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Yes, but the argument is that drop-shippers aren’t really producing any value. It’s not like they’re putting banners over their product pics saying “hey, you k

Yes, but the argument is that drop-shippers aren’t really producing any value. It’s not like they’re putting banners over their product pics saying “hey, you know you can buy this exact same product for like half the price on alibaba if you’re willing to wait a couple more weeks for it right?”. I don’t like Amazon consolidating this much power either but if they can push you out of your business that easily you weren’t the critical component of it.

BizarroLand 3y ago
Show me a business that Amazon couldn't destroy just for kicks. Also, it's not like you have any choices. If you manufacture your products yourself, you have to fund a massive venture to handle the workload. If you outsource the products, then the companies you pay to manufacture your stuff can easily make knockoffs and then let drop shippers undercut you with inferior versions of your own products. Look at a lot of the stuff for sale on Temu for instance. There are hundreds if not thousands of products that were invented, tested, and designed by Western companies that you can now buy a reasonable facsimile of on Temu for a quarter of the price. This includes art work, enamel pins, battery packs, woodworking tools. You're on a hard path either way, but if you make it to the point where you have a standout product knowing that at the final step Amazon can easily step in and price you out of existence, even if they had to take a loss on it just to destroy you, they could and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. That should be broken up. Monopolies are bad. Monopsonies are bad. They are bad for the country, bad for the people, and bad for the flow of money. I hope we see record fines against them and that everyone affected by this gets to be part of an earth shattering nuclear verdict.
- danielmarkbruce 3y ago
  Apple Iphone, airpods, ipad, macbook. Google search. Coke. Boeing. Caterpillar. Goldman Sachs. AirBnB. Exxon. AutoDesk. BlackRock. CME. Costco. JP Morgan Chase. Mastercard, Visa, Nike, TSMC and a thousand others. They started out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors. The idea that they'd make it easy for competitors using their infrastructure to beat them makes zero sense.
  - thghtihadanacct 3y ago
    Those are good ones but i was thinking of local stuff like grocery (which they tried and are currently failing) and gas (not that i use it). Also, real services like plumbing, electric, vehicle maint. ... Angies list got that corner ;)
    - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
      The list is extremely long as you say. Amazon isn't good at much except cheap third party stuff made by contract manufacturers in china, books, and AWS.
  - eru 3y ago
    How did Goldman Sachs '[start] out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors'? Or am I misunderstanding you?
    - whoknew1122 3y ago
      The 'they' here is Amazon. This is how it should be read: "Amazon started out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors. The idea that they'd make it easy for competitors using their infrastructure to beat them makes zero sense.
    - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
      Bad use of pronouns on my part. As another comment pointed out, I should have written "Amazon".
      - eru 3y ago
        OK, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    Most people responded by providing a logical response to my argument while discarding the semantics. Semantically, what company that (Relies on Amazon to operate) couldn't they destroy on a whim?
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
  It’s not connecting for me how breaking up monopolies is going to stop Chinese clones of Western products from winning price wars. It might change how the margin gets carved up between the people who make the clones and various middlemen but how would it stop the overall trend of cloned products?
  - eru 3y ago
    We should encourage more price wars. They are good for customers.
