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At what point does Amazon get broken up? Grocery chains, freight, aws, ecommerce, each of these could be companies on their own. Seems like we're heading to a d

At what point does Amazon get broken up? Grocery chains, freight, aws, ecommerce, each of these could be companies on their own. Seems like we're heading to a dystopian future where megacorps own you in every sense.

mrlala 7y ago
Where is the efficiency in that?
cheschire 7y ago
Amazon probably won't get broken up as long as people continue to get the lowest prices from them. As far as owning you in every sense, that won't happen until these companies start buying up so much property that they rival military bases in family services offered. At that point, once it becomes possible to live cradle to grave on a company's property, that's when you will be owned.
- duxup 7y ago
  >as long as people continue to get the lowest prices from them. I don't really think that's the breakpoint as to if something gets broken up or not.
  - lukejduncan 7y ago
    Currently, it's actually the definition of when something gets broken up or not. Anitrust today focuses on consumer wealthfare and not corporate power. However, there are some politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are argueing to change that criteria. This is often referred to as "Hipster Antitrust" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_Antitrust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_Antitrust For a great series on the history of anti-trust and the current debates on its application to tech companies check out this short Planet Money Series: Antitrust 1: Standard Oil https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/antitrust-1-standard-oil https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/anti... Antitrust 2: The Paradox https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/antitrust-2-the-paradox https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/anti... Antitrust 3: Big Tech https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-tech https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/anti...
    - notfromhere 7y ago
      Hipster Antitrust is basically how antitrust used to function before Bork. Just about the same time when income inequality really started to accelerate
      - lukejduncan 7y ago
        Yeah I thought that was super interesting. The podcast covers that too.
rattlesnakedave 7y ago
All of these services enrich the lives of millions.
barbecue_sauce 7y ago
If Amazon was just in-housing all of these business lines for the use of their core business (vertical integration), I don't think there would be a case for antitrust. Getting into freight makes sense for the supply chain of a global retailer. However, they insist on platform-itizing everything to the point that the argument could be made that the platform IS the business, and things get murkier. (IANAL or subject matter expert).
- anongraddebt 7y ago
  I sometimes wonder if there is some power (whatever we want that to mean) threshold at which an invalid antitrust case is brought simply because of the amount of power under discussion. Extreme and improbable hypothetical: Amazon hits ~$2.5T in annual revenue, while the GDP of France stagnates at ~$2.5T. Assuming that there is zero evidence for an antitrust case to be built (again, this is an extreme and improbable and rather outlandish scenario), would the U.S. have an interest in simply brute forcing the break-up of Amazon simply on the grounds that the company itself has too much geopolitical clout/power/influence/etc.? I'm seriously curious.
  - nordsieck 7y ago
    > Extreme and improbable hypothetical: > Amazon hits ~$2.5T in annual revenue, while the GDP of France stagnates at ~$2.5T. > Assuming that there is zero evidence for an antitrust case to be built (again, this is an extreme and improbable and rather outlandish scenario), would the U.S. have an interest in simply brute forcing the break-up of Amazon simply on the grounds that the company itself has too much geopolitical clout/power/influence/etc.? In this hypothetical, how much money a year do you estimate they'd spend on politics? It's not like the country is a body with a single mind.
    - anongraddebt 7y ago
      I'd wager their lobbying efforts would increase roughly in parallel with their revenue (or something like that).
jonknee 7y ago
Conglomerates aren't new and aren't by themselves something to consider antitrust action over. Samsung does everything from highway construction to chip fabrication to making appliances.
- ctvo 7y ago
  What's South Korea's anti-trust laws like? Chaebols aren't exactly well regarded, are they? - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/south-korea-chaebol-samsung.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/south-korea-chae...
rednerrus 7y ago
It doesn't seem like they have a monopoly in any one area.
JackFr 7y ago
> At what point does Amazon get broken up? They'd have to violate the law. As it stands, they're not engaging in anti-competitive activity. Simply being better at something than your competition isn't anti-competitive. > Seems like we're heading to a dystopian future where megacorps own you in every sense. Literally every business that Amazon has entered has improved my life. Books are cheaper with an enormously larger selection available. Prime Video offers alternative to Netflix. AWS has revolutionized the software industry. Don't get me wrong -- Amazon is in it for Amazon, and I think Jeff Bezo's can be an asshole. But the reason they get my money year after year is that they do such a great job.
- swoongoonz 7y ago
  it's improve your life because you're probably a highly paid software developer or engineer (guessing because here you are on hacker news). I would like to hear more from the people who work for amazon (not the devs reaping all of the rewards of stock shares) and the retailers selling their goods on amazon to see if the company has "improved" their lives. https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse-jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...
  - Reedx 7y ago
    Engineers are not the majority of Amazon's customers. Nor are they the ones that benefit most from buying there. For example, consider single mothers working two jobs, ordering from Amazon.com to save time & money. And depending on where they live, they might even get the order within a couple hours. That's a new kind of efficiency that many benefit from.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Consider why that person has to work two jobs, and the contribution Amazon made towards that. Low prices aren't free. Some of it came from efficiency, the rest comes from simply paying labor less.
chrisseaton 7y ago
What law do you think they’ve broken to justify breaking them up? You can’t just dismantle someone’s business because you think they should structure it differently.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  Reconsider the current system and change the laws, obviously. The Consumer Welfare Standard fails to capture forms of market power and forms of dominance that should be relevant to antitrust and do raise competition concerns. What happens when Amazon hypothetically reaches state level income but doesn't break any laws? How much is enough soft power? How much is enough power for one corporation, monopoly or not? It's interesting that I got so much push back for this discussion, seems fairly obvious this can end badly for the average person.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    If you’re making custom laws to deliberately target specific businesses you don’t like then that’s a red flag your new law is abusive.
    - jorblumesea 7y ago
      This has nothing to do with specific businesses, just the size and scale that businesses are reaching now. This has nothing to do with Amazon, they are just an elegant example of a broken system. Corporations that have serious soft power but have broken no laws should cause us to ask deep questions about what it means to be "anti trust" in the 21st century. The consumer welfare framework is a weak and ineffective framework for today's modern corporations.
    - eropple 7y ago
      Businesses exist at and only at the sufferance of the society that grants that charter and need only be permitted to exist so long as there is positive social benefit to their existence. One cannot "abuse" a business by requiring them to properly hold up their end of the bargain. We have mostly forgotten--to our detriment as societies around the world--that businesses exist to serve the collective us of citizenry and society. Not the other way around.

