That would be like showing up for the battle of Kursk with an M18 battalion. Might go well at first, you might score some big flashy wins, but....ugh... things are gonna get worse as the party goes on and it's generally an ill advised strategy.
Rico as written and enforced walks right up to the limit of constitutionality in a dozen ways. It's built for speed. It's never really been thrown into a knock down drag out legal action between titans on equal footing (i.e. a bigco legal team, potentially helped by other bigcos). It might survive nominally but it probably won't come out the other end in serviceable condition. You might win a few but eventually an appeal will find its target and end your day.
I say go for it. Heads I win. Tails you get RICO reform.
Shouldn't be hard with the obvious circular investing and... oh yeah... the poaching emails between Steve Jobs and Eric at Google back in the day, along with emails revealed during a discovery phase where big tech CEOs were agreeing to act in each other's interests as if they were one big family of companies; it's just physics, afterall
But everyone was making tons of money due to ZIRP trickle down no one cared then
This seems like a grand proclamation rather than a curious conversation-starter about the specific case the article is about. The guidelines have different ways of asking us to avoid this kind of comment.
Please don't fulminate...
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
It would make all the difference if the comment included some commentary on why Antitrust law is inadequate in this case and how RICO would be likely to enable a better outcome.
If you've ever seen those "Click To Reveal Price" or "Price Only Revealed At Checkout" products online, this here is one reason why. They help businesses keep discounted prices hidden from Amazon's crawlers.
We need all new antitrust laws. The size of these companies is itself a problem. They have so much power that there is no possibility for fair competition. Maybe we can start by taxing companies that are worth more than 1 trillion at an extremely high rate.
It's odd that this is a request for a preliminary injunction considering that the case is almost four years old. Both the 2022 and the new filing are heavily censored[1][2], so I can't know for sure, but I didn't notice any revelation in the latest filing. Amazon requires that anyone selling through their platform not offer lower prices elsewhere online. If a seller does so, they'll be relegated to the "New & pre-owned" offers section below the "Add to cart" & "Buy it now" buttons. This has been the case since at least 2019. (This also means that if you're shopping on Amazon and want a better deal, you should check the other offers section for a cheaper price.)
Lots of retailers (both physical & online) have similar requirements, and many manufacturers have similar requirements for minimum advertised prices (such as Apple). I think the California AG's plan is to argue that the pricing rules combined with Amazon's large market share merit a judgement against them, but it's going to be an uphill battle to single out one company for practices that are common to the industry.
How is this not a complete violation of anti-trust laws? If the federal government won't pursue it (questionable in this environment), surely there's more than enough to go after it state-by-state.
And can't we do a class-action lawsuit against Amazon at this point?
The entire use case of dynamic pricing is to raise prices.
Airlines were really the first to do this but there it kinda makes sense. You have a plane. It's going anyway. You want to fill it.
At the other extreme is RealPage, which is explicitly designed to raise rents and it's used by enough people that you can view it as the last frontier of anti-trust, anticompetitive behavior and price-fixing. It's also state-sanctioned violence because your price-fixing scheme has the threat of you being homeless attached to it.
That's another aspect to this: collusion doesn't happen in dark smoke-filled rooms anymore. It can be as simple as all "competitors" simply using the same software, which tells them all to do the same thing.
Another commenter had it right: this is beyond antitrust or competition law. It's a RICO issue.
There's no real structural reason for inflation since the pandemic. The pandemic simply broke the seal on raising prices and now everybody is in on it.
And what's really stupid about this is that done openly there probably wouldn't be an issue. Insurance companies can demand providers charge them the lowest rate they charge anyone. Would there have been any issue if Amazon had simply said that to get those features you must match any deals you give anyone else?
If Amazon punishes sellers for having lower prices elsewhere, isn’t it the sellers choice whether to lower their price on Amazon OR raise their price for other sellers?
I didn’t see anything in the article suggesting Amazon ask for the 2nd option, just examples of sellers who did the 2nd one.
