> And if you want to do business (at all) you have to abide by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world, those laws would be set by the people and for the people.
which law is amazon breaking and if there isn't one (there isn't, otherwise there would be lawsuits we are all aware of) what's the law going to look like?
> Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society, and why their behavior should be tolerated in an ideal democratic society?
not sure what "democracy" has to do with anything? we don't really have a system in place where we go to a referendum and make decisions like this. whether or not amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society or not is on the society to decide. you have a choice whether to use amazon services and if you are so anti-amazon no one is forcing you to use their services. if amazon is doing something is illegal based on today's laws there is a machinery to bring lawsuits against (by the government itself or otherwise).
You should reread the comments you have replied to, as you clearly haven't understood what was written.
A law would be fairly simple — it would forbid a marketplace or retailer from influencing the price of goods sold outside their marketplace/shop.
There are already laws regulating pricing in some places, e.g. selling below the manufacturer's recommended retail price, or preventing selling products below cost to attract customers.
> You should reread the comments you have replied to, as you clearly haven't understood what was written.
I sure have
> A law would be fairly simple — it would forbid a marketplace or retailer from influencing the price of goods sold outside their marketplace/shop.
This type of law would make no sense, you are basically saying "I can price gouge the customers on your platform while providing the same product cheaper on mine." That is a F'ed up as it gets...
> e.g. selling below the manufacturer's recommended retail price
This is completely a different thing - if Amazon is actually telling retailers "hey, you want to sell this for $100 but you can't, you need to lower this price" that should 100% be illegal - Amazon should not be telling anyone what the price of their product should be. But that is 1000000% different from Amazon telling same companies "you cannot use our platform to price gouge people and sell your shit for more than you are selling elsewhere."
> you cannot use our platform to price gouge people and sell your shit for more than you are selling elsewhere.
You're badly misrepresenting the situation, to the point that I have to wonder whether you're just being dishonest. Many (likely most, but I don't have the data) 3rd party sellers aren't price gouging customers on Amazon, they're simply trying to pass Amazon's significant fees onto the customers.
They're being prohibited from doing so which reduces price transparency and competition which as you surely know, are both required for a market to be efficient.
This is a move that I would expect to disgust free market capitalism maximalists on some level, regardless of what one may think about Amazon's "right" to do whatever it wants.
I asked you whether you believed that society would democratically support Amazon's actions to determine whether you're making those arguments because you genuinely believe this behavior makes average people's lives better, or whether you're just arguing some abstract extremist neoliberal talking points of freedom for the sake of freedom, no matter what it costs us.
which law is amazon breaking and if there isn't one (there isn't, otherwise there would be lawsuits we are all aware of) what's the law going to look like?
> Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society, and why their behavior should be tolerated in an ideal democratic society?
not sure what "democracy" has to do with anything? we don't really have a system in place where we go to a referendum and make decisions like this. whether or not amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society or not is on the society to decide. you have a choice whether to use amazon services and if you are so anti-amazon no one is forcing you to use their services. if amazon is doing something is illegal based on today's laws there is a machinery to bring lawsuits against (by the government itself or otherwise).