Counter-argument: we're talking about saving a handful of bucks for something that lasts months. Do it if you find it fun - I tried it and didn't like the work nor spice under my fingernails, at all.
My preferences in cooking are like software: high level is fun (cooking dishes), low level is annoying (growing or producing ingredients).
I also like making cocktails. A brief try with homemade coffee licqueurs was disappointing - knowing a couple of good brands, I can buy and enjoy them, no hassle. Closest to preparing ingredients I do is occasionally doing batches of "super juice", where you squeeze a bunch of limes and add some conservatives and enhancers (and water), that increase the yield, flavor and shelf life by a lot. Then it's really practical to just use the juice like a normal ingredient, versus having the cytrus available having to squeeze them and having more stuff to clean.
It's much harder to predict exactly than to dismiss anything slightly off.
But the tendency is showing: in my country, we're getting records in extreme temperatures, forrest fires and storms.
But a study 1% can be dismissed, some random in a basement 99% off can be believed. This just says: many people are just looking for a confirmation of their beliefs, not evidence. And many companies play this game (supporting the right politicians, spreading disinformation aka lies, etc), because there are billions at stake.
This is a tactic I'm seeing more in politics. When it's in the interests of a group for something to pass, but they don't want the blame, they can abstain or defer. It still goes through and if it goes wrong they can argue it's not their fault. Win/win for them.
The thesis could get an F at law school, but it is not guaranteed that the government will act lawfully. Its useful to think about what the administration can do, legal or not, especially when given little challenge when acting illegally.
In the UK amazon has completely removed free shipping in an effort to push everyone to prime. YUou used to be able to wait 5 days for free shipping, not any more.
In the German site I get free shipping over 60 Eur, but only by stuff shipped by amazon. And other vendors somehow manage to always screw up shipping, so now I have had all orders for used books that had no/invalid tracking number, not arrive and I have/had to negotiate a refund for all of these refunds with the vendors themselves instead of amazon. So all-in-all, amazon is actually good, makes stuff available that’s impossible to find locally (books in English), and does shipping well.
I think that's because in general shipping in the UK became incredibly expensive during and after COVID, and never ever went down again. Coupled with Brexit, shipping companies all pushed their prices up en masse for no apparent reason, and it's never gone down again.
This reads like propaganda. Amazon has no business de-listing products because of their price elsewhere.
If it wanted to be pro-consumer, I don't know, it could warn the consumer the price is lower somewhere else, and point them there, like a good search engine of products! Sounds ridiculous? Yeah, because those claims are a bit ridiculous too.
I'm not convinced Amazon has any market power here. Online and physical retail competitors are alive and well, so Amazon has very little room to actually push up prices. It's margins in this area are under 5%. AWS has market power and has a 25% margin, and yet the complaints almost always focus on the retail side.
Section VII is on the anti-competitive effects of Amazon's conduct.
You argue the market space includes physical retail competitors, which the complaint rejects. They describe their reasoning, point out how Jeff Bezos also doesn't see them as interchangeable, hence "physical stores and online stores are not reasonably interchangeable substitutes for one another from the standpoint of consumers".
Indeed,"most merchants—even those that sell through both channels—do not consider physical brick-and-mortar stores to be in the same market as online stores".
It also describes the effect on third-party sellers, like how Chewy.com, Wayfair.com, and Newegg.com charge lower fees, so the seller would like to set a lower price there, but Amazon's policies and market power inhibit the seller "because doing so would result in the suppression of the Buy Box for their Amazon listing."
There's a dozen or so examples of sellers raising their prices elsewhere in order to no lose the buy box, affecting also Amazon competitors:
> A major competing online marketplace to Amazon itself confirmed that it has heard from merchants that they would need to raise their prices on its marketplace or decline to participate in a discount/sale event because a lower price on its marketplace had disqualified or could disqualify their offers from the Amazon Buy Box. This rival marketplace operator reported that during a sales event, certain merchants contacted it to pull their items from the event or indicated that they would need to raise their prices because they reported that they had lost the Buy Box on Amazon, believed they would lose the Buy Box on Amazon, or believed that they would be delisted on Amazon because their item prices were lower on this competing website for the event. ...
> one Walmart manager reported to Bloomberg that “Walmart routinely fields requests from merchants to raise prices on its marketplace because they worry a lower price on Walmart will jeopardize their sales on Amazon.”
> Amazon’s coerced price parity agreements with Marketplace sellers constitute
unlawful contracts and/or combinations in restraint of trade in violation of the Cartwright Act.
