Re:Amazon's Toll Road – How it funds its monopoly empire
by jessaustin on Friday December 03, 2021 @12:25PM
(#29432535)
This is a strange understanding of "screw them over". Lots of products are sold for a range of different prices, and have been throughout economic history. Amazon appoint themselves "lowest-price king" because they can, not because they have some sort of moral right to that position.
Re:Amazon's Toll Road – How it funds its monopoly empire
by viro on Friday December 03, 2021 @01:17PM
(#29433191)
why should a business be allowed to overcharge Amazon customers? Your product should have a price not a Amazon price and a Shopify price.
Re:Amazon's Toll Road – How it funds its monopoly empire
by jessaustin on Friday December 03, 2021 @01:27PM
(#29433315)
Every product varies in price depending on the conditions of sale. Shopify's fees are lower than Amazon's. Why shouldn't there be a free market in online fulfillment?
Re:Amazon's Toll Road – How it funds its monopoly empire
by allemagne on Friday December 03, 2021 @03:53PM
(#29435290)
Is it really more competitive to let companies like Apple pick winners in that space? Maybe (probably?) to an extent, at least in this circumstance, but it seems like there's more of a balance needed here.
Re:Amazon's Toll Road – How it funds its monopoly empire
by jessaustin on Friday December 03, 2021 @10:23PM
(#29438405)
I'm not sure what role you're envisioning for Apple here? Assuming you're referring to their role as a vendor selling electronic doodads, this is overstating their influence. iPhones are expensive, but they are a small portion of overall sales at Amazon. Besides, they own the iPhones! Ownership includes the right to sell what one owns, to whomever one chooses, for whatever price one can negotiate. (Well, unless one has signed over these rights to Amazon.)
If this is "picking winners" then every participant in the economy is picking winners all the time. Usually I think the term means something more like an outside actor deciding that results will be different than what the buyers and sellers would have decided in the absence of that outside actor. One might think that "the government" is the only such outside actor. However I feel that other large organizations with plenty of money and political power also qualify.
> Steve has tried to escape Amazon’s grip by selling on other platforms. But he’s had no luck generating more than a trickle of orders on these sites.
Kinda gives the game away, right? You're either sharecropping on Amazon's land or Google's. There is no scalable way for companies to reach their markets that doesn't involve something being the portal that people use to do product discovery. Whatever business finds themselves in this position will by its very nature wield disproportionate market power. You can't "break up" Amazon, Google, YouTube, Apple, and the countless other people who act as discovery portals into different markets -- you can only regulate them.
> It would help if he could lower his prices on these sites, he says, but Amazon effectively blocks him from doing so under its “fair pricing policy.”
You can't get the benefit of free marketing by being listed on Amazon and then try to screw them over by lowering prices on your own sites. This isn't monopoly power inasmuch as businesses not realizing that they're trying to get advertising and discovery for free without paying the piper.