32 Comments
Jul 17, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

Amazon charges very high fees to sell on their site. In my business, which is, on average, at 35% gross margin, Amz charges 15% of the gross price. They are my partner, for doing nothing more than hosting.

Two thirds of Amazon’s retail profits are from third party sellers. No kidding. It’s short term thinking but no one cares. Smaller operators can’t stay in business with Amazon as their partner.

Why this gouging is overlooked escapes me.

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Is there any remote possibility to be able to roll back time- laws. Bring back

anti monopolies, Glass-Steagall Act , and to me added need to revise back before 1952 Truman's changed transparency into our own government, Archives, over Cold war issue with then USSR.

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Thanks as always, Matt, for your intrepid efforts.

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A Dem holding up anti-monopoly legislation - what a surprise ....

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I just wrote to Bernie asking him to go back to being the angry old socialist pointing out how it is all about corporate power. Who needs another nice sorta-Democrat. And why isn’t Warren squeezing this into every news cycle? And why aren’t more mainstream Dems like Tim Ryan screaming about the destruction of small businesses by Amazon? I keep saying, this is a winning campaign issue with ordinary voters on both sides. And, to our progressive, educated costal elites who use Amazon … I frigging see all your boxes … shame on you and your holier than thou yard signs. Do the right thing.

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I'm very disappointed. You have now tried to bootstrap your inaccurate claims that Biden is appointing judges who hostile to anti-trust (while providing no evidence that they are in fact bad on anti-trust) into a slander that Biden's competition policy is "incoherent". This is really bad and it damages your credibility. You should stop doing this.

Our house is on fire going into the midterms and you are pouring gasoline on the fire instead of helping us persuade people to put it out.

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founding

Cheers, Matt. Great piece.

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The kind of pressure Amazon puts suppliers under forces the suppliers to slash costs in a way that is harmful for the long term viability of these companies. Amazon does no actual innovation or brand development. It is just sucking profits out of innovative companies by controlling access to the customers and the needed data to innovate and grow.

Long term this kills innovation in the industries that have to sell through the web and slows down over all productivity growth especially in the US. What they are doing is terrible for the US economy.

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Jul 17, 2022·edited Jul 17, 2022

Hi, Matt,

Ah, here is a gem from a Biden bureaucrat….

“In a 2020 interview with PV Magazine, Jigar Shah, co-founder of Generate Capital, a fund that invests in sustainable infrastructure, said the problem can be addressed at the very start of the product chain — by manufacturers. Shah, who is now director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, said that policymakers need to require manufacturers to come up with a standard design that makes panels easier and cheaper to recycle.

“”It’s far more cost-effective for manufacturers to be forced to work together … where they try to greatly reduce the cost of all that collectively. That happens through policy,” he said. “It doesn’t happen through people opting in.””

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/california-rooftop-solar-pv-panels-recycling-danger?mod=djemMER_h

Seems at first glance sensible till I consider the implications of “force” by top down government decree is as threatening to freedom of choice as a bottom up monopoly. Maybe this isn’t the great tip you need, but here goes.

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