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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 ant

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).

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).