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> If your prediction is that this will result in a welfare loss to consumers I would ask that you offer some evidence. For what it's worth a company that is v

> If your prediction is that this will result in a welfare loss to consumers I would ask that you offer some evidence. For what it's worth a company that is valued at between 1.5 and 2 trillion usd has to come with evidence of how it isn't a monopoly/abusing its monopoly position, we can't reasonably talk about a "free market" when those numbers are involved. I'm not an economist and I'm not good with remembering names, but I do seem to remember that there was more than one economist in the past who said that one of the few ways of getting/acquiring "value" is to reach a monopoly position. $1.5 trillion is a hell lot of value.

huitzitziltzin 5y ago
> For what it's worth a company that is valued at between 1.5 and 2 trillion usd has to come with evidence of how it isn't a monopoly/abusing its monopoly position, There is no good evidence I'm aware of which suggests that Amazon is a monopoly or anything like one in any market I'm aware of: certainly not in retail to consumers, nor in AWS (to pick a frequent target of criticism that I see on this site). If you have evidence which suggests Amazon is a monopolist in some market it competes in, please cite it. Amazon is large because it is successful. It is successful because it generally offers products cheaply and delivers them quickly. Period. That is exactly the case that you do not want antitrust law to punish. Antitrust should preserve competition while not punishing successful firms. It is indeed true that one way to become valuable is to acquire a monopoly position in a market. That is not the only way. And it is not the way that Amazon has become such a valuable company.
bhupy 5y ago
It feels like the aversion to the "trillion" market value is strictly psychological in response to an arbitrary order of magnitude. Keep in mind that the total value of all US companies combined as of March 2021 is $49 trillion (https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/); https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/); Amazon represents just 4% of that. If we were to try to define Amazon's market, there's no reasonable definition you could come up with in which Amazon holds more than a 40% market share (https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/10/31/market-definitions-and-tech-monopolies https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/10/31/market-de...).
- jbullock35 5y ago
  The linked article allows that Amazon has much more than a 40% share of certain "segments": > Amazon has well over half of US book sales, and probably three quarters of ebook sales. So if we’re arguing about how Amazon runs its books business, it unquestionably has market dominance. You have to pull out a segment, not the whole company. To speak more generally, my understanding is that arguments that Amazon is a monopolist are stronger when we focus on Amazon Marketplace than on (say) AWS, partly because there are many "segments" in which almost all products are sold through Amazon. But I wish that I had more data about this particular claim.
  - bhupy 5y ago
    Thanks for the correction, you're absolutely right about the ebook market share. Notwithstanding that, I think the general point is that this is a vertical acquisition completely unrelated to that market, in which Amazon has nowhere close to that kind of market share. Keep in mind that nobody here is arguing that we ought to have a free-for-all in acquisitions and do away with the FTC entirely. It's just that the FTC doesn't operate off of knee-jerk reactions to absolute dollar amount market valuations. Instead, the level of analysis is one that's more in line with what the GP commenter has been arguing.

huitzitziltzin 5y ago

> For what it's worth a company that is valued at between 1.5 and 2 trillion usd has to come with evidence of how it isn't a monopoly/abusing its monopoly position, There is no good evidence I'm aware of which suggests that Amazon is a monopoly or anything like one in any market I'm aware of: certainly not in retail to consumers, nor in AWS (to pick a frequent target of criticism that I see on this site). If you have evidence which suggests Amazon is a monopolist in some market it competes in, please cite it. Amazon is large because it is successful. It is successful because it generally offers products cheaply and delivers them quickly. Period. That is exactly the case that you do not want antitrust law to punish. Antitrust should preserve competition while not punishing successful firms. It is indeed true that one way to become valuable is to acquire a monopoly position in a market. That is not the only way. And it is not the way that Amazon has become such a valuable company.

bhupy 5y ago

It feels like the aversion to the "trillion" market value is strictly psychological in response to an arbitrary order of magnitude. Keep in mind that the total value of all US companies combined as of March 2021 is $49 trillion (https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/); https://siblisresearch.com/data/us-stock-market-value/); Amazon represents just 4% of that. If we were to try to define Amazon's market, there's no reasonable definition you could come up with in which Amazon holds more than a 40% market share (https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/10/31/market-definitions-and-tech-monopolies https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/10/31/market-de...).

jbullock35 5y ago
The linked article allows that Amazon has much more than a 40% share of certain "segments": > Amazon has well over half of US book sales, and probably three quarters of ebook sales. So if we’re arguing about how Amazon runs its books business, it unquestionably has market dominance. You have to pull out a segment, not the whole company. To speak more generally, my understanding is that arguments that Amazon is a monopolist are stronger when we focus on Amazon Marketplace than on (say) AWS, partly because there are many "segments" in which almost all products are sold through Amazon. But I wish that I had more data about this particular claim.
- bhupy 5y ago
  Thanks for the correction, you're absolutely right about the ebook market share. Notwithstanding that, I think the general point is that this is a vertical acquisition completely unrelated to that market, in which Amazon has nowhere close to that kind of market share. Keep in mind that nobody here is arguing that we ought to have a free-for-all in acquisitions and do away with the FTC entirely. It's just that the FTC doesn't operate off of knee-jerk reactions to absolute dollar amount market valuations. Instead, the level of analysis is one that's more in line with what the GP commenter has been arguing.