[mars4rp]

according to the article, if the company is operate at loss and it benefit customers, it is fine!

"Both of these outcomes reflect consumers failing to share in Amazon’s bounty, which is key for current antitrust law. Right now, anti-competitive conduct like predatory pricing is judged under the “consumer welfare standard,” which has been interpreted to mean simply whether a market dominated by a single company results in higher or lower prices. But even though prices are the same on Amazon, consumers are arguably missing out, Sussman explains, because they’re not benefiting from Amazon’s soaring profits. “It’s illegal and even the most conservative neoclassical thinker would agree,” he says."

[gowld]

That's ridiculous. There is no law that mandates consumers get a specific percentage of the economic surplus. Amazon is worth about a trillion dollars. Amazon has 100 million prime customers, not to mention all the non Prime customers. With these very generous assumptions NOT in Amazon's favor, $10K equity per prime customer is totally on par with the amount of lifetime consumer surplus a Prime customer enjoys thanks to Amazon existing, possibly in gasoline and shipping savings alone! Amazon probably does anti competitive things, and competing vendors and their low skill employees and contactors maybe earning less, bit it's laughable to claim that customers are suffering.

[aeternus]

I'd argue consumers are benefiting greatly from Amazon's profits. They have overall re-invested those profits into other businesses that benefit consumers.

Ex: Purchased Whole Foods and have brought down those prices overall plus building Amazon Go stores which offer a much better consumer experience than traditional grocery. Amazon's Web Services platform has leveled the playing field and enabled many startups. Amazon has pressured almost all other retailers online & offline to offer free or cheap delivery which is great for consumers. Walmart would likely never have done this without pressure from Amazon.

[gowld]

Free delivery isn't free; it's just amortized baked into the price. The real savings come from logistics like getting one shipment from the Everything Store instead of 5 separate shipments.

[rootusrootus]

Benefiting now perhaps, but isn't the point that in the long run customers will be worse off because of what Amazon is doing?

[aeternus]

Maybe, but Amazon faces competition from Ebay, Alibaba, even Walmart. It's unlikely they can raise prices significantly and maintain market share, nor is it likely that they can push out all of those competitors.

[eridius]

This view, that prices to consumers are really the only thing that matters, is why Amazon was able to use the Justice Department to remove their only real competition in the eBook space (Apple).