Subject: Re: How Dey Do Dat?
There is no way a properly functioning economy and a properly functioning judiciary should have allowed Amazon to reach even half its current size in the retailing and distribution of so many products in so many sectors.
Antitrust doesn’t prevent a company from being big, even huge. It prevents (supposedly) a company from abusing that position to disadvantage competitors, and thereby keep the monopoly for itself. With AT&T it was the refusal to let other non-AT&T devices connect to the network (or other networks like MCI’s microwave network). With Microsoft it was the use of the OS to capture the market for middleware or top level software. For Standard Oil it was, well, we all know the story.
So a couple questions: (1) what would you say the anticompetitive things are that Amazon has done or is doing to achieve their positions, and (2) what remedies would you use if you were in a position to eliminate/dismantle/ or otherwise fix the problem?
How would you fix it?