(The Cartwright Act is California's main antitrust law.)
I don’t like it, but it is Amazon’s web property and they can do whatever they want. They could put up political banners on the top of their website, but I wouldn’t recommend it with how divided the country is.
They can't do whatever they want, we live in a regulated economy for precisely this reason. Otherwise you get exactly what is happening here, a company using it's near monopoly power to raise prices on everyone to enrich a few
> The policy and spirit of the California antitrust laws are to promote the free play of competitive market forces and the lower prices to consumers that result. Amazon, the dominant online retail store in the United States, has violated the policy, spirit, and letter of those laws by imposing agreements at the retail and wholesale level that have prevented effective price competition across a wide swath of online marketplaces and stores.
The linked-to article concerns a possible preliminary injunction related to that antitrust case.
You don’t need to be a monopoly for anti-trust law to come into play. Airlines can’t collude on pricing, for example, even though no single airline is a monopoly.
Yes. And? There's no claim that Amazon is part of a price-fixing cartel or other collusion.
A pure monopoly is one where there is a single seller or provider. The US grants limited-time monopoly power to a new patent holder, and USPS has a monopoly on traditional letter delivery within the United States, for examples. A pure monopoly is therefore not necessarily illegal.
"In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. For instance, the term monopoly may be referring to instances where: ... There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)"
That use certainly seems appropriate in the context of Amazon's ability to dictate prices, as described in California's complaint, yes?
malfist literally wrote "near monopoly power", which is not the same thing as claiming that "Amazon is a monopoly".
You asked malfist 'In what sense does Amazon have “near monopoly power”?'
I answered that question. The state of California claims Amazon has enough market share to dictate prices, making it a near monopoly, and it abuses those near monopoly powers in violation of California anti-trust laws. California doesn't need to demonstrate that Amazon is a pure monopoly because that is irrelevant, and not true.
I farther pointed out that even using the term "monopoly" without the "near" qualifier can mean "There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)", with citation.
Which means your statement "Amazon is a monopoly" is a correct summary of the issue, even if those injunction request and complaint don't use those terms.
It seems you think the term "monopoly" can only ever be applied to pure monopolies. You seem to be confusing the economic and legal definitions. Quoting the introduction paragraph from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
> In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.
This thread concerns a lawsuit, so the legal definition is the most relevant.
Is Walmart a “near monopoly”? How about Costco? They both have significant pricing power over their suppliers. How would you differential them from Amazon, if at all?
If we’re using your definition and not anything directly alleged in the CA complaint…
Do you understand what malfist wrote by "near monopoly power", and agree that it's a correct description of California's anti-trust lawsuit?
If not, what do you not understand?
As to your new set of questions, do you mean my personal beliefs, or do you mean the process by which the courts determine if an organization is abusing monopoly power, or to you mean an actual court decision? I'll answer all three.
Personally, yes, these companies abuse their near monopoly power. The failure to enforce the Robinson–Patman Act, the de-fanging of the FTC and consumer protection agencies, and the post-Borkian re-casting of antitrust law to "consumer welfare", has, IMHO, devastated the American free market resulting in a centralized command economy dominated by a handful of megacorporations.
Nor am I alone in this belief. It is not hard to find articles like "Walmart’s Monopolization of Local Grocery Markets" at https://ilsr.org/article/independent-business/walmarts-monop... which, among other things, points out how the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department has, since the 1960s, greatly raised the threshold for what "highly concentrated" market capture means, and WalMart is extreme even by that definition.
The legal process is to identify the relevant market. This can neither be too narrow - the market for "RC Cola" is not "those who buy RC Cola" but also includes other colas - nor too large -- RC Cola is not really interchangeable with milk, even though both are liquids which people drink.
If 99% of the people drink RC Cola, that could be because they love the taste, and are willing to pay more for it. (This is the premise of the Borkian view that monopolies are a direct and visible expression of consumer choice.) The anti-trust case must therefore also show there was abuse of its market position. That is what California's complaint does by describing many cases of third-party sellers unwilling to offer lower prices elsewhere, for fear of retaliation by Amazon. (The "consumer welfare" interpretation wrongly, IMO, rejects the idea that vendor concerns like this are part of antitrust law.)
There's probably more, but I'm a programmer, not a lawyer. I only know about these details because of the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit and commentary about the influence of Lina Khan on the FTC.
