6 ms·

Amazon Must Be Stopped

70 points by bruceb 12y ago

spindritf 12y ago
Convenience, low prices, extensive catalogue, pleasent customer support, innovative products... Yes, we need to kill the beast. Maybe pander and bait some clicks in the meantime. I particularly liked the part where threatening Hachette's business is threatening democracy. What about shitty journalism? Seems like a much bigger threat to me.
- mercurial 12y ago
  > Convenience, low prices, extensive catalogue, pleasent customer support, innovative products... Yes, we need to kill the beast. Maybe pander and bait some clicks in the meantime. Don't you think the article raises a number of valid points? While Hachette is little better than Amazon, having an effective monopoly on such a large market is definitely not healthy. The fact that they are exploiting their workers doesn't help.
spacefight 12y ago
Brilliant piece, also in comparison to Walmart: "Meanwhile, both companies have studiously avoided unionization and treat their workers miserably. In one famous incident, Amazon hired paramedics to revive heat-sick employees at a Pennsylvania warehouse rather than buy an air-conditioning unit."
- pjmlp 12y ago
  They also use lame processes here in Germany, by hiring people from the job centers in a situation that they cannot reject offers, with a salary that barely gets to the end of the month and bad working conditions.
- icebraining 12y ago
  I think that's a great reason to force them to indemnify their workers and ex-workers, and to provide safe working conditions. I don't see how it justifies breaking Amazon up. It's not like smaller firms don't often do the same - for example, the Chinese restaurant workers we read about just a few days ago weren't exactly hired by multinationals.
- tzs 12y ago
  The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a case involving Amazon working conditions, although the workers involved are actually employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc., which provides staffers for Amazon warehouses. The workers are required to go through security screening at the end of their shifts, to make sure they aren't stealing from Amazon. There are only two check stations for the entire warehouse they work in, and it often takes workers 25 minutes to get through the line and leave. They are required to clock out BEFORE they get in line, so that's 25 unpaid minutes. The workers won in the 9th Circuit, and that spawned several class action suits seeking compensation for about 100000 workers who are subject to post-shift security screenings. CVS Pharmacy and Apple are also facing such suits. The company is arguing that time waiting in line for a security check is similar to commuting time, which companies do not have to pay for. That law is that employers have to pay for things that are "integral and indispensable part of the principal activities" of the job. Several Justices seemed skeptical that this covered security screenings on exit--it's not a principal activity of the job. The lawyer for the employees argued that an employee is hired to do what he's told to do, and so should be paid for things that the employer requires him to do. Some Justices did seem receptive to the worker's case. Justice Kagan noted that what makes Amazon special is that they have a better inventory control system than their competitors, and it is very important for them to know where everything is. Merchandise security is a principle activity of Amazon's operations, and so the security checks would be a principle activity of the job. The Obama administration is siding with Amazon.
  - humanrebar 12y ago
    Not germane to this case, but I've recently started to wonder why employers aren't more responsible for commute times. There aren't really incentives to situate places of employment in affordable neighborhoods. Long commute times end up being a regressive drain on the time of employees, and employers bear no responsibility to alleviate the problem though they are complicit in its creation.
ivanche 12y ago
Ain't Amazon unstoppable by now?
- bruceb 12y ago
  In some areas maybe. Seems newegg and Tiger Direct have similar prices still though for electronics. I wonder what the difference in sales volume is. What are newegg's logistics like, anyone know?
tsotha 12y ago
>Amazon has left a trail of destruction—competitors undercut, suppliers squeezed... We normally call that progress. That "trail of destruction" is leaving money in the hands of millions of people who used to be captive to the local brick and mortar retailers.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Are those the same people whose jobs were lost due to Walmart and Amazon? Or who prefer to have a vibrant local downtown?
  - facepalm 12y ago
    If you want a job, why not just dig a hole in the street and try to get paid for it? That would not be different from keeping a job that is not needed anymore alive just for the sake of the job. If you feel bad about Amazon, donate 10% of what you buy at Amazon to a "hole digger foundation" which pays people who lost their jobs because of Amazon to dig holes.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - lelandbatey 12y ago
        If that's what consumers decide they want, then I don't think its wrong to say that is their purpose. It's kinda sad to see them go, but that's OK. We no longer see as many of the beautiful locomotives as we used to, even though they where excellently engineered with tremendous history. But that's OK, since they've been replaced by other means of transportation/shipping. Things change, sometimes that sucks. We all move on and try to make a more awesome world in other ways.
    - dkarapetyan 12y ago
      Incidentally smile.amazon.com does this for charities. Whatever you buy from that link a certain percentage of the sale goes to your chosen charity.
dkarapetyan 12y ago
