what kind of a law would you put in place here to make this illegal? and who would it cover? amazon has a business, yes? and if you want to do business with amazon you have to abide but those rules. you can also just NOT do business with amazon - sell your shit at another place, done deal. too many times here on HN we see people say what you say - let's just add mooooooar laws (these would have to be FEDERAL to make any sense) and have government involved in as many things as possible... it is just wrong although in theory you can say this is unfair - but certainly should be be illegal... like saying apple charging 30% wig should be illegal :)
The laws of our economy are not there to serve a few large companies. They are there to serve us, people, most of all. Do you think that markets will collapse if we had more fair rules for big companies?
Not nonsense of course but if what Amazon is doing is breaking any of the antitrust laws we have in place there is a machinery for that already - the government can take this up if they feel like Amazon is breaking antitrust laws. The problem is - whatever "issue" someone has with something amazon is doing it inevitably ends up here on HN as "oh that should be illegal..." you start putting every little thing you don't like into some federal laws and pretty soon you are China... it is a fine line to walk on...
> The laws of our economy are not there to serve a few large companies. They are there to serve us, people, most of all.
In some theory maybe - not in any reality... this sounds more like the way China is organized, not United States :) I personally wish this was true...
> Do you think that markets will collapse if we had more fair rules for big companies?
This depends - who is making the rules?! This is always easier said than done - you think that whatever "rules" you put in place is what "everyone/majority/..." wants but of course you'd be wrong. And again - who is making the rules? The politicians who spent over 70% of their fundraising for their next election... and during those fundraisers the donors are ... well not me and you but Amazon, NRA... and they will get their way... The system is stacked against you and you can talk fantasy like "oh the economy should work for the little guy..." or reality...
no doubt... the question remains whether what is being discussed in this thread falls under an antitrust law breach though? and if it does not (it does not) would it make any sense to add it (I will argue it does not)
The conditions under which you can do business are governed by law. For example, you can't require that employees enter into a contract for eternal servitude, even though that too could be explained away as "if you want to do business with the company you need to follow their rules". So why exactly would a pricing scheme like this be uniquely difficult/undesirable to outlaw? It seems pretty straightforward to me.
you are comparing something as crazy as “eternal servitude” with company saying “if you want to use our platform you cannot price gouge on it”??! how is paying more on amazon than elsewhere “better for consumers and needs to be regulated”??! so weird we are discussing this at all…
> amazon has a business, yes? and if you want to do business with amazon you have to abide but those rules.
And if you want to do business (at all) you have to abide by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world, those laws would be set by the people and for the people.
Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society, and why their behavior should be tolerated in an ideal democratic society?
> And if you want to do business (at all) you have to abide by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world, those laws would be set by the people and for the people.
which law is amazon breaking and if there isn't one (there isn't, otherwise there would be lawsuits we are all aware of) what's the law going to look like?
> Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society, and why their behavior should be tolerated in an ideal democratic society?
not sure what "democracy" has to do with anything? we don't really have a system in place where we go to a referendum and make decisions like this. whether or not amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society or not is on the society to decide. you have a choice whether to use amazon services and if you are so anti-amazon no one is forcing you to use their services. if amazon is doing something is illegal based on today's laws there is a machinery to bring lawsuits against (by the government itself or otherwise).
You should reread the comments you have replied to, as you clearly haven't understood what was written.
A law would be fairly simple — it would forbid a marketplace or retailer from influencing the price of goods sold outside their marketplace/shop.
There are already laws regulating pricing in some places, e.g. selling below the manufacturer's recommended retail price, or preventing selling products below cost to attract customers.
> You should reread the comments you have replied to, as you clearly haven't understood what was written.
I sure have
> A law would be fairly simple — it would forbid a marketplace or retailer from influencing the price of goods sold outside their marketplace/shop.
This type of law would make no sense, you are basically saying "I can price gouge the customers on your platform while providing the same product cheaper on mine." That is a F'ed up as it gets...
> e.g. selling below the manufacturer's recommended retail price
This is completely a different thing - if Amazon is actually telling retailers "hey, you want to sell this for $100 but you can't, you need to lower this price" that should 100% be illegal - Amazon should not be telling anyone what the price of their product should be. But that is 1000000% different from Amazon telling same companies "you cannot use our platform to price gouge people and sell your shit for more than you are selling elsewhere."
> you cannot use our platform to price gouge people and sell your shit for more than you are selling elsewhere.
You're badly misrepresenting the situation, to the point that I have to wonder whether you're just being dishonest. Many (likely most, but I don't have the data) 3rd party sellers aren't price gouging customers on Amazon, they're simply trying to pass Amazon's significant fees onto the customers.
They're being prohibited from doing so which reduces price transparency and competition which as you surely know, are both required for a market to be efficient.
This is a move that I would expect to disgust free market capitalism maximalists on some level, regardless of what one may think about Amazon's "right" to do whatever it wants.
I asked you whether you believed that society would democratically support Amazon's actions to determine whether you're making those arguments because you genuinely believe this behavior makes average people's lives better, or whether you're just arguing some abstract extremist neoliberal talking points of freedom for the sake of freedom, no matter what it costs us.