mrlala 7y ago

Where is the efficiency in that?

cheschire 7y ago

Amazon probably won't get broken up as long as people continue to get the lowest prices from them. As far as owning you in every sense, that won't happen until these companies start buying up so much property that they rival military bases in family services offered. At that point, once it becomes possible to live cradle to grave on a company's property, that's when you will be owned.

duxup 7y ago
>as long as people continue to get the lowest prices from them. I don't really think that's the breakpoint as to if something gets broken up or not.
- lukejduncan 7y ago
  Currently, it's actually the definition of when something gets broken up or not. Anitrust today focuses on consumer wealthfare and not corporate power. However, there are some politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are argueing to change that criteria. This is often referred to as "Hipster Antitrust" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_Antitrust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_Antitrust For a great series on the history of anti-trust and the current debates on its application to tech companies check out this short Planet Money Series: Antitrust 1: Standard Oil https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/antitrust-1-standard-oil https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/anti... Antitrust 2: The Paradox https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/antitrust-2-the-paradox https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/anti... Antitrust 3: Big Tech https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-tech https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/anti...
  - notfromhere 7y ago
    Hipster Antitrust is basically how antitrust used to function before Bork. Just about the same time when income inequality really started to accelerate
    - lukejduncan 7y ago
      Yeah I thought that was super interesting. The podcast covers that too.

rattlesnakedave 7y ago

All of these services enrich the lives of millions.

barbecue_sauce 7y ago

If Amazon was just in-housing all of these business lines for the use of their core business (vertical integration), I don't think there would be a case for antitrust. Getting into freight makes sense for the supply chain of a global retailer. However, they insist on platform-itizing everything to the point that the argument could be made that the platform IS the business, and things get murkier. (IANAL or subject matter expert).

