
Tim Bray told a union meeting Amazon should be broken up - evo_9
https://www.businessinsider.com/former-amazon-engineer-tim-bray-calls-for-antitrust-breakup-2020-6
======
rickyplouis
I often see many people show immediate solidarity with Amazon as soon as the
ideas of anti-trust or monopoly are brought up. If the government is allowed
to break up a large corporation then where does it stop? Will they come after
my small business next?

The ironic part of this is that the same large companies they are showing
solidarity with are implementing anti-competitive practices to prevent smaller
entrants from standing a chance. Between google and facebook's unknown
algorithms, Apple's secretive approval process for iOS apps, and Amazon's
practice of pushing their products up and pushing new entrants out, the large
companies already act as gatekeepers for their dominion.

Perhaps it's marketing, maybe it's brand loyalty, but it seems bizarre that
people are more willing to give control of their lives to a large corporation
than to have any government intervention.

~~~
roosterdawn
You raise an interesting point, but I wonder if the point is less that people
trust the brand than they _distrust_ the government. Do you think it might be
possible that however much people distrust corporations, they at least trust
the corporation to function unlike the government, which they only trust to
deepen dysfunction?

~~~
waheoo
Americas version of democracy is next level messed up.

Start voting for people you want in power.

Stop voting for the lesser evil.

Yes you cant always avoid it but a functioning democracy involves a forcing of
ideologies to work together through multi party systems and the resulting
coalitions.

~~~
rayiner
Only a minority of people view the candidates they’ll be voting for as “the
lesser evil.” For the rest, they’re voting for the person they want in power.
The recent Democratic primary is proof of that. There are a lot of
progressives in the Democratic coalition who will vote for Biden because he’s
the “lesser evil.” But all those voters who woke up at the last minute and
drove Biden to a decisive victory did so because that’s who they wanted. They
want someone to basically maintain the status quo and make modest changes, and
do so without the racist tweets.

~~~
scarface74
I think a lot of the people voted for Biden because he was more electable than
Sanders. I don’t share that opinion - Sanders scares the hell out of me.

I consider myself a bleeding heart pro capitalist pig. In other words I
believe in a social safety net funded by taxes and the free market.

------
MattGaiser
1\. Amazon is not a monopoly in any market. It faces stiff competition across
the board.

2\. Amazon both drives costs down and is a lead innovator and the fear with
monopolies is that they raise prices and hinder innovation. Amazon probably
captures 90% of my non-food consumer spending simply because nobody else seems
to be trying to improve except them.

~~~
theandrewbailey
A monopoly can have competition. Lots of people used Netscape on Macs in the
90s, but the US government (and lots of other people) said Microsoft was a
monopoly anyway.

~~~
jonhohle
Being a monopoly isn’t the issue. Abusing monopoly power is. Commentators
often miss that both is required for antitrust action.

In what market does Amazon have a defacto monopoly in? Apple is another one
often brought up for antitrust related to App Store policing.

In the late 90s, early 00s, Microsoft sold 90+% of desktop operating systems
(their monopoly). That’s fine, great success! However, they used that monopoly
to harm competitors: bundling a competing product with their earned monopoly
(IE/Netscape), threatening vendors which attempted to also sell a competitor’s
product (Sony/BeOS), locking in customers by extending common platforms and
making them incompatible with competitor’s products (Java).

Had they not had a monopoly, those actions probably wouldn’t be considered
abuse. It’s the combination that’s the problem.

~~~
theandrewbailey
That pretty much explains it. Pointing out Mac+Netscape vs MS in the 90s is my
simple one-liner when anyone says that $company isn't a monopoly, because
$competition.

~~~
scarface74
And guess what? Apple overtook Microsoft in revenue and profit not because of
government intervention but because of strong leadership and being innovative
- capitalism worked.

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ronnier
Sure, break them up and eventually get replaced by even larger Chinese
companies that you can’t break up.

~~~
ViViDboarder
I don’t see how this would work. The US can use sanctions or other legal means
of preventing such companies from doing business in the US. China did this for
years to ensure US companies didn’t dominate their market (among other
reasons).

~~~
logicchains
What happens when one of those giant Chinese (or maybe in the future Indian)
companies produces, due to economies of scale, something really useful? Stupid
example: 7G internet with steady 10GB/s bandwidth. If America bans it, they'll
be at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the world. They could try and
copy it / help their own companies develop an equivalent (as China did to try
and catch up with the US), but then they'd have just done a reversal, going
from breaking up their big companies to trying to help them grow big to
compete with China.

The further American companies fell behind technogically, the more it would
hurt to ban foreign technologies. And the more that large US technology
companies were broken up, the slower America would advance technologically. A
huge percentage of RND is currently funded by FANG and the like; being
somewhat monopoly-like (and having huge economies of scale) is actually what
allows them to fund this: in a perfectly competitive market, where margins are
razor-thing, nobody has any money to invest in research or moonshots.

------
steelframe
Now that he no longer has to worry about being fired, Tim is freely tossing
around anti-competitive trigger words that anybody who has gone through
corporate training at a FAANG company should instantly recognize.

"In effect cloud computing is providing the resources that Amazon is using to
crush whole sectors of the retail economy."

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rideontime
Some more context for his argument can be found on this blog post of his from
the other day: [https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/06/08/Anti-
mono...](https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/06/08/Anti-monopoly)

------
RegnisGnaw
Here's a question, we're in a globally competitive marketplace. Wouldn't
forcing a breakup of Amazon hurt its competitiveness globally against
companies like Alibaba or JD?

~~~
almost_usual
I’d doubt the US government would allow another Chinese monopoly to take the
place of an American one.