"A newly unredacted FTC complaint shows that PepsiCo and Walmart worked together to rig grocery pricing, drive up pricing at competitors and protect Walmart’s dominance. Internal PepsiCo documents reveal a coordinated strategy to give Walmart better wholesale prices, penalize independent and regional grocers that tried to lower their prices and preserve Walmart’s “price gap” by pushing rivals’ shelf prices up."
but then having it dropped voluntarily by the Trump/Ferguson FTC.
Which is why these sorts of things are now taken up on state courts, like California for Amazon, or New York (see Gelbspan v. Pepsico and Walmart at https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/mopabybynva/...). That does use the word "monopoly" and "monopolist", and describes the SSNIP test as the Hypothetical Monopoly Test used to determine if the relevant market is well-defined.
So if you are looking for actual court cases which have determined this, you either haven't been paying attention to the topic (completely understandable!), or you are a willing supporter of the Chicago School and the billionaire class which gain power by promoting it.
I guess I’m looking for a definition of the market for which Amazon holds a “near monopoly” and the criteria for establishing that designation.
It can’t be because 99% of people shop at Amazon to the exclusion of other retailers, because they don’t. Indeed, Amazon’s share of aggregate retail spending is quite low.
The response has been, roughly, “There are a bunch of court cases where these things are hashed out, and Amazon’s name has come up.”
OK, but as I said to begin with, antitrust is not just about monopoly power.
What monopoly powers does Amazon hold? At what point did they acquire them (roughly) looking back to their founding 30 years ago?
Maybe frame this the other way: If Amazon is only a “near monopoly”, what would have to happen to drop the “near”? What weight is that word carrying?
Then you need a primer in competition and anti-trust law.
The steps are to identify the relevant market and show abuse of market power - abuse as defined by antitrust law. The relevant market is not "aggregate retail spending". The California complaint goes into details about how online sales are not interchangeable with brick and mortar stores, something I mentioned earlier.
Determining abuse is not a simple plug&chug exercise.
It's not "99%", but such levels are a political decision about how what is fair and what is unfair market power. I pointed to the ISLR page, and mentioned how the threshold for concerns about market concentration has increased. Here's the full paragraph:
> Even by the permissive standards of today’s Justice Department, Walmart’s market power is considered extreme. Under guidelines established by the department’s Antitrust Division in 2010, markets in which one corporation captures more than 50 percent of revenue are defined as “highly concentrated.” (The agency has repeatedly raised this threshold since the 1960s, including sharply increasing it in 2010. These guidelines are used to evaluate mergers.)
My response has been "here are complaints which go into the details that you've asked about. You should read them to understand their arguments."
> but as I said to begin with, antitrust is not just about monopoly power.
And I completely agreed with you. However, for this specific case of Amazon, the California complaint can correctly be interpreted as concerning abuse of monopoly power, even if California never used that term. Because they don't need to use that term.
> What monopoly powers does Amazon hold?
Addressed in the complaint.
> At what point did they acquire them (roughly) looking back to their founding 30 years ago?
Why does that matter? When did Standard Oil become a monopoly? I doubt the Supreme Court of Ohio had to determine a rough date before being able to issue a breakup order.
> what would have to happen to drop the “near”?
Why does it matter?
I've already pointed out that economics and law use different definitions of "monopoly". Adding the qualifier "near" ensures that "monopoly" isn't misread as the economics definition of being a (pure) monopoly.
Determining abuse is not a simple plug&chug exercise.
I’m not asking about abuse, I’m asking about monopoly. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s possible to become a monopoly through legitimate competitive action, and indeed similarly preserve that monopoly without violating anti-trust law.
So again: Why is Amazon a “near monopoly”? You go on for pages and pages through multiple comments that amount to, “Because California alleges that they are”—despite California not using that word, just words about anti-competitive practices that you claim are the same thing. I deny that claim. I believe California is alleging Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive behavior that would be anti-competitive behavior whether they’re a monopoly, near monopoly, or no monopoly at all.
Please do me the honor of remembering that I gave examples of monopolies and near monopolies which are not considered abusive, and linked to https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly with more details.
"However, the existence of a very high market share does not always mean consumers are paying excessive prices since the threat of new entrants to the market can restrain a high-market-share firm's price increases. Competition law does not make merely having a monopoly illegal, but rather abusing the power that a monopoly may confer, for instance through exclusionary practices"
> Why is Amazon a “near monopoly”?
Again, the lawsuit is that Amazon is abusing their power as a "high-market-share firm". This is widely characterized as Amazon being a monopoly. I have provided many links which support my interpretation.
> I deny that claim.
I can't help but conclude you are being obstinate. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly : "A monopoly is when a single company or entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in a market."
