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Tim Bray told a union meeting Amazon should be broken up

85 points by evo_9 6y ago

Communitivity 6y ago
Does Amazon allegedly have some very bad practices toward workers and toward 3rd-party sellers? Yes, there are a lot of reports. The solution then is to fix that problem through mandatory reporting and unions, not to break up the company. "Why on earth should an online retailer, a cloud computing company, a smart speaker company, an organic supermarket company, and a video production company all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?" Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you? Also because an economy of scale helps consumers. Amazon Prime gives access to music, books, delivery of home goods, delivery of groceries, and much more. Break it up and you will have Prime Music, Prime Books, Prime Home, Prime Market subscriptions, each for nearly the same price - one sub for each piece you break the company into. I agree something must be done - the stories of the workers read like Bram Stoker award-winning horror novels, but swinging the needle the other way and completely breaking the company apart is over-reaction. My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers.
- quonn 6y ago
  > Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you? So now monopoly power is not a concern anymore? How did we get to this point? Does anyone believe that the fact that a founder can only have, say 10 billion and not 100 prevent anyone from starting a startup? I don‘t think so.
  - Communitivity 6y ago
    Monopoly is a concern, but so is trying to improve the situation through negative reinforcement, by breaking apart the company. Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. Also, 10 billion vs 100 is arbitrary and could easily vary from market to market, and is determined by who? Here we edge into the moral question of whether it is ok to be a billionaire, and the discussion taps into the current outrage against the 1%. I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately - something like a 50% flat income tax (no deductions, applies to all income including investment earnings/interest) if your net worth is over 1 billion.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      >I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately How is it even remotely your business how much money other people have given somebody? A billionare (assuming they didn't inherit it) has already given way more back to the community than the average person, because they brought into existance something that collectively brought billions of dollars of value to people.
    - ViViDboarder 6y ago
      > Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. With what goal? More gigantic conglomerates? Or after ten years, they get rolled up into an existing one? To me, this sounds like it would make the problem worse. What is your concern with negative reinforcement? Pretty much our entire legislation is based on the concept of fines and punishment.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    They're not a monopoly though. Like 40% market share in eCommerce and like 15% in retail overall isn't close to a monopoly. Yes they compete in other spaces, the onus is on their competitors not to suck.
    - cybwraith 6y ago
      40% in ecommerce would definitely be able to have monopoly power which would often be enough to trigger an anti-trust response, historically. What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Its extremely unbalanced and lets them really crush any rising opposition unless you trust they won't unfairly wield that power.
      - logicchains 6y ago
        >What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Are there any examples of them actually doing this?
        ViViDboarder 6y ago
        Of them having 40% of the market place? The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers.
        logicchains 6y ago
        No, of them forcing anybody off their platform. >The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers. Antitrust law (at least in the US) is conducted on the basis of harm to consumers. If Amazon's negotiating power with suppliers results in better prices/outcomes for consumers, then there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. As a producer, nobody is obligated to buy what you're selling. http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastiat.pdf http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastia... is a nice argument why laws should try to benefit consumers, not producers.
- killerpopiller 6y ago
  the breakup happened to AT&T, is this considered an overreaction?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Communitivity 6y ago
    No, because Bell lost what was already geographically distinct - the regional baby Bells. Bell labs, Bell trademark, Western Electric, and AT&T Long Distance were all retained. This might be the equivalent of splitting AWS and the rest of Amazon into two companies.
    - ViViDboarder 6y ago
      Or Web Services, Commerce (Whole Foods, Amazon.com), Media (Alexa, Ring, Fire TV, Amazon Studios) Amazon has so many different components in their conglomerate that there are many ways to draw lines.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    The government gave AT&T the monopoly.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  The complaint about how warehouse workers are treated, hired, and such, is not unique to Amazon. It is manual labor where as much intelligence if not language skills is eliminated as possible. Examples, from light walls where light is used to guide placement to pickup, indicator lights on bins for the same, to voice prompts in language of choice, all guided by computers because they know exactly where the gun/scan device the employee is holding. Still I find it disappointing people only concentrate on the warehouse worker while completely ignoring other low wage workers they are likely working around but tend to be invisible to you, from mail clerks, building maintenance, and even the security guard at the front desk. Look, not all jobs are equal nor should you assume offense on some other person's part. Believe me, I got the shock of my life working in IT while working for a "rent a cop" company. That some people earned and lived on what some of them made was both amazing and a little disappointing to me. Yet a few I would talk to thought it was fine as they had a job where they didn't have to put much effort into doing to get paid; plus in that line some were fond of being indoors and having a uniform. Basically what we find unacceptable other's will just blow off our opinion as being snotty or worse.
