[LeonB]

> There is no way that Jeff Bezos owning Amazon shares makes me worse off.

They use their market dominance to reduce the income of authors resulting in less choice and lower quality books for you to read, while increasing the price of available books.

They use their vast wealth to buy out or strike deals with competitors, preventing any challenge to their hold on the industry.

As market maker and participant they use their exclusive market data to undercut their own providers resulting in more hoarded wealth for them but a less creative and productive society for all.

They engage in continual astro-turfing which alters public debate away from whatever is really going on and toward what the mega wealthy owners want people to believe.

And much much more.

[sooheon]

Efforts to obtain monopoly rent ("supernormal profits by restricting output and hence increasing prices above its perfectly competitive level."[1]) is a subset of rent-seeking. The problem again, isn't the wealth itself, it is the fact that wealth is being expended to seek monopoly rent at great social cost.

[1] https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/assets/pdf/SER/1995/Alan_Dunne....