The FTC Sues to Break Up Amazon over an Economy-Wide “Hidden Tax”

Re:The FTC Sues to Break Up Amazon over an Economy-Wide “Hid... by abduhl on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @01:46PM (#37768912)

My interpretation isn’t the worst possible interpretation, it’s the realistic interpretation based on how permitting discretionary application of the law actually works in practice. Your view is fine in theory but fails (and not just fails theoretically - it has failed and continues to fail actually) in practice. Advocating for your theoretical ideal when we know it fails in practice is… well, just not useful.

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Re:The FTC Sues to Break Up Amazon over an Economy-Wide “Hid... by taeric on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @01:56PM (#37769083)

I'm largely acknowledging that that is where we are. And not too concerned about that for many rules. But, and I said so in the initial post, expect that more and more will get enforced both as you get bigger, and as we get better at enforcing them.

That is to say, I also expect clarification and evolution of the rules during this enforcement action. Such that I would be most happy to have some of these arrangement flat out illegal. That said, https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... was linked on Matt Levine's email today. And... "Our company monitors competitors' ads, and we sometimes offer to match special discounts or sales incentives for consumers. Is this a problem?" is answered with a no. Such that, this is a tough field to litigate right now.

And, what is it you are advocating for? That we only have rules that we can universally enforce? That would require that we know all of the ways that they can be broken from the beginning, so that we can encode those in law.

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