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Amazon spongebob monopoly11/19/2023 The paper quotes Citigroup analyst Ronald Josey, who concludes in a new report: “The e-commerce market is becoming more competitive.” “Meanwhile, Shopify has more than tripled its revenue over just the past three years,” the Journal adds, thanks to a strategy of catering to merchants who want an alternative to selling on Amazon’s platform. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that the company’s leading competitors are “growing of late instead of diminishing.” Walmart’s revenue from online sales has surged by an average of 39 percent each year for the last four years, and is expected to reach $62 billion in the current fiscal year. Yet Amazon’s rivals aren’t dwindling, they’re growing stronger. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but a monopoly? The reason federal and state antitrust laws take such a dim view of monopolistic behavior is that it strangles competition - and when companies have no competition, consumers suffer through higher prices, lower quality, and fewer choices. The company’s market share accounts for a bit under 38 percent of leading retail e-commerce companies in the United States. Amazon may be big and popular, but it doesn’t come close to meeting that definition. How could there be? Amazon isn’t a monopoly.Īs any economics textbook will affirm, a monopoly is an enterprise that is the sole provider of a good or service. “Amazon is a monopolist.” But in all the pages that follow, there is little concrete evidence to substantiate those charges. “Amazon has seized control over much of the online retail economy,” it contends on its first page. The government’s complaint is 172 pages long. So there is a certain irony in the way federal regulators go after successful companies that are not protected from competition and loudly denounce them for exerting monopolistic control - something the government itself gets away with every day. These government monopolies didn’t always exist - the Pony Express was a private company and private banks used to issue their own paper money - but they are now mandated by law and taken for granted by most Americans. So is the allocation of broadcast frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum. The granting of patents and trademarks is another area in which the feds have a monopoly. Through the US Postal Service, the federal government has the exclusive right to deliver (and charge for) first-class mail. For instance, only the Bureau of Engraving and Printing may print paper currency and only the US Mint may produce coins for use as legal tender. There is no more powerful monopolist in America today than the US government.Įxamples of Washington’s monopoly power abound.
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