From this biography of John D. Rockerfeller:

> In 1870, he established Standard Oil, which by the early 1880s controlled some 90 percent of U.S. refineries and pipelines. Critics accused Rockefeller of engaging in unethical practices, such as predatory pricing and colluding with railroads to eliminate his competitors, in order to gain a monopoly in the industry.

So what? Those competitors have become redundant so they are going extinct? What's the problem with progress?

Even if you give Amazon every benefit of the doubt regarding the ethicalness of its business practices, the fact remains that monopolies, and near-monopolies, are dangerous. We know what happens. We have hundreds of years of history to look back on to see what happens.

Amazon isn't a monopoly. Everything available there is available somewhere else. Amazon is just doing it better. They're more efficient, less expensive, and more convenient. It's a good thing.

Now, they need to start paying people better and stop the worker abuses.

FWIW, the oil companies broken up from the Standard Oil trust re-merged together anyway, as did AT&T after it was broken up.

> they need to start paying people better

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120221

In what way is Amazon a monopoly or near-monopoly?

They’re nearly 50% of US e-commerce and growing. Retail spending online is growing double-digits year over year. It’s not too hard to see the writing on the wall. Whether or not this is good or bad is a separate argument, but there’s no doubt there’s an issue with its competitive dynamics.

But e-commerce is still a minority of retail. I was surprised to learn that gas stations are the biggest retail player of all, followed by grocery stores.

How does that make them a monopoly? As a matter of fact, their platform is open to third party sellers now (which IMO has hurt their quality of service). Is 50% the magic number that deems an entity to be a monopoly? What is, and who decides?

WalMart is still leaps ahead of Amazon in revenue. It’s disingenuous and you point out a percentage metric, which is very misleading, but don’t compare hard numbers such as revenue.

Well, you just have to use common sense. It’s not like they’re 50% of the shoe button business; they’re 50% of online retail. You’re being disingenuous because you write as if that number is meaningless.

No, I’m not being disingenuous. As an investor, I care less about what percentage of online sales Amazon has. It could be 10% or 90%, but I care more about the total size of the retail space and Amazons specific dollar amount. If you heard their last earnings call, it’s clear their online growth is slowing down. Amazon understands this and they know a long term bet on it isn’t wise - hence, they’re shifting to a more physical presence, but WalMart trounces them. WalMart has the retail space strategically located across the country, and WalMart is offering competitive shipping, without requiring annual memberships. They’re holding their own in the online space. If anything, your 50% metric is an incomplete picture and a gross representation.

I’m still betting on Amazon going forward (I invested ~$2MM when they were below $300 a share, which has grown miraculously), but if their retail business was where all of Amazons eggs were put, I would have offloaded my investment a while ago.

Walmart is 4x the size of Amazon in retail revenue with plenty of growth.

It is stupid to criticize or blame amazon for wiping the floor with their competition. The rules of the game are set by lawmakers. Amazons job is to do the best they can in their business.

No it isn't, that attitude is terrible for society. There is no game, and "Amazon" doesn't have a job, the people who work there do. Running a business with the sole purpose of getting bigger and making more money is as immoral as it is common.

What makes it immoral? The idea that profit is immoral is a religious viewpoint, and one not shared by most people.

You make a lot of statements unbacked by explanations. Capitalism has produced the most peaceful and prosperous societies in the world. What exactly is better then?

I wonder what the post-Bezos future will look like after we have a single source remaining for all our daily necessities, and Amazon enters a later stage of its corporate lifecycle and begins to go the way of IBM or GE. If we replace all other stores with just Amazon, that seems like an enormous risk to human life if Amazon starts to become mismanaged in the future.

Your post is inaccurate. WalMart still beats Amazon handsomely in terms of revenue, not to mention, Amazon only recently shifted to profitability, and now their growth is declining.

This notion that Amazon has retail market capture or is close to market capture is completely inaccurate.

I mean, we had Sears previously. That is the direct analog of Amazon. I think you will always find boutiques, hybrid supermarkets and then destination like experiences. People will pay for convenience and last minute availability. Also, Amazon is filled to the brim with Chinese crap.

Amazon has gotten really bad since they opened the floodgate to Chinese crap. Alot of it is shady as fuck.

That already happened with Walmart to an extent, right? Not that I want Amazon to do the same thing...

We're not replacing all other stores with Amazon. The Amazon-takes-over-retail fantasy is not going to happen. Their online retail business is now a very slow growth business. For them to actually take over retail, they'd need to be seeing high rates of growth year after year for decades yet. At their rate of deceleration, they'll be at a mid single digits rate of growth within a couple of years. Their whole business - AWS, devices, online retail, physical retail - is going to struggle to stay above 10% sales growth in that same timeline as a matter of fact. The far bigger, more likely risk is that their traditional online retail business sees a near contraction stall four to five years out.

Walmart is still doing $500 billion in sales by comparison. Unless Amazon finds a magic way to turbocharge their online growth (1 day shipping isn't going to cut it), it'll still take 20 to 30 years to just match the size of Walmart in retail, and that's if everything goes well for Amazon.

What Amazon figured out, is that they can't kill Walmart via online retail (which is the sole segment that Amazon has any retail dominance). So they're increasingly exploring physical retail as their only way to grow. Wholefoods was Amazon being forced to buy their growth, it was a classic sign of a business that has lost much of its organic growth. Their days of serious retail growth online are dead.

Matured rather than 'dead' - that cycle is now mostly complete

Dead was the right term. It refers to the high rate of former growth in their online retail business. That high rate of growth is dead.

The business is mature. I didn't say the business was dead.

Since half of Walmarts revenues are from groceries, I wonder how much of a difference it would make if you coud use food stamps at Amazon

IBM and GE are both 100 years old, so Amazon still has plenty of room left in its game.