[danjoredd]

not OP but why would the average person buy a book from example.com for 15 dollars when Amazon sells it for 10? Here or there there might be a person who pays the extra 5 out of principle, but most people are going to buy from Amazon because that's what they know, and its cheaper anyway. In order to make money, other stores are going to need to match Amazon or beat it just to enter the public consciousness a little bit. Thats why Amazon kinda controls the ebook market

[braunboffel]

Am I correct in understanding you that you're saying companies shouldn't be able to sell at the lowest price they can sell at? How is that anti-competition, a monopoly?

[danjoredd]

Yes, because Amazon can afford to lose money that a small business cannot. They can unfairly "squeeze" small businesses out by taking a prolonged hit until the little guy can't afford to operate anymore. That's what makes them a monopoly, because they have an unfair advantage over smaller businesses. Looking through your comment history it seems you require a source for every little thing you disagree with, so here. Its called Price Dumping. Only reason Amazon hasn't done so is because they know the US and EU will smack them with a lawsuit they would not be able to win:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices

If we truly care about capitalism, we need to make sure that the little businesses get just as fair of a shot as the early adopters. The market cannot balance itself out if one player dominates all others.

[braunboffel]

> Looking through your comment history it seems you require a source for every little thing you disagree with,

Interesting approach to having a fruitful discussion. I would recommend defending your claim rather than attacking my comment history. Yes, I like to ask for sources when I see something which I perceive as a extraordinary claim. It is not my intend to offend you. My intent is to acquire new data that may cause me to change my perception. Currently, I have not changed my position or perception of this discussion.

I think I'll summarize the argument here and try to steelman the position opposite to mine. Your position is that a company that "dumps" or "takes a prolonged hit" is conclusively proven to be a monopoly. Therefore, I assume you also call Google a monopoly in the search space, and you also call Microsoft a monopoly in the operating system space. Is that correct?

[danjoredd]

search engines don't charge, so price dumping is not an issue. The only thing keeping them from being a monopoly is the fact that there are reasonable competitors and it is relatively easy to switch to a new search engine, and there are few drawbacks to doing so. There are nearly a monopoly, but there are a few reasons why anti-competition doesn't necessarily apply to them. that being said, until reasonable competitors DID start cropping up, they absolutely WERE a monopoly. Until Bing came out, they were the only real choice and dominated the entire search engine industry.

I do consider Microsoft a monopoly in the consumer operating system space, because nobody can reasonably compete against them. Who are you going to switch to? The only reasonable alternative for the average consumer is Apple which costs thousands of dollars, and also only has a 16% usage share vs Microsoft's 76%. That is extremely uneven and we have seen the detriments to Microsoft's market dominance already. If you have spent any time on the internet, you will realize that Windows 11 is very unpopular for a variety of reasons...for most people its the only choice they have to upgrade, and when support for Windows 10 drops there only choice will be either 11 or 12. If 12 has just as many issues as 11, they will have no choice but to just deal with it. It is a stagnant industry that once was vibrant with many competitors. The only reason Microsoft has market dominance now is because they committed anticompetitive practices in the 90s to shut down all competition. Both in the web browser industry, and in the Operating systems industry. By the time regulation came for their head, all reasonable competitors were already out of business.

The only cost-effective alternative is Linux. And don't get me wrong, I love Linux. However it is an unreasonable switch as it requires knowledge of the PC you are using, and the ability to install an OS yourself. Most people can't do that. After that, we have to assume that people know how to get their drivers working, and the slew of other issues. Its a common meme in the Linux space that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" will never come. It is also not sold with actual hardware outside of a few niche vendors that have no brick and mortar presence. Those vendors pander exclusively towards hobbyists because they know that grandma will just be confused, and mom and pop will balk at the price.

So yes, I consider Windows a monopoly. When people don't like the changes, their only choice is mostly to either deal with it, pay thousands of dollars for their competitor, or learn to be a tech geek and install a system that might not even work for their system. They need a serious affordable competitor, and that likely won't happen until either the inevitable antitrust lawsuit splits the company(this almost happened in 2002 but the judge was replaced with a Microsoft sympathizer that helped them maintain their monopoly.) happens or someone comes up with a reasonable competitor that can SOMEHOW compete with Microsoft. How they would do that, I don't know.

Now...as far as you go. Am I correct in believing that you think total market dominance is a GOOD thing? That a single vendor that controls the direction of the entire industry will ACTUALLY serve the best interests for the consumer? Like I said with Microsoft, that is not really the case. Microsoft doesn't actually give a damn what the public thinks, because people will have to upgrade anyway. They do insane privacy-invading telemetry because while people will complain, they also know that nobody can switch outside of people who are already technical or rich enough to buy Apple.

As far as me checking your comment history, yes. I check people's comment history to get a judgement of their character. It is extremely often I deal with shills, or someone who doesn't engage in honest discussion for whatever reason, or trolls. Considering the fact that you almost exclusively try to debate with people on monopolies regarding e-readers, I am starting to think that you have a vested interest in market dominance, either in the e-ink industry or the e-reader industry. Am I correct in that assumption?

Market share: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

Microsoft's anticompetitive practices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#Antitrust

Microsoft's telemetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT4vDfA_4NI

[braunboffel]

> Am I correct in believing that you think total market dominance is a GOOD thing?

No, you're wrong. I don't think that's a good thing. But I think it would be worse to invite politicians into controlling the market. Am I correct in believing that you think government should control who can do business and set prices?

> Considering the fact that you almost exclusively try to debate with people on monopolies regarding e-readers, I am starting to think that you have a vested interest in market dominance, either in the e-ink industry or the e-reader industry. Am I correct in that assumption?

No, you're mistaken. I have expertise in electrophoresis and involvement in the OLED display industry and know enough about the technology and display market to be able to dispute the 'outlandish' comments that I've seen. I debate in topics that I know well.