Hmm, then we also need to stop Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Dropbox, TimeWarner Cable, military industrial complex, some big oil companies, a few hedge funds, a few banks, etc. Probably might as well call it quits with this whole capitalism thing. In all seriousness though why don't any of these articles ever address the underlying issue of why this stuff happens. If you have a certain kind of economic system then some things are inevitable. It is the exact analog of traffic on highways. It is just an emergent property of the system.
- rtpg 12y ago
  that's why anti-trust laws exist. If we break them up as they grow, we still reap the benefits of economic growth without the dangers of the monopoly.
  - dkarapetyan 12y ago
    Sure but that still doesn't address the actual problem and from a certain viewpoint two companies doing the same thing is less efficient than a large company doing it because of economies of scale. So which is it? Do we want efficiency or fairness?
    - jamespo 12y ago
      Maybe we should no longer have elections as there's a lot of duplication between > 1 political parties too
      - bibonix 12y ago
        Indeed :)
      - dkarapetyan 12y ago
        There is an entire field of mathematics dedicated to answering such questions and the answer is a lot more complicated than your simple quip. In fact the way most democracies are set up they are theoretically much less optimal than they could be and in some cases are as good as dictatorial systems because of susceptibility to being rigged. As usual wikipedia is a pretty good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system.
VexXtreme 12y ago
It seems as though the author has a problem with capitalism and free markets in general. Yes, let's abolish capitalism, allow some central bureau to fix prices and use its power of violence over actors who don't comply. Oh wait... it was attempted 90 years ago and it didn't work out.
- mercurial 12y ago
  Are markets where one player enjoys a monopoly "free"? > Oh wait... it was tried 90 years ago and it didn't work out. Whether the current system is working is up for debate.
  - VexXtreme 12y ago
    If a monopoly spontaneously emerges out of a free market, whereby no violence or coercion was used against other participants, then that business was simply better and more efficient at giving the market what it wants. It also doubles as a price signal to others that something in their way of doing business is inefficient and wasteful (or just not as efficient as the most efficient participant). I don't have a problem with such "monopolies", because they aren't real monopolies. As long as the market is still open to new participants, then it's not really an issue. For example, if a monopolist starts raising prices and hoarding supplies in order to artificially elevate prices, then new participants can enter the market and make money off the delta between the new prices and the old prices that made sense to the market.
    - ende 12y ago
      You touch on something important. Beyond the fact that the term monopoly gets thrown at a company without any further qualification of such a statement, there's no real thought put into how the company is using said alleged monopoly power to raise prices on consumers or create barriers to entry in the market. Amazon's prices trend downward, constantly. Amazon is also itself a market facilitator, agnostic to which products sell, so long as they sell. High quality and low prices race to the top of customer ratings. Third parties sell on Amazon as well, providing a global market for local brick and mortar shops. Further, Amazon is by far not the only website selling things on the internet. The internet is pretty great at lowering barriers to entry.
walterbell 12y ago
> ".. more attention will fall on a strange inefficiency at the heart of the business: the advances that publishing houses pay their writers. This upfront money is the economic pillar on which quality books rest, the great bulwark against dilettantism." It can't be that inefficient, since publishers are still in business and Amazon wants more of their money.
Shivetya 12y ago
I shop at both Wal-Mart and Amazon, oddly both also benefit some smaller companies I purchase from. Wal-Mart shopping centers, at least near me, have all sorts of restaurants and specialty stores I like/use/need. Amazon's market place has let me source some products that were previously difficult to find elsewhere (Skyflakes crackers for one, many other items from that side of the world could be found but not consistently or for good pricing) The book industry needs to change, I haven't come up against the dark side of Amazon's influence. I did watch for years when Apple and the publishers clearly broke the law and cheered when they got caught as I had seen prices for books I bought just sky rocket. As for how their employees are treated or their "perceived" treatment, local employment laws cover those. Avoiding unionization is not a crime and should not be held against anyone. Much of retail outside of grocery is not unionized. When the same unions hire no benefit, no union, temps to protest tell me again how they are the good guys?
facepalm 12y ago
At least for ebooks it recently occurred to me that it will probably be difficult for any ebook vendor to establish a monopoly. After all, everybody can just offer ebooks on their web site.
- equoid 12y ago
  The Kindle is attempt to do exactly that, breadth of offering and convenience is a pretty big hurdle to overcome.
- lalc 12y ago
  Right, book publishers are largely middlemen. Let the old ways die and a hundred new business models flourish.
- deong 12y ago
