
Marc Andreessen Annotates Paul Krugman's Amazon Op-Ed - lawsohard
http://tech.genius.com/Paul-krugman-amazons-monopsony-is-not-ok-annotated
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lmg643
Wow. Talk about an advertisement for the ineffectiveness of annotations. I've
got comments from multiple different authors on here simultaneously - who are
all these people? I was interested in Marc's annotations - talk about bait and
switch.

For complex subjects, this is a great example of why single-author critiques
are best, so you can follow a single person's train of thought and their
logical conclusions (or errors).

This particular debate strikes me as pretty juvenile in both directions - by
Krugman, and his critics. Marc gets "closest to the pin" for me when he says
"if Amazon was a monopoly, it would be raising prices." Of course, that's not
to say any big company can't overplay its leverage in "supplier negotiations"
and this is surely something worth discussing. Marc is also right that the
judgment here is a lot more nuanced than standard oil owning 60% of the
market.

Going a little deeper on the Hachette dust-up, it's really interesting that
the chattering classes never took much of an axe to Amazon's reputation until
it tread on their turf - book publishing! All the waylaid mom-and-pop stores
were just hicks who had it coming. Protecting the fat advances paid to big
name authors - that is sacrosanct - part of the rewards that go with public
life these days, and part of the corruption IMHO.

I will end with Glazer's beginning - "Krugman nearly always gets it
right...but this is very wrong." I find that this Amazon critique is easier to
contextualize if you shift that understanding - Krugman is frequently wrong
about many things, and this Amazon article fits neatly with that overall
trend.

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ameister14
>Marc gets "closest to the pin" for me when he says "if Amazon was a monopoly,
it would be raising prices."

That's not really what he says, he said that if they raised prices, Krugman
would take that as evidence of monopoly behavior as well. Monopolies don't
always raise prices; sometimes they keep them quite low.

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pkaye
Marc should know about monopolies. Microsoft started giving web browsers for
free to undercut Netscape's business model. Once your competitors go out of
business, you would be free to raise your prices.

~~~
splintercell
But the question is, when have companies manage to kick their competition out
of business and raised prices?

More importantly, if the theory is: "Amazon/Microsoft/ETC is trying to
underprice and drive its competition out of business, and not just doing good
business.", then what is the falsifiability test of this theory?

How do you know whether Amazon isn't just the best and cheapest service
provider out there?

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snewman
I'm not sure how impressed I am by Marc's arguments. For instance:

> Another classic Krugman rhetorical maneuver. According to Paul, keeping
> prices low is a sign of monopoly power, but of course he’d also say that
> keeping prices high would also be a sign of monopoly power.

This seems silly. Krugman doesn't say that Amazon's low prices are a sign that
they _have_ monopoly power. He's saying that Amazon uses low prices to
_acquire or maintain_ ("reinforce") monopoly power ("dominance").

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gahahaha
I can't imagine that this stuff is legal - the NYT has paid Krugman to write
this, and Genious is just copying the text and adding a few (to my mind inane)
links and comments. It all seems very shady..

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leggo2m
Not only that, they don't even link to the original NYT article!

This is less a deconstruction of Krugman's article than it is a self-promotion
of Crap Genius.

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ohazi
Am I the only one who thinks that inline responses usually end up making the
replying author sound childish and petty?

~~~
nostrademons
This is an interesting observation. I wonder if it's because, on Paul Graham's
disagreement hierarchy [1], inline annotations strongly encourage DH3
responses, make it challenging to write DH4-5 (because of lack of space, and
interruption of the flow of the main piece), and outright make it impossible
to write a DH6 response.

That doesn't necessarily make them bad - often you can provide useful
elaboration or contradict factual assertions - but I think you're right that
they do have a petty vibe to them.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

~~~
ohazi
Ah, this is great. I had forgotten about this essay. I think this part is
particularly relevant:

> Even as high as DH5 we still sometimes see deliberate dishonesty, as when
> someone picks out minor points of an argument and refutes those. Sometimes
> the spirit in which this is done makes it more of a sophisticated form of ad
> hominem than actual refutation. For example, correcting someone's grammar,
> or harping on minor mistakes in names or numbers. Unless the opposing
> argument actually depends on such things, the only purpose of correcting
> them is to discredit one's opponent.

It's really easy to end up doing this when replying inline.

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StefanKarpinski
Is it just me or is the Genius interface kind of confusing? Is there any way
to see just Marc Andreessen's comments and not the comments of a bunch of
other randos too?

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Tloewald
I always find it amusing when someone snipes at someone else's writing and
still comes off second best.

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TillE
This format is terrible for both usability (click click click click) and
general coherence. A plain old fisking would be vastly superior.

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kirinan
Andreessen makes some really excellent points in there, but there a few that
just strike me as incorrect:

> Another classic Krugman rhetorical maneuver. According to Paul, keeping
> prices low is a sign of monopoly power, but of course he’d also say that
> keeping prices high would also be a sign of monopoly power.

Yeah its both. You can be a monopoly by having ridiculously high or low
prices, mainly its really low then really high and if you think Amazon wouldnt
raise everything by 100$ if it could, you're just wrong.

> It will startle every single business owner and CEO in the world to learn
> that negotiating with suppliers is now a business tactic that is “out of
> line”.

No negotiating is smart. Strong arming is wrong. Amazon is strong arming
people not negotiating. They are playing the game where if you don't agree
with what they are doing they are taking their toys and leaving. This causes
economic harm to the company because of Amazon's volume to the point where the
publishers have to use Amazon's terms which is monopolistic power.

~~~
fleitz
That's pretty much how negotiation works.

If a company doesn't give me the raise I want, I accept an offer from a
company that does give me the raise I want: "Taking my toys and going home"

If you say "Well, I don't agree with you, however, I'm going home and leaving
my toys here for you to play with" then you'll probably end up at home without
any toys.

Taking your toys and going home is your BATNA. Hachette has a shitty BATNA and
is hence losing the negotiation, because they don't have any toys Amazon
wants, and hence Amazon doesn't care they are going to go home and whine to
daddy Krugman that little Jeffery isn't sharing his toys.

It's 2014, taking words from a text file from some author, putting them into a
PDF isn't some kind of miracle that warrants 90% of the cost of the book.

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MaysonL
I wonder if diapers.com had been an Andreessen investment if his take on
Amazon would be the same?

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driverdan
> Krugman is one of the most important writers and the world, and nearly
> always gets it right.

I stopped reading right there.

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CyberDildonics
Marc Andreesen getting trolled by Paul Krugman, a modern master of trolling.

