FTC files “the big one,” a lawsuit alleging Amazon illegally maintains monopoly
FTC files “the big one,” a lawsuit alleging Amazon illegally maintains monopoly
FTC: Amazon "extracts enormous monopoly rents from everyone within its reach."
FTC files “the big one,” a lawsuit alleging Amazon illegally maintains monopoly::FTC: Amazon "extracts enormous monopoly rents from everyone within its reach."
I can't help but notice Amazon is facing a big lawsuit over hurting other corporations.
Selling an infinite catalogue of shoddy, fraudulent, and outright dangerous goods like leaden toys, phone-melting power-equipment, house-destroying incendiary batteries, and data-erasing empty data storage? No, that's fine, that's not Amazon's fault, that was XZBBK's fault. We kicked them off the store. No, I don't think they're related to that new company XBZZK, why would you say that? They sell legitimate USB cables that according to the listing used to be cutting board, a drying rack, a canopy for a kids bed, and an espresso machine.
It's worse than that.
They DON'T kick bad actors off the store most of the time because they don't know who they are.
Amazon keeps all of product X in one place in each distribution center, regardless of the supplier. So they can't know which of the 35 sellers of the product is supplying the counterfeits.
I don't buy batteries from them anymore. I'm pretty sure 90+% of 18650 cells they have are counterfeit.
At some point it became a question of who doesn't sell counterfeit 18650s
The gall to question their listing with an average customer rating of 4.9/5 stars. Sure I only gave them that rating so I could qualify for the warranty on the 3 TB flash drive I bought from them for $8.99, but I'm sure it'll work fine once I use it for the first time.
Amazon isn't sued for not kicking bad actors, it is sued for being bad actor
....can we just skip to the part where Amazon pays less than a fractional percent of their profit in fines and then proceeds with business as usual? I just feel like the charade has grown tiresome at this point.
You sound jaded.
Don't let the billionaires wear down the will to fight.
Thanks. I appreciate that.
You must’ve missed the part where Lina Khan built her entire career and reputation on an article she wrote for the Yale Law Journal as a law student arguing that Amazon should be split into separate companies and prevented from re-integrating.
She is considered a radical within the antitrust law world. She is vigorously opposed to vertically integrated monopolies of which Amazon is a star example. This case against Amazon is basically the final boss of her career and her legal movement, the New Brandeis Movement.
And then when this gets big it will be decided on by partison 90 year old idiots who will probably and up saying "amazon is 100% in the right on all counts, as damages to their reputation, amazon now owns the FTC" and then it is promptly found out that amazon paid them $10 million each with a comically large check in front of the courthouse at a press conference while taking photos and laughing "about those darned poor people" and the ruling will still stand.
Ah well, better not try then. Guess we just have to learn to like the taste of corporate boot.
Maybe some more wanking about some glorious revolution that will never happen will make that boot taste better.
Allow it to take its course.
"The lawsuit seeks declarations that Amazon's conduct violates federal and state laws. It asks for an injunction prohibiting the conduct described in the lawsuit along with unspecified "structural relief" that would be "necessary to redress and prevent recurrence of Amazon's violations of the law." Structural relief could involve breaking up the company."
Were you around in 1989 when Exxon basically destroyed Prince William Sound with an iceberged oil tanker through a comically evil set of circumstances including a possibly drunken captain, faulty equipment which languished for months, promised equipment that was never installed, and a total lack of planning for contingency? They dumped like 11 million gallons of oil and were assigned massive punitive damages of 5 billion bucks?
....and then it got appealed all the way to the supreme court, where it got busted down to 500 million spread over a time which actually allowed them to see profitability for causing one of the largest ecological disasters in history.
I don't mean to sound jaded, and I truly appreciate your optimism. But the deck is no less stacked thirty years later and our political system is still bought and paid for. Let's roll the dice and hope you come out on top of this one, friend. I'll cheer alongside you.
Amazon and Walmart are in great need of some good ol' trust busting. Well, they aren't in need of it, this society is in need of it.
Amazon and Walmart have just outright won the game. Everyone else in those spaces, and adjacent spaces, just can't compete anymore. You either do business with them or die/live on the leftover scraps.
It's really not good, there should be more opportunities for others.
Oooh. Someone's getting a 0.001% fine to continue business as usual. Juicy.
Everyone is so clever and so jaded. Please read the article:
"The lawsuit seeks declarations that Amazon's conduct violates federal and state laws. It asks for an injunction prohibiting the conduct described in the lawsuit along with unspecified "structural relief" that would be "necessary to redress and prevent recurrence of Amazon's violations of the law." Structural relief could involve breaking up the company."