  It comes down to a question of definition. Is it a monopoly if there is literally zero cost to entering a market, but the market conditions make it almost certain that you'll fail? Hatchette and any other publisher could stop selling their books to Amazon tomorrow. You could still buy them in paper from loads of physical stores, and you could still buy their ebooks from dozens of places, including little-known and difficult-to-find resellers like Apple and Google. But if they lost, say, 40% of sales, would we call Amazon a monopoly? I don't know. My inclination is to be pretty conservative in applying heavy-handed regulatory remedies. That's a big hammer, and it's one I'd rather not use on a whim, and right now, I think it's still far too easy to compete with Amazon on its core business for this to be an option I'm ready for. But I'm not sure how hard it would be to convince me otherwise in the future.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    Maybe the kindle is just a desperate attempt to save some of the book business for Amazon. You are thinking too short term. Sure, maybe it will be a quasi monopoly for a while. But in the long run, why should people stick with the kindle? Other convenient devices and services will crop up making it seem very inconvenient to be tied to one vendor.
lmm 12y ago
Are we really facing "less variety of products and lower quality of the remaining ones"? I see more variety in Amazon's kindle store than I ever saw in a traditional publisher's range, and while the average quality may be lower the peaks are as high as ever. If Amazon really did undercut Diapers.com by selling at a loss, that sounds like a perfectly good case for existing antitrust laws, not something that requires executive action. For the rest, I'm happy to reap the benefits of what Amazon gives us.
- gugol 12y ago
  In my experience, Amazon almost always isn't the cheapest place to get something online.
netcan 12y ago
We have to remember that when we talking about giant companies we are talking about giant institutions, of a form and culture that has not existed in human history. The closest parallels common throughout human history are armies. I think that our 20th century paradigms have failed to understand and shape these institutions, each with their own trappings. Labour unionism, which was deeply rooted in man labour cultures and many countries' political systems was amazingly corrupt. They became their own institutions layering their own dynamics and interests into the already impossible mesh. The results were far from unanimously positive. Liberal-capitalism nurtured the concept of non natural person, corporate entities. The cultural relationship between individual, employers, consumers and investors and the institutions is grafted onto the idea that the institution is a legal person. At this point, companies are far more than risk sharing and limiting devices. They are institutions of the same gravity as churches, bureaucracies, aristocracies and such. They are entrenched. I don't mean that in a strictly accusatory sense. They are just part of the web of culture, laws, economies and everything else. First of all, we all need to have the humility to understand how little we know about how these things work. We are designed to operate within social institutions, not to build and destroy them each generation. No one built feudalism or poleis. No one really designed the international system of nation states. No one created Danish national identity. These things just evolved. Those are the kinds of things we're dealing with. I don't know what is the right way of dealing with Amazon, Google or Walmart as a (global) society. I think I would be more comfortable if the times brought around a period of miniaturization, where these mega institutions gave way to hundreds or thousands of smaller ones. For Amazon, what's keeping them huge is (a) dispatch & postal delivery is surprisingly hard. (b) The chain between design, manufacture, marketing and delivery is surprisingly cumbersome. Amazon is a company that does what a market would do in a world fewer impediments. Maybe the next few decades will make global delivery trivial. This would enable products to come directly from suppliers and simplify the chain. Software developers once had to sell software through software stores. The modern incarnations of software store is a relatively thinner layer. Producers are closer to consumers and the intermediaries are really just market makers. PS: Price controls have a bad track record dating back to Roman times.
- davidw 12y ago
  > For Amazon, what's keeping them huge is ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm
lake99 12y ago
I'm not American, and had not heard of New Republic. But reading this article, I think New Proletariat sounds like a more honest name for their magazine.
zefei 12y ago
Modern society always progresses at the cost of old, inefficient jobs, while redistributing the wealth from those destroyed markets. The only concern is whether the redistribution of wealth is towards equality or inequality. As long as wealth is transferred to more people, the overall gain of buying power will eventually create a better economy. The problem is really not about monopoly, but whether the beneficiaries of these business contain a larger population.
Wintamute 12y ago
But in truth doesn't Amazon act more as a economic lubricant? Connecting consumers with all sorts of industries and businesses all across the world? For every industry or business that's "trampled" aren't an equal or greater number of businesses benefiting? It's like a shit hot postal service with a great website that's hugely profitable and ploughs most of its profits into making the service even better. It renews my faith in the human race to get big stuff done, and done well. I'd say we need to keep an eye on it, especially its tax affairs, but for now its probably best just to wait and see what happens ...
golemotron 12y ago
The solution is some variation of Richard Stallman's proposal for banks that are 'Too Big To Fail.' http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/02/04/fixing-too-big-to-fail/ http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/02/04/fixing-too-... Economies of scale are good but I think we're entering a world where the negatives are growing too rapidly. If the economy consisted of more small companies, there would be more competition, more employment, and more innovation. And, per Stallman, it can all be rigged with the tax code.
