Amazon is a ripoff (Cory Doctorow on Enshittification )

[Voltaire2]

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

There's a cheat-code in US antitrust law, one that's been increasingly used since the Reagan administration, when the "consumer welfare" theory ("monopolies are fine, so long as the lower prices&quot shoved aside the long-established idea that antitrust law existed to prevent monopolies from forming at all.

The idea that a company can do anything to create or perpetuate a monopoly so long as its prices go down and/or its quality goes up is directly to blame for the rise of Big Tech. These companies burned through their investors' cash for years, selling goods and services below cost, or even giving stuff away for free. Think of Uber, who lost $0.41 on every dollar they brought in for their first 13 years of existence, a move that cost their investors (mostly Saudi royals) $31 billion.

The monopoly cheerleaders in the consumer welfare camp understood that these money-losing orgies could not go on forever, and that the investors who financed them weren't doing so for charitable purposes. But they dismissed the possibility that would-be monopolists could raise prices after attaining dominance, because these prices hikes would bring new competitors into the market, starting the process over again.

...

A long but as always very interesting essay by Cory on the antitrust case against amazon.

[jimfields33]

1. I do like the idea that Amazon does help save the planet.

We’d have so many more miles driven without Amazon. Yes it has warts. But it does save the world in a strange way.

[Voltaire2]

2. no it doesn't.

That is the oddest take.

[jimfields33]

4. You may not be aware that one truck can deliver thousands of products to

Various homes throughout an area which results in customers not getting in their car.

[CrispyQ]

3. This introvert who hates shopping loves Amazon.

Amazon isn't the problem. A global economic system dependent on continual growth in a finite system is the problem. Eight billion people all trying to live large is the problem. Agent Smith was right. Humanity is like a virus, consuming everything in its path.