I just want a trust buster
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon, claiming the online retail giant illegally maintains monopoly power.
"Our complaint lays out how Amazon has used a set of punitive and coercive tactics to unlawfully maintain its monopolies," FTC Chair Lina Khan said.
Today's lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition."
Joining the FTC in the lawsuit are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
The FTC claimed that "Amazon's illegal, exclusionary conduct makes it impossible for competitors to gain a foothold," and that the company "extracts enormous monopoly rents from everyone within its reach."
If the FTC gets its way, the result would be fewer products to choose from, higher prices, slower deliveries for consumers, and reduced options for small businesses—the opposite of what antitrust law is designed to do," Amazon Global Public Policy & General Counsel David Zapolsky wrote.
The original article contains 613 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Amazon gets me shit for cheap and quickly. They could punch me in the face once a year for a fee. I’m not paying $8 to target for fucking deodorant when amazon will get it to me tomorrow for $3. Every penny in this economy counts.
Go after fucking Xfinity and real monopolies that hold our infrastructure and food supply hostage. Otherwise people aren’t going to respect government and the FTC.
Lol are you high? Amazon isn't even the cheapest option in many cases and hasn't been for a long time. They're a terrible company that literally extorts merchants, authors, and businesses. Just look at the cut Amazon takes from books, for example: 65%!
You'll see in that editorial just how much Amazon fucks over authors (many major authors have begun refusing to sell books and audiobooks on their platform). And that's just a tiny fraction of all the fuckery Amazon is involved in.
You're also being completely short sighted if you believe Amazon isn't going to begin price gouging the shit out of everything once their market dominance is utterly complete. Monopolies are illegal for a reason. Just read up on the Robber Baron Era of the US to see how bad it gets when monopolies go completely unchecked. Sadly, we're pretty much reliving it already, as Amazon isn't the only company doing this type of bullshit, which you rightly pointed out in regards to other rackets.
That still comes at a cost, short term gain sounds nice until the next generation(what you were) are even more screwed than before. It’s not the win that it feels like, but they know it feels good and that’s why they try so hard to get you to focus on that instead of other things.
I also understand that it’s fucking rough out there and no one has the energy or money to the right thing every time. Keep buying the cheap deodorant if that’s what you need to do but understand that it comes from a system where the entire goal is to wear you down and pay you so little that you have no choice. These businesses charge so little because they know that no one can compete with them at scale and everyone suffers in the longterm.
Enjoy your counterfeit deodorant that'll likely give you cancer, I guess? Most of what they get people these days is fake garbage that's the same shit on Wish and Temu, but somehow being on Amazon makes it seem more trustworthy to anyone not paying attention.
👞👅
Pff…. Now do the banks, cable companies, health care, etc.
banks
Not a monopoly though?
cable companies
Agreed on this one! In theory, there are lots of cable companies.
In practice, you actually only have one cable provider that provides service in your area.
health care
Also not a monopoly in my area.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to defend any of the abusive practices of any of these industries. It's just that they're not monopolies.
Monopoly as used by professional economists doesn't refer to a literal 100% marketshare. It refers to distortion.
FCC burns ISP's butts
i hate amazon as much as anyone, but...really, just cancel prime and dont use them unless you absolutely have to. Order direct from companies themselves if you can. Shop local. You can't rely on the FTC to do anything and i doubt this will go anywhere. you are much more powerful than you think you are.
That feel when your Etsy purchase comes with an Amazon receipt in the package :(
I had this happen to me on eBay as well. I paid a few extra bucks to avoid buying from Amazon and instead got the item mailed to me directly from Amazon. This is against eBay's policies (you need to have the described item on hand) and may be against Etsy's policies too
That's if Etsy shit wasn't expensive as hell. It's not practical to ship at
No thanks, I don't feel like going back to waiting a week for my package, 4 hour to next day delivery is just too nice
fair enough. i found that it was mostly a scam. they hook you in with "free" prime in college, then it just keeps re-billing forever until you finally realize "do i really need this package in 1 day as opposed to 3-4?" in my case, i virtually never need something instantly. so why pay the $170? its clearly very profitable for them, judging by how desperately they try to get me to re-sign up.
LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Will not go anywhere because Amazon and other gigacirporations basically own the US govt at this point.
Well it’s a shame a company can’t keep benefitting the customers. Seems the capitalist business plan always has to go through a morph of fucking over everyone.
Lina is the best
I'm all for Amazon getting sued but... the big one? Wasn't there another "big one" a week or two ago? And who called it that? Feels like the reporters just made that part up.
I want this to actually do something but I don't have any hope anything will happen. Sigh.