- thatcat 6y ago
  >they built it They built part of a logistics chain and acquired the rest. >skys the limit Why should those being exploited be limited by amazon? The sky should the limit for every individual not just Bezos. >Prime books If you broke up prime you would have nothing. The reason people subscribe is the overlap with multiple markets which is what makes it a monopolistic strategy. It uses loss leaders from one market to destroy competition in other markets with the intent to later raise prices.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  Amazon shouldn't compete with third party sellers, as it creates a conflict of interest that has been documented to lead to abuses. WSJ has a series of articles on such abuses. See e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its... Amazon claims it's against their internal policies. But it's widespread and there's no indication those policies serve as anything more than plausible deniability - i.e. managers can tell employees to increase sales, give them access to the seller's data, and just have them agree on paper that they won't use the data but never enforce it.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    Fun fact: Amazon has argued in litigation that it would take over 5,000 hours to collect sales information on a couple of thousand products. When they want to restrict data from their own teams, they can easily. Anyone who's ever dealt with a database understands that this kind of query wouldn't take more than a couple of hours if you had access to the database. Amazon clearly built a system to limit the amount of access their legal team has, presumably to avoid having to give out significant amounts of data. If the retail team needed this data to improve their algorithms or something there's no question they'd have been able to get it without putting 5,000 man-hours into it. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726.927.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726... >As a result, I estimate that producing responsive information to Plaintiffs’ request for sales data for 5,376 ASINs from October 1, 2011 to the present will take between 5,376 and 8,064 hours of Amazon paralegal time. Assuming a 40 hour work week, based on these estimates it would take one paralegal working full time 2.5 to 3.8 years to collect just the sales data Plaintiffs are seeking from Amazon. I calculated this based on my estimate of 60-90 minutes per ASIN for 5,376 ASINs.
- spydum 6y ago
  Isn't the government kind of already a union, and you are a member electing leadership and funding it with your dues (taxes)? Why the need for a seperate org? How is it different than a government?
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Because the government and specific worker unions have different, though not necessarily competing, objectives.
- streblo 6y ago
  > My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers. I was with you up until this point. So now instead of having one institution that I'm beholden to for my livelihood, I have two. Unions are just another form of institution that can succumb to the same kinds of corruption and bad practices as the company I work for. Why not start with a higher minimum wage, or incentivizing companies to pay a living wage across all roles, or UBI, or cheaper/universal health care - something so that workers at shitty companies can say "screw this" and leave.
- tobr 6y ago
  > "Why on earth should [..] all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?" > Because they built it. This is an entirely fictional idea. Consider who this language serves. Bezos started the company, but how does it make sense to say he “built” all of the businesses mentioned? They were built by many thousands of people, but they barely own what they created. Bezos has abused his position as founder to capitalize on their work. If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions. If they had the opportunity to build things in better conditions, why aren't they already doing that? Look at it this way, if nobody did what Bezos did, nobody quit their job to try starting a business (bearing in mind something like over 90% of businesses fail, so it's a significant risk), then there wouldn't be any jobs. We'd all still be subsistence farmers. And this is essentially the condition that the world was in before we had a government/legal system that allowed people to create and grow businesses free from molestation. If not for Bezos, Amazon wouldn't exist, and all the beneft people gained from the superior convenience, prices and delivery speed it offered compared to competitors would have been lost.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      Nonsense. That's the 'great man' theory. Its clear from history that when the time has come, the business appears. There were many online retail operations when Bezos came on the scene. If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. Heck, Amazon isn't even Amazon any more. Its a two- or three-removed reinvention of what Amazon started out to be.
      - logicchains 6y ago
        >If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. It would have happened later, so everybody's standard of living would have been a little lower. The more you discourage people from starting businesses, the fewer people try to start businesses, so successful new business are created more slowly, and the economy grows slower. It's also more likely the company will appear first in another country more friendly to business, and then the original country will lose out on the revenue, jobs and soft power it might have gained from that country operating there.
rideontime 6y ago
Some more context for his argument can be found on this blog post of his from the other day: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/06/08/Anti-monopoly https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/06/08/Anti-mono...
MattGaiser 6y ago