higherpurpose 12y ago
If you're so worried about Amazon monopoly, then get them to stop using DRM. Without DRM, we can take our (e)books anywhere.
thelettere 12y ago
Amen. Most of Amazon's nearly 100k large workforce are warehouse workers, running around all day like rats in a maze with no real break, no opportunity to connect to other humans, no autonomy and no final product to be proud of. If that isn't a recipe for misery, I don't know what is. "We have much studied and much perfected the great civilised invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. Truly speaking it is not the labour that is divided; but the men: – Divided into mere segments of men – broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin. "Only in right understanding on the part of all classes of what kinds of labor are good for men, raising them & making them happy, and by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour can this evil be met." -John Ruskin
- lsaferite 12y ago
  Funny you mention "running around all day like rats in a maze" as I have a good friend that just did an Amazon warehouse tour this week. He's the CTO for a company that runs several warehouses and he commented on the fact that the pickers were actually quite slow compared to what his pickers and others he's seen do. I was surprised because I too had read many times about how the warehouse pickers have to basically run everywhere all day.
danesparza 12y ago
I disagree. They literally give me everything I want, at a reasonable price. If you have some alternatives that fit that bill, I would be willing to consider them.
atemerev 12y ago
The Age of Envy.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  Good point. We should let wealthy companies manipulate the economy because you said competitors are envious. That makes tons of sense.
schalab 12y ago
Can someone provide practical examples of how Amazon would possibly abuse their monopoly without breaching existing law, influencing the government, or opening up the market for a smaller, more agile competitor? It is strange picking on Amazon, as the barrier for entry into the online shopping industry is relatively low, and their monopoly is far less stable and enduring than what Microsoft and Google achieved.
- radmuzom 12y ago
  > barrier for entry into the online shopping industry is relatively low I was under the impression that online retail is extremely capital-intensive. Especially in the initial years, where companies use capital to undercut competitors.
fpgeek 12y ago
Oh, please. This piece is silly. Amazon's ebook "monopoly" is incredibly fragile. Either Apple or Google could squash it without breaking a sweat. Microsoft, Facebook and others could too, they'd just probably sweat a bit. None of them want to. That's not an accident. It's because Amazon isn't giving them an opening by abusing either customers or suppliers. Publishers can claim otherwise, but they're not putting their money where their mouths are. They're not walking away from Amazon, nor can they even demonstrate that they're getting clearly better terms from anyone else.
- jackgavigan 12y ago
  The problem isn't that a company has a monopoly per se, assuming that the monopoly was achieved by outperforming its competitors fairly and legally. The problem arises when a company abuses its monopoly position or, far more commonly, when an oligopoly engages in implicit collusion. As a general rule, such situations result in the suppression of competition, which leads to higher prices and a poorer product/service for the consumer.
ende 12y ago
The author appears to suffer from nostalgia bias, longing for turn of the century progressivism to reign in his old corporate foe. This same well of centralized thinking gave a brave new world eugenics, prohibition, and industrial nationalism. Antitrust is indeed an important emergency power of the government, but its utility is most often the self-corrction of errors caused by the state itself. If you want to target monopolies in this modern age, go after companies like Comcast that arise out of state induced monoploy as a matter of necessity but go unregulated beyond that. The only thing Amazon is guilty of is decreasing costs of living for millions. It is no more at fault for liss of jobs in bygone industries as Ford was for layoffs in the horse and buggy industry. The authors's argument essentially amounts to the Corporations Being All Corporationy.
johnm111888 12y ago
I disagree completely. Amazon is successful through legal means. What do you want to do? Government punishing them for being too successful? As long as there isn't regulation that prohibits market entrants --a big reason for monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th century -- I don't see exactly what someone would suggest to do. The free market is a cumulation of mutually beneficial exchanges-- its a volunteer economy. Amazon's not forcing anyone to do anything. Publisher's do business with Amazon because it benefits them. They could easily stick with Barnes and Noble. Capitalism is by no means perfect but it's the best way to distribute capital. It's the only economic system that's brought masses of people out of poverty. For someone to say government should step in and set pricings!? Force Amazon to breakup?! Government knows better than anyone else? They know the market better than the participants? Who are these people in this all-knowing government? I'd like to meet them. What industry does Amazon have monopolized anyway? 41% on new books? cool. their cheaper prices on books benefit all of americans more than it hurts the handful of publishers. Fact is monopolies are defined by if they set higher prices than would-be in a perfect competition industry. As long as prices are low -- it signals they have competition-- so don't come at me talking about how big of a monopoly they are.

