Phil Hands for September 29, 2023

Bezos is not that handsome. That greedy, yes.

It’s not what I’d call a monopoly. But I do think they’re big and evil enough to be operating in restraint of free trade.

Well, I was thinking about the Amazon Pharmacy – isn’t it funny how Amazon could always bargain with Big Pharma when Medicare/Medicaid couldn’t?

Special deal for Big Pharma from the best legislators money can buy, methinks.

Well when the choice is getting what I need in two days or driving from store to store for a week hoping to find something close to it Amazon wins every time. I also hold little sympathy for WalMart, Target, etc. I find WalMart crying about anti-competitive practices especially hilarious.

Where’s the monopoly? I have no Amazon account and have never purchased from them.

Replace it with something that works better then. To replace it with something inferior is just plain stupid.

If you live in any of the crime ridden blue cities where looters run rampant it is safer and faster to shop on Amazon. Bezos supplies what buyers want.

Amazon’s not a monopoly and they’re losing market share making money isn’t against the law

I live in a rural area and Amazon is good for some things considering it costs me $0.25 per km to go anywhere. Walmart and Canadian Tire deliver with a charge, usually better than making a 350 km round trip. If it is really low priority and not returnable I go to AliExpress. That said a CCTV camera was the same price on Amazon and Ali but Amazon does returns since the Chinese one arrive defective and it took forever to get a refund. And I didn’t wait a month

Went to space on republican tax breaks for rich people.

Lina Khan, current head of the FTC, wrote an article for the Yale Law Journal in 2017 titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”. You can get the pdf of it on the web. In 2018, she further expanded this theme in “The Ideological Roots of America’s Market Power Problem” in the Yale Law Journal Forum.

America’s three hundred and something billionaires made over $2.4 trillion off of Trump’s Tax cuts so far. Only takes a few million per billionaire to buy Congress, great return on investment.

Welcome to the USA! You are free NOT to purchase anything from Amazon. Look back 15 years ago, we all could get the stuff we needed or wanted.

We buy something from Amazon almost on a daily basis. It’s just too convenient. Every time I look online for an alternative, it is hard to find. I don’t consider going to Wal-Mart or Target as helping the little guy either.

“… Republicans’ grasp on the upper crust of American society is beginning to slip, while Democrats are increasingly becoming the preferred party of America’s elite. And it could cost them their grip on the White House.

Republicans have appealed to America’s wealthy with a platform that’s long committed itself to lower taxes and fewer regulations for big businesses. However, wealthier Americans are gravitating more toward Democrats, voting blue in the last two presidential elections. And the new appeal to wealthier individuals is creating a divide with a key Democratic voting bloc: blue-collar workers. …" __ Newsweek

The divide between the richest and the poorest keeps growing, aided by tax breaks enthusiastically endorsed by the Right.

Bezos does not have a monopoly. He has done what Sears should have done online. Unfair business practices are cited, and if proved are the issue. Intimidating any competitor with lower pricing is wrong.

Not so sure there’s a case against Amazon. Their marketplace dominance isn’t really a monopoly. The rose to dominance through non-monopolistic actions. They’re not using monopolistic practices to push out other businesses. (Beating them in the marketplace isn’t the same thing.)

He’s going the wrong way on the board.