1. Amazon is not a monopoly in any market. It faces stiff competition across the board. 2. Amazon both drives costs down and is a lead innovator and the fear with monopolies is that they raise prices and hinder innovation. Amazon probably captures 90% of my non-food consumer spending simply because nobody else seems to be trying to improve except them.
- stephenr 6y ago
  The fear with monopolies is that they kill off competition, and then are free to raise prices. Amazon has been selling books at a loss for decades, and it has absolutely killed a large chunk of their competition for physical books in the US.
  - x43b 6y ago
    Do you have evidence Amazon sold books at a loss for 20+ years? Buying a book for $10, selling it for $12, then spending $5 on a new warehouse is cash flow negative but not selling at a loss. Amazon isn't even cash flow negative anymore.
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  A monopoly can have competition. Lots of people used Netscape on Macs in the 90s, but the US government (and lots of other people) said Microsoft was a monopoly anyway.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Microsoft's violations, while having to do with the browser market, were not exclusive to it. MS had something around 97% market share with Windows alone. They used that position to release their free, and largely broken if you go by the standards, IE browser. By pushing that free browser, which cost them over a billion in marketing and development, they cut into the markets of the cross-platform browsers. This was their game plan. Web applications (even the rudimentary versions in the mid-90s) offered a chance for companies to leave Windows, to remove the need for dedicated applications on thick client-styled machines. The OS would be come irrelevant, and this is something MS feared. But that wasn't the only product market that they did this with. They straight up bought competitors and either closed their product lines or sold them themselves. They threatened to penalize OEMs who sold non-Windows OSes by taking away their OEM license cost (much lower than the shelf price) for Windows, with the margins of that market that killed many alternate OS efforts. They just couldn't get into the market, why pay $50-200 for a new product when you already have Windows on your computer?
ronnier 6y ago
Sure, break them up and eventually get replaced by even larger Chinese companies that you can’t break up.
- logicchains 6y ago
  I wonder if Baidu, Tencent, et al. have donated anything to these anti-monopoly efforts? Seems like a great way for China to convertly influence America to advance China's own interests, and those companies are in bed with the government so they'd have the resources to do so. *Edit: to whoever flagged this, I'm curious why you think it's so unlikely. Given China's history of state-sponsored espionage and technology transfer to assist its own companies, why wouldn't it be eager to support something that would benefit its own companies even more by breaking up their biggest competitors?
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    I really doubt the US government would let a Chinese monopoly take the place of Amazon. Tensions are only rising with China right now.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      Even if it banned the company from America, it couldn't stop it spreading overseas. Like TikTok, which is already eating Facebook and Instagram's lunch.
      - almost_usual 6y ago
        What you’re arguing is “monopolies are OK because China does it”. If we’re arguing about power grabs then what happens if China gets more powerful because they have an authoritarian government? Does that mean the US needs needs to be authoritarian now too? No thanks.
        logicchains 6y ago
        It's not about okay or not okay, it's just pointing out that breaking up Amazon could actually result in worse outcomes for America.
rickyplouis 6y ago
I often see many people show immediate solidarity with Amazon as soon as the ideas of anti-trust or monopoly are brought up. If the government is allowed to break up a large corporation then where does it stop? Will they come after my small business next? The ironic part of this is that the same large companies they are showing solidarity with are implementing anti-competitive practices to prevent smaller entrants from standing a chance. Between google and facebook's unknown algorithms, Apple's secretive approval process for iOS apps, and Amazon's practice of pushing their products up and pushing new entrants out, the large companies already act as gatekeepers for their dominion. Perhaps it's marketing, maybe it's brand loyalty, but it seems bizarre that people are more willing to give control of their lives to a large corporation than to have any government intervention.
- roosterdawn 6y ago
  You raise an interesting point, but I wonder if the point is less that people trust the brand than they _distrust_ the government. Do you think it might be possible that however much people distrust corporations, they at least trust the corporation to function unlike the government, which they only trust to deepen dysfunction?
  - waheoo 6y ago
    Americas version of democracy is next level messed up. Start voting for people you want in power. Stop voting for the lesser evil. Yes you cant always avoid it but a functioning democracy involves a forcing of ideologies to work together through multi party systems and the resulting coalitions.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      > "Start voting for people you want in power. Stop voting for the lesser evil." I can do that, but I can't make other people do that. So your "advice" isn't really actionable is it?
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Only a minority of people view the candidates they’ll be voting for as “the lesser evil.” For the rest, they’re voting for the person they want in power. The recent Democratic primary is proof of that. There are a lot of progressives in the Democratic coalition who will vote for Biden because he’s the “lesser evil.” But all those voters who woke up at the last minute and drove Biden to a decisive victory did so because that’s who they wanted. They want someone to basically maintain the status quo and make modest changes, and do so without the racist tweets.
tinyhouse 6y ago
This guy made millions from working at big tech including Amazon & Google. Now that he's retiring comfortably he wants to break them up. Hypocrite.
