6 ms·

There's no way it's that simple. It's the equivalent of telling Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target they cant sell Great Value, Kirkland, and Good & Gather. Does tha

by basch 6y ago

There's no way it's that simple. It's the equivalent of telling Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target they cant sell Great Value, Kirkland, and Good & Gather. Does that mean if Ikea mostly sells their own brand, they cant also sell some third party products. Is this rule only going to apply in the digital realm, to non physical goods? Does that mean that game publishers can no longer own game studios? Are game engines a platform, or only virtual stores? Can GameStop no longer make an inhouse game? Making a "simple" rule like that, would cascade much further than you lead on.

DenisM 6y ago
Actually I like all the rules you proposed, except that smaller players should be exempt. Not what you in mind probably, but here we are.
- basch 6y ago
  If thats the way to fix problems (I'm not convinced necessarily) thats fine. It's just not simple.
cblconfederate 6y ago
You do have some good ideas there I do find it kind of strange that Walmart has such a big monopoly in the US, but i can only assume that they are viewed positively by most people or else they 'd have faced antimonopoly action. Same with their brand products, I m sure some other brands will have complained about unfair competition , but maybe their anticompetitive behavior hasn't been egregious enough to bring the ire of politicians. Tech OTOH has been quite aggressively monopolistic in certain areas, and needlessly so, with things like the App Store(apple has way too much profit to justify keeping the app tax so high). In a way ... they make themselves look overly greedy and bring it upon themselves.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Note: while Walmart has potential antitrust concerns, it's due to how they impose pricing demands on suppliers, and possibly for their online marketplace. The fact that they sell store brands in their retail locations is immaterial, as that has been a part of retail since before third party brands existed. See, e.g., the Sears case, in which it was Sears' ability to fix prices due to its market dominance that concerned antitrust regulators. They didn't care that Sears sold store brands alongside competing products.
gamblor956 6y ago
In the retail world, the retailers buy the physical goods from the manufacturers (i.e., the store is the customer), so it's not an issue to have store brands. The big name product manufacturers are usually making the store brands as well. (Consignment is brought up a lot in this discussion as a counterpoint but it's a very small minority of product sales; generally used only for trial products.)
- basch 6y ago
  So if Apple pre-buys digital apps, and resells them with some markup and maybe a rebranding, then its ok? I would expect this sort of just-in-time prebuy to have no noticeable effect on the market. They would just be predicting whats about to become popular, and buy copies of it, days, hours, minutes before it gets popular. Could they just have one in stock at a time, and constantly buy another as their stock runs out?
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    So if Apple pre-buys digital apps, and resells them with some markup and maybe a rebranding, then its ok? No, because that doesn't change the economic reality of the transaction, that the end-user is the actual customer and Apple is just acting as a transient purchaser. If Apple were to pre-buy digital apps ahead of time, and them offer those purchased licenses on the app store, then that could be okay. But a JIT pre-buy is not a pre-buy at all. (Believe it or not, but courts are adept at piercing through sham transactions, and such transactions usually make things worse.)
    - basch 6y ago
      >If Apple were to pre-buy digital apps ahead of time, ... then that could be okay How far ahead of time is OK?
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Nobody knows, since nobody does that for digital goods. In the physical goods world, products are usually purchased months or weeks in advance of being sold.
arrosenberg 6y ago
It would be much easier to just start enforcing our existing pro-competition laws, break up the interlocking parts, the huge chain stores and end price discrimination altogether. The same paradigm works for distributors of both digital and physical goods. I don't think your questions are that hard to figure out if we just enforce the rules on the books, as they are supposed to be enforced. > Does that mean that game publishers can no longer own game studios? Yes > Are game engines a platform, or only virtual stores? Is the engine distributing physical or digital goods? If not, it is probably not an issue. > Can GameStop no longer make an inhouse game? Yes.
- Tyr42 6y ago
  Does that mean Nintendo can no longer launch the next console with Mario and Zelda games? That's 100% competing in their own store, but I also wouldn't own a switch if there wasn't a new Zelda game on it.
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    Philosophically, the hardware and software should probably be broken up. Practically, there are much bigger fish and only so many hours in the day. That wouldn't be my priority if I was a legislator or regulator.
tomrod 6y ago
This was mentioned in other comments, but retailers are not platforms. They purchase their inventory. Rather, eBay, Comcast, phone networks, Amazon Marketplace, financial market makers and similar are what people refer to as two-sided or multi-sided markets. Without the existence of a platform the market would fail to exist, in many cases.