70 points by bruceb 12y ago

Convenience, low prices, extensive catalogue, pleasent customer support, innovative products... Yes, we need to kill the beast. Maybe pander and bait some clicks in the meantime. I particularly liked the part where threatening Hachette's business is threatening democracy. What about shitty journalism? Seems like a much bigger threat to me.

mercurial 12y ago
> Convenience, low prices, extensive catalogue, pleasent customer support, innovative products... Yes, we need to kill the beast. Maybe pander and bait some clicks in the meantime. Don't you think the article raises a number of valid points? While Hachette is little better than Amazon, having an effective monopoly on such a large market is definitely not healthy. The fact that they are exploiting their workers doesn't help.

spacefight 12y ago

Brilliant piece, also in comparison to Walmart: "Meanwhile, both companies have studiously avoided unionization and treat their workers miserably. In one famous incident, Amazon hired paramedics to revive heat-sick employees at a Pennsylvania warehouse rather than buy an air-conditioning unit."

pjmlp 12y ago
They also use lame processes here in Germany, by hiring people from the job centers in a situation that they cannot reject offers, with a salary that barely gets to the end of the month and bad working conditions.
icebraining 12y ago
I think that's a great reason to force them to indemnify their workers and ex-workers, and to provide safe working conditions. I don't see how it justifies breaking Amazon up. It's not like smaller firms don't often do the same - for example, the Chinese restaurant workers we read about just a few days ago weren't exactly hired by multinationals.
tzs 12y ago
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a case involving Amazon working conditions, although the workers involved are actually employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc., which provides staffers for Amazon warehouses. The workers are required to go through security screening at the end of their shifts, to make sure they aren't stealing from Amazon. There are only two check stations for the entire warehouse they work in, and it often takes workers 25 minutes to get through the line and leave. They are required to clock out BEFORE they get in line, so that's 25 unpaid minutes. The workers won in the 9th Circuit, and that spawned several class action suits seeking compensation for about 100000 workers who are subject to post-shift security screenings. CVS Pharmacy and Apple are also facing such suits. The company is arguing that time waiting in line for a security check is similar to commuting time, which companies do not have to pay for. That law is that employers have to pay for things that are "integral and indispensable part of the principal activities" of the job. Several Justices seemed skeptical that this covered security screenings on exit--it's not a principal activity of the job. The lawyer for the employees argued that an employee is hired to do what he's told to do, and so should be paid for things that the employer requires him to do. Some Justices did seem receptive to the worker's case. Justice Kagan noted that what makes Amazon special is that they have a better inventory control system than their competitors, and it is very important for them to know where everything is. Merchandise security is a principle activity of Amazon's operations, and so the security checks would be a principle activity of the job. The Obama administration is siding with Amazon.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  Not germane to this case, but I've recently started to wonder why employers aren't more responsible for commute times. There aren't really incentives to situate places of employment in affordable neighborhoods. Long commute times end up being a regressive drain on the time of employees, and employers bear no responsibility to alleviate the problem though they are complicit in its creation.

ivanche 12y ago

Ain't Amazon unstoppable by now?

bruceb 12y ago
In some areas maybe. Seems newegg and Tiger Direct have similar prices still though for electronics. I wonder what the difference in sales volume is. What are newegg's logistics like, anyone know?

tsotha 12y ago

>Amazon has left a trail of destruction—competitors undercut, suppliers squeezed... We normally call that progress. That "trail of destruction" is leaving money in the hands of millions of people who used to be captive to the local brick and mortar retailers.

walterbell 12y ago
Are those the same people whose jobs were lost due to Walmart and Amazon? Or who prefer to have a vibrant local downtown?
- facepalm 12y ago
  If you want a job, why not just dig a hole in the street and try to get paid for it? That would not be different from keeping a job that is not needed anymore alive just for the sake of the job. If you feel bad about Amazon, donate 10% of what you buy at Amazon to a "hole digger foundation" which pays people who lost their jobs because of Amazon to dig holes.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - lelandbatey 12y ago
      If that's what consumers decide they want, then I don't think its wrong to say that is their purpose. It's kinda sad to see them go, but that's OK. We no longer see as many of the beautiful locomotives as we used to, even though they where excellently engineered with tremendous history. But that's OK, since they've been replaced by other means of transportation/shipping. Things change, sometimes that sucks. We all move on and try to make a more awesome world in other ways.
  - dkarapetyan 12y ago
    Incidentally smile.amazon.com does this for charities. Whatever you buy from that link a certain percentage of the sale goes to your chosen charity.

