- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- news@lemmy.world
California Attorney General Rob Bonta last night filed a request for a preliminary injunction in California’s existing case against Amazon for price fixing. Attorney General Bonta’s 2022 lawsuit alleged that the company stifled competition and caused increased prices across California through its anticompetitive policies in order to avoid competing on price with other retailers. New evidence paints a clearer and more shocking picture. The motion for a preliminary injunction comes after a robust discovery process where California uncovered evidence of countless interactions in which Amazon, vendors, and Amazon’s competitors agree to increase and fix the prices of products on other retail websites to bolster Amazon’s profits. Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply. Vendors, bullied by Amazon’s overwhelming bargaining leverage and fearing punishment, comply — agreeing to raise prices on competitors’ websites (often with the awareness and cooperation of the competing retailer), or to remove products from competing websites altogether. Amazon’s goal is to insulate itself from price competition by preventing lower retail prices in the market at the expense of American consumers who are already struggling with a crisis of affordability.
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There was a time when Amazon was not full of scummy rip-off products, when it was not playing games with prices, when it was not a cloud-computing powerhouse, and you know what happened?
That’s right, they crushed their adversaries (retail shopping) and earned billions in profits. They won.
But somehow that’s not enough winning, there isn’t enough winning until all the value has been vacuumed up from the world.
To quote a favorite singer of mine,
You could fill a man with gold, and still have room for greed.
The other commenters here are right about Amazon’s initial methods, but I’m also going to highly recommend Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification for a detailed explanation of how this happens (including a breakdown on Amazon specifically) and what to do about it.
Bezos explicitly undercut the competition for years to drive all of the competition out of business. Amazon took as much time from 1997-2016 to make as much profit as they did in 2017, which is also (not) coincidentally when they hit peak market saturation and were able to start raising their prices.
So what you’re talking about was real, but it wasn’t like, “back when Amazon was good”, they were just preparing for what they are now. Having a huge monopoly on just about everything has always been their win condition, and they’re no where near done winning.
AKA the Walmart method.
Yeah. It’s the same thing Uber did with pushing cab services out of business.
Not only that, but AWS is the real money maker for them. Not that retail and gaming and prime and whatever don’t also make boat loads of cash, but it doesn’t even graze AWS. The scale of these data centers is unreal and most of the internet runs on AWS.
I’m an industrial electrician with background on what they’re ordering and installing in terms of control panels and if you saw the weekly shipments it’d make you sick. And we’re only one supplier, they have others.
And that is why I no longer buy anything from them. I’m just embarrassed it took me as long as it did to realize what they were really doing.
Yep. Canceled my shit, deleted all the apps, I’ll buy from someone else. Life was just fine before Amazon and will continue to be fine without them.
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You can stop buying from Amazon whenever you choose to. There are online alternatives to every product they sell. You don’t need to be part of it. Whatever excuse you give is wrong.
Further their prices often aren’t the best, and it’s going to continue getting worse.
Yeah, I cancelled my subscription last year and I thought I’d missed out because it was on Amazon. When I searched other sites I actually saved money in a few cases. Also, turns out I buy less now as well which is an overall win.
Bought something from AliExpress last week. Showed up in an Amazon box 😐 Aggravating that the only way to avoid them is apparently to never shop online. I already mostly don’t, but sheesh.
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Yeah, I’m in the US and what you described matches the experience here too.
One major point though, the physical locations still have to pay humans, in my community, to operate. It’s not much, but these days I consider it roughly a moral duty to do what I can to force companies to spend money on employees.
And then otherwise at our house we just buy more and more stuff second hand. Quality in everything is trash anymore, even just packaging is barely functional trash these days. Everything you open destroys itself, including stuff that’s supposed to reseal with a zipper, like a bag of cheese. Gotta make line go up!
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Look here for alternatives of Amazon: https://lmaa.space/
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I definitely can’t comment on what your situation looks like to you directly, but where I live, I find your description of nothing but “lil Istanbuls” in the “inner cities” to sound super suspicious. Gross, honestly.
In the US that’s roughly the exact sentiment (not far from exact words, truly!) that the most egregious Trump supporters spew everywhere they can. To be clear, these folks rarely visit a city in any capacity and will often tell stories for weeks when they do. All the while getting themselves worked up enough to collect legitimate small arsenals (not hypothetical “har har, Americans”, I’ve known many people young and old like this).
I dunno. I can’t see what it looks like from your eyes, fundamentally. But are you sure you’re as unwelcome as you think in the immigrant shops, or even shopping areas/neighborhoods? I randomly pop into whatever vaguely or strongly “ethnic” shop or restaurant and never have a bad time. Pretty often have some fantastic times! Just go shop there and let yourself be (a little) vulnerable and clueless, is the advice I’d give my lost warped countrymen.
Sounds like you’re describing a different desired experience, I don’t mean to be TOO reductive, but idk. Cultural integration can work both ways, it’s fun and dope to learn and enjoy what other people like, might be my single favorite experience on Earth 🤙
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In the game, you have to improve your properties to charge more rent. In reality, the monopoly can reduce quality and raise price at the same time.
You dont really improve it, just added more units. Its about volume, not quality.
