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Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance observes that, “when third-party sellers post new products, Amazon tracks the transactions and then star
by sharemywin 8y ago
Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance observes that, “when third-party sellers post new products, Amazon tracks the transactions and then starts selling many of their most popular products.”
However much that practice may increase economic productivity, it does so at the unacceptable cost of concentrating power in one firm while discouraging entrepreneurship outside it. Policymakers should protect vulnerable sellers against it.
- sharemywin 8y agoHow the platforms can both play platform and participant is really the disturbing part. I get that a lot of platforms have to start off as both to get started. It's probably better in the beginning to be the a really good chicken and start selling eggs. The let others sell their eggs to.
- travellingbuyer 8y agoJust the middleman is replaced. The producer is still in the game. It would be more of a problem if Amazon started manufacturing the same product. I see that it can concentrate power on Amazon (as a merchant), but it's debatable that it would reduce incentives to enterpreneurship. If platforms like Amazon didn't exist at all, there would be even less incentives to sell online. One current alternative is simply not to sell products at Amazon in the first place. What I find most disturbing is that this Amazon tactic is not clear to third-party sellers, which leads to the same old problem of disclosing what they do with the data they capture.