I just saw a political advertisement on MASN that warns if S.2992 passes, it would be extremely detrimental to the quickness of Prime shipping.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2992
Can you give me the Straight Dope on this? Because it seems that Amazon simply wants to limit competition, as usual.
According to Chamber of Progress (think Chamber of Commerce but for some of the massive tech giants), it would prevent Amazon from privileging some of their retailers over others, and from charging retailers a fee to have Amazon deliver products within 2 days (which is how Prime deliveries are paid for).
I have mixed feelings about this.
I understand the motivation behind these laws, I have read and heard testimonials from people frustrated by trying to put their products in Amazon’s store and not being able to compete because Amazon undercuts them in every way with their own products.
On the other hand, I buy a lot of Amazon Basics products. Sometimes it’s because they’re cheaper, but sometimes they just sell really good products. There is a grapefruit-based shower gel I’ve been using for years that is awesome, and it’s an Amazon brand. And I really enjoy Prime shipping. So if this law gets passed, it might directly impact me.
It’s hard to be supportive of theoretical free market principles when the proposed remedy is likely to immediately and directly impact me in a negative way.
I don’t know if this specific measure is the right approach, but something needs to be done about Amazon’s near monopoly. They are still in the expansion phase pushing for market share, so you’re getting the benefit of that push with attractive pricing and services. When their utter dominance is fully established and the competition vaporized, that can bite the consumer in the ass.
Although I must confess to wondering whether, if we’re going to lose our democracy anyway, maybe we’d be better to just to hand the reins of power to the tech giants completely. They have most of the power already, and they are only slightly evil. They’d be much better at handling a pandemic, and at least there’s a chance that our tech overlords might remain somewhat benevolent.
I don’t think Amazon has anything close to a monopoly. According to this chart, they have 41% of online retail sales (and of course a much smaller fraction of total retail sales, which I think is arguably a better market to consider). While they are by far the largest online retailer, they’re not even a majority.
I’m not convinced that anything needs to be done. I’ve already noticed that Amazon is no longer the best choice for lots of my online purchases and I do more comparison shopping in other places. Normal competition is working fine here. Amazon is very good at it, but their competitors are not sitting still.
The other way of reading that is that they are 6 times the size of the closest competitor, in a market where economy of scale is a huge advantage.
Walmart is the only competitor with similar breadth of product range.
Ebay and Costco are not competing in the same space.
And most of the others offer competition only for a limited (or very limited - Apple) range of products.
It’s not yet a monopoly, but those data really do not paint a picture of healthy competition.
I think there are many companies that are significantly larger than their closest competitors and yet exist in a healthy market.
I’m not sure I agree that eBay and Costco are not competitors in the same space. Or, at least, you’d have to define the space even more narrowly than it already is, which I tend to think is too narrow. I recently bought a toy for one of my children, and after looking at price in a few places, including Amazon, I bought it on eBay. I recently bought two televisions, and after looking at prices in a few places, including Amazon, I bought one from Best Buy and one from Costco. I also continue to buy plenty of stuff from Amazon and Walmart online.
One thing I have been trying and failing to find is info on is how Amazon’s share of online retail is changing over time. Are they actually trending toward a monopoly? Is Amazon not yet a monopoly, or is it just not a monopoly and not going to be?
There have been dominant retail behemoths of the past (Sears, Walmart) that… just didn’t become monopolies. People worried about it at the time, too. But competition works in most industries. And I’m not convinced that Amazon has anything like the competitive moats that actual monopolistic companies of the past have had.
If that’s the same one I’ve been seeing – i.e.: put out by https://www.ccianet.org – they’re also claiming that it’ll end free Google searches and allow malware into your phone.
It sounds to me like this would end Prime shipping altogether. I pay for that for a reason. And I don’t really see why at least Amazon’s larger competitors couldn’t do similar things. I know Walmart already does. And they basically are trying to be Amazon, just with the added benefit of actually having nearby storefronts and taking advantage of that to keep prices lower on a lot of stuff.
Inasmuch as I think we need to rein in Amazon, I think it would have more to do with how they treat their employees. Anything else should be about trying to make other companies better, not making Amazon worse.
I also have to give Amazon credit for adding their own delivery workers to actually get things delivered on time.
Though I don’t know why they aren’t using it for my most recent item. If it has Prime on it, I usually expect it to be shipped that way. But for some reason it’s coming UPS, and they’re going to be at least 2 days behind.
Found an article: