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> There's an important difference between "capturing market share" and "capturing too much the market share." No. Not in the economics of antitrust. There is

> There's an important difference between "capturing market share" and "capturing too much the market share." No. Not in the economics of antitrust. There is no "too much market share" threshold. Unless consumer welfare is harmed there is no reason to complain that a firm is "too big." > From my experience as a customer, Amazon's e-commerce operation hasn't improved much (e.g. their search is still as shitty as ever) and has arguably regressed in many ways (e.g. more shady products and fake reviews) in the last decade. That's pretty strong signal to me that they're not under enough competitive pressure. So go elsewhere! That's how competition should work. Among your other alternatives are Walmart and Target, which have quite robust online operations. Amazon is not plausibly a monopoly.

int_19h 5y ago
The "consumer welfare" standard is a fairly recent (1980s) reinterpretation, and the switch to it happened because of large business lobbying. The original intent of American trust-busting laws was very much to prevent capturing so much market share that competition becomes irrelevant. https://promarket.org/2019/09/05/how-robert-bork-fathered-the-new-gilded-age/ https://promarket.org/2019/09/05/how-robert-bork-fathered-th... And that original interpretation was what worked on the original monopolies (oil etc). The sooner we get back to that, the better.
tablespoon 5y ago
> No. Not in the economics of antitrust. There is no "too much market share" threshold. Unless consumer welfare is harmed there is no reason to complain that a firm is "too big." Consumers are harmed by a "too big" firm that's under little to no pressure to improve its products. The retort to that usually "wait a few decades until the market sorts that out," but frankly, I could be dead by then. Another poster addressed how the "consumer welfare" standard is not so much an economic argument, but rather a legal enforcement framework. I see little mechanism for consumer welfare to be harmed by the creation of multiple successor companies that all share the same successful formula of the "too big" firm but now have to compete with one another.

int_19h 5y ago

The "consumer welfare" standard is a fairly recent (1980s) reinterpretation, and the switch to it happened because of large business lobbying. The original intent of American trust-busting laws was very much to prevent capturing so much market share that competition becomes irrelevant. https://promarket.org/2019/09/05/how-robert-bork-fathered-the-new-gilded-age/ https://promarket.org/2019/09/05/how-robert-bork-fathered-th... And that original interpretation was what worked on the original monopolies (oil etc). The sooner we get back to that, the better.

tablespoon 5y ago

> No. Not in the economics of antitrust. There is no "too much market share" threshold. Unless consumer welfare is harmed there is no reason to complain that a firm is "too big." Consumers are harmed by a "too big" firm that's under little to no pressure to improve its products. The retort to that usually "wait a few decades until the market sorts that out," but frankly, I could be dead by then. Another poster addressed how the "consumer welfare" standard is not so much an economic argument, but rather a legal enforcement framework. I see little mechanism for consumer welfare to be harmed by the creation of multiple successor companies that all share the same successful formula of the "too big" firm but now have to compete with one another.