~~~
logicchains
What's it going to do, ban it? Is there any precedent for the US permanently
banning successful foreign retailers?

Even if it did, that still wouldn't stop the Chinese company taking a dominant
place in the rest of the world, like Google, Facebook and Amazon do now. Which
would represent a massive loss to US intelligence-gathering capabilities and
soft power.

~~~
almost_usual
What you’re arguing is “monopolies are OK because China does it”.

So what happens if China gets more powerful because they’re authoritarian?
Does that mean US authoritarianism is OK if it keeps the US #1?

It’s a slippery slope and I’m not on board.

~~~
logicchains
It's not about okay or not okay, it's just pointing out that if the US
government breaks up Amazon, it may just be replaced by a Chinese monopoly,
ultimately achieving no big benefit, but hurting America's geopolitical
interests.

Outcomes matter, not intentions.

~~~
archagon
I'd rather live in a second-rate democracy than a first-rate corporatocracy.
To me, that's the only outcome that matters. If the Chinese monopoly does
things to break our laws, it can be sanctioned or banned.

~~~
scarface74
Corporate America doesn’t have the power of the police or military to take
away my liberty or property.

~~~
archagon
Well, it certainly did in the past!!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes)

And there are much more disturbing historical examples of unrestrained
corporatism:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India)

~~~
scarface74
Have you seen the actions of the government lately - not in the distant pass.

------
buboard
During the precambrian era of the internet , when valuations were still small
, companies like amazon and their competitors could get away with a lot , from
bad security to piracy, to counterfeits, to fraud. back then metallica were
the baddies and napster the good guys, today it would be the opposite. No
amount of government intervention will change the monopolistic nature of the
Single Market of the internet. What could enable competition is deregulation

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kpmcc
Don't break Amazon up. Nationalize Amazon. Use all the data they collect to
make supply chains more effective/efficient, move us closer to a planned
economy.

~~~
wisemanwillhear
I would argue that it would most likely become another bureaucracy where
people jockey for position and power with efficiency being given little more
than lip service. Such bureaucracies are difficult to kill or replace.

------
Communitivity
Does Amazon allegedly have some very bad practices toward workers and toward
3rd-party sellers? Yes, there are a lot of reports.

The solution then is to fix that problem through mandatory reporting and
unions, not to break up the company.

"Why on earth should an online retailer, a cloud computing company, a smart
speaker company, an organic supermarket company, and a video production
company all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one
person?"

Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the
limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider
wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you?

Also because an economy of scale helps consumers. Amazon Prime gives access to
music, books, delivery of home goods, delivery of groceries, and much more.
Break it up and you will have Prime Music, Prime Books, Prime Home, Prime
Market subscriptions, each for nearly the same price - one sub for each piece
you break the company into.

I agree something must be done - the stories of the workers read like Bram
Stoker award-winning horror novels, but swinging the needle the other way and
completely breaking the company apart is over-reaction.

My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at
least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers.

~~~
killerpopiller
the breakup happened to AT&T, is this considered an overreaction?

~~~
Communitivity
No, because Bell lost what was already geographically distinct - the regional
baby Bells. Bell labs, Bell trademark, Western Electric, and AT&T Long
Distance were all retained. This might be the equivalent of splitting AWS and
the rest of Amazon into two companies.

~~~
ViViDboarder
Or Web Services, Commerce (Whole Foods, Amazon.com), Media (Alexa, Ring, Fire
TV, Amazon Studios)

Amazon has so many different components in their conglomerate that there are
many ways to draw lines.

------
moneywoes
What were the circumstances in which standard oil was broken up?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Standard Oil did a lot that was forward-thinking business. For example, oil
shipped in barrels - real wooden barrels. Standard Oil got in the barrel-
making business because they were having trouble getting enough barrels to run
their business. (Today we call that "vertical integration"; they probably just
thought of it as doing what they needed to do to keep their business running.)
You don't build a business like Standard Oil just by being evil. You have to
be able to execute really well.

But Standard Oil did a lot that was shady, too. For example, they shipped so
much oil (by rail) that they demanded a kickback from railroads, or they'd
take their business to the competing railroad. (This was back when there were
enough railroads that there was competition.) That means that Standard Oil was
paying lower freight rates (net) than other oil companies. (I think at this
time rail rates were controlled by the government, so the kickbacks were
probably illegal from that standing, not just from the extortion involved.)
Standard Oil then went a step further. They demanded kickbacks not just for
their own oil traffic, but for their competitors' oil shipments as well.

If you were a competitor, you weren't going to be able to prosper in that kind
of an environment. Then Standard Oil would offer to buy your business...

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tinyhouse
This guy made millions from working at big tech including Amazon & Google. Now
that he's retiring comfortably he wants to break them up. Hypocrite.

~~~
netsharc
Maybe it's called finding your conscience.

It can also be done belatedly, or one can be someone like Donald Trump and
never admit past faults...

Edit: look at all the pious people downvoting me. Sure, I bet you're all
morally superior to him!

~~~
tinyhouse
Maybe if he worked at Google & Amazon in his twenties. I doubt it given that
he worked there in his 50s/60s.

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sub7
Would love to see more people who haven't already profited from the evil they
currently attack. Roger McNamee is another case.

These guys make a shitload of blood money, get guilty and think that writing a
blog post absolves everything.

