10-15-2014, 12:18 PM | #1 | |||
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Legal web site: "Please stop calling Amazon a monopoly"
From the litigation and trial web site, fallouf from the laughable piece in THE NATION:
http://www.litigationandtrial.com/20...azon-monopoly/ "Please stop calling Amazon a monopoly": Quote:
Quote:
Good clear writing from a lawyer. And concludes: Quote:
Listen to James Patterson: http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/1...oycott-amazon/ Let's see how far that gets him. Last edited by fjtorres; 10-15-2014 at 12:21 PM. |
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10-15-2014, 12:36 PM | #2 |
Omnivorous
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Poor Patterson. He keeps whining and *still* nobody listens to him.
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10-15-2014, 12:44 PM | #3 |
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10-15-2014, 02:06 PM | #4 |
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I have never found Patterson's books interesting enough to want to buy or read them.
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10-15-2014, 02:43 PM | #5 |
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10-15-2014, 04:39 PM | #6 |
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Ah but Amazon doesn't just sell ebooks. It sells a lot of other things as well. Are we to believe that none of the thousands of things sold are being sold at non competitive prices? I wonder if even Jeff Bezos knows the actual price on every product sold via Amazon.
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10-15-2014, 06:31 PM | #7 | |
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Quote:
Not for long. Remember, Amazon is all about data mining and maximizing the utilization of their infrastructure. If a product's price means it's not pulling its weight they haggle a better price or drop it. (And they do drop products from their catalog regularly.) One way they do it is by letting one of their affiliated vendors get the sale. They can always drop the price and take a loss just to get it out of the system. |
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10-15-2014, 06:43 PM | #8 | |
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Quote:
Ok, how about dominant market position if he finds the word monopoly offensive? Legally it amounts to the same thing and is a pretty good description of Amazon's ebook position over the past several years (ranging from 60% to 90% of the market). Of course, the idea that it can't be a monopoly if a company is selling something that is supplied by someone else is rather odd. Some of the most famous monopolies have been trading companies that sold something supplied by someone else (starting with Tea and going through the meat packing and slaughter house cases). |
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10-15-2014, 06:54 PM | #9 |
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Never Mind... Wrong post
Last edited by jgaiser; 10-15-2014 at 06:59 PM. |
10-15-2014, 07:08 PM | #10 |
Surfin the alpha waves ~~
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Hey! I worked for the Bell System!
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10-15-2014, 07:11 PM | #11 | |
Is that a sandwich?
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The information from the court case is over 2 years old now. The ebook world is in a totally different place now.
Quote:
This doesn't necessarily mean Amazon is a monopoly, monopsony or predator but, on the other hand, Amazon may want to avoid any new DOJ scrutiny. |
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10-15-2014, 07:30 PM | #12 |
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On a simular note, there was a pretty interesting opinion piece in todays Wall Street Journal -
Three Cheers for ‘Creative Monopolies’ by Crovitz http://online.wsj.com/articles/gordo...&mg=reno64-wsj The crux of the article is discussion of Peter Thiel and his idea that innovators create a temporary monopoly by moving into a space where no one else is. Here is an interesting quote - "He warns against creating products that can be commoditized. “All happy companies are different: Each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem,” he writes. “All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.” Example: Google , with its unique search advertising, is worth three times as much as all U.S. airlines combined." He quotes a Scalia written majority opinion - “The mere possession of monopoly power, and the concomitant charging of monopoly prices, is not only not unlawful, it is an important element of the free-market system. The opportunity to charge monopoly prices—at least for a short period—is what attracts ‘business acumen’ in the first place; it induces risk taking that produces innovation and economic growth.” So, innovative companies, such as Amazon, Google, Paypal and Apple, are monopolies. However, this is neither illegal nor bad. The article is based on Thiel's new book “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” Sounds interesting. As a side note, I would point out that the US practice of granting a patent for just about anything and everything, tends to help innovative companies hold so call creative monopolies for longer than normal. When one can patent the idea of an online shopping cart, that tends to cut back on competition. I suspect that patents are the biggest barrier to entry in many tech markets. |
10-15-2014, 08:21 PM | #13 |
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Amazon's US market share, in eBooks, is roughly the same as that of Standard Oil, in refined oil, when it was broken up for being an illegal monopoly.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffberc...y-the-numbers/ I'm not saying Amazon should be broken up. I am saying that 2/3 market share is enough for the word monopoly to be commonly applied. Thinking that I now I should read Ida Tarbell's History of Standard Oil (1904) to see if there are other similarities, I just checked Amazon.com and found they wanted $5.99 to Whispernet this public domain title to my Kindle. So I got it from Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7057...rd_Oil_Company I wonder if Standard Oil ever had a Gazelle Project: http://www.businessinsider.com/sadis...azelle-2013-10 Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 10-15-2014 at 09:43 PM. |
10-15-2014, 08:29 PM | #14 | |
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Quote:
Shari |
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10-16-2014, 04:42 PM | #15 |
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The government is a monopoly and all other monopolies are approved by the accomplice in monopoly, the government.
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