Amazon - Desperate need for Antitrust

[NT1440]

This came across my scrolling today. Unfortunately the actual story is on Bloomberg.

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50% of the cut of sales goes to Amazon. That’s absurd.

In addition, Amazon regularly tracks the best selling items and makes their Amazon Basics version of it, then promotes it near the top of search results almost always at a lower cost than the original item.

This company has far and away too much power.

 

[Herdfan]

This company has far and away too much power.

They do. But not as much as the public does. We could simply stop buying from them, but we won't because they are convenient.

 

[lizkat]

They do. But not as much as the public does. We could simply stop buying from them, but we won't because they are convenient.

Yeah but their couriers often enough do spoil enjoyment of that convenience at point of delivery, regardless of whether Amazon's own or FedEx handles the shipment. I omit UPS from my annoyance list only because I've usually had better luck with them, but Amazon doesn't even use UPS in my area.

So I quit re-upping on staple goods through Amazon because of couriers electing to ignore saved location preferences and instead leaving them wherever the hell they felt like dropping the parcel... in one case not even two feet from the county roadway, on the lawn, and 15 feet from my driveway. I'd rather use Instacart at a supermarket that offers in-store prices and where i have a loyalty card. By time those perks get applied I'm not paying an outrageous amount over the "convenience" of an Amazon buy.

Yes the stuff does still cost more using that middleman and a decent tip, but a few trips with a garden cart in winter fetching my order --from someplace not my back porch-- has certainly made that difference irrelevant.

Maybe if I were 40 I wouldn't care, but I'm twice that and then some, so I got fed up enriching AMZN shareholders at the cost of my own exasperation. Life seems too short to sign up for predictable anger.

This is for Amazon or FedEx to discover and straighten out if they want to. I mean I was dropping quite the bundle annually on stocking up a winter pantry with canned goods and shelf-stable items every year. But complaining to couriers (in a civil tone) made no difference and mentioning it to Amazon only fetched a suggestion to take it up with the courier. Game, set and match since then to Instacart. Not my problem if there are millions of geezers like me doing the same damn thing.

 

[NT1440]

They do. But not as much as the public does. We could simply stop buying from them, but we won't because they are convenient.

It shouldn’t be up to the collective public to do individual acts of protest to get the laws on the books to actually be enforced.

For every person tuned in, there are 20 who are too busy scraping by in life to have the mental bandwidth to take on systemic issues.

That’s what the (completely corporate captured) regulators are supposed to exist for.

On a semi-related note, you literally can’t separate yourself from AWS services if you’re using the internet in 2023.

If the originators of anti-trust law saw the state of the world today they’d wonder why we allowed to this happen over the last 40 years of extreme corporate consolidation.

 

[Herdfan]

It shouldn’t be up to the collective public to do individual acts of protest to get the laws on the books to actually be enforced.

For every person tuned in, there are 20 who are too busy scraping by in life to have the mental bandwidth to take on systemic issues.

That’s what the (completely corporate captured) regulators are supposed to exist for.

On a semi-related note, you literally can’t separate yourself from AWS services if you’re using the internet in 2023.

If the originators of anti-trust law saw the state of the world today they’d wonder why we allowed to this happen over the last 40 years of extreme corporate consolidation.

Setting aside the AWS issue, should a regulator be involved simply because Amazon got too big. I don't think so, especially since they don't have a monopoly. Like I mentioned, people could simply stop using them and it isn't the job of regulators because people are too lazy to do something about it.

Many years ago I read a story who's basis was Microsoft didn't have a monopoly because people were just too lazy to learn a new operating system. In this case it wasn't MacOS, but Linux.

I was starting to figure out the world when the government was breaking up AT&T. That made sense because they had an actual monopoly and people had no choice but to use them. People have other choices in the case of Amazon.

 

[NT1440]

Setting aside the AWS issue, should a regulator be involved simply because Amazon got too big. I don't think so, especially since they don't have a monopoly. Like I mentioned, people could simply stop using them and it isn't the job of regulators because people are too lazy to do something about it.

Many years ago I read a story who's basis was Microsoft didn't have a monopoly because people were just too lazy to learn a new operating system. In this case it wasn't MacOS, but Linux.

I was starting to figure out the world when the government was breaking up AT&T. That made sense because they had an actual monopoly and people had no choice but to use them. People have other choices in the case of Amazon.

That’s the consumer-facing aspect that anti-trust regulators have harped on since the 80’s.

The original intent, and application of these laws up until Reagan was whether the entity in question had unfair leverage over the actual industry down the chain.

Monopoly is just one extremely narrow part of these laws, but there are far more powers these regulators have than just anti-monopoly.

An example, the railroads also owned the steel mills, and therefore could effectively control the price of steel, and gave themselves a healthy discount for rail. I think that’s called a monopsony?

In regards to Amazon, they are single-handedly able to undercut pricing on items to drive out their previous “competitors” in their store itself, blatantly steal the product in question, AND make their result show at the top of searches. They own the whole stack for far too many consumer items.

It would be lovely if people would collectively stop buying from them, but again it shouldn’t be up to the consumer to make up for the entire lack of enforcement from these agencies (whom have been stuffed to the gills with people intentionally undermining these agencies).

 

[Clix Pix]

I use Amazon to read reviews (taking some with a grain of salt, of course!) when considering a product that I might want to purchase. I then explore local stores (online) to see if they actually have that product in their inventory so that I can go and take a look at it, handle it, buy it, etc. If they don't, if no one within reasonable driving distance of me does, that is when I go back to Amazon and decide if I want to just go ahead and order the product from them. Hey, it really IS convenient to have overnight or one-day delivery..... I am careful, though, to make sure the product is being handled all the way by Amazon rather than by a vendor on the "Marketplace" or whatever they call it. Some items I simply will not purchase through Amazon, regardless, and for those I go to other vendors whose services I have used in the past and trust.