    - chii 3y ago
      Except once the price war is over, the consolidation of market share to one or a few players means that there is a good chance of monopoly pricing. Unless, if the price wars are never over.
      - eru 3y ago
        > Except once the price war is over, the consolidation of market share to one or a few players means that there is a good chance of monopoly pricing. Almost never happens like that.
        j16sdiz 3y ago
        It always happen like that. That's why there are anti-dump rules on international trades.
        tonyarkles 3y ago
        Heh, a couple of years ago (maybe true still?) Canada had a 99%! tariff on aluminum extrusion from China. And it was still cheaper than domestically sourced material at twice the price.
        eru 3y ago
        Alas, no. Just because there are certain rules, and just because people say that those rules are for a specific reason, doesn't imply any actual causality between the reasons given and the rule existing. Especially anti-dumping rules are most often just exploited as a tool to get a competitor in trouble.
- 8note 3y ago
  I don't think Amazon could destroy apple or Walmart just for kicks. Aramco? Air Canada? Samsung? Memory Express? Digikey? McMaster Carr? McDonald's? The Big R? Cantillion? Texas Instruments? "Show me a business" is quite vague
  - berniedurfee 3y ago
    Why not McMaster Carr or even Digikey? I’m sure Amazon has put a sizable dent in their sales without even really trying. Amazon now has special search tools for buying fasteners that make it easier to find exactly what you need. Prices are cheap, risk is high, but prices are cheap.
    - lostapathy 3y ago
      > Amazon now has special search tools for buying fasteners that make it easier to find exactly what you need Easier but they are no McMaster, by a long shot.
      - callalex 3y ago
        I have a lot of friends in the manufacturing business that range from self-employed to military-backed conglomerates. None of them use this tool. Are they all Luddite idiots, or is this Amazon search tool, backed by their swiss-cheese supply chain, just not that useful?
        tyingq 3y ago
        I think it's the same as the overall enshitification of all products and product quality. Consumers now value cheap fast shipping and low prices over everything else. Amazon delivers that, with the tradeoffs in product quality, support, etc. Other things are low quality too, like the product listings themselves. Often, for example, the listed dimensions or other specs (thread type, grade strength, etc) are missing or just wrong. That's much less true for sites like McMaster. But nobody values that anymore.
        3y ago
- zdragnar 3y ago
  According to Amazon's rebuttal to the charges, 80% of all retail is still brick-and-mortar. Amazon has tried it a few times, but remains essentially an online only service. If your business depends on potential competitors for it's existence, then being eventually forced out seems like a pretty natural conclusion.
- gmd63 3y ago
  We're reaching the point in the economy where racing to the lowest cost, such as Temu, comes with great damage to the world. It's spyware that collects data on the american consumer across applications, and the products are made with illegal forced labor. If people keep choosing to reward dishonest cheaters and criminals just to get something for lower cost, we are not in a good place. And either cheating or disguising the true nature of your company is becoming the easiest way to stand out in a commoditized world. More important than how you vote is how you buy.
pyrale 3y ago
> if they can push you out of your business that easily you weren’t the critical component of it. Alternative suggestion: modern monopolistic corporations are disproportionately powerful. If they can topple a country to sell bananas cheaper, they sure as hell can kill a small business, no matter how relevant that business is.
desert_rue 3y ago
These aren’t drop shippers. They are importing the product and paying to store that product before a sale is made. The shop is taking on a risk that the inventory won’t sell, and the customer gets the product far faster.