- goatherders 6y ago
  Tend to agree. Doesnt make what he has to say untrue or invalid, but I do think the optics are not ideal.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Maybe it's called finding your conscience. It can also be done belatedly, or one can be someone like Donald Trump and never admit past faults... Edit: look at all the pious people downvoting me. Sure, I bet you're all morally superior to him!
  - tinyhouse 6y ago
    Maybe if he worked at Google & Amazon in his twenties. I doubt it given that he worked there in his 50s/60s.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  Who would be an acceptable person to call for breaking up Amazon, then? If he were a low-level Amazon employee, they would say, "Bah, he's just jealous he doesn't have a killer salary like the rock-star developers at Amazon." If he were a non-Amazon employee, they would say, "He's just jealous of Amazon's market strength."
- sys_64738 6y ago
  He had an ax to grind when he left Oracle too. There's history here.
- danaris 6y ago
  At least according to his own blog posts, he tried to work from within to change Amazon for the better, to the extent that was feasible without making his own life a living hell. When things went too far for him, he resigned in protest. And yes, it is a privilege that he is able to do so and still live comfortably, but that doesn't make it a meaningless gesture. Now that he's no longer in a position where saying what he really wants Amazon to be/do/have done to it will lead to those around him vilifying him on a daily basis, he's using his privilege, and his voice, which speaks louder than most in the tech world, to try to get that to happen.
RegnisGnaw 6y ago
Here's a question, we're in a globally competitive marketplace. Wouldn't forcing a breakup of Amazon hurt its competitiveness globally against companies like Alibaba or JD?
- almost_usual 6y ago
  I’d doubt the US government would allow another Chinese monopoly to take the place of an American one.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    What's it going to do, ban it? Is there any precedent for the US permanently banning successful foreign retailers? Even if it did, that still wouldn't stop the Chinese company taking a dominant place in the rest of the world, like Google, Facebook and Amazon do now. Which would represent a massive loss to US intelligence-gathering capabilities and soft power.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      What you’re arguing is “monopolies are OK because China does it”. So what happens if China gets more powerful because they’re authoritarian? Does that mean US authoritarianism is OK if it keeps the US #1? It’s a slippery slope and I’m not on board.
      - logicchains 6y ago
        It's not about okay or not okay, it's just pointing out that if the US government breaks up Amazon, it may just be replaced by a Chinese monopoly, ultimately achieving no big benefit, but hurting America's geopolitical interests. Outcomes matter, not intentions.
        almost_usual 6y ago
        If tensions rise to that degree we’ll be even deeper into a Cold War where you’ll see other countries pick sides with who they do business with.
moneywoes 6y ago
What were the circumstances in which standard oil was broken up?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Standard Oil did a lot that was forward-thinking business. For example, oil shipped in barrels - real wooden barrels. Standard Oil got in the barrel-making business because they were having trouble getting enough barrels to run their business. (Today we call that "vertical integration"; they probably just thought of it as doing what they needed to do to keep their business running.) You don't build a business like Standard Oil just by being evil. You have to be able to execute really well. But Standard Oil did a lot that was shady, too. For example, they shipped so much oil (by rail) that they demanded a kickback from railroads, or they'd take their business to the competing railroad. (This was back when there were enough railroads that there was competition.) That means that Standard Oil was paying lower freight rates (net) than other oil companies. (I think at this time rail rates were controlled by the government, so the kickbacks were probably illegal from that standing, not just from the extortion involved.) Standard Oil then went a step further. They demanded kickbacks not just for their own oil traffic, but for their competitors' oil shipments as well. If you were a competitor, you weren't going to be able to prosper in that kind of an environment. Then Standard Oil would offer to buy your business...
sub7 6y ago
Would love to see more people who haven't already profited from the evil they currently attack. Roger McNamee is another case. These guys make a shitload of blood money, get guilty and think that writing a blog post absolves everything.
steelframe 6y ago
Now that he no longer has to worry about being fired, Tim is freely tossing around anti-competitive trigger words that anybody who has gone through corporate training at a FAANG company should instantly recognize. "In effect cloud computing is providing the resources that Amazon is using to crush whole sectors of the retail economy."
buboard 6y ago
During the precambrian era of the internet , when valuations were still small , companies like amazon and their competitors could get away with a lot , from bad security to piracy, to counterfeits, to fraud. back then metallica were the baddies and napster the good guys, today it would be the opposite. No amount of government intervention will change the monopolistic nature of the Single Market of the internet. What could enable competition is deregulation
kpmcc 6y ago
Don't break Amazon up. Nationalize Amazon. Use all the data they collect to make supply chains more effective/efficient, move us closer to a planned economy.
- wisemanwillhear 6y ago
  I would argue that it would most likely become another bureaucracy where people jockey for position and power with efficiency being given little more than lip service. Such bureaucracies are difficult to kill or replace.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Because the government really runs efficiently. We should really want the government to have access to our data. What could possibly go wrong?