dkarapetyan 12y ago

Hmm, then we also need to stop Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Dropbox, TimeWarner Cable, military industrial complex, some big oil companies, a few hedge funds, a few banks, etc. Probably might as well call it quits with this whole capitalism thing. In all seriousness though why don't any of these articles ever address the underlying issue of why this stuff happens. If you have a certain kind of economic system then some things are inevitable. It is the exact analog of traffic on highways. It is just an emergent property of the system.

rtpg 12y ago
that's why anti-trust laws exist. If we break them up as they grow, we still reap the benefits of economic growth without the dangers of the monopoly.
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  Sure but that still doesn't address the actual problem and from a certain viewpoint two companies doing the same thing is less efficient than a large company doing it because of economies of scale. So which is it? Do we want efficiency or fairness?
  - jamespo 12y ago
    Maybe we should no longer have elections as there's a lot of duplication between > 1 political parties too
    - bibonix 12y ago
      Indeed :)
    - dkarapetyan 12y ago
      There is an entire field of mathematics dedicated to answering such questions and the answer is a lot more complicated than your simple quip. In fact the way most democracies are set up they are theoretically much less optimal than they could be and in some cases are as good as dictatorial systems because of susceptibility to being rigged. As usual wikipedia is a pretty good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system.

VexXtreme 12y ago

It seems as though the author has a problem with capitalism and free markets in general. Yes, let's abolish capitalism, allow some central bureau to fix prices and use its power of violence over actors who don't comply. Oh wait... it was attempted 90 years ago and it didn't work out.

mercurial 12y ago
Are markets where one player enjoys a monopoly "free"? > Oh wait... it was tried 90 years ago and it didn't work out. Whether the current system is working is up for debate.
- VexXtreme 12y ago
  If a monopoly spontaneously emerges out of a free market, whereby no violence or coercion was used against other participants, then that business was simply better and more efficient at giving the market what it wants. It also doubles as a price signal to others that something in their way of doing business is inefficient and wasteful (or just not as efficient as the most efficient participant). I don't have a problem with such "monopolies", because they aren't real monopolies. As long as the market is still open to new participants, then it's not really an issue. For example, if a monopolist starts raising prices and hoarding supplies in order to artificially elevate prices, then new participants can enter the market and make money off the delta between the new prices and the old prices that made sense to the market.
  - ende 12y ago
    You touch on something important. Beyond the fact that the term monopoly gets thrown at a company without any further qualification of such a statement, there's no real thought put into how the company is using said alleged monopoly power to raise prices on consumers or create barriers to entry in the market. Amazon's prices trend downward, constantly. Amazon is also itself a market facilitator, agnostic to which products sell, so long as they sell. High quality and low prices race to the top of customer ratings. Third parties sell on Amazon as well, providing a global market for local brick and mortar shops. Further, Amazon is by far not the only website selling things on the internet. The internet is pretty great at lowering barriers to entry.

walterbell 12y ago

> ".. more attention will fall on a strange inefficiency at the heart of the business: the advances that publishing houses pay their writers. This upfront money is the economic pillar on which quality books rest, the great bulwark against dilettantism." It can't be that inefficient, since publishers are still in business and Amazon wants more of their money.

Shivetya 12y ago

I shop at both Wal-Mart and Amazon, oddly both also benefit some smaller companies I purchase from. Wal-Mart shopping centers, at least near me, have all sorts of restaurants and specialty stores I like/use/need. Amazon's market place has let me source some products that were previously difficult to find elsewhere (Skyflakes crackers for one, many other items from that side of the world could be found but not consistently or for good pricing) The book industry needs to change, I haven't come up against the dark side of Amazon's influence. I did watch for years when Apple and the publishers clearly broke the law and cheered when they got caught as I had seen prices for books I bought just sky rocket. As for how their employees are treated or their "perceived" treatment, local employment laws cover those. Avoiding unionization is not a crime and should not be held against anyone. Much of retail outside of grocery is not unionized. When the same unions hire no benefit, no union, temps to protest tell me again how they are the good guys?

facepalm 12y ago

At least for ebooks it recently occurred to me that it will probably be difficult for any ebook vendor to establish a monopoly. After all, everybody can just offer ebooks on their web site.

