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To: ClearCase_guy
However, if Amazon conducts online business better than anyone else and grows and grows and makes customers and investors happy, this is not a monopoly. There is nothing to “fix” here.

I disagree. Anytime a corporation corners a market, the "how" of it is irrelevant. What matters is the result of letting one Corporation own an entire market with no effective competition.

Power must be distributed. We can never let any single entity hold so much power, regardless of how they came to hold so much power.

28 posted on 06/20/2017 7:22:32 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp
"Anytime a corporation corners a market, the "how" of it is irrelevant. What matters is the result of letting one Corporation own an entire market with no effective competition."

I would say this is especially true with food distribution.

35 posted on 06/20/2017 7:25:47 AM PDT by circlecity
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To: DiogenesLamp
Anytime a corporation corners a market

Amazon's revenue in 2016: $136B. Global retail e-commerce in 2016: $1100B.

51 posted on 06/20/2017 7:40:13 AM PDT by palmer (turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure)
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To: DiogenesLamp
We can never let any single entity hold so much power, regardless of how they came to hold so much power.

"We"? Who's that?

It's not government, which is also a single entity which has already aggregated too much power. The idea that "we" are the government is a candy coating that totalitarian wannabes use to feed the rest of us their poison pill of dictatorship.

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.

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

But, you may say, they don't, or can't, because the existing monopoly will squeeze it out. Well, again, it depends on "how". If the old dog answers the challenge by improving service yet more, then no problem. That is what drives the quality of goods and services in a free market.

It's when a monopoly maintains its position by illegitimate means (and history provides plenty of examples) that there is a problem. The focus changes from the service or goods provided to the customers, to making sure that no other source is available. 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.

Those tactics are illegal, and since those days, law has been spelled out to allow government to sanction such practices. There was a time when it did just that.

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?

"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.

Ain't no sech thang as "too big to fail!"

111 posted on 06/20/2017 8:29:59 AM PDT by thulldud
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