[knuththetruth]

I think one of few good outcomes of monopolistic tech companies, like Amazon, is the degree to which they expose the lie that is American free market Capitalist ideology. There’s never been anything other than highly-subsidized State Capitalism and it’s outcome is massive, private command economies in the form of corporate dictatorships. These dictatorships then seek to assume the power of the state so as to achieve a monopoly on subsidization, while at the same starving the ability of the state to subsidize others and provide a challenge to their control.

[mortenjorck]

It’s incredible to me how many comments here citing this sort of thing as common practice are made with the implication that we should be less upset because it’s just how business works, rather than more upset because these injustices are so widespread.

[mattnewton]

I think most of these state sponsored companies are unintentionally so, at least in the beginning. Amazon was built on state taxes not being applicable to internet purchases in the beginning, which was an unintended subsidy.

[Apocryphon]

Maybe this backlash will lead to a class consciousness forming in the startup community, at least in a weird Frankenstein left-libertarian-ish message of "the big guys are too big, they're harming free market competition"? While Silicon Valley skews 'socially liberal, fiscally conservative', that doesn't mean they are on the side of the monopolies by default.