It’s Time To Break Up Amazon

Fast Company ^ | 6/20/17 | Douglas Rushkoff

[Callahan]

“Amazon just bought Whole Foods,” my friend texted me seconds after the announcement of the proposed acquisition. “It’s over. The world.”

This unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for breaking up Jeff Bezos’s impending monopoly by force. Surely the company, which now generates 30% of all online and offline retail sales growth in the United States, and already controls 40% of internet cloud services, has reached too far. The 3% hike in Amazon’s share price since the announcement—which would alone more than pay for the acquisition—may attest less to the deal’s appropriateness than to investors’ growing fear that missing out on Amazon means missing out on the future of the economy.

Whatever you may think of Jeff Bezos, and whether or not antitrust regulations can justifiably be applied to a company whose expansion doesn’t raise but actually lowers costs for end consumers, may be beside the point. Many of us get that something is amiss, but are ourselves so deeply enmeshed in the logic of last century’s version of free-market industrial capitalism that we can’t quite bring ourselves to call this out for the threat it poses to our markets, our economy, and even our planet.

[vette6387]

“I’ll vote with my wallet against those corporations,”

Well you can do that until they’ve managed to gobble up their competition, then what will you be doing? The problem here is the scale of what these companies are doing. Just look at what the banks did back in 2007. Left to their own selfish devices, these “retailers” will end up doing the same thing to this country and probably the whole world. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, the only tool we have at our disposal will be our government. Unfortunately, by the time we really need some measure of government control. Bezos & Co. will probably completely own the government too.

[ClearCase_guy]

As I said before, it sounds like you are against Free Markets and Free Speech.

Now if sounds like you oppose businessmen having too much money. Perhaps we should redistribute their wealth, eh Comrade?

I will point out that 2 of the richest people in the original colonies were George Washington and John Hancock. The money isn’t the issue. I grant that the misuse of political influence is a legitimate issue (I don’t like crony capitalism) — but getting rid of rich people isn’t the solution. Limiting the power of government is the solution.

So far I haven’t seen anything with Amazon / Whole Foods which makes me think this is crony capitalism. It’s just business. Business is what America is all about.

[moehoward]

I don’t know if I’d call Whole Foods “high end”. They might be expensive because they feature “organic/sustainable” inventory.

A while back there was a thread on the Anti Vaccine Movement. The article stated if you wanted to find those that make up the movement, all you needed to do was find a Whole Foods and draw a 10 mile radius around it.

That is the socio-politcal mentality Bezos is targeting with this acquisition.

He will of course expand to every flavor of Twinkie and all the other junk food currently available at any market, and your EBT card can be used at checkout.

[palmer]

No one is going to be able to match their economies of scale.

That is false for just about every category of product. Look up the Amazon price and then look for a lower price and you will likely find one. The convenience of Amazon Prime keeps customers as well as the fact that Amazon advertises for many other retailers.

[Sam Gamgee]

The article itself actually had little to do with the headline. They just wanted to capture some attention.

So yes, if we applied the standards we did in the 1930s, we should break up Amazon.

But from a conservative point of view, I oppose government interfering in the marketplace unless something fraudulent or illegal is going on. Government has this tendency to look at success and want to destroy it.

If anything, it is Goldman Sachs that should be broken. This is an organization that functions on lies and fraud and brings no economic value.

[Sam Gamgee]

Agree. It is wonder that government didn’t try to destroy Carnegie. I mean he put other steel producers out of business. (but brought unheard of wealth to the masses).

[The Great RJ]

Start with the beer industry in the US ..basically two major players. InBev- Anaheiser Bush and SA Miller/ Coors Molston

[Sam Gamgee]

Yes. These guys sold toxic assets worldwide, and then actually made money betting against those assets. How they still exist is beyond me.

[Sam Gamgee]

There are certain “players” who want us to fear corporations. Watch many if not most “Dystopian” features these days, and the future is run by a mega corporation.

Corporation can't force us to do anything. The only power they have is persuasion.

Government has the power of the army, courts, and police. It is government we should fear.

[Albion Wilde]

Ping!

[DiogenesLamp]

While I agee with you, it largely doesn’t matter as their corporate masters probably wouldn’t allow it. Like with most ideas limiting government it’s a non starter as the corporate/billionaire side of the opinion gets what they want.

This is a problem which I fear may eventually overwhelm us.

[discostu]

Both sides are fond of it. Big ol’ scary faceless corporations are an easy boogieman for any agenda.

[Chickensoup]

bumpptiy bump

[DiogenesLamp]

"We"? Who's that?

And it does matter very much how somebody gets power. If he does it by providing a better service than everybody else, then so be it. Such is the reward of success.

That is naive. Kings got power by inheriting it. How they get power is irrelevant to the fact that too much power concentrated in the hands of two few is a recipe for Oligarchy, especially with all the socialist leaning people of wealth nowadays.

