Amazon enforces a Most Favored Nation (MFN) condition on sellers, basically implying that they cannot sell the same product elsewhere for cheaper. Funny enough - when Amazon pushes their fees higher, it means the prices go up everywhere, that's Amazon inflation.
so does this go for companies which sell electronics like phone companies etc. or since I think resellers sell it on amazon, maybe we don't have MFN condition?
But like, my question is, Doesn't this cripple every company which sells electronics on amazon or something?
I think amazon tries doing it to say that you would only get the best price here, thus people might buy from amazon which can then increase the sales making retailers believe they need to be on amazon agreeing to MFN policy and then crippling their custom market too I suppose
Are there any loopholes to this? What if I am a seller and then I can have lets say my book be on amazon for 100 bucks as an example and I can create a website where I sell it for 110$
But when someone signs up they can get a voucher for 20$ and then they can apply it for what I am selling which for them becomes 90$
I think amazon's MFN is monopolistic especially for things like books which is what amazon first was created for.
I kinda wish if there was a service where I can buy one time right to publish a book from the authors directly for like the books price and then be able to download it or print it from local competing printing/tech service shops..
It does cripple them, but only those Amazon can strong arm. There are some companies that refuse to sell on Amazon for this very reason - one example I know is Jellycats. MFN applies at reseller level - not at product level (obviously).
Yes, it is monopolistic - some call it technofeudalism, because Amazon owns the "land" and extract land rent out of it - with questionable service in return.
It's certainly not the case that you can just buy something outside of Amazon and it'll magically be 40% cheaper. For a long time Amazon pursued aggressive strategies to drive out competition and physical stores, leaving Amazon the most convenient or sometimes the only option.
Having built an extremely strong position, they can now increase prices and fees, and leverage power over sellers to stop them from listing lower prices off-Amazon, if they want to also sell on Amazon. See page 42 of https://web.archive.org/oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/... for an example of this
So, a competitor could also invest a lot, drive out competition, be the most convenient, build themselves an extremely strong position then reap the rewards ? This strategy can be replicated, thus is subject to market forces
The market today is extremely different to what the market looked like at the time Amazon worked their strategy, it was dominated mainly by physical retailers that may have required a long drive, things were not always stocked, limited choice on what's stocked on shelves. And ordering over a phone from paper catalogs had long delivery times and limited information beyond just a picture and short description. Amazon disrupted the industry by changing all of this and becoming the first major online retailer.
You won't be able to just replicate their strategy, and they've spent ridiculous amounts of money on next-day/same-day delivery infrastructure that nobody's gonna be able to invest that much. But if you do have any ideas on how to disrupt Amazon and be more convenient than them in 2025 let me know :)
Plenty of people do want to make the efforts and have tried. Physical retailers like Walmart have opened online retail but adoption remains limited. Startups like Jet.com, Quidsi, Fab.com, Rakuten/Buy.com, Woot and many others have tried and failed to take on Amazon, leading to bankruptcy or being sold. The reality is that nobody can take on Amazon due to their slimy tactics but also nobody can realistically provide something to customers that Amazon doesn't already provide. Fees will keep increasing and costs inflating as much as Amazon wants, while customers are none the wiser and sellers can do nothing about it.
You can't realistically compete with a Monopoly like Amazon. They'll buy you out way before you can be an inconvenience to them, or drown you by artificially lowering their price until you go bankrupt if you refuse their deal. And even in the off-chance you somehow replace them, then great. We're back to square one.
Sure, "a competitor" with hundreds of billions of dollars and a few decades to burn could, in theory, do that.
But what would be the payoff? Getting to compete head-to-head with Amazon? Amazon, that's a well-established incumbent, with a well-known pattern of ruthless dealings, including leveraging their ties with governments, to protect their monopoly?
No one's going to be able to make a profit doing that.
"The market" is not a real entity with desires and opinions.
"The wisdom of the market" only works with an ideal free market, or something close to it.
Such a thing has a number of requirements, such as low/no barriers to entry, perfect information, elasticity of demand, etc.
Those do not exist here. No useful information on how things "should be" can be obtained from the fact that Amazon cannot meaningfully be challenged.
Your position, essentially, boils down to "however things are right now, if they're even remotely stable, that's how things should be, because that's what the market wants." Worship of the status quo.
I’m only criticising Varoufakis point of view and some people arguments here. Of course I have some things to say about Amazon… and yes information is never perfect
huge, and where else?
there are some places here where the slope is so gradual, that the low tide is over the horison
growing up we had a camp right at the end of Burnt Coat Head, in Noel, and never did make it to the low tide line
between there and Cape Split there is the full range of tidal phenominon on display, resonant standing waves, whirlpools, tidal bores(with surfing black ducks),whole bays emptied, and varios dikes and berms, dams, locks, to hold it back
there are one ot two other places on the planet that are close, and from the charts in the article, spots with NO tide, which when I think about,is very wierd indeed
Bravo you are among 0.1% of people who check on your own behavior. 99.9% others just try random stuff until it works and don't want to bear the consequences of their mistakes
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I'm always wondering why we don't note down the base (10) when we name those numbers. There can be lots of others similars properties in small bases and all the "magic" properties of such numbers are just specific to base 10, there's nothing specific about 10 it's only what a lot of humans use
Obviously if you remove from your mind all market mechanisms, then it doesn’t look like a market anymore
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