[pnt12]

This reads like propaganda. Amazon has no business de-listing products because of their price elsewhere.

If it wanted to be pro-consumer, I don't know, it could warn the consumer the price is lower somewhere else, and point them there, like a good search engine of products! Sounds ridiculous? Yeah, because those claims are a bit ridiculous too.

[JKCalhoun]

"…[Amazon] could warn the consumer the price is lower somewhere else, and point them there…"

That would be a miracle.

(On 34th Street.)

[amirhirsch]

Beat me to it. Now I have to delete my reply.

[terminalshort]

Rules around pricing like that are standard retail practice since well before the internet even existed.

[TheCoelacanth]

Many standard practices become illegal when you have the amount of market power that Amazon does.

[terminalshort]

I'm not convinced Amazon has any market power here. Online and physical retail competitors are alive and well, so Amazon has very little room to actually push up prices. It's margins in this area are under 5%. AWS has market power and has a 25% margin, and yet the complaints almost always focus on the retail side.

[eesmith]

Here is the Complaint of the People of the State of California about Amazon - https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/2022-...

Section V is on Amazon's market power.

Section VII is on the anti-competitive effects of Amazon's conduct.

You argue the market space includes physical retail competitors, which the complaint rejects. They describe their reasoning, point out how Jeff Bezos also doesn't see them as interchangeable, hence "physical stores and online stores are not reasonably interchangeable substitutes for one another from the standpoint of consumers".

Indeed,"most merchants—even those that sell through both channels—do not consider physical brick-and-mortar stores to be in the same market as online stores".

It also describes the effect on third-party sellers, like how Chewy.com, Wayfair.com, and Newegg.com charge lower fees, so the seller would like to set a lower price there, but Amazon's policies and market power inhibit the seller "because doing so would result in the suppression of the Buy Box for their Amazon listing."

There's a dozen or so examples of sellers raising their prices elsewhere in order to no lose the buy box, affecting also Amazon competitors:

> A major competing online marketplace to Amazon itself confirmed that it has heard from merchants that they would need to raise their prices on its marketplace or decline to participate in a discount/sale event because a lower price on its marketplace had disqualified or could disqualify their offers from the Amazon Buy Box. This rival marketplace operator reported that during a sales event, certain merchants contacted it to pull their items from the event or indicated that they would need to raise their prices because they reported that they had lost the Buy Box on Amazon, believed they would lose the Buy Box on Amazon, or believed that they would be delisted on Amazon because their item prices were lower on this competing website for the event. ...

> one Walmart manager reported to Bloomberg that “Walmart routinely fields requests from merchants to raise prices on its marketplace because they worry a lower price on Walmart will jeopardize their sales on Amazon.”

> Amazon’s coerced price parity agreements with Marketplace sellers constitute unlawful contracts and/or combinations in restraint of trade in violation of the Cartwright Act.

(The Cartwright Act is California's main antitrust law.)

Are you still not convinced, and if not, why not?

[cebert]

I don’t like it, but it is Amazon’s web property and they can do whatever they want. They could put up political banners on the top of their website, but I wouldn’t recommend it with how divided the country is.

[malfist]

They can't do whatever they want, we live in a regulated economy for precisely this reason. Otherwise you get exactly what is happening here, a company using it's near monopoly power to raise prices on everyone to enrich a few

[twoodfin]

In what sense does Amazon have “near monopoly power”?

Elsewhere in this thread we find shock that American households spend a few thousand dollars on average between Whole Foods and Amazon.com.

I assure you that’s a small fraction of household spending on the goods Amazon sells.

[eesmith]

In the sense described in the lawsuit. See https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/2022-... for details, starting with:

> The policy and spirit of the California antitrust laws are to promote the free play of competitive market forces and the lower prices to consumers that result. Amazon, the dominant online retail store in the United States, has violated the policy, spirit, and letter of those laws by imposing agreements at the retail and wholesale level that have prevented effective price competition across a wide swath of online marketplaces and stores.

The linked-to article concerns a possible preliminary injunction related to that antitrust case.

[twoodfin]

You don’t need to be a monopoly for anti-trust law to come into play. Airlines can’t collude on pricing, for example, even though no single airline is a monopoly.

[eesmith]

Yes. And? There's no claim that Amazon is part of a price-fixing cartel or other collusion.

A pure monopoly is one where there is a single seller or provider. The US grants limited-time monopoly power to a new patent holder, and USPS has a monopoly on traditional letter delivery within the United States, for examples. A pure monopoly is therefore not necessarily illegal.

In addition to that definition, quoting https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly :

"In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. For instance, the term monopoly may be referring to instances where: ... There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)"

That use certainly seems appropriate in the context of Amazon's ability to dictate prices, as described in California's complaint, yes?

[eesmith]

Companies are required to follow the law.

These laws do not prohibit putting up political banners, but Amazon certainly cannot do whatever they want.

There are laws regarding price fixing, abuse of monopoly powers, discrimination on a protected class, product labeling, and making false and misleading statements about drugs.

If they sell Cuban-made cigars made with conventionally grown tobacco, then while they technically can put up a banner claiming "these organic, made in the USA cigars, if smoked twice daily, will cure epilepsy in children - buy now!", they'll have broken several laws.

[robtherobber]

That's not legally correct in the US, EU, or the UK. Private ownership gives Amazon a lot of discretion over its own site design, messaging and whatnot, but not unlimited freedom to do or say whatever they please.

In the US major firms do not get a free pass simply because they own the platform and the idea that a website constitute "private property" doesn't work as a defence to anticompetitive conduct or to display a political banner expressing support for a political party of candidate without triggering additional rules / limits.

In the EU this is even less the case, as it effectively treats some platform conduct as capable of creating societal/systemic risks and thus needs to be kept in check. Whether is happens like that all the time in reality is subject of another discussion, I think; the point is that the mechanisms exist.

Political spending/advertising is a regulated activity that goes beyond rules that apply to private property. In the UK, for example, spending, donation, reporting etc. if the activity is intended to influence voters, falls under specific regulations: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-guidance/campaign...

[dns_snek]

> it is Amazon’s web property and they can do whatever they want

Maybe in a different world, one without antitrust law.

But in a sense you're right, they have de facto right to do whatever they want because of the lack of enforcement.

[robotpepi]

for sure they can do whatever they want, but that doesn't make it "pro consumer" as said above

[mattlondon]

When Google did it with their search results on their site that included links to their own products everyone lost their shit about it.

And those were just links to sites, not things to buy...