Amazon Is a Ripoff

&quot;There&#x27;s a cheat-code in US antitrust law, one that&#x27;s been increasingly used since the Reagan administration, when the &quot;consumer welfare&quot; theory (&quot;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.&quot;<p>Antitrust law governs anti-competitive conduct, not the formation of monopolies (cf. &quot;trusts&quot;, as they were known at the time the Sherman Act was passed). There is is nothing illegal about forming a monopoly. The question is whether the defendant used their monopoly position to engage in anti-competitive practices.

I am generally skeptical towards anti trust laws--though i do recognize that they are necessary. They give the state too much power to decide who is a market winner. Too often the definition of anti-competitive comes down to political favoratism.<p>I would caution the author to consider the implications of what he seems to be asking for.<p>Most businesses run at a loss at first. You really cannot start a business--nevermind an unproven startup--if you&#x27;re required to charge at a profitable level initially.<p>So I think the argument about Uber is accurate. Clearly the investors do plan on re-couping their losses. Were they planning on doing it <i>anti-competitively</i>? Maybe. The line between &#x27;taking losses initially to get started&#x27; and &#x27;taking losses so we can clear the field of competition and then reign as a monopoly&#x27; is dubious and difficult to quantify.<p>Most of the tactics mentioned re: Amazon seem like regular retail tactics (staples in the back, high-margin items prominently displayed). All retailers control the price of items (usually they don&#x27;t want a reputation for being expensive, a few don&#x27;t want a reputation for being cheap). And 40% profit margins are not unusual. And consider even after this, Amazon basically breaks even in it&#x27;s retail.

Speaking of scraping: One fundamental problem is the lack of standardized presentation of discoverable semantic web data <i>cough</i> RDF <i>cough</i> ontologies <i>cough</i>. If it&#x27;s standardized and provided, then it&#x27;s less of a burden to the scrapee and more useful for others.<p>For example, finding the precise version history of open source software inevitably requires scraping a web page, download hosting server, or some source control. This is costly for the servers hosting it and fragile.<p>Circling back to the case of price data. When an item is not in-stock, merchants have a habit of displaying disingenuous prices that are very high or low.<p>Another dark pattern of gamification: displaying deceptive prices based on User-Agent, such that crawlers see one price while potential buyers see another.

&quot;There&#x27;s a cheat-code in US antitrust law, one that&#x27;s been increasingly used since the Reagan administration&quot;<p>AKA The Bork Doctrine, for the originator, Robert Bork.