Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
The comparison between Amazon and Standard Oil for example is pure hyperbole. Standard oil, in 1904, controlled 91% of production and 81% of final sales. By 1911 they were broken up for anti-trust violations.
|
When Standard Oil was broken up, its market share in refined oil had declined to about where Amazon's eBook market share is now. And there was a time, before agency, when Amazon had the same overwhelming market share in eBooks you mention for Standard Oil.
Quote:
|
Amazon has not been charged with any anti-trust violations.
|
Part of the reason is that attitudes towards the largest businesses, and the tycoons who run them, has changed a lot in the last fifty years or so. Here's the US president speaking in 1910:
Quote:
|
The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.
|
Contrast with:
I talked to Jeff Bezos yesterday, and he was so proud of the fact that he wants to see every employee at Amazon continually upgrade their skills and improve. And if they've got a dream they want to pursue, Amazon wants to help them pursue it.
This is not a party-political thing. Both parties have shifted. The average American has shifted.
US antitrust a century ago was mostly about protecting small to medium sized businesses. Antitrust today is more about protecting consumers. We can argue whether this is good or bad. But it does suggest that Amazon is not being judged by the same anti-trust standards Standard Oil (or the A&P) faced. Instead Amazon is being judged by the newer standards that have largely allowed WalMart to escape antitrust attention.
This isn't to predict the future. The pendulum could swing back.