BizarroLand 3y ago

Show me a business that Amazon couldn't destroy just for kicks. Also, it's not like you have any choices. If you manufacture your products yourself, you have to fund a massive venture to handle the workload. If you outsource the products, then the companies you pay to manufacture your stuff can easily make knockoffs and then let drop shippers undercut you with inferior versions of your own products. Look at a lot of the stuff for sale on Temu for instance. There are hundreds if not thousands of products that were invented, tested, and designed by Western companies that you can now buy a reasonable facsimile of on Temu for a quarter of the price. This includes art work, enamel pins, battery packs, woodworking tools. You're on a hard path either way, but if you make it to the point where you have a standout product knowing that at the final step Amazon can easily step in and price you out of existence, even if they had to take a loss on it just to destroy you, they could and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. That should be broken up. Monopolies are bad. Monopsonies are bad. They are bad for the country, bad for the people, and bad for the flow of money. I hope we see record fines against them and that everyone affected by this gets to be part of an earth shattering nuclear verdict.

danielmarkbruce 3y ago
Apple Iphone, airpods, ipad, macbook. Google search. Coke. Boeing. Caterpillar. Goldman Sachs. AirBnB. Exxon. AutoDesk. BlackRock. CME. Costco. JP Morgan Chase. Mastercard, Visa, Nike, TSMC and a thousand others. They started out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors. The idea that they'd make it easy for competitors using their infrastructure to beat them makes zero sense.
- thghtihadanacct 3y ago
  Those are good ones but i was thinking of local stuff like grocery (which they tried and are currently failing) and gas (not that i use it). Also, real services like plumbing, electric, vehicle maint. ... Angies list got that corner ;)
  - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    The list is extremely long as you say. Amazon isn't good at much except cheap third party stuff made by contract manufacturers in china, books, and AWS.
- eru 3y ago
  How did Goldman Sachs '[start] out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors'? Or am I misunderstanding you?
  - whoknew1122 3y ago
    The 'they' here is Amazon. This is how it should be read: "Amazon started out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors. The idea that they'd make it easy for competitors using their infrastructure to beat them makes zero sense.
  - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    Bad use of pronouns on my part. As another comment pointed out, I should have written "Amazon".
    - eru 3y ago
      OK, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  Most people responded by providing a logical response to my argument while discarding the semantics. Semantically, what company that (Relies on Amazon to operate) couldn't they destroy on a whim?
fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
It’s not connecting for me how breaking up monopolies is going to stop Chinese clones of Western products from winning price wars. It might change how the margin gets carved up between the people who make the clones and various middlemen but how would it stop the overall trend of cloned products?
- eru 3y ago
  We should encourage more price wars. They are good for customers.
  - chii 3y ago
    Except once the price war is over, the consolidation of market share to one or a few players means that there is a good chance of monopoly pricing. Unless, if the price wars are never over.
    - eru 3y ago
      > Except once the price war is over, the consolidation of market share to one or a few players means that there is a good chance of monopoly pricing. Almost never happens like that.
      - j16sdiz 3y ago
        It always happen like that. That's why there are anti-dump rules on international trades.
        tonyarkles 3y ago
        Heh, a couple of years ago (maybe true still?) Canada had a 99%! tariff on aluminum extrusion from China. And it was still cheaper than domestically sourced material at twice the price.
        eru 3y ago
        Alas, no. Just because there are certain rules, and just because people say that those rules are for a specific reason, doesn't imply any actual causality between the reasons given and the rule existing. Especially anti-dumping rules are most often just exploited as a tool to get a competitor in trouble.
8note 3y ago
I don't think Amazon could destroy apple or Walmart just for kicks. Aramco? Air Canada? Samsung? Memory Express? Digikey? McMaster Carr? McDonald's? The Big R? Cantillion? Texas Instruments? "Show me a business" is quite vague
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  Why not McMaster Carr or even Digikey? I’m sure Amazon has put a sizable dent in their sales without even really trying. Amazon now has special search tools for buying fasteners that make it easier to find exactly what you need. Prices are cheap, risk is high, but prices are cheap.
  - lostapathy 3y ago
    > Amazon now has special search tools for buying fasteners that make it easier to find exactly what you need Easier but they are no McMaster, by a long shot.
    - callalex 3y ago
      I have a lot of friends in the manufacturing business that range from self-employed to military-backed conglomerates. None of them use this tool. Are they all Luddite idiots, or is this Amazon search tool, backed by their swiss-cheese supply chain, just not that useful?
      - tyingq 3y ago
        I think it's the same as the overall enshitification of all products and product quality. Consumers now value cheap fast shipping and low prices over everything else. Amazon delivers that, with the tradeoffs in product quality, support, etc. Other things are low quality too, like the product listings themselves. Often, for example, the listed dimensions or other specs (thread type, grade strength, etc) are missing or just wrong. That's much less true for sites like McMaster. But nobody values that anymore.
      - 3y ago
zdragnar 3y ago
According to Amazon's rebuttal to the charges, 80% of all retail is still brick-and-mortar. Amazon has tried it a few times, but remains essentially an online only service. If your business depends on potential competitors for it's existence, then being eventually forced out seems like a pretty natural conclusion.
gmd63 3y ago
We're reaching the point in the economy where racing to the lowest cost, such as Temu, comes with great damage to the world. It's spyware that collects data on the american consumer across applications, and the products are made with illegal forced labor. If people keep choosing to reward dishonest cheaters and criminals just to get something for lower cost, we are not in a good place. And either cheating or disguising the true nature of your company is becoming the easiest way to stand out in a commoditized world. More important than how you vote is how you buy.

pyrale 3y ago

> if they can push you out of your business that easily you weren’t the critical component of it. Alternative suggestion: modern monopolistic corporations are disproportionately powerful. If they can topple a country to sell bananas cheaper, they sure as hell can kill a small business, no matter how relevant that business is.

desert_rue 3y ago

These aren’t drop shippers. They are importing the product and paying to store that product before a sale is made. The shop is taking on a risk that the inventory won’t sell, and the customer gets the product far faster.