[cyberax]

Offering goods or services below the cost of their production is often illegal, though. It's called "dumping".

Although in this case it's probably impossible to define, given the complexity of calculating the true cost of tokens.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Offering goods or services below the cost of their production is often illegal, though. It's called "dumping"

No.

Dumping is an international-trade term. It doesn’t even require pricing below cost, just aiming “to increase market share in a foreign market by driving out competition and thereby create a monopoly situation where the exporter will be able to unilaterally dictate price and quality of the product” [1].

Loss leaders are common in commerce and entirely legal, as are free trials. I struggle to think of a competent jurisdiction that bans them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

[cyberax]

I'm sorry, my fault. I studied economics in Russia, and the term "dumping" was used in a more general sense as "selling goods or services below their cost".

Russian laws officially use the term "monopolistically low prices", and prohibit them if the entity engaging in such pricing holds a dominating presence in the market (and not necessarily for the goods that are being underpriced).

A correct term for the US is "predatory pricing", and it's also prohibited by the Sherman Act. For much the same reason, a large entity can destroy competition by accepting losses from selling goods below the cost. The border between loss leaders and predatory pricing is, as usual, very blurred.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I studied economics in Russia, and the term "dumping" was used in a more general sense as "selling goods or services below their cost"

Oooh! Do you have a recommendation for a translation of a Russian economics text? I’m particularly curious of Soviet-era texts that work on theory without prices.

> correct term for the US is "predatory pricing", and it's also prohibited by the Sherman Act

Sherman prohibits the “restraint of trade or commerce” [1]. The word “price” never appears in its text. In practice, predatory pricing is a tightly-regulated term that doesn’t generally prohibit selling goods below cost

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-3055/pdf/COMPS-305...

[cyberax]

> Oooh! Do you have a recommendation for a translation of a Russian economics text? I’m particularly curious of Soviet-era texts that work on theory without prices.

I don't think they exist? The Soviet Union used prices internally as an accounting tool. It essentially had two separate currencies: the actual physical currency that regular people owned and the virtual "accounting" currency. The accounting currency could not be converted into the real one, except for salary payments that were tightly regulated.

Once the USSR allowed some inter-conversion channels in the early 80-s its economy predictably got blown up as a result.

> Sherman prohibits the “restraint of trade or commerce” [1]. The word “price” never appears in its text. In practice, predatory pricing is a tightly-regulated term that doesn’t generally prohibit selling goods below cost

The Sherman Act is a framing law that establishes the authority to regulate monopolies, and it's on purpose rather vague in its wording.

A more concrete law here is the Robinson-Patman Act, which prohibits illegal price discrimination, including pricing substantially similar goods differently for different purchasers.

[jacquesm]

They also had 'hard' money and a fictive exchange rate between the 'hard' (Western) currencies and the internal one. And a whole machine dedicated to obtaining as much of this hard money as possible without returning anything of real value for it.

[raw_anon_1111]

So every company that is not immediately selling enough to cover its fixed costs and its variable cost should be illegal? Every company and every new initiative must be profitable from day one in your world?

[cyberax]

If it's a large company, that can dominate the market by absorbing the losses until competition disappears?

Arguably, yes.

[raw_anon_1111]

So that means for instance it was illegal for Netflix to get into the streaming business or for Apple to start selling iPods because neither could do it profitably from day one?

Should Microsoft have not been allowed to sell operating systems and still survive from selling BASIC interpreters? Should Nintendo have not been allowed to sell video games and still be selling playing cards?

Every company that is interested in survival takes profits from an existing business to start a new one,

[s1artibartfast]

The question is over what timescale and volume.

Toyota shouldn't have to sell their first new car off the line for 100 million to pay for the entire manufacturing line.

Your first SAAS customer shouldn't have to pay back all your costs.

Can you plan to break even after your first month of sales? first year? 10 years?

