Breakup Amazon?

I’m not sure I agree with her proposals, but for an interesting perspective, see Lina M. Khan, Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, 126 Yale L.J. 564 (2017).

 

Name their competition.

In government parlance, it is referred to as "impediments to competitive procurement". It is what anti-trust laws are for. When you purchase through Amazon, you are not just buying a product, you are also buying a service - i.e. the service Amazon provides is in retailing products for sale on the internet. Amazon effectively has a monopoly on that service. Ma Bell used to have an effective monopoly on telephone services until it was broken up in 1982.

When a company gets so big that it adversely impacts the growth of competition, or otherwise abuses it's "economic authority", it is considered bad for the economy.

 

Amazon looses money on Prime and all retail
they only make money on their backbone and servers that everyone from small business to the FBI uses.

Separate these and Prime either has to double prices or go out of business.

Considering Amazons only goal in retail is to loose money until all competition goes under I would say the government is on the right track.

 

it's not likely a hard line, nor seperated from politics and political action commitees.

if the honorable competition is tired of the grind, an end around sometimes works.

i was against the breakup of at&t at the time, but looking back, i'm less sure. the biggest problem i see know is international competition. we can't break them up if they don't suit our competitive tastes.

 

so the chickens have come home to roost. Monopoly / antitrusts have morphed from a snake into Godzilla. Amazon - trying its hardest to become one of the very few games in town, gets most of its cheap stuff from China. Now, we have way fewer factories to make all of our stuff .... making us purchasers instead of sellers. Then there's the other head of the Hydra - political influence. Amazon wealth, Chevron wealth, whoever's wealth, gets to buy your politician, & get legislation re-written. Oh well .... I just bought 2 micro-switches, made in Malaysia, by a controlling entity in China, shipped to a distributor in another country, then to one in the USA, then to our address. Including shipping, all for $3 & we git 'em in under 5 days. In the 1970's back when that dollar still had a ton more value, just one of these switches would have cost well over $5 (w/out shiping included) & the 70's transactions were feeding the USA manufacturing supply chain. Fun fact; What famous socialist predicted, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
.

 

My parents had a leased-phone in their home for decades. When the break-Up happened, our local baby bell continued to charge my folks (monthly) for the next 7 years, until they were forced to notify customers that Leasing was no longer Law.

The phone company stole from my parents for 7 years. I have no problem showing them the middle finger every chance I get.

 

Rope quote @7 Vladimir Lenin usually gets credited, but it seems murky. Maksim Litvinov said something very similar. He is more interesting for his other actions though.

 

Amazon loses money?!!!!! Sure could have fooled me!

In any case, I think most the of this just is infighting between the IT and social media giants who are scared sh*tless of what may happen to their "special status" and are now trying to deflect attention away from from themselves.

It is disingenuously naive to think that anti-trust litigation against Amazon - or against ANY of the IT / social media giants - could lead to a loss of prosperity. Other companies will be more than happy to take some of that "burden" away from the giants. And right now, with the COVID-19 shutdown, it is the eventual loss of consumer buying power that is the greatest threat to prosperity.

 

Amazon makes money hand over fist on its servers that funds its retail presence .

Prime has never made money


This would be similar to Chevy making 10million profit on Buick and loosing 5 million on Chevy but still making 5 million overall profit.


Amazon doesn’t generate profit from retail sales, it hasn’t in at least 15 years.

whenever a business purposefully runs a loss on one of its segments and says it won’t stop until it finishes gaining market share that’s a time for government involvement

 

I shop at Amazon a lot.

The rapid delivery is nice, but honestly the real benefit to me is their search engine. I can look for an item with a ton of specificity rather than putting up with whatever made it to the shelves nearby.

When I say "nearby" I mean a couple of towns over- a different school district & tax base. My own has one grocery store and one beverage distributor. That's it for retail, so I'm not even cutting out my community by shopping online.

If Amazon were to be broken up, I think I would want their website/database/search/shopping engine to be separated from their actual sales & distribution system. Effectively Amazon itself would become another Amazon Marketplace vendor. Just a thought.

 

No doubt, they're very good at what they do. So was Bell Telephone. So was Standard Oil. They were all leaders in their fields and many created the the very industries that they dominated. But as they say in that business "there comes a time when you have to fire the engineer and move on."

Just because Amazon created the business that they are so successful at, doesn't mean they should be allowed to dominate indefinitely. When they are eventually broken up, others will step in and do just as good a job, if not better. Competition usually improves quality.

 

i'm too old for amazon. i can't figure out their web pages. feels like eveything is designed to trick you into buying what you don't need or want.
generation next, it's what they grew up on.

 

So, just like other shopping venues.

 

probably. physical stores, i can ignore the noise. online? i don't do much besides amazon and a few local places that offer curbside pickup or delivery.

wegmans website is very confusing, but i manage to muddle through once a week.

i think amazon is the worst i've seen personally

 

I don't even load up Amazon's website until I know exactly what I want. And sometimes, they have it on the terms I like and they sell it to me. It's pretty unusual that I visit their site and buy anything other than the specific thing I wanted when I sat down at the computer.

With regular retail? not so much. Always feels like I've invested in the trip to get there, don't want to leave empty-handed etc. I've saved a lot of money not going into stores the past few months, and I don't really miss the actual showroom/retail experience.

I particularly like this for buying hardware & home improvement stuff. I want what I want. I don't want to waste time looking through unmaintained bins and shelves. If they don't have it, that's fine- I appreciate knowing without leaving home or setting aside time to do the project. They could cure the virus tomorrow; I'll never set foot in HD or Lowes again, just too hooked on curbside pickup and the time savings is amazing.

I'm getting most of my groceries from various websites too. Even my little farmer's market hustled themselves up a proper website. My german butcher hasn't yet, but I know what they have so I just call the order in over the phone.

 

before covid, i rarely used amazon. only for the oddball item i couldn't get locally. now, i add stuff to the amazon cart as i realize the need, then pull the trigger when i really need something. it has definitely taken the place of box stores for us.
still trying to figure out how to get bulky building materials delivered, so i can finish our basement this winter, in case we can't go south.
most all of our local mom and pops are doing etail and curbside, which is great.

next gen, from what i have observed, are hooked on amazon.

 

I'm in my 70s and use Amazon all the time. But you have to be careful: they are not always the cheapest, and some things are cheaper locally or on eBay. One thing I don't like about Amazon is that the reviews of some items (but only some) are "generic" but with the specific model specified at the top of each individual review.

 

I usually look at the negative reviews for common problems with the product. Five star reviews are a necessary criteria for deciding to purchase, but the narratives are fairly meaningless because many review are base on initial experience, and usually do not reflect problems encountered after 30 days.

For both eBay and Amazon, you have to practice a fair amount of "due diligence" when evaluating a seller / product, but after a while you get proficient and it becomes second nature. The first rule is to READ ALL LISTING INFORMATION AND PRODUCT DETAILS incl shipping cost and product return policies / guarantees. E.g. If a product is low cost, and requires the buyer to pay return shipment, there is a good chance that the seller is trying to dump overstock with the expectation that the buyer will write it off as not worth the return shipping cost.

For eBay, I rarely buy from any seller with less than a 99% approval rating and less than 400 sales. Even then, some bad apples get through. Amazon has to have at least 70% five star ratings with no recurring negative complaints - except for those where the buyer(s) obviously didn't know how to use the product.