85 points by evo_9 6y ago

Does Amazon allegedly have some very bad practices toward workers and toward 3rd-party sellers? Yes, there are a lot of reports. The solution then is to fix that problem through mandatory reporting and unions, not to break up the company. "Why on earth should an online retailer, a cloud computing company, a smart speaker company, an organic supermarket company, and a video production company all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?" Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you? Also because an economy of scale helps consumers. Amazon Prime gives access to music, books, delivery of home goods, delivery of groceries, and much more. Break it up and you will have Prime Music, Prime Books, Prime Home, Prime Market subscriptions, each for nearly the same price - one sub for each piece you break the company into. I agree something must be done - the stories of the workers read like Bram Stoker award-winning horror novels, but swinging the needle the other way and completely breaking the company apart is over-reaction. My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers.

quonn 6y ago
> Because they built it. Do we tell people building startups that the sky is the limit, unless you become too big or do something too many people consider wrong, and in that case we'll take it away from you? So now monopoly power is not a concern anymore? How did we get to this point? Does anyone believe that the fact that a founder can only have, say 10 billion and not 100 prevent anyone from starting a startup? I don‘t think so.
- Communitivity 6y ago
  Monopoly is a concern, but so is trying to improve the situation through negative reinforcement, by breaking apart the company. Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. Also, 10 billion vs 100 is arbitrary and could easily vary from market to market, and is determined by who? Here we edge into the moral question of whether it is ok to be a billionaire, and the discussion taps into the current outrage against the 1%. I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately - something like a 50% flat income tax (no deductions, applies to all income including investment earnings/interest) if your net worth is over 1 billion.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >I think it is ok to be a billionaire, if and only if you give back to the community commensurately How is it even remotely your business how much money other people have given somebody? A billionare (assuming they didn't inherit it) has already given way more back to the community than the average person, because they brought into existance something that collectively brought billions of dollars of value to people.
  - ViViDboarder 6y ago
    > Instead, foster competition by handing out grants to competitors on the condition that they can't be sold to the Big Co for 10 years, and provide mentoring to those startups. With what goal? More gigantic conglomerates? Or after ten years, they get rolled up into an existing one? To me, this sounds like it would make the problem worse. What is your concern with negative reinforcement? Pretty much our entire legislation is based on the concept of fines and punishment.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  They're not a monopoly though. Like 40% market share in eCommerce and like 15% in retail overall isn't close to a monopoly. Yes they compete in other spaces, the onus is on their competitors not to suck.
  - cybwraith 6y ago
    40% in ecommerce would definitely be able to have monopoly power which would often be enough to trigger an anti-trust response, historically. What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Its extremely unbalanced and lets them really crush any rising opposition unless you trust they won't unfairly wield that power.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      >What producer of a consumer good sold through Amazon could afford to lose 40% of their retail presence/revenue overnight? Well in the current environment, Amazon has that power. Are there any examples of them actually doing this?
      - ViViDboarder 6y ago
        Of them having 40% of the market place? The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers.
        logicchains 6y ago
        No, of them forcing anybody off their platform. >The comment is referring to the fact that companies trying to sell goods online are given a choice to either forego 40% of potential revenues or work with Amazon. This gives Amazon an enormous amount of leverage over suppliers. Antitrust law (at least in the US) is conducted on the basis of harm to consumers. If Amazon's negotiating power with suppliers results in better prices/outcomes for consumers, then there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. As a producer, nobody is obligated to buy what you're selling. http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastiat.pdf http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/bastia... is a nice argument why laws should try to benefit consumers, not producers.
killerpopiller 6y ago
the breakup happened to AT&T, is this considered an overreaction?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Communitivity 6y ago
  No, because Bell lost what was already geographically distinct - the regional baby Bells. Bell labs, Bell trademark, Western Electric, and AT&T Long Distance were all retained. This might be the equivalent of splitting AWS and the rest of Amazon into two companies.
  - ViViDboarder 6y ago
    Or Web Services, Commerce (Whole Foods, Amazon.com), Media (Alexa, Ring, Fire TV, Amazon Studios) Amazon has so many different components in their conglomerate that there are many ways to draw lines.
- scarface74 6y ago
  The government gave AT&T the monopoly.
Shivetya 6y ago
The complaint about how warehouse workers are treated, hired, and such, is not unique to Amazon. It is manual labor where as much intelligence if not language skills is eliminated as possible. Examples, from light walls where light is used to guide placement to pickup, indicator lights on bins for the same, to voice prompts in language of choice, all guided by computers because they know exactly where the gun/scan device the employee is holding. Still I find it disappointing people only concentrate on the warehouse worker while completely ignoring other low wage workers they are likely working around but tend to be invisible to you, from mail clerks, building maintenance, and even the security guard at the front desk. Look, not all jobs are equal nor should you assume offense on some other person's part. Believe me, I got the shock of my life working in IT while working for a "rent a cop" company. That some people earned and lived on what some of them made was both amazing and a little disappointing to me. Yet a few I would talk to thought it was fine as they had a job where they didn't have to put much effort into doing to get paid; plus in that line some were fond of being indoors and having a uniform. Basically what we find unacceptable other's will just blow off our opinion as being snotty or worse.
