Quote:
Originally Posted by Barcey
1) The comparison to Standard Oil is flawed. Oil is a physical commodity with very expensive infrastructure to refine, store and distribute. If you corner the market on a physical commodity the barrier to competitors is huge. There is no comparison to selling virtual goods, anyone with an existing ecommerce site can enter the market in a month. The barrier to entry today is huge because you'd have to do a better job then Amazon and be price competitive. If Standard Oil abused their power there was no alternative, if Amazon abuses their power there are alternatives for both the customer and the supplier. He's smart enough to know his comparison is flawed.
2) The publishers have a life plus 70 year monopoly on individual books. That power is absolute and can be abused just as much (if not more) than Amazon's power. They accumulated and consolidated that power in the last few decades and that is also damaging. There is loads of evidence that they've also colluded. When he doesn't consider those facts objectively it comes off as one sided and propaganda.
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I do not get 1. Since the barrier to entry is huge we have the same situation. And Amazon is abusing its power when negotiating with the publishers.
And 2 is strange. If A, B and C is bad then it seems strange that an article talking about A and how bad it is must mention that B andC are bad also. Why, since the article is about A?