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Comment by _uhtu | Hacker News Reader

I hate that every discussion of reigning in abusive companies has to come with 1000 comments about how other companies are also being abusive, which should apparently make us just wave the white flag. Nah, let's deal with all the monopolies, and Amazon is a good place to start since like you said, they are just incredibly blatant.

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It's obvious astroturfing.

The top two posts with the most upvotes are "Ebay is just as bad" for the startoff line, and "Everybody's just as bad as Amazon. Why are you being so mean and cruel to Amazon?"

Obvious astroturfing, just like the entire Amazon review ecosystem. Surprise? No.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Bezos' wealth relative to "normal" shown as 1-pixel comparisons. Be careful once you get to the $Trillion portion (you'll be scrolling for the rest of your life.)

I LOVE that link, but I think serious accusations like that need better justification/explanation.

Are you saying that Amazon is buying upvotes for comments they like, or that that comment was written by a shill? The former is very possible but hard to prove either way, but the latter seems really unreasonable. In this example, it's a poster that's been here since 2017, talking about things like startup culture, Covid-19, and investment banking. They even say they're ex-AWS in their HN bio, which would be a very unconventional move for an Amazon-corporate-operated fake account.

Almost every claim of astroturfing is from someone who doesn't understand the basic argument opposing their position.

Unless it's Amazon reviews, where almost every glowing 5 star review is paid for.

Based on what? You’ve never given a 5 star review? I sure have and I’m sure many many other people have too.

I think this lawsuit is dumb and anti-consumer. I've also been active on HN since 2008. Not astroturfing :)

I still don't get how for me as a consumer it's bad that I see the full price and don't have to add the shipping on top only at the end of an order pipeline.

Doesn't showing the total price make it much easier to compare? Aren't politicians pushing on other service industries (airlines, ticket sales) to do just that with all their stupid hidden fees?

It's not astroturf. It's pointing out you've been living with this stuff for years, Amazon isn't new and special. If you want the problem solved then it shouldn't be about Amazon, it should be about entire process.

If Amazon can't sell an "Amazon Brand" that competes with other sellers on it's site, the Trader Joe's should not be able to sell wine that competes with the other branded wine in it's own stores. Nor should Target be able to see it's Good Stuff brand (or whatever it is) that directly competes with other things it stocks.

Similarly, if Amazon is going to be barred from having people pay to be the top of search results than Safeway should be barred from having companies pay to have their items placed on the end shelves.

This shouldn't be about just Amazon.

There’s no “entire process” you can target. You going to pass a law on how every company can raise prices? Impossible

No, the actual way is to go company by company and dismantle them. And by Starting with the biggest it sends a message to others that perhaps they should change before they too get broken up.

So by killing a few prominent hostages the system ends up changing “on its own.”

> No, the actual way is to go company by company and dismantle them. And by Starting with the biggest it sends a message to others that perhaps they should change before they too get broken up.

You will never finish if you go company by company, there’s just too many. Additionally no company ever stops anything until forced to. Your suggestions will not solve anything.

If they are all so interchangable, then I guess no one should care too much about them being split up either. Just need a high enough frequency of splitting to keep the market sane.

Are you suggesting free markets are a bad thing? If people think it’s bad, they can stop using the company. If you can’t convince everybody that it’s bad and they should stop using the company, then doesn’t this mean your thoughts are not the average?

Basically you just said it's hopeless

So what's the solution?

I reverse this question to you, what is the solution? I have none but asking companies to change will do nothing. Forcing them to change is a dictatorship. So you tell me what the solution is?

1. Set the example by creating or joining organizations that are not based on Capital owning the majority of the organization (cooperatives, non-stock not-for profit etc..)

2. Increase taxes on non-labor capital growth to directly fund full employment programs Eg make "profit" impossible

And i state again, setting an example will do nothing, as it hasn’t.

Banning MBAs will have more of an effect.

> It's obvious astroturfing.

Are you really suggesting that Amazon is paying people to post comments on HN of all places? That sounds utterly deranged.

Found one.

In what sense is Costco an "abusive" company? They squeeze their suppliers, but their suppliers legitimately have other options. I'm not aware of any market what Costco is the only game in town.

I can see this both ways. Obviously, nobody is forced to sell to Costco, Amazon, or Walmart, but in a business with thin margins, like Retail, the only way to stay afloat is to sell high numbers. A quasi-monopoly does force vendors to comply in a way.

Costco meets no reasonable person's definition of monopoly. Not quasi, not sort of, not anything. They do a couple hundred bill of sales in a multi-trillion dollar market. Sub 10% share.

Legal precedent exists for a reason. It's not waving the white flag, it's having actual standards and rules. I think Amazon is a shithole of a website and one of the worst examples of downward spirals into mediocrity, but there has to be some semblance of fairness.

Targeting amazon for something Walmart or Target does, but without targeting them too is just wack. You can't just handwave that issue by saying that we can just start there! Because it's been decades, it's standard industry practices, and the law hasn't changed (I know that the FTC has a wide executive mandate, but conjuring a rule is still not great).

Even if you want Amazon broken down, you don't want such a process to start on super shaky grounds like this. I don't know how to explain exactly what I mean here, but it just feels off!

The basic question is "does the FTC have the right to make rules about our society". I think you're answering "no, it should be the legislative only", which sounds great but I think is a serious status-quo bias. The FTC makes rules about our society all the time, both _de jure_ and _de facto_.

There is no moral justification for "starting here", but there is a definite practical one. It would be quite hard for the FTC to open 3-5 different massive lawsuits at the same time, each of which would require tons of funding at a time when funding is seeming scarcer by the day.

Actually, I think I agree with most of your points! I wasn't trying to advocate for the status quo or even a legislative only approach. I think what I would prefer is more of an "EPA" like approach of setting progressive timelines for compliance to a new standard or rule, then strict enforcement. Instead of grand and "bomb shell" one off attempts that sometimes feel just bizarre. Maybe the FTC does not have the power to implement something similar to the FTC , but it definitely would help more imo.

"all the monopolies"

The precise term would be the oligopolies.

There is no oligopoly in retail (online or brick and mortar). It's cut throat competition, razor thin margins, players coming and going.

It's a very strong argument to say that the practice currently being pursued by the FTC has been a long standing and generally accepted as legal practice in the retail industry. The fact that they are going after Amazon for this, but have not ever gone after anybody else who has been doing it for decades leads me to the conclusion that this is not about the actual trade practice it claims to be about, but rather a politically targeted attack on Amazon.

And the FTC is very much capable of running multiple enforcement actions at once. Why are there no such charges against other companies doing the same thing. They don't have to be one at a time.

I checked, Amazon does indeed sell tiny violins. They are keychains that make sounds. Unless there's a claim here that the FTC is working directly for, say, Walmart, everyone else benefits from Amazon being brought down a handful of pegs.

Sorry if it makes things hard for some AWS customers, but eggs, baskets, etc.

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