equoid 12y ago
The Kindle is attempt to do exactly that, breadth of offering and convenience is a pretty big hurdle to overcome.
lalc 12y ago
Right, book publishers are largely middlemen. Let the old ways die and a hundred new business models flourish.
deong 12y ago
It comes down to a question of definition. Is it a monopoly if there is literally zero cost to entering a market, but the market conditions make it almost certain that you'll fail? Hatchette and any other publisher could stop selling their books to Amazon tomorrow. You could still buy them in paper from loads of physical stores, and you could still buy their ebooks from dozens of places, including little-known and difficult-to-find resellers like Apple and Google. But if they lost, say, 40% of sales, would we call Amazon a monopoly? I don't know. My inclination is to be pretty conservative in applying heavy-handed regulatory remedies. That's a big hammer, and it's one I'd rather not use on a whim, and right now, I think it's still far too easy to compete with Amazon on its core business for this to be an option I'm ready for. But I'm not sure how hard it would be to convince me otherwise in the future.
- facepalm 12y ago
  Maybe the kindle is just a desperate attempt to save some of the book business for Amazon. You are thinking too short term. Sure, maybe it will be a quasi monopoly for a while. But in the long run, why should people stick with the kindle? Other convenient devices and services will crop up making it seem very inconvenient to be tied to one vendor.

lmm 12y ago

Are we really facing "less variety of products and lower quality of the remaining ones"? I see more variety in Amazon's kindle store than I ever saw in a traditional publisher's range, and while the average quality may be lower the peaks are as high as ever. If Amazon really did undercut Diapers.com by selling at a loss, that sounds like a perfectly good case for existing antitrust laws, not something that requires executive action. For the rest, I'm happy to reap the benefits of what Amazon gives us.

gugol 12y ago
In my experience, Amazon almost always isn't the cheapest place to get something online.

netcan 12y ago

We have to remember that when we talking about giant companies we are talking about giant institutions, of a form and culture that has not existed in human history. The closest parallels common throughout human history are armies. I think that our 20th century paradigms have failed to understand and shape these institutions, each with their own trappings. Labour unionism, which was deeply rooted in man labour cultures and many countries' political systems was amazingly corrupt. They became their own institutions layering their own dynamics and interests into the already impossible mesh. The results were far from unanimously positive. Liberal-capitalism nurtured the concept of non natural person, corporate entities. The cultural relationship between individual, employers, consumers and investors and the institutions is grafted onto the idea that the institution is a legal person. At this point, companies are far more than risk sharing and limiting devices. They are institutions of the same gravity as churches, bureaucracies, aristocracies and such. They are entrenched. I don't mean that in a strictly accusatory sense. They are just part of the web of culture, laws, economies and everything else. First of all, we all need to have the humility to understand how little we know about how these things work. We are designed to operate within social institutions, not to build and destroy them each generation. No one built feudalism or poleis. No one really designed the international system of nation states. No one created Danish national identity. These things just evolved. Those are the kinds of things we're dealing with. I don't know what is the right way of dealing with Amazon, Google or Walmart as a (global) society. I think I would be more comfortable if the times brought around a period of miniaturization, where these mega institutions gave way to hundreds or thousands of smaller ones. For Amazon, what's keeping them huge is (a) dispatch & postal delivery is surprisingly hard. (b) The chain between design, manufacture, marketing and delivery is surprisingly cumbersome. Amazon is a company that does what a market would do in a world fewer impediments. Maybe the next few decades will make global delivery trivial. This would enable products to come directly from suppliers and simplify the chain. Software developers once had to sell software through software stores. The modern incarnations of software store is a relatively thinner layer. Producers are closer to consumers and the intermediaries are really just market makers. PS: Price controls have a bad track record dating back to Roman times.

davidw 12y ago
> For Amazon, what's keeping them huge is ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

lake99 12y ago

I'm not American, and had not heard of New Republic. But reading this article, I think New Proletariat sounds like a more honest name for their magazine.

zefei 12y ago

Modern society always progresses at the cost of old, inefficient jobs, while redistributing the wealth from those destroyed markets. The only concern is whether the redistribution of wealth is towards equality or inequality. As long as wealth is transferred to more people, the overall gain of buying power will eventually create a better economy. The problem is really not about monopoly, but whether the beneficiaries of these business contain a larger population.

Wintamute 12y ago

But in truth doesn't Amazon act more as a economic lubricant? Connecting consumers with all sorts of industries and businesses all across the world? For every industry or business that's "trampled" aren't an equal or greater number of businesses benefiting? It's like a shit hot postal service with a great website that's hugely profitable and ploughs most of its profits into making the service even better. It renews my faith in the human race to get big stuff done, and done well. I'd say we need to keep an eye on it, especially its tax affairs, but for now its probably best just to wait and see what happens ...

golemotron 12y ago

The solution is some variation of Richard Stallman's proposal for banks that are 'Too Big To Fail.' http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/02/04/fixing-too-big-to-fail/ http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/02/04/fixing-too-... Economies of scale are good but I think we're entering a world where the negatives are growing too rapidly. If the economy consisted of more small companies, there would be more competition, more employment, and more innovation. And, per Stallman, it can all be rigged with the tax code.

