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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon, claiming the online retail giant illegally maintains monopoly power.
"Our complaint lays out how Amazon has used a set of punitive and coercive tactics to unlawfully maintain its monopolies," FTC Chair Lina Khan said.
Today's lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition."
Joining the FTC in the lawsuit are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
The FTC claimed that "Amazon's illegal, exclusionary conduct makes it impossible for competitors to gain a foothold," and that the company "extracts enormous monopoly rents from everyone within its reach."
If the FTC gets its way, the result would be fewer products to choose from, higher prices, slower deliveries for consumers, and reduced options for small businesses—the opposite of what antitrust law is designed to do," Amazon Global Public Policy & General Counsel David Zapolsky wrote.
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Amazon gets me shit for cheap and quickly. They could punch me in the face once a year for a fee. I’m not paying $8 to target for fucking deodorant when amazon will get it to me tomorrow for $3. Every penny in this economy counts.
Go after fucking Xfinity and real monopolies that hold our infrastructure and food supply hostage. Otherwise people aren’t going to respect government and the FTC.
Lol are you high? Amazon isn't even the cheapest option in many cases and hasn't been for a long time. They're a terrible company that literally extorts merchants, authors, and businesses. Just look at the cut Amazon takes from books, for example: 65%!
https://authorlink.com/writing-insights/writing-does-amazon-take-a-percentage-or-flat-fee-on-e-book-sales-2021/
You'll see in that editorial just how much Amazon fucks over authors (many major authors have begun refusing to sell books and audiobooks on their platform). And that's just a tiny fraction of all the fuckery Amazon is involved in.
You're also being completely short sighted if you believe Amazon isn't going to begin price gouging the shit out of everything once their market dominance is utterly complete. Monopolies are illegal for a reason. Just read up on the Robber Baron Era of the US to see how bad it gets when monopolies go completely unchecked. Sadly, we're pretty much reliving it already, as Amazon isn't the only company doing this type of bullshit, which you rightly pointed out in regards to other rackets.
That still comes at a cost, short term gain sounds nice until the next generation(what you were) are even more screwed than before. It’s not the win that it feels like, but they know it feels good and that’s why they try so hard to get you to focus on that instead of other things.
I also understand that it’s fucking rough out there and no one has the energy or money to the right thing every time. Keep buying the cheap deodorant if that’s what you need to do but understand that it comes from a system where the entire goal is to wear you down and pay you so little that you have no choice. These businesses charge so little because they know that no one can compete with them at scale and everyone suffers in the longterm.
Enjoy your counterfeit deodorant that'll likely give you cancer, I guess? Most of what they get people these days is fake garbage that's the same shit on Wish and Temu, but somehow being on Amazon makes it seem more trustworthy to anyone not paying attention.
👞👅