(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not in the retail, legal, or finance departments, and I have no inside information about what the company is doing with respect to its pricing. Opinions are my own and not of the company.)
Yet another sensationalist headline that is unsubstantiated by the article.
"This law student" has a theory. He does not have evidence -- and, in fact, much ink in the article is spilled on the fact that the evidence needed to sustain an antitrust case against Amazon isn't readily available to the public or to the Government.
Nor has any Court ever held, to my knowledge, that an antitrust action can be sustained without consumer prices going up - merely keeping them the same is not enough.
Key quotes (emphasis mine):
"Sussman believes that if Amazon gave the full picture, it would show negative cash flow."
"No current accounting rules force full disclosure of itemized costs. Considered highly confidential, they’re typically redacted from public legal documents, even when a company is sued. More definitive cash flow numbers could help prove whether Amazon sells items below cost."
"Sussman believes that the Federal Trade Commission should force companies to break down their costs in confidential examinations."
"Right now, anti-competitive conduct like predatory pricing is judged under the “consumer welfare standard,” which has been interpreted to mean simply whether a market dominated by a single company results in higher or lower prices. But even though prices are the same on Amazon, consumers are arguably missing out, Sussman explains, because they’re not benefiting from Amazon’s soaring profits." (This is not my understanding of an actionable situation under current antitrust law.)
The "consumer welfare standard" is a relatively recent thing, as the article points out, and there were antitrust actions (e.g. blocking of mergers) that were sustained without direct evidence of consumer prices going up as a result prior to that standard being enshrined.
And many people don't think it's a valid standard. So you might be correct in that this is currently legal - or, perhaps, unenforceable because there's no way to prove that it is illegal to the requisite standard of proof. But if so, then to me that would be yet another argument in favor of getting back to antitrust that we used to have before it got Borked [1], since what we have right now is very clearly not working.
1. Amazon occasionally sells below cost (hence existence of CRaP products)
2. Amazon has pushed some vendors to 3p
3. Amazon directly or indirectly dictates allowable 3p prices
The progression from Amazon selling at a loss to them pawning the product off to 3p sellers and taking a larger cut is reasonably argued in the source article to be harmful to consumer welfare.
You're clearly engineering on how to evade antitrust law. But the better argument is simply that if antitrust law doesn't sufficiently cover Amazon's business, then it needs to be changed to ensure that it does.
You can disagree on whether or not Amazon is pricing things ethically, or whether or not antitrust laws should cover Amazon's actions, but the article title is "Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws" which, in the current state of US law, it (probably) isn't.
This comment crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed on Hacker News. Please make your points without stooping to that.
In this case, the nasty bits at the beginning of the comment could be replaced with a factual explanation about the issue at hand. Since you say it's clear, that ought to be easy to do, and it would make your comment into a good one rather than a bad one for HN.
No, a personal attack would be to suggest the moderators at HN are defending Amazon employees from criticism using intellectually dishonest tactics. That would be a personal attack.
Nothing I said was about the poster as a person, but rather the poster represented him/herself as a representative of a company at issue. If you're on here representing your company for good press, expect criticism. If you're moderating that away, look in a mirror and ask yourself why. Does one of the largest companies on earth really need to be defended in the public square by HN moderators?
No, of course. But I'm defending HN, not Amazon. Had your comment been pro-Amazon the moderation would be the same.
You broke the site guidelines by accusing the commenter of posting in bad faith and by making a serious allegation in a snarky, drive-by way. If you're going to address that sort of issue on HN, your comment needs to lose those qualities and contain more information. That's true regardless of how correct your view is.
Yet another sensationalist headline that is unsubstantiated by the article.
"This law student" has a theory. He does not have evidence -- and, in fact, much ink in the article is spilled on the fact that the evidence needed to sustain an antitrust case against Amazon isn't readily available to the public or to the Government.
Nor has any Court ever held, to my knowledge, that an antitrust action can be sustained without consumer prices going up - merely keeping them the same is not enough.
Key quotes (emphasis mine):
"Sussman believes that if Amazon gave the full picture, it would show negative cash flow."
"No current accounting rules force full disclosure of itemized costs. Considered highly confidential, they’re typically redacted from public legal documents, even when a company is sued. More definitive cash flow numbers could help prove whether Amazon sells items below cost."
"Sussman believes that the Federal Trade Commission should force companies to break down their costs in confidential examinations."
"Right now, anti-competitive conduct like predatory pricing is judged under the “consumer welfare standard,” which has been interpreted to mean simply whether a market dominated by a single company results in higher or lower prices. But even though prices are the same on Amazon, consumers are arguably missing out, Sussman explains, because they’re not benefiting from Amazon’s soaring profits." (This is not my understanding of an actionable situation under current antitrust law.)