Some would say that the way commerce works is sellers can sell anywhere at any price that a buyer wants to pay.
Yes, but at the end of the day Amazon to remove the seller for any reason, so even if the FTC succeeds here, Amazon will simply purge those sellers who are not offering the best price, even if not explicitly stated.
There is no reality where Amazon allows their site to be inundated with higher priced goods compared to competitors.
Dictating how you sell elsewhere is a clear step beyond that.
There is no obligation to sell on Amazon, nor a requirement for them to raise prices on other platforms. They could simply offer the lowest price everywhere. The result? Lower prices for Amazon customers. If they raise the price, then that's the seller's fault, not Amazon.
While true, this ignores the important point that Amazon is only able to do this anti-competitive practice due to their market dominance that effectively forces many sellers to sell on Amazon.
> nor a requirement for them to raise prices on other platforms.
That is what this whole thing is about. Sellers that sell on Amazon aren't allowed to sell for lower prices on other platforms that are cheaper to sell on.
If Amazon was able to offer lower prices for its customers by offering sellers a marketplace with lower costs compared to competitors that would be great. Instead, they abuse their market dominance to prevent any competitors from offering lower prices by being more cost efficient for sellers. This is extremely nasty as it effectively prevents any competitors to Amazon from building a market share since consumers will have no price incentive to switch and sellers will not want to switch due to the smaller market share on those competitors' platforms.
It could not be more clear that this is anti-competitive behavior achieved through abuse of a dominate market position.