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Amazon is almost the opposite of a monopoly - they literally seek out highly competitive markets with the slimmest profit margins. Uber has plenty of competiti

Amazon is almost the opposite of a monopoly - they literally seek out highly competitive markets with the slimmest profit margins. Uber has plenty of competition in Lyft and current taxis. You can't simultaneously complaint about Uber driving down prices and then call for anti-trust regulation of them.

mc32 8y ago
Yes and no for Amazon. If Walmart/Jet would offer some competition. Facebook, not sure they can be broken up reasonably (what parts?) but perhaps they should be regulated as a utility, to some degree.
- topkai22 8y ago
  You could break off the network itself from all the other businesses, including the ad business. The network would then have to provide a regulated interface to all advertisers, with strong regulation of what data they are allowed share and target.
  - mc32 8y ago
    That’s not a bad thought, though i doubt it’ll come to fruition.
- ascar 8y ago
  Amazon has a lot of individual web shops as competition in addition to sites like ebay and rakuten. Also any serious classical retailer has an online shop by now and search engines like Google shopping help them to compete on price. Amazon has a high market share, but they are far from a monopoly. They earned their market share through low prices, fast delivery and best in market customer support and they will lose it, if these three points drop considerably in quality. Anecdotal I explcitly skip Amazon for lower priced shops, if I do not care about customer support and if products have a high reputation of arriving broken, because they made a reputation of banning accounts for bad return behavior. While Facebook itself might be hard to break up, Instagram and WhatsApp can easily be independent companies and a strong point can be made that these acquisition shouldn't have been allowed based on anti-trust in the first place as these stopped emerging social network competition in other forms of communication (images, 1 to 1).
belljustin 8y ago
I think the author is specifically drawing attention to how current antitrust laws, which focus on a price model, don't protect consumers from more long-term anti-competition. I wish the article would dive into those problems more but I'm not sure anyone knows what the symptoms of this (mis)behaviour looks like. But in terms of Amazon and Uber: - Amazon behaviour with diapers.com seems like predatory pricing, which is clearly illegal (and doesn't help consumer pricing after acquisition) - Uber wants to have it's cake and eat it too. If the drivers aren't employees, they're price fixing; if the drivers are employees, treat them like it, e.g. benefits, etc
- tynpeddler 8y ago
  The fact that uber does face competition of every sort means that they aren't fixing prices in the market. To attack uber (and lyft's) business model in a self consistent manner, looking at short term contracts seems like a better approach.
basch 8y ago
A much better article than the verge one https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...

mc32 8y ago

Yes and no for Amazon. If Walmart/Jet would offer some competition. Facebook, not sure they can be broken up reasonably (what parts?) but perhaps they should be regulated as a utility, to some degree.

topkai22 8y ago
You could break off the network itself from all the other businesses, including the ad business. The network would then have to provide a regulated interface to all advertisers, with strong regulation of what data they are allowed share and target.
- mc32 8y ago
  That’s not a bad thought, though i doubt it’ll come to fruition.
ascar 8y ago
Amazon has a lot of individual web shops as competition in addition to sites like ebay and rakuten. Also any serious classical retailer has an online shop by now and search engines like Google shopping help them to compete on price. Amazon has a high market share, but they are far from a monopoly. They earned their market share through low prices, fast delivery and best in market customer support and they will lose it, if these three points drop considerably in quality. Anecdotal I explcitly skip Amazon for lower priced shops, if I do not care about customer support and if products have a high reputation of arriving broken, because they made a reputation of banning accounts for bad return behavior. While Facebook itself might be hard to break up, Instagram and WhatsApp can easily be independent companies and a strong point can be made that these acquisition shouldn't have been allowed based on anti-trust in the first place as these stopped emerging social network competition in other forms of communication (images, 1 to 1).

belljustin 8y ago

I think the author is specifically drawing attention to how current antitrust laws, which focus on a price model, don't protect consumers from more long-term anti-competition. I wish the article would dive into those problems more but I'm not sure anyone knows what the symptoms of this (mis)behaviour looks like. But in terms of Amazon and Uber: - Amazon behaviour with diapers.com seems like predatory pricing, which is clearly illegal (and doesn't help consumer pricing after acquisition) - Uber wants to have it's cake and eat it too. If the drivers aren't employees, they're price fixing; if the drivers are employees, treat them like it, e.g. benefits, etc

tynpeddler 8y ago
The fact that uber does face competition of every sort means that they aren't fixing prices in the market. To attack uber (and lyft's) business model in a self consistent manner, looking at short term contracts seems like a better approach.

basch 8y ago

A much better article than the verge one https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...