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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmazon Must Be Stopped
In other words, were all enjoying the benefits of these corporations far too much to think hard about distant dangers. Besides, the ideology of Silicon Valley suggests that we have nothing much to fear: If these firms no longer engineer breathtaking technologies, they will be creatively destroyed. Thats why Peter Thiel, the creator of PayPal, has argued that the term monopoly should be stripped of its negative connotation. A monopoly, he argues, is really nothing more than a synonym for a highly successful company. Insulation from the brutish spirit of competition even makes them superior organizationsmore beneficent employers, better able to both daydream and think clearly. In Thiels phrasing: Creative monopolies arent just good for the rest of society; theyre powerful engines for making it better.
Thiel makes an important point: The Internet-age monopolies are a different species; they flummox our conventional ways of thinking about corporate concentration and have proved especially elusive to those who ponder questions of antitrust, the discipline of law that aims to curb threats to the competitive marketplace. Part of the issue is the laws themselves, which were conceived to manage an industrial economyand have, over time, evolved to focus on a specific set of narrow questions that have little to do with the core problem at hand.
Whether Amazon, which does $75 billion in annual revenue, has technically violated antitrust laws is an important matter, of course. But descending into the weeds of predatory pricing statutes also obscures the very real threat. In its pursuit of bigness, Amazon has left a trail of destructioncompetitors undercut, suppliers squeezedsome of it necessary, and some of it highly worrisome. And in its confrontation with the publisher Hachette, it has entered a phase of heightened aggression unseen even when it tried to crush Zappos by offering a $5 rebate on all its shoes or when it gave employees phony business cards to avoid paying sales taxes in various states.
In effect, weve been thrust back 100 years to a time when the law was not up to the task of protecting the threats to democracy posed by monopoly; a time when the new nature of the corporation demanded a significant revision of government.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119769/amazons-monopoly-must-be-broken-radical-plan-tech-giant
mainer
(12,022 posts)Omaha Steve
(99,580 posts)Thanks for the link!
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)Initech
(100,063 posts)The rich are the takers, let's get that right! The term "monopoly" means exactly that -no competition.