thatcat 6y ago
>they built it They built part of a logistics chain and acquired the rest. >skys the limit Why should those being exploited be limited by amazon? The sky should the limit for every individual not just Bezos. >Prime books If you broke up prime you would have nothing. The reason people subscribe is the overlap with multiple markets which is what makes it a monopolistic strategy. It uses loss leaders from one market to destroy competition in other markets with the intent to later raise prices.
ikeboy 6y ago
Amazon shouldn't compete with third party sellers, as it creates a conflict of interest that has been documented to lead to abuses. WSJ has a series of articles on such abuses. See e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its... Amazon claims it's against their internal policies. But it's widespread and there's no indication those policies serve as anything more than plausible deniability - i.e. managers can tell employees to increase sales, give them access to the seller's data, and just have them agree on paper that they won't use the data but never enforce it.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  Fun fact: Amazon has argued in litigation that it would take over 5,000 hours to collect sales information on a couple of thousand products. When they want to restrict data from their own teams, they can easily. Anyone who's ever dealt with a database understands that this kind of query wouldn't take more than a couple of hours if you had access to the database. Amazon clearly built a system to limit the amount of access their legal team has, presumably to avoid having to give out significant amounts of data. If the retail team needed this data to improve their algorithms or something there's no question they'd have been able to get it without putting 5,000 man-hours into it. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726.927.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.427726... >As a result, I estimate that producing responsive information to Plaintiffs’ request for sales data for 5,376 ASINs from October 1, 2011 to the present will take between 5,376 and 8,064 hours of Amazon paralegal time. Assuming a 40 hour work week, based on these estimates it would take one paralegal working full time 2.5 to 3.8 years to collect just the sales data Plaintiffs are seeking from Amazon. I calculated this based on my estimate of 60-90 minutes per ASIN for 5,376 ASINs.
spydum 6y ago
Isn't the government kind of already a union, and you are a member electing leadership and funding it with your dues (taxes)? Why the need for a seperate org? How is it different than a government?
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Because the government and specific worker unions have different, though not necessarily competing, objectives.
streblo 6y ago
> My suggestion: mandate unions in every field, every worker must be part of at least one union, and union dues must be paid as a tax by the employers. I was with you up until this point. So now instead of having one institution that I'm beholden to for my livelihood, I have two. Unions are just another form of institution that can succumb to the same kinds of corruption and bad practices as the company I work for. Why not start with a higher minimum wage, or incentivizing companies to pay a living wage across all roles, or UBI, or cheaper/universal health care - something so that workers at shitty companies can say "screw this" and leave.
tobr 6y ago
> "Why on earth should [..] all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?" > Because they built it. This is an entirely fictional idea. Consider who this language serves. Bezos started the company, but how does it make sense to say he “built” all of the businesses mentioned? They were built by many thousands of people, but they barely own what they created. Bezos has abused his position as founder to capitalize on their work. If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >If he hadn’t started the company, these people would still have found ways to build things, perhaps even under less heinous conditions. If they had the opportunity to build things in better conditions, why aren't they already doing that? Look at it this way, if nobody did what Bezos did, nobody quit their job to try starting a business (bearing in mind something like over 90% of businesses fail, so it's a significant risk), then there wouldn't be any jobs. We'd all still be subsistence farmers. And this is essentially the condition that the world was in before we had a government/legal system that allowed people to create and grow businesses free from molestation. If not for Bezos, Amazon wouldn't exist, and all the beneft people gained from the superior convenience, prices and delivery speed it offered compared to competitors would have been lost.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Nonsense. That's the 'great man' theory. Its clear from history that when the time has come, the business appears. There were many online retail operations when Bezos came on the scene. If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. Heck, Amazon isn't even Amazon any more. Its a two- or three-removed reinvention of what Amazon started out to be.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      >If Amazon hadn't happened, then another company would have. It would have happened later, so everybody's standard of living would have been a little lower. The more you discourage people from starting businesses, the fewer people try to start businesses, so successful new business are created more slowly, and the economy grows slower. It's also more likely the company will appear first in another country more friendly to business, and then the original country will lose out on the revenue, jobs and soft power it might have gained from that country operating there.

rideontime 6y ago

Some more context for his argument can be found on this blog post of his from the other day: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/06/08/Anti-monopoly https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/06/08/Anti-mono...

MattGaiser 6y ago

1. Amazon is not a monopoly in any market. It faces stiff competition across the board. 2. Amazon both drives costs down and is a lead innovator and the fear with monopolies is that they raise prices and hinder innovation. Amazon probably captures 90% of my non-food consumer spending simply because nobody else seems to be trying to improve except them.

stephenr 6y ago
The fear with monopolies is that they kill off competition, and then are free to raise prices. Amazon has been selling books at a loss for decades, and it has absolutely killed a large chunk of their competition for physical books in the US.
- x43b 6y ago
  Do you have evidence Amazon sold books at a loss for 20+ years? Buying a book for $10, selling it for $12, then spending $5 on a new warehouse is cash flow negative but not selling at a loss. Amazon isn't even cash flow negative anymore.
theandrewbailey 6y ago
A monopoly can have competition. Lots of people used Netscape on Macs in the 90s, but the US government (and lots of other people) said Microsoft was a monopoly anyway.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Microsoft's violations, while having to do with the browser market, were not exclusive to it. MS had something around 97% market share with Windows alone. They used that position to release their free, and largely broken if you go by the standards, IE browser. By pushing that free browser, which cost them over a billion in marketing and development, they cut into the markets of the cross-platform browsers. This was their game plan. Web applications (even the rudimentary versions in the mid-90s) offered a chance for companies to leave Windows, to remove the need for dedicated applications on thick client-styled machines. The OS would be come irrelevant, and this is something MS feared. But that wasn't the only product market that they did this with. They straight up bought competitors and either closed their product lines or sold them themselves. They threatened to penalize OEMs who sold non-Windows OSes by taking away their OEM license cost (much lower than the shelf price) for Windows, with the margins of that market that killed many alternate OS efforts. They just couldn't get into the market, why pay $50-200 for a new product when you already have Windows on your computer?

ronnier 6y ago

Sure, break them up and eventually get replaced by even larger Chinese companies that you can’t break up.

logicchains 6y ago
I wonder if Baidu, Tencent, et al. have donated anything to these anti-monopoly efforts? Seems like a great way for China to convertly influence America to advance China's own interests, and those companies are in bed with the government so they'd have the resources to do so. *Edit: to whoever flagged this, I'm curious why you think it's so unlikely. Given China's history of state-sponsored espionage and technology transfer to assist its own companies, why wouldn't it be eager to support something that would benefit its own companies even more by breaking up their biggest competitors?
- almost_usual 6y ago
  I really doubt the US government would let a Chinese monopoly take the place of Amazon. Tensions are only rising with China right now.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    Even if it banned the company from America, it couldn't stop it spreading overseas. Like TikTok, which is already eating Facebook and Instagram's lunch.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      What you’re arguing is “monopolies are OK because China does it”. If we’re arguing about power grabs then what happens if China gets more powerful because they have an authoritarian government? Does that mean the US needs needs to be authoritarian now too? No thanks.
      - logicchains 6y ago
        It's not about okay or not okay, it's just pointing out that breaking up Amazon could actually result in worse outcomes for America.

rickyplouis 6y ago

I often see many people show immediate solidarity with Amazon as soon as the ideas of anti-trust or monopoly are brought up. If the government is allowed to break up a large corporation then where does it stop? Will they come after my small business next? The ironic part of this is that the same large companies they are showing solidarity with are implementing anti-competitive practices to prevent smaller entrants from standing a chance. Between google and facebook's unknown algorithms, Apple's secretive approval process for iOS apps, and Amazon's practice of pushing their products up and pushing new entrants out, the large companies already act as gatekeepers for their dominion. Perhaps it's marketing, maybe it's brand loyalty, but it seems bizarre that people are more willing to give control of their lives to a large corporation than to have any government intervention.

roosterdawn 6y ago
You raise an interesting point, but I wonder if the point is less that people trust the brand than they _distrust_ the government. Do you think it might be possible that however much people distrust corporations, they at least trust the corporation to function unlike the government, which they only trust to deepen dysfunction?
- waheoo 6y ago
  Americas version of democracy is next level messed up. Start voting for people you want in power. Stop voting for the lesser evil. Yes you cant always avoid it but a functioning democracy involves a forcing of ideologies to work together through multi party systems and the resulting coalitions.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    > "Start voting for people you want in power. Stop voting for the lesser evil." I can do that, but I can't make other people do that. So your "advice" isn't really actionable is it?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Only a minority of people view the candidates they’ll be voting for as “the lesser evil.” For the rest, they’re voting for the person they want in power. The recent Democratic primary is proof of that. There are a lot of progressives in the Democratic coalition who will vote for Biden because he’s the “lesser evil.” But all those voters who woke up at the last minute and drove Biden to a decisive victory did so because that’s who they wanted. They want someone to basically maintain the status quo and make modest changes, and do so without the racist tweets.

tinyhouse 6y ago

This guy made millions from working at big tech including Amazon & Google. Now that he's retiring comfortably he wants to break them up. Hypocrite.