by basch 6y ago

DenisM 6y ago

Actually I like all the rules you proposed, except that smaller players should be exempt. Not what you in mind probably, but here we are.

basch 6y ago
If thats the way to fix problems (I'm not convinced necessarily) thats fine. It's just not simple.

cblconfederate 6y ago

You do have some good ideas there I do find it kind of strange that Walmart has such a big monopoly in the US, but i can only assume that they are viewed positively by most people or else they 'd have faced antimonopoly action. Same with their brand products, I m sure some other brands will have complained about unfair competition , but maybe their anticompetitive behavior hasn't been egregious enough to bring the ire of politicians. Tech OTOH has been quite aggressively monopolistic in certain areas, and needlessly so, with things like the App Store(apple has way too much profit to justify keeping the app tax so high). In a way ... they make themselves look overly greedy and bring it upon themselves.

gamblor956 6y ago
Note: while Walmart has potential antitrust concerns, it's due to how they impose pricing demands on suppliers, and possibly for their online marketplace. The fact that they sell store brands in their retail locations is immaterial, as that has been a part of retail since before third party brands existed. See, e.g., the Sears case, in which it was Sears' ability to fix prices due to its market dominance that concerned antitrust regulators. They didn't care that Sears sold store brands alongside competing products.

gamblor956 6y ago

In the retail world, the retailers buy the physical goods from the manufacturers (i.e., the store is the customer), so it's not an issue to have store brands. The big name product manufacturers are usually making the store brands as well. (Consignment is brought up a lot in this discussion as a counterpoint but it's a very small minority of product sales; generally used only for trial products.)

basch 6y ago
So if Apple pre-buys digital apps, and resells them with some markup and maybe a rebranding, then its ok? I would expect this sort of just-in-time prebuy to have no noticeable effect on the market. They would just be predicting whats about to become popular, and buy copies of it, days, hours, minutes before it gets popular. Could they just have one in stock at a time, and constantly buy another as their stock runs out?
- gamblor956 6y ago
  So if Apple pre-buys digital apps, and resells them with some markup and maybe a rebranding, then its ok? No, because that doesn't change the economic reality of the transaction, that the end-user is the actual customer and Apple is just acting as a transient purchaser. If Apple were to pre-buy digital apps ahead of time, and them offer those purchased licenses on the app store, then that could be okay. But a JIT pre-buy is not a pre-buy at all. (Believe it or not, but courts are adept at piercing through sham transactions, and such transactions usually make things worse.)
  - basch 6y ago
    >If Apple were to pre-buy digital apps ahead of time, ... then that could be okay How far ahead of time is OK?
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      Nobody knows, since nobody does that for digital goods. In the physical goods world, products are usually purchased months or weeks in advance of being sold.

arrosenberg 6y ago

It would be much easier to just start enforcing our existing pro-competition laws, break up the interlocking parts, the huge chain stores and end price discrimination altogether. The same paradigm works for distributors of both digital and physical goods. I don't think your questions are that hard to figure out if we just enforce the rules on the books, as they are supposed to be enforced. > Does that mean that game publishers can no longer own game studios? Yes > Are game engines a platform, or only virtual stores? Is the engine distributing physical or digital goods? If not, it is probably not an issue. > Can GameStop no longer make an inhouse game? Yes.

Tyr42 6y ago
Does that mean Nintendo can no longer launch the next console with Mario and Zelda games? That's 100% competing in their own store, but I also wouldn't own a switch if there wasn't a new Zelda game on it.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  Philosophically, the hardware and software should probably be broken up. Practically, there are much bigger fish and only so many hours in the day. That wouldn't be my priority if I was a legislator or regulator.

tomrod 6y ago

This was mentioned in other comments, but retailers are not platforms. They purchase their inventory. Rather, eBay, Comcast, phone networks, Amazon Marketplace, financial market makers and similar are what people refer to as two-sided or multi-sided markets. Without the existence of a platform the market would fail to exist, in many cases.