It's a temporary thing, though. What one does well, some other will eventually do better, and a new player may replace the old.

That is wishful thinking substituting for a valid rebuttal. How do you know that it is temporary? How do you know a new player will replace the old? Because that has been the case in the past?

That is a logical fallacy.

It's when a monopoly maintains its position by illegitimate means (and history provides plenty of examples) that there is a problem.

It is when a monopoly is created or maintained by any means that there is a problem. Monopolies are inherently detrimental to those who have to live under them. The temptation to use the power of a monopoly is too great, and human resistance to temptation is too weak.

If you create the power, it will be abused.

In the old days, robber barons used goon squads and labor strikes against their competitors, boycotts against upstream vendors, many such underhanded tactics "in restraint of trade", as they are categorized.

And these things were mostly legal at the time. This is my point. People's understanding of what is happening needs to be informed by the notion that things which are currently legal, perhaps should not be legal.

We are plowing new ground so far as monopolies go, because the technology to achieve one in this manner did not exist previously.

We may discover that we need to implement new laws to prevent such monopolies from being formed, and it may require us to make illegal things which are currently legal.

Nowadays, the myrmidons of DC have decided that it's too much like work to fight illegal restraint of trade, and more profitable to come to terms with monopolists. Not that they ignore the possible uses of the law when some upstart entrepreneur threatens to crash the party. Remember how they turned the hounds loose on Microsoft (for good cause), and also remember how quickly that all just "went away" with a few "burnt offerings" at the proper altars?

Yes I do, and I still regard Microsoft as a near monopoly and one which should be broken.

"We" just need to break up the monopolistic government ("drain the swamp") and the existing monopolistic businesses that depend on it to maintain their positions will have to sink or swim.

Well I agree, but that is as difficult a proposition as restraining the monopolies. The "Swamp" protects it's creatures, and we are having a hard enough time trying to pry business and government collusion apart already.

I see a long fight ahead of us, and one which we may not win.

[DiogenesLamp]

I note that people often revert to accusations of "tin foil" when they have no valid rebuttal to a point which has been put forth.

It's a lazy man's argument.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything is “will”, “will”, “will” because you’re just fantasizing based on your fears, rather than the actual current reality.

Because history gives us a pretty good understanding of human nature, and when power is available to be exploited, it eventually will be exploited. To disregard potential threats is naive.

You’re calling capitalism a “theology”, derisively, on FR? Wrong website, man.

Don't strawman me. I'm talking about the notion that you can have a free market system that regulates itself. That is effectively a theology, because it has no basis in fact. Adam Smith showed that you cannot have such a system. When opportunity arises, amoral businessmen will do bad things to gain an upper hand, so the system must of necessity be regulated by some external power with no direct interest in profit.

I’ve never said they don’t pose a threat, but people like you use the specter of monopolies simply to bash any successful business they don’t like, even when they are far from approaching the definition of a monopoly. I guess you think it makes you sound less like a leftist.

Yes, I know it's a big Leftist talking point to rail about corporations, but the potential to do mischief when you become so big or have so much information about the public is real.

Google did use their power to manipulate the 2012 elections. The "news" corporations routinely use their powers to advance democrat policies and talking points. They do this deliberately with the intention of manipulating elections, and they have been quite successful at this since 1960.

Even if you turn out to be right and my fears are unwarranted, don't you think it is at least prudent to keep an eye looking in this direction?

[Alberta's Child]

Interesting that you would point that out.

I think you'll find that in most industries, the "natural" progression over time is that they consolidate as they mature until they end up with two dominant players who function as a duopoly. Think of how retail sectors ended up with two dominant competitors, not one ... Wal-Mart and Target, Barnes & Noble and Borders, Home Depot and Lowe's, Staples and Office Depot, etc. Amazon is basically turning the retail industry on its head by adding a new competitor into almost all of these sectors.

[DiogenesLamp]

You have repeatedly suggested that the "power" of a company that has (in your opinion) gotten "too big" needs to be "reallocated" among the people.

I have not said anything which even slightly resembles such a thing. I said that corporations which get so big that they control huge swaths of the economy and the public need to be broken up and control of those corporations needs to be distributed among more people.

Think the "Bell System" and you'll have a better idea of what i'm saying.

[Alberta's Child]

The shipping side of this ultimately comes through in the pricing for Amazon. Even if they offer “free shipping” to their customers, the reality is that the cost of delivering something to your door has to be folded into Amazon’s cost of doing business.

[Mr. K]

Breaking up Bell Telephone was not necessarily a good thing.

It created much more confusion than it help savings for customers. Did it help or hurt the advancement of technology for the cell phones?

Government meddling in the economy is rarely a good thing.

I am not sure if I know a good answer to this one- you could argue that Microsoft has a monopoly status too... but would you want to argue that it has not helped the entire planet while becoming the biggest capitalist success story ever?