goatherders 6y ago
Tend to agree. Doesnt make what he has to say untrue or invalid, but I do think the optics are not ideal.
netsharc 6y ago
Maybe it's called finding your conscience. It can also be done belatedly, or one can be someone like Donald Trump and never admit past faults... Edit: look at all the pious people downvoting me. Sure, I bet you're all morally superior to him!
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  Maybe if he worked at Google & Amazon in his twenties. I doubt it given that he worked there in his 50s/60s.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
Who would be an acceptable person to call for breaking up Amazon, then? If he were a low-level Amazon employee, they would say, "Bah, he's just jealous he doesn't have a killer salary like the rock-star developers at Amazon." If he were a non-Amazon employee, they would say, "He's just jealous of Amazon's market strength."
sys_64738 6y ago
He had an ax to grind when he left Oracle too. There's history here.
danaris 6y ago
At least according to his own blog posts, he tried to work from within to change Amazon for the better, to the extent that was feasible without making his own life a living hell. When things went too far for him, he resigned in protest. And yes, it is a privilege that he is able to do so and still live comfortably, but that doesn't make it a meaningless gesture. Now that he's no longer in a position where saying what he really wants Amazon to be/do/have done to it will lead to those around him vilifying him on a daily basis, he's using his privilege, and his voice, which speaks louder than most in the tech world, to try to get that to happen.

RegnisGnaw 6y ago

Here's a question, we're in a globally competitive marketplace. Wouldn't forcing a breakup of Amazon hurt its competitiveness globally against companies like Alibaba or JD?

almost_usual 6y ago
I’d doubt the US government would allow another Chinese monopoly to take the place of an American one.
- logicchains 6y ago
  What's it going to do, ban it? Is there any precedent for the US permanently banning successful foreign retailers? Even if it did, that still wouldn't stop the Chinese company taking a dominant place in the rest of the world, like Google, Facebook and Amazon do now. Which would represent a massive loss to US intelligence-gathering capabilities and soft power.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    What you’re arguing is “monopolies are OK because China does it”. So what happens if China gets more powerful because they’re authoritarian? Does that mean US authoritarianism is OK if it keeps the US #1? It’s a slippery slope and I’m not on board.
    - logicchains 6y ago
      It's not about okay or not okay, it's just pointing out that if the US government breaks up Amazon, it may just be replaced by a Chinese monopoly, ultimately achieving no big benefit, but hurting America's geopolitical interests. Outcomes matter, not intentions.
      - almost_usual 6y ago
        If tensions rise to that degree we’ll be even deeper into a Cold War where you’ll see other countries pick sides with who they do business with.

moneywoes 6y ago

What were the circumstances in which standard oil was broken up?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Standard Oil did a lot that was forward-thinking business. For example, oil shipped in barrels - real wooden barrels. Standard Oil got in the barrel-making business because they were having trouble getting enough barrels to run their business. (Today we call that "vertical integration"; they probably just thought of it as doing what they needed to do to keep their business running.) You don't build a business like Standard Oil just by being evil. You have to be able to execute really well. But Standard Oil did a lot that was shady, too. For example, they shipped so much oil (by rail) that they demanded a kickback from railroads, or they'd take their business to the competing railroad. (This was back when there were enough railroads that there was competition.) That means that Standard Oil was paying lower freight rates (net) than other oil companies. (I think at this time rail rates were controlled by the government, so the kickbacks were probably illegal from that standing, not just from the extortion involved.) Standard Oil then went a step further. They demanded kickbacks not just for their own oil traffic, but for their competitors' oil shipments as well. If you were a competitor, you weren't going to be able to prosper in that kind of an environment. Then Standard Oil would offer to buy your business...

sub7 6y ago

Would love to see more people who haven't already profited from the evil they currently attack. Roger McNamee is another case. These guys make a shitload of blood money, get guilty and think that writing a blog post absolves everything.

steelframe 6y ago

Now that he no longer has to worry about being fired, Tim is freely tossing around anti-competitive trigger words that anybody who has gone through corporate training at a FAANG company should instantly recognize. "In effect cloud computing is providing the resources that Amazon is using to crush whole sectors of the retail economy."

buboard 6y ago

During the precambrian era of the internet , when valuations were still small , companies like amazon and their competitors could get away with a lot , from bad security to piracy, to counterfeits, to fraud. back then metallica were the baddies and napster the good guys, today it would be the opposite. No amount of government intervention will change the monopolistic nature of the Single Market of the internet. What could enable competition is deregulation

kpmcc 6y ago

Don't break Amazon up. Nationalize Amazon. Use all the data they collect to make supply chains more effective/efficient, move us closer to a planned economy.

wisemanwillhear 6y ago
I would argue that it would most likely become another bureaucracy where people jockey for position and power with efficiency being given little more than lip service. Such bureaucracies are difficult to kill or replace.
scarface74 6y ago
Because the government really runs efficiently. We should really want the government to have access to our data. What could possibly go wrong?