Are you seriously saying you've never heard anyone call for ending Walmart's dominance?
> I think we have to see the bigger picture. Growth, momentum, and investments should be a good thing.
The big picture for involves looking outside of the myopic view of growth, momentum, and investments, and seeing how it affects people. Growth, momentum, and investments are only a good thing when the gains benefit society, which only happens if they occur throughout a diverse market. Growth, momentum, and investments for Amazon only benefit Amazon, and if they're only in Amazon, it's at the expense of the rest of the market.
> Dominance is not illegal. Nor technically is a monopoly. Using a monopoly illegally is.
The implication that companies with monopolies don't use them, in direct opposition to incentives, is incredibly naive.
Also, this is a conversation about policy should be, so telling people what policy is, isn't really very relevant.
> Amazon accounts for 4% of ALL retail sales.
> Having said that we would have to fundamentally change the definition of a monopoly in order to break up the party responsible for 4% of the market -- and have a record of reducing prices.
On what basis have we decided that "retail sales" is the most relevant market segment? Why not "book sales" or "online sales"? It should absolutely be concerning to us that Amazon is dominant even in these smaller markets, with little hope of competition.
That is not a naive understanding of American antitrust law; it's perfectly accurate. It's not illegal to have a monopoly, it's illegal to abuse your monopoly position to harm consumers. This is in contrast to EU antitrust law.
And yes, this is what I think the policy should be. We don't want to punish success. We want to protect consumers.
Which is odd, considering the plain language of the Sherman Anti Trust act not only makes monopolies illegal, but makes pursing a monopoly illegal. Has there been any laws passed that override this, or have the courts been unwilling to enforce the law as it's written?
I can't see any area in which Amazon has a monopoly by the section 2 definition.
What is it that I can only buy from or using Amazon and where there is no ready substitute in the market? (Saying I can't buy Amazon Basics AA batteries or an Echo doesn't count [IMO] as I can buy Duracells or Google Home things.) Almost invariably when I look for something on Amazon, I also do a Google shopping and Ebay check.
I never claimed Amazon has a monopoly. I just hear what the GP posted a lot, but when reading the actual law it seems to be incorrect. So I'm trying to figure out why what the GP stated seems to have become the case: because lawmakers passed something else? Or courts didn't like it? Or what?
"It should absolutely be concerning to us that Amazon is dominant even in these smaller markets"
Serious question. Why? Every market has a leader, a dominant player, and sometimes a couple of them vying for the top against myriad smaller players. Why should I be "concerned" about this natural state of affairs?
It's not concerning if there are actually a couple significant contenders for the top, competing in the same space in a fair market.
The problem is that when you get one dominant player, they use their dominance to change the market so that it's no longer fair, buying any competitors that approach relevance, lobbying for laws that no competitors have enough voice to combat, etc. In a fair market, consumers benefit because companies compete to provide better products/services/prices. But a single dominant player can compete in other ways, which don't benefit the consumer.
One example of this: Amazon allows third-party sellers to sell on Amazon. If you create a product, such as Iron Gym pull up bars[1], you can create an online store for it. But your store is competing with Amazon, and even though the Iron Gym pullup bar was better than the pull up bars on Amazon which required you to screw them into the wall, people would likely buy an inferior, more expensive product from Amazon simply because they didn't know your product existed. You can easily compete in the home gym equipment market, but Amazon's dominance in the online retail market forces you to sell through their platform. No big deal, you're trying to compete in the pull up bar market anyway.
So you sell your Iron Gym pull up bars on Amazon[2]. Now Amazon has all the market data on your product, and sees that it's doing well. So they release an AmazonBasics version of your product[3], price it automatically cheaper than your product because they don't have to pay a cut of their profits as an Amazon third-party seller, prioritize it higher in their search results, and wait for you to go out of business. Amazon's dominance in the online retail market lets them completely reverse dominance in the pull up bar market, without any real competition in the pull up bar market.
It might seem that this is good for consumers, because Amazon provides a cheaper product, but keep in mind that if Iron Gym goes out of business, Amazon is free to hike the price of the pull up bars up to whatever they want.
Are you seriously saying you've never heard anyone call for ending Walmart's dominance?
> I think we have to see the bigger picture. Growth, momentum, and investments should be a good thing.
The big picture for involves looking outside of the myopic view of growth, momentum, and investments, and seeing how it affects people. Growth, momentum, and investments are only a good thing when the gains benefit society, which only happens if they occur throughout a diverse market. Growth, momentum, and investments for Amazon only benefit Amazon, and if they're only in Amazon, it's at the expense of the rest of the market.
> Dominance is not illegal. Nor technically is a monopoly. Using a monopoly illegally is.
The implication that companies with monopolies don't use them, in direct opposition to incentives, is incredibly naive.
Also, this is a conversation about policy should be, so telling people what policy is, isn't really very relevant.
> Amazon accounts for 4% of ALL retail sales.
> Having said that we would have to fundamentally change the definition of a monopoly in order to break up the party responsible for 4% of the market -- and have a record of reducing prices.
On what basis have we decided that "retail sales" is the most relevant market segment? Why not "book sales" or "online sales"? It should absolutely be concerning to us that Amazon is dominant even in these smaller markets, with little hope of competition.