1. Our new paper on Amazon is a description of how the 21st century gatekeeper works.
Amazon's rise is not a story of innovation, it's a story of power. Bezos's focus is entirely about exploiting legal loopholes. Our report shows how he did this and how to fix the law.
Amazon's rise is not a story of innovation, it's a story of power. Bezos's focus is entirely about exploiting legal loopholes. Our report shows how he did this and how to fix the law.
2. From the earliest days, Bezos sought to get big by any means necessary. He told an early employee, “When you are small, someone else that is bigger can always come along and take away what you have.”
economicliberties.us/our-work/under…
economicliberties.us/our-work/under…
3. Early Amazon employees confirmed the obsession with creating dependencies, noting that Bezos’s “underlying goals were not to build an online bookstore or an online retailer, but rather a ‘utility’ that would become essential to commerce."
4. “I want to draw a moat around our best customers,” Bezos said when launching Prime. “I’m going to change the psychology of people not looking at the pennies differences between buying on Amazon versus buying somewhere else.”
5. Today, Amazon is simply key infrastructure. Amazon controls more than three fourths of all digital transactions in toys and games, household essentials, electronics, personal care, and appliances. searchenginewatch.com/2019/08/01/ama…
6. Amazon's lines of business include cloud computing, a massive TV & movie studios, advertising, supermarkets, fashion, pharmaceutical distribution, music, books, fulfillment and logistics, home security, and of course online shopping. 
7. How Amazon generated its power is simple. It found ways to become a gatekeeper using superior access to capital, it fortified its gatekeeping position, and then it extended its power from one market into another. Repeat and rinse. Books --> Toys --> All retail --> Logistics...
8. Creating monopoly power by excluding competitors, and then leveraging that power into new markets, used to be against a whole series of laws. This report lists those laws. economicliberties.us/our-work/under…
8. The key with Amazon is to stop the predatory activities without undermining the actual lines of business. There's nothing wrong with UPS, eBay, and Target, the problem is putting them into the same conglomerate, which becomes heavily conflicted. Here's how to make Amazon safe:
9. Eliminate self-preferencing of its own products by structurally separating its lines of business where it sells products on platforms it controls. (Marketplace, Basics, Alexa, AWS, Fulfillment by Amazon, Ring, Kindle, Studios, Music, and Advertising) economicliberties.us/our-work/under…
10. Prohibit tying of products/services by dominant firms. Right now Amazon seems to tie its fulfillment service to its marketplace service. mattstoller.substack.com/p/what-amazon-…
11. Strengthen predatory pricing law so selling below cost to get market share is illegal. Also start enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act again, which prohibits price discrimination to acquire monopoly power. yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-a…
12. Police against deceptive search results. Amazon’s advertising business relies on search displays that contravenes the FTC’s guidance on deceptively formatted search engines.
13. Amazon's power relies on its ability to withhold critical services from competitors, suppliers, and merchants who use its platform. So bar monopoly leveraging, refusals to deal, and/or restore essential facilities doctrine.
14. It's too hard to bring a case as a private litigant, so we have to rely on feeble gov't enforcement. Eliminate arbitration agreements that prohibit class action antitrust suits, reduce the legal burden required to certify classes, and and create anti-retaliation provisions.
15. Strengthen investor disclosures w/lines of business requirements. Amazon’s withholding of data on Prime, Ads, FBA, and private labels prevents enforcers, customers, and competitors from seeing how the corporation might be engaging in unfair practices. mattstoller.substack.com/p/what-amazon-…
16. Add privacy protections for third party business data, and a purpose-limitation for data (as per @johnnyryan). Amazon should be prohibited from using data collected on one platform to target consumers on any other platform.
17. Harmonize liability standards for retailers and platforms so Amazon can't weaponize counterfeits. Electronic marketplaces should have more liability for products sold by third party merchants on their platforms.
18. Limit acquisitions by dominant firms like Amazon. Strengthen labor law by banning non-competes and making it easier to form unions. Finally, end tax subsidies through inter-state compacts or a Federal law banning company-specific state and local tax incentives.
19. Amazon is powerful because we stopped enforcing laws against monopoly power. We just need to remember that we once did constrain monopolists, and can do so again. The question is whether we the people regulate our trade, or whether Jeff Bezos does. economicliberties.us/our-work/under…
20. Ok this bugged me and Twitter doesn't have an edit button. I should have put *substantially* instead of *entirely* in the opening tweet. But you get the point.