Long-time Amazon seller/brand here, so here's the crux of the case:
1. Amazon is a search engine for product
2. It values being the cheapest destination for products (MFN most favored nation clause to sell on their website), and basically will suppress your listings from search if they can find you selling it cheaper elsewhere.
3. Amazon is def one of the more expensive ecom channels to sell, BUT they've got a huge audience as well due to decades of consumer-first policies, so sellers still go there because even if they have loyal customers with strong brand loyalty, you still end up with at least 30% of customers going to Amazon first after seeing your ads elsewhere + the lure of NTB new-to-brand customers you can acquire there.
So the crux of the case is dependent on whether they can do #2 with impunity -- which Amazon considers "consumer friendly" (but obviously it's win-win for them too).
MFN clauses are common in retail, what's different about Amazon's is the enforcement. Manufacturer MAP policies threaten "we won't ship you more," which you can recover from (unlike a listing demotion)
21 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 37.1 ms ] threadDid Amazon think they were too big to convict?
I wonder if they will meet the fate of Standard Oil, back in the day.
Rico as written and enforced walks right up to the limit of constitutionality in a dozen ways. It's built for speed. It's never really been thrown into a knock down drag out legal action between titans on equal footing (i.e. a bigco legal team, potentially helped by other bigcos). It might survive nominally but it probably won't come out the other end in serviceable condition. You might win a few but eventually an appeal will find its target and end your day.
I say go for it. Heads I win. Tails you get RICO reform.
It lists plenty of crimes, but anti-trust violations isn't one of them.
Also, obligatory https://web.archive.org/web/20170301062028/https://www.popeh...
See specifically sections "Wait. Isn't the defendant the enterprise?" and "So what's "racketeering activity"?"
But everyone was making tons of money due to ZIRP trickle down no one cared then
Please don't fulminate...
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It would make all the difference if the comment included some commentary on why Antitrust law is inadequate in this case and how RICO would be likely to enable a better outcome.
Lots of retailers (both physical & online) have similar requirements, and many manufacturers have similar requirements for minimum advertised prices (such as Apple). I think the California AG's plan is to argue that the pricing rules combined with Amazon's large market share merit a judgement against them, but it's going to be an uphill battle to single out one company for practices that are common to the industry.
1. https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/2022-...
2. https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/REDAC...
And can't we do a class-action lawsuit against Amazon at this point?
Airlines were really the first to do this but there it kinda makes sense. You have a plane. It's going anyway. You want to fill it.
At the other extreme is RealPage, which is explicitly designed to raise rents and it's used by enough people that you can view it as the last frontier of anti-trust, anticompetitive behavior and price-fixing. It's also state-sanctioned violence because your price-fixing scheme has the threat of you being homeless attached to it.
That's another aspect to this: collusion doesn't happen in dark smoke-filled rooms anymore. It can be as simple as all "competitors" simply using the same software, which tells them all to do the same thing.
Another commenter had it right: this is beyond antitrust or competition law. It's a RICO issue.
There's no real structural reason for inflation since the pandemic. The pandemic simply broke the seal on raising prices and now everybody is in on it.
I didn’t see anything in the article suggesting Amazon ask for the 2nd option, just examples of sellers who did the 2nd one.
1. Amazon is a search engine for product
2. It values being the cheapest destination for products (MFN most favored nation clause to sell on their website), and basically will suppress your listings from search if they can find you selling it cheaper elsewhere.
3. Amazon is def one of the more expensive ecom channels to sell, BUT they've got a huge audience as well due to decades of consumer-first policies, so sellers still go there because even if they have loyal customers with strong brand loyalty, you still end up with at least 30% of customers going to Amazon first after seeing your ads elsewhere + the lure of NTB new-to-brand customers you can acquire there.
So the crux of the case is dependent on whether they can do #2 with impunity -- which Amazon considers "consumer friendly" (but obviously it's win-win for them too).
- they take a huge cut, making them more expensive. I've heard some folks give 50% to amazon to sell stuff
- they destroy or drive away brands, so you cannot shop for quality
- "customers" are bombarded by ads. I think sponsored links seem to be close to 100% of results until you scroll down a few pages.