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Comment by saadalem | Hacker News Reader

Those were the dirtiest business tactics of Amazon Nobody can beat Amazon’s margin. Amazon “invites” you to sell on their marketplace. You hustle. You innovate. You test the market. You risk your time and money. Until FINALLY you nail it! After weeks or months of hard work you finally find the right product at the right price… SUCCESS! You start making money! Everything is amazing…

But “someone” has been watching you! The “owner” of YOUR customers has been collecting ALL your data. Watching your progress, your growth, your competitors, your margins, your shipping costs, etc. THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING! Amazon will copy your product. Add their private label “Amazon Basics” to it. Sell it at an unbeatable price. Attach FREE Amazon Prime shipping to it. Position the exposure of their product on their website better than yours. In a matter of days, you will be OUT of business! THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN AMAZON MARKETPLACE!

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Would you please not use allcaps for emphasis? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

It's almost like there should probably be some oversight on one of the most powerful entities on the planet to stop these anti-competitive practices.

And now they can threaten what, the losses of 400k jobs if forced to not utilize their nation-state scale to screw competitors?

Actually that thread doesn't work at all. Because restricting them might cost Amazone jobs BUT:

1. Not all of them, probably a negligible amount. (Just the ones responsible for crating/producing copied products, not any ones involved in any other area)

2. Create new jobs through fair competition in similar amounts as jobs lost, likely even more as more companies being involved means more operational positions like e.g. for book keeping.

3. (2. reformulated). Not restricting it will cost as much or more jobs due to small companies going out of business and amazon as a giant company can better optimize overhead of operation away compared to many small independent businesses.

Is it really in the spirit of anti competitive laws if the consumer wins?

This is more like one business owner (FBA seller) trying to sic the authorities on their competition (Amazon Basics) in order to keep a competitive advantage. This seems more anti competitive than what Amazon is doing

The consumer doesn't win in the end if there's only one major retailer that survives. There's lots of benefit in diversity of retailers competing against each other.

The consumer doesn't feel the effect of the consolidated marketplace until Amazon decides to start squeezing its customers. Once all the ducks are in a row, look out.

Yes. Anti-monopoly laws are about overall society health, not just consumer protection. Having only a few large companies controlling large segments has massive negative effects on suppliers, employee wages, etc. etc.

You might wish that this was the case, but in the US, the anti-trust law doesn't work this way.

The law doesn't prohibit monopoly by itself. Monopolization is only prohibited if it restrains trade, or if the monopoly position was improperly gained. If Amazon attains monopoly position through superior products, innovation, or business acumen, it is very much legal in the US[1].

I think it's hard to argue that Amazon undercutting the participants in its marketplace is restraining the trade: the complaint here is, as I understand it, that through better knowledge of the market, and better integrated and more efficient platform, it is able to offer same or better products at lower prices. I can't see how it restrains the trade, according to how FTC understands it. It would only be illegal if Amazon did sold these products below their own costs, and then planned to recoup the losses by raising the price after the competition is gone. I haven't seen any evidence that this is what's going on.

[1] - https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Obtaining a monopoly via legal means is irrelevant if there is then monopolization, the examples given in this thread of "product tying" via Amazon Prime, essential facilities denial via superseding with their own products, and predatory pricing via not having to pay platform fees are all restraining trade.

Whether these could be sufficiently proved is a whole other matter.

> the examples given in this thread of "product tying" via Amazon Prime, essential facilities denial via superseding with their own products, and predatory pricing via not having to pay platform fees are all restraining trade.

If you don't trade on Amazon's platform, you're not affected by any of these. You might as well complain about Safeway's (or whatever grocery chain operates in your area) anti-competitive practices, because Safeway will also do product tying via membership card, rewards and coupons, deny you facilities to put your products on their shelves, and won't pay carrying fees for its own store brand products.

Sure, it might be much harder for you to compete with Amazon if you can't use its platform, but then the argument is that the Amazon is too competitive, not anti-competitive, and that is in fact legal (and a boon for customers).

>Anti-monopoly laws are about overall society health

you can't prove this

Or, markets will shift away from abuse, and they will have difficulty regaining customer trust cough Blockbuster Video cough

“Don’t worry guys! The magical invisible hand of the market will fix this! Just like how it stopped abuse and exploitation by itself all those other times! This time it will _definitely_ work”

Regulating them to a pure marketplace is the best outcome we an hope for, i.e. require them to divest any product they sell in the marketplace. India took some steps in that direction last year. Why not in the US?

Because the US regulatory framework and enforcement has been chipped away at by corporate interests over the past 3 decades to the point of non-existence.

America went from filing >50 antitrust lawsuits in the 1970s to ~5 in the past 2 decades.

In all fairness, if Amazon doesn’t copy your product, then some Alibaba store or Chinese manufacturer will and in a few weeks time you’ll see the same product and description surface on Amazon under the name YUKOOLSEE and with 1000 5-star reviews already.

It is arguable that all retail chains have been doing this with their store branded product lines.

Amazon needs more competition. Other markets like Walmart are stepping up, but not quickly enough.

Surprised ? Also, you choose to give the data by using the platform. Terms and condition apply.

But no, there's no antitrust case to be made against big tech...

I mean, this is essentially how capitalism has always worked. Mountain bikes were invented by tinkerers in California, the blues was invented by slaves or former slaves, none of those people died rich. The big guys have all the money and power, and if you dont like it, well, this is how capitalism is designed to operate, so I don’t know what to tell you.

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