If you want to argue over what "unreasonable" means, go ahead. But denying terms which date back to the 1800s[1] is parading your own stubbornness.
What do you define as "monopoly" or "near monopoly", and when should the law step in to restrain a monopolist? Can you demonstrate external support for your interpretation?
Because as it stands, it seems like you don't understand the basics of the topic, but believe you do, and are doubling-down, unwilling to consider that you don't.
> I believe California is alleging Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive behavior that would be anti-competitive behavior whether they’re a monopoly, near monopoly, or no monopoly at all.
I assume you read how California claims Amazon violated the Cartwright Act. This requires an ability to harm market-wide competition, in a properly defined relevant market. That's why the complaint goes through the effort of defining the market, and presents evidence of market-wide harm to that market. This is why I've been careful to insist that being a monopoly isn't the problem - abusing monopoly power is the problem.
If Amazon had no monopoly at all, which I'll interpret as having little market power, then it does not have that ability, so cannot violate the Cartwright Act, so would not be in the complaint, which again tells me that you need to learn more about antitrust law. (Note that I am specifically addressing the part of the complaint which can be regarded as relevant to explaining how "near monopoly" is a correct characterization.)
"That is, Monopoly is a kind of Commerce, in buying, selling, changing or bartering, usurped by a few, and sometimes but by one person, and forestalled from all others, to the gaine of the Monopolist, and to the Detriment of other men."
"The parts then of a Monopolie are twaine, The restraint of the liberty of Commerce to some one or few: and the setting of the price at the pleasure of the Monopolian to his private benefit, and the prejudice of the publique. Upon which two Hinges every Monopoly turneth."
California claims that Amazon restrains the liberty of third-party sellers to set prices which do not benefit Amazon, and which prejudice the public, making Amazon a monopolist even when using a 400 year old definition.
These laws do not prohibit putting up political banners, but Amazon certainly cannot do whatever they want.
There are laws regarding price fixing, abuse of monopoly powers, discrimination on a protected class, product labeling, and making false and misleading statements about drugs.
If they sell Cuban-made cigars made with conventionally grown tobacco, then while they technically can put up a banner claiming "these organic, made in the USA cigars, if smoked twice daily, will cure epilepsy in children - buy now!", they'll have broken several laws.
That's not legally correct in the US, EU, or the UK. Private ownership gives Amazon a lot of discretion over its own site design, messaging and whatnot, but not unlimited freedom to do or say whatever they please.
In the US major firms do not get a free pass simply because they own the platform and the idea that a website constitute "private property" doesn't work as a defence to anticompetitive conduct or to display a political banner expressing support for a political party of candidate without triggering additional rules / limits.
In the EU this is even less the case, as it effectively treats some platform conduct as capable of creating societal/systemic risks and thus needs to be kept in check. Whether is happens like that all the time in reality is subject of another discussion, I think; the point is that the mechanisms exist.
Political spending/advertising is a regulated activity that goes beyond rules that apply to private property. In the UK, for example, spending, donation, reporting etc. if the activity is intended to influence voters, falls under specific regulations: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-guidance/campaign...
you may want to re-evaluate your understanding of the word hackers. It has had a few definitions during my lifetime and none of the fit with how you have used it here.
My understanding of hackers is entirely based on people on this message board.
And of course hackers and other similarly minded people would be outraged if something they bought on Amazon could be found for cheaper elsewhere, and then the company would have to process a thousand percent increase in returns as well as losing the sales.
It disturbs me to see this behavior in my country alt-right voters, or better said, fanatics. The party is full of contradictions, and they will go with the flow, double down and rationalize all of them.
Maybe the problem is that they make it part of their identity. Voting for a different party according to their agenda is reasonably easy, but it's hard to reject who we are.
In the end, they're supporting a lying, corrupt, violent, fascist party and they don't see it - to them, it's the other parties doing that, even though this one has the most accusations (with evidence backing them up, not just made up).
My preferences in cooking are like software: high level is fun (cooking dishes), low level is annoying (growing or producing ingredients).
I also like making cocktails. A brief try with homemade coffee licqueurs was disappointing - knowing a couple of good brands, I can buy and enjoy them, no hassle. Closest to preparing ingredients I do is occasionally doing batches of "super juice", where you squeeze a bunch of limes and add some conservatives and enhancers (and water), that increase the yield, flavor and shelf life by a lot. Then it's really practical to just use the juice like a normal ingredient, versus having the cytrus available having to squeeze them and having more stuff to clean.
reply