[andrew_lettuce]

This isn't typically an area where laws and regulations can work effectively because who knows until after the fact? Taxation laws do deal with this from a different perspective, for example most jurisdictions won't let a company take losses every year forever, as they judge the intent of a corporation. Even this is incredibly complex so I'm not sure how your idea would work, even the term "break even" doesn't have a clear definition, ex: do Capital assets still depreciate the same in the AI world? When did Amazon start to break even? What if they didn't deliver shopping on top of aws? Was that an unfair subsidization?

[raw_anon_1111]

Amazon doesn’t for the most part deliver shopping on top of AWS.

Amazon runs two sets of infrastructure “CDO” and “AWS”. It’s a myth that Amazon used excess capacity to start AWS. AWS was always built out as separate infrastructure outside of AWS.

Some Amazon services do run on AWS. But when Amazon runs workloads on AWS, for internal accounting, they are considered a customer.

Source: former employee at AWS

[raw_anon_1111]

So we are going to pass a law that any new company initiative must be profitable in $x years? Are we going to outlaw loss leaders?

[int_19h]

So it would be illegal for Google but legal for Anthropic?

What about OpenAI?

[MichaelZuo]

This obviously cannot be true, otherwise Costco would have been sued to oblivion for “dumping” their rotisserie chickens.

[andrew_lettuce]

Forget about Costco, if some people here are so convinced this behavior is illegal they should be going after every fast food company that offers anything like "get a free/cheap xyz with any drink purchase!" Where the subsidy is obvious.

[cyberax]

Costco gets to sidestep a lot of regulations because they technically are a private club with paid membership. The US anti-monopoly laws are also unusually weak.

In other countries, selling a $7 chicken if it's subsidized by the sale of other goods can indeed be illegal.

[hrimfaxi]

Do you have some countries in mind where that's illegal?

[apex_sloth]

In Germany, selling goods for less then the one bought them for can be illegal if its used to push competition out on a large scale.

[tovej]

That would most likely be illegal in Finland. You're not allowed predatory pricing. And the same is true for the EU as a whole, although you may have to be operating in an international market, not just a local one. See Abuse of dominance in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_102_of_the_Treaty_on_t...

[cyberax]

The US, the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits predatory pricing.

[hrimfaxi]

So if I could charge less for chicken because I use that as a doorbuster to get you inside the store, but I charge more for other items, that is predatory pricing and against US law?

[MichaelZuo]

If you now acknowledge there is a carve out… couldn’t there be two carve outs? Or more?

It seems like you havent thought this through at all.

[jacquesm]

And in this case the subsidy is paid for by tied sales from other users that don't actually use the service, which is another illegal business practice.

[walletdrainer]

Tying is typically perfectly legal in both the EU and the US.

This isn’t even vaguely similar to illegal tying. The biggest problem being that the products almost certainly aren’t dissimilar enough to be considered “tied” at all.

[raw_anon_1111]

So cable bundling channels is also “illegal” according to you? Since I don’t watch sports?

[Marsymars]

There certainly are jurisdictions where tv providers are legally required to offer channels a la carte.

[raw_anon_1111]

Not in the US…

[Marsymars]

Sure, but we're generally talking here about companies that don't operate only in the US. :)

e.g. the CRTC has regulations around a la carte offerings since the past decade: https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/television/program/alacarte.htm

> TV service providers must offer channels both individually and in packages of up to 10 channels.

[andrew_lettuce]

And not typically channels that can survive independently

[Aurornis]

What are you talking about? Where is this illegal? It’s common to sell subscription services and then price them according to expected usage blended across the user base.

[Aurornis]

First of all, I doubt they’re losing money in inference. Even across subscriptions. This is a tired argument that has been repeated so many times on HN.

Second, that’s not what dumping means. It’s a specific term for international trade.

Third, it’s not illegal to sell something for below the cost to make it. That’s another common misunderstanding.

[rvnx]

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