anongraddebt 7y ago
I sometimes wonder if there is some power (whatever we want that to mean) threshold at which an invalid antitrust case is brought simply because of the amount of power under discussion. Extreme and improbable hypothetical: Amazon hits ~$2.5T in annual revenue, while the GDP of France stagnates at ~$2.5T. Assuming that there is zero evidence for an antitrust case to be built (again, this is an extreme and improbable and rather outlandish scenario), would the U.S. have an interest in simply brute forcing the break-up of Amazon simply on the grounds that the company itself has too much geopolitical clout/power/influence/etc.? I'm seriously curious.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > Extreme and improbable hypothetical: > Amazon hits ~$2.5T in annual revenue, while the GDP of France stagnates at ~$2.5T. > Assuming that there is zero evidence for an antitrust case to be built (again, this is an extreme and improbable and rather outlandish scenario), would the U.S. have an interest in simply brute forcing the break-up of Amazon simply on the grounds that the company itself has too much geopolitical clout/power/influence/etc.? In this hypothetical, how much money a year do you estimate they'd spend on politics? It's not like the country is a body with a single mind.
  - anongraddebt 7y ago
    I'd wager their lobbying efforts would increase roughly in parallel with their revenue (or something like that).

jonknee 7y ago

Conglomerates aren't new and aren't by themselves something to consider antitrust action over. Samsung does everything from highway construction to chip fabrication to making appliances.

ctvo 7y ago
What's South Korea's anti-trust laws like? Chaebols aren't exactly well regarded, are they? - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/south-korea-chaebol-samsung.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/south-korea-chae...

rednerrus 7y ago

It doesn't seem like they have a monopoly in any one area.

JackFr 7y ago

> At what point does Amazon get broken up? They'd have to violate the law. As it stands, they're not engaging in anti-competitive activity. Simply being better at something than your competition isn't anti-competitive. > Seems like we're heading to a dystopian future where megacorps own you in every sense. Literally every business that Amazon has entered has improved my life. Books are cheaper with an enormously larger selection available. Prime Video offers alternative to Netflix. AWS has revolutionized the software industry. Don't get me wrong -- Amazon is in it for Amazon, and I think Jeff Bezo's can be an asshole. But the reason they get my money year after year is that they do such a great job.

swoongoonz 7y ago
it's improve your life because you're probably a highly paid software developer or engineer (guessing because here you are on hacker news). I would like to hear more from the people who work for amazon (not the devs reaping all of the rewards of stock shares) and the retailers selling their goods on amazon to see if the company has "improved" their lives. https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse-jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...
- Reedx 7y ago
  Engineers are not the majority of Amazon's customers. Nor are they the ones that benefit most from buying there. For example, consider single mothers working two jobs, ordering from Amazon.com to save time & money. And depending on where they live, they might even get the order within a couple hours. That's a new kind of efficiency that many benefit from.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Consider why that person has to work two jobs, and the contribution Amazon made towards that. Low prices aren't free. Some of it came from efficiency, the rest comes from simply paying labor less.

chrisseaton 7y ago

What law do you think they’ve broken to justify breaking them up? You can’t just dismantle someone’s business because you think they should structure it differently.

jorblumesea 7y ago
Reconsider the current system and change the laws, obviously. The Consumer Welfare Standard fails to capture forms of market power and forms of dominance that should be relevant to antitrust and do raise competition concerns. What happens when Amazon hypothetically reaches state level income but doesn't break any laws? How much is enough soft power? How much is enough power for one corporation, monopoly or not? It's interesting that I got so much push back for this discussion, seems fairly obvious this can end badly for the average person.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  If you’re making custom laws to deliberately target specific businesses you don’t like then that’s a red flag your new law is abusive.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    This has nothing to do with specific businesses, just the size and scale that businesses are reaching now. This has nothing to do with Amazon, they are just an elegant example of a broken system. Corporations that have serious soft power but have broken no laws should cause us to ask deep questions about what it means to be "anti trust" in the 21st century. The consumer welfare framework is a weak and ineffective framework for today's modern corporations.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Businesses exist at and only at the sufferance of the society that grants that charter and need only be permitted to exist so long as there is positive social benefit to their existence. One cannot "abuse" a business by requiring them to properly hold up their end of the bargain. We have mostly forgotten--to our detriment as societies around the world--that businesses exist to serve the collective us of citizenry and society. Not the other way around.