higherpurpose 12y ago

If you're so worried about Amazon monopoly, then get them to stop using DRM. Without DRM, we can take our (e)books anywhere.

thelettere 12y ago

Amen. Most of Amazon's nearly 100k large workforce are warehouse workers, running around all day like rats in a maze with no real break, no opportunity to connect to other humans, no autonomy and no final product to be proud of. If that isn't a recipe for misery, I don't know what is. "We have much studied and much perfected the great civilised invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. Truly speaking it is not the labour that is divided; but the men: – Divided into mere segments of men – broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin. "Only in right understanding on the part of all classes of what kinds of labor are good for men, raising them & making them happy, and by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour can this evil be met." -John Ruskin

lsaferite 12y ago
Funny you mention "running around all day like rats in a maze" as I have a good friend that just did an Amazon warehouse tour this week. He's the CTO for a company that runs several warehouses and he commented on the fact that the pickers were actually quite slow compared to what his pickers and others he's seen do. I was surprised because I too had read many times about how the warehouse pickers have to basically run everywhere all day.

danesparza 12y ago

I disagree. They literally give me everything I want, at a reasonable price. If you have some alternatives that fit that bill, I would be willing to consider them.

atemerev 12y ago

The Age of Envy.

spacemanmatt 12y ago
Good point. We should let wealthy companies manipulate the economy because you said competitors are envious. That makes tons of sense.

schalab 12y ago

Can someone provide practical examples of how Amazon would possibly abuse their monopoly without breaching existing law, influencing the government, or opening up the market for a smaller, more agile competitor? It is strange picking on Amazon, as the barrier for entry into the online shopping industry is relatively low, and their monopoly is far less stable and enduring than what Microsoft and Google achieved.

radmuzom 12y ago
> barrier for entry into the online shopping industry is relatively low I was under the impression that online retail is extremely capital-intensive. Especially in the initial years, where companies use capital to undercut competitors.

fpgeek 12y ago

Oh, please. This piece is silly. Amazon's ebook "monopoly" is incredibly fragile. Either Apple or Google could squash it without breaking a sweat. Microsoft, Facebook and others could too, they'd just probably sweat a bit. None of them want to. That's not an accident. It's because Amazon isn't giving them an opening by abusing either customers or suppliers. Publishers can claim otherwise, but they're not putting their money where their mouths are. They're not walking away from Amazon, nor can they even demonstrate that they're getting clearly better terms from anyone else.

jackgavigan 12y ago
The problem isn't that a company has a monopoly per se, assuming that the monopoly was achieved by outperforming its competitors fairly and legally. The problem arises when a company abuses its monopoly position or, far more commonly, when an oligopoly engages in implicit collusion. As a general rule, such situations result in the suppression of competition, which leads to higher prices and a poorer product/service for the consumer.

ende 12y ago

The author appears to suffer from nostalgia bias, longing for turn of the century progressivism to reign in his old corporate foe. This same well of centralized thinking gave a brave new world eugenics, prohibition, and industrial nationalism. Antitrust is indeed an important emergency power of the government, but its utility is most often the self-corrction of errors caused by the state itself. If you want to target monopolies in this modern age, go after companies like Comcast that arise out of state induced monoploy as a matter of necessity but go unregulated beyond that. The only thing Amazon is guilty of is decreasing costs of living for millions. It is no more at fault for liss of jobs in bygone industries as Ford was for layoffs in the horse and buggy industry. The authors's argument essentially amounts to the Corporations Being All Corporationy.

johnm111888 12y ago

I disagree completely. Amazon is successful through legal means. What do you want to do? Government punishing them for being too successful? As long as there isn't regulation that prohibits market entrants --a big reason for monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th century -- I don't see exactly what someone would suggest to do. The free market is a cumulation of mutually beneficial exchanges-- its a volunteer economy. Amazon's not forcing anyone to do anything. Publisher's do business with Amazon because it benefits them. They could easily stick with Barnes and Noble. Capitalism is by no means perfect but it's the best way to distribute capital. It's the only economic system that's brought masses of people out of poverty. For someone to say government should step in and set pricings!? Force Amazon to breakup?! Government knows better than anyone else? They know the market better than the participants? Who are these people in this all-knowing government? I'd like to meet them. What industry does Amazon have monopolized anyway? 41% on new books? cool. their cheaper prices on books benefit all of americans more than it hurts the handful of publishers. Fact is monopolies are defined by if they set higher prices than would-be in a perfect competition industry. As long as prices are low -- it signals they have competition-- so don't come at me talking about how big of a monopoly they are.