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Has a single law review article done more to propel anyone’s career or drive policy than the Amazon Antitrust Paradox?
by bradj 5y ago
Has a single law review article done more to propel anyone’s career or drive policy than the Amazon Antitrust Paradox?
- elefanten 5y agoIt's quite silly and not the greatest look for the country. I mean, to some people it is the greatest look -- the DEI story and the heroic "brilliant youth" narrative. But appointing someone so inexperienced to such a high office is not something you do you if you are serious about governing.
- an_opabinia 5y agoHow do you personally benefit from an Amazon with fewer competitors? I’m not sure if even ordinary people who work for Amazon benefit. You’re complaining about someone who represents your interests, as opposed to representing the interests of someone you’ll never be, a billionaire.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoAmazon has many retail competitors. Maybe they have pricing power in AWS, but otherwise, I do not see evidence of them having control of the retail goods market. Even for AWS, they have Microsoft and Google as competitors and a few other companies too.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y agoAmazon is in such a monopoly position that it is able to force sellers to cover the price of prime shipping (incorporating the shipping price into the display price) and then penalizes their display rank when they list lower prices on websites where shipping is separate from product price. Forcing suppliers to raise prices on unrelated sales is a classic monopoly move, like when MSFT forced OEMs to pay for Windows licenses on computers sold without operating systems.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoAnd those sellers cannot go to Target or Walmart or Home Depot or advertise their own website? We have Apple Pay, Google Pay, Paypal making it very simple to pay for things with a simple click, just like Amazon. Amazon has inertia, but it’s not exactly in a high barrier business. Walmart supplanted Kmart, and Amazon was able to gain share from Walmart. The switching cost is visiting a different website. If you have a good product at a price people we willing to pay, the internet makes it very possible to survive without any big retailer’s help. The bigger problem is probably someone cloning it but with 50% cheaper materials and selling it for 70% of your price, one that I’m sure many sellers on Amazon’s flea market are aware of.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y agoThey can advertise and sell on other websites, but if they advertise below the prices they advertise for on Amazon, then Amazon pushes them out of the search results box. Something like 90% of Amazon sales happen due to products being put in that box.
- fortenforge 5y agoWhat? The whole point of "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" is that we should abandon the "consumer welfare" standard. Meaning that we should gut Amazon even though it provides enormous benefits to consumers in the form of low prices. Lina Khan may represent the interests of Amazon's competitors, but she certainly doesn't represent the interests of consumers.
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoThe problem with the "consumer welfare" standard is that it traditionally only considers a single variable: Cost. But consumer welfare can and should extend beyond that. But if you try to get customer service from many of these monopolies, you'll see plenty of consumers falling through the cracks. Google abuses people's privacy, eliminates competitors, kills off services people rely on, provides literally no customer service... but because their core services are "free", the consumer welfare standard is often considered inadequate to deal with an absolutely reprehensible and societally harmful company. And what's really crazy is: Competition tends to force companies to compete on treating consumers well. Protecting competing businesses protects consumer welfare pretty darn well, and it provides room for innovation which stagnates when a single company dominates a field.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago> get customer service from many of these monopolies, you'll see plenty of consumers falling through the cracks That's true of many non-monopolies too. And Amazon is widely known to have pretty good service. Conversely, no cellular company has ever had a monopoly in the US but a number of them are famed for poor customer service.
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoI can call Verizon or Comcast right now and get someone on the line in minutes. Usually they can solve my problem too. Get Google on the phone though. (Amazon actually does deserve credit here, their customer service isn't the worst, by any means. But they have a litany of other issues, like a work environment where people have to pee in bottles to make quotas...)
- Apocryphon 5y agoWho are some alternatives in the antitrust space, then? Elizabeth Warren?
- arcticfox 5y agoSince when are 32-year-olds "so inexperienced"? Maybe she's got different experience from prior appointees but 10+ years of high quality experience is IMO, more than enough. Most people are at the top of their game at that age.
- bgorman 5y agoShe has been out of law school for 4 years.
- akomtu 5y agoTo play the DEI's advocate I'll call this sexism.
- vitus 5y agoAdditionally: while 32 might set a new record, it's not by _that_ much -- Collier became chairman at 34 in 1976.
- lupire 5y agoFor better or for worse, the law is much more complicated now than in 1976.
- rpdillon 5y agoI get where you're coming from, "so inexperienced" is probably overstating it. But she's been out of law school for four years, and I feel like saying most folks are at their best then discounts all the experience and learning that come from working another 30 years in the field (for, say, a 62-year old).
- elefanten 5y ago4 years out of law school is what I was referencing. I stand by my phrasing. She had (presuming usual timelines) 3 years of work between undergrad and law school. She went from law school student to law school associate professor (on the strength of her viral rewview article). She has 0 non-academic work experience and will now be regulating entire industries. In context, that's "so inexperienced".
- kemitchell 5y agoI've met Lina Khan. Silly doesn't come to mind.
- bobsil1 5y agoOne of SpaceX’s rocket leads was 27 at their first successful launch.
- ROARosen 5y agoAnd how is that comparable with an appointment to the number one top position in the authority over thousands of regulations governing thousands of companies etc. Also I think i's safe to assume you don't just "get appointed" to the lead team in SpaceX you need to actually "show" that you have what it takes. I'm not saying she won't be good, I'm just asking how can we trust?
- ldbooth 5y agoAt least she's not on the backend of her mental stamina. +1 for being hungry. Unlike congress, who today ignored the homeless ( or pick your) crises to make Juneteenth an official holiday. I'd like to see a lot of under 40 year olds governing if that is the result of "experience".
- selimthegrim 5y agoI suppose they’d rather have Feinstein in charge
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JoeJonathan 5y agoIt's not like she was dragged in off the street. She's an associate professor at Columbia Law.
- shbooms 5y agomore than that, she has direct experience within the FTC and related government bodies [1]: - 2018, worked as a Legal Fellow at the FTC in the office of Commissioner Rohit Chopra - 2019, began serving as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law - Lead the Democrat's congressional investigation into digital markets and lead the investigation into digital markets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan
- GoodJokes 5y agoPlease be more dismissive and patronizing of a person you know very little about. A DEI story? You are showing your insecurity.
- elefanten 5y agoIt has been explicitly trumpeted widely. The admin itself has highlighted it. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying it seems like there are narratives motivating this orthogonal to good governance. Are you saying she, with zero industry experience, is the most capable person for the job?
- GoodJokes 5y agoAll I am saying is I would have no grounds to make a decision on her hire, because like you I know very little about her. I can name many jobs where industry experience is not important. I can do this because I can critically think and am not biased.
- nvr219 5y agoWhy, was Joseph Simons was so amazing?
- timy2shoes 5y agoAlthough it's not a review article, but maybe Bork's The Antitrust Paradox, which the Amazon Antitrust Paradox works hard to refute.
- CalChris 5y agoRobert Bork had already been Nixon's acting-Attorney General at that point. He became acting AG when AG Elliot Richardson refused Nixon's order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and instead resigned. Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus also then refused to fire Cox and resigned. Bork then became acting AG but he did not refuse to fire Cox. Bork's legal career was not propelled by any singular brilliance.
- dvtrn 5y agoBork's legal career was not propelled by any singular brilliance. Well there was the whole Blockbuster rental history thing during his confirmation but that’s more like fun/interesting pub-trivia than anything necessarily “brilliant”.
- an_opabinia 5y agoI agree, there ought to be more original ideas in law, besides “Whatever earns me a plum clerkship.”
- musicale 5y ago"Whatever helps me pay off my student loans."