked up by the media cycle), before Epstein it was impossible that billionaires were trafficking children for sex, before 2008 it was impossible that wall street was colluding to rig the market - the consistent thread in all of these is that the "impossible" was happening for several years before it was ever exposed.
I understand the incentive to leak it exists, but that doesn't mean there isn't a stronger incentive to keep it a secret.
If you work on PRISM leaking its existence does nothing for your career. Quite the opposite in fact. But if you work for a newspaper and leak a massive story it’ll be very beneficial for your career.
How many famous journalists can you name? I'm not saying there aren't journalists that want to do good work and become famous as a result. But despite their efforts they're mostly fighting a losing battle.
I’m not sure how that’s relevant. Ask a dozen people on the street who John Carmack is I’m sure you’d get a lot of blank faces. But if he walked into a dev shop looking for a job I think he’d probably get one.
Of course breaking a massive story is going to lead to you being well known. Perhaps only within journalistic circles but in the context of your career that’s the only thing that matters anyway.
(and to answer anecdote with anecdote: Woodward and Bernstein. Both have lived to ripe old ages, too, for what it’s worth)
My argument is the opposite. You can break a massive story and people can still not care. That was why I brought up the Panama Papers.
Anyway, let's just agree to disagree.
The Panama Papers were a huge story, they won a Pulitzer! If you’re a journalist of course a story like that is going to open doors.
I feel like you're not actually considering what I'm saying and I'm exiting this conversation.
You just did the exact opposite.
We’re talking about professional journalists here. I’m quite sure they’re aware of it all. If the story is newsworthy and backed by evidence you’d be able to take it to any competing newspaper. I imagine the Wall Street Journal’s legal team would be happy to bear the brunt of any fallout, it’s their job.
I know evidence the contrary: The Post is clearly on the Democrat side, and it's Democrats that seek more regulation and who are suing Amazon.
You mean the (left-leaning) newspaper that Bezos bought in 2013 vs Diapers/com that Amazon bought in 2010?
Have you ever heard of the monkeys and ladder metaphor?
Things need to change. It's great to be skeptical, but not if you're not also optimistic at the same time.
Monopolies are bad for many reasons, not just because arbitrary "rules" or whatever you think is easily dismissed, but because of the opportunity costs that even the owner of the profits incurs. We're not talking about money or status or power, but actual meaningful change of the total composition of their culture & society and the world. They are literally preventing themselves from experiencing a world that gives them everything they can't have now and clamor and hurt themselves chasing after. It's the ultimate irony.
So yes, you should have hope. There is NOT a "good" reason for being a greedy parasite. People have just forgotten and/or been manipulated into believing in fake power. This false faith (fear) is literally what enables these fake leaders like Jeff Bozos the clown to succeed.
Please next time contribute more to the conversation than just whine.