Re:Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust laws...
by kd5bjo on Saturday May 16, 2020 @06:26AM
(#23202247)
The issue is the consumer harm that comes from the combination of not trusting Amazon to deliver the qualities you care about for a certain class of product and there being no alternative suppliers because Amazon drove them out of business.
It seems like there aren’t any middle-quality products anymore: you can buy a cheap plastic item that never works quite right and will break next month, or you can buy a chrome-plated showpiece item that costs too much. Where’s the non-disposable, ugly, bulletproof utility version these days?
Re:Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust laws...
by pdonis on Sunday May 17, 2020 @12:06AM
(#23209479)
> It seems like there aren’t any middle-quality products anymore
I think there still are, but I agree it's very hard to find any on Amazon, at least in a lot of product categories. You have to spend time trawling actual brick and mortar stores.
Standard Oil didn't have a "counterfeiting problem", so I don't see how this is relevant to them. Or, for that matter, to any other large monopoly that has been broken up by antitrust action.
Also, you as a consumer might judge that, for example, you don't trust Amazon to deliver the product you want in a certain area, regardless of how low the price is. That's fine. But that in itself is no argument for breaking up Amazon in an antitrust action. It's just an argument for not trusting Amazon for certain types of products.