California sues Amazon, alleging its policies cause higher prices everywhere

[wxa7115]

No sympathies here. Companies such as Amazon and Google spend billions of USD every year to manipulate elections in favor of left-wing political parties, and they are now getting sued by the same people whom they helped to elect. I don't understand this logic. How can Amazon influence the prices in other online platforms? I can say with full confidence that the arrival of Amazon helped to lower prices for 99% of the products and to remove the middle-men. I am sure that the current lawsuit was planned by the middle-men who lost their business due to Amazon. 

This is what I do not get either, it is not as if people are mindless buyers which will only buy whatever they have in front of them, if you use Amazon and you're looking for a product and then you find the very same product or another product with similar characteristics for a cheaper price in another platform then it is natural that you are going to buy the cheaper option as long as the product is similar.

If what they accuse Amazon of doing is true then at some point people will realize this and then they will begin to stop using Amazon by themselves without the need of any regulation or lawsuit, the capitalist system is very good at dealing with those price distortions and we do not need the government to do anything, as most of the time they make things worse instead of improving them.

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[blue_hurricanger]

No sympathies here. Companies such as Amazon and Google spend billions of USD every year to manipulate elections in favor of left-wing political parties, and they are now getting sued by the same people whom they helped to elect. I don't understand this logic. How can Amazon influence the prices in other online platforms? I can say with full confidence that the arrival of Amazon helped to lower prices for 99% of the products and to remove the middle-men. I am sure that the current lawsuit was planned by the middle-men who lost their business due to Amazon. 

then you find the very same product or another product with similar characteristics for a cheaper price in another platform then it is natural that you are going to buy the cheaper option

What you missing here is this one. People or buyer has a sort of loyal thinking to branding or platform. If they used to get their stuff from a platform, unless it earns their mistrust, they'll keep using it. This is how Amazon has established itself and its position. They got too many customers browsing Amazon that they were confident even with a little bit more expensive price, they can still sell it against the competitors on other platforms. As well as tricks like price floor like this. So yeah, I can understand why some sellers feel frustrated if they made their goods become available on many platforms and earn a blacklist from Amazon if they set their goods price lower on any platforms other than Amazon.

[savetheFORUM]

California being the home of silicon valley and 5th largest economy in the world. As well as the homes of google, apple, tesla, microsoft and countless other world famous US tech start ups. One might wonder how california came to have leadership which blames amazon for high market prices. Is this the future direction for silicon valley and the united states as a whole?

The dream is near the end, California has stopped being the land of the promise and it's starting to turn more and more into a mess of capitalism socialism and even communism with the cheery on top being that they are only taking the worse part from everything.

The whole dream about building a utopia, like the one with green energy that has led California to have both the highest prices and the most black-outs, the ban of gas cars, and then the announcement to not load your electric car as you stress the grid, the taxes that are driving the same companies away to, ironically Texas, idiotic laws to preserve cities like they are museums driving up prices for homes, driving up rents, turning people into homeless and the ending up destroying the same city center you wanted to protect and eradicating every business there because of crime. And god, how many more!!!

That’s what happens when you have unchecked growth just to get some more money. California got so much money thanks to big corporations there, many of the big tech companies are there and paying their taxes there at the same time, which is understandable because it is a location where they can find the right people to work there, but at the same time this caused wealth difference between regular people and these people.

I feel like capitalism has never really worked, and California could be a great example for it as well, liberalism doesn't mean let everyone either be rich or die, it means you should be free to do whatever you want but the role of the government should still exist to protect its citizens.

[Sithara007]

What you missing here is this one. People or buyer has a sort of loyal thinking to branding or platform. If they used to get their stuff from a platform, unless it earns their mistrust, they'll keep using it. This is how Amazon has established itself and its position. They got too many customers browsing Amazon that they were confident even with a little bit more expensive price, they can still sell it against the competitors on other platforms. As well as tricks like price floor like this. So yeah, I can understand why some sellers feel frustrated if they made their goods become available on many platforms and earn a blacklist from Amazon if they set their goods price lower on any platforms other than Amazon.

Yes... the last point is a valid one and I am not very comfortable with it.

Amazon blacklists sellers if they sell their products at a lower rate in any of the other online platforms. If the California authorities want to eradicate this practice, then I am 100% in support of them. But given the socialist/communist leaning of the current California representatives, I really don't think that their intention is that good.

Here in India, it is an entirely different story. Offline stores (who used to overcharge the customers by up to 2x) are mad that products are being available at very cheap rates in Amazon.

[tygeade]

California is the bluest of the blue states and whatever happened there during the last 2-3 decades can be solely attributed to the policies of the Democrat party. Else how can a state which is home to the Silicon Valley can become bankrupt? I am not defending the GOP as well. Pre-Trump era Republican party was like Democrats on steroids. There were countless invasions of third world nations, which resulted in military expenses of trillions of USD. Trump era was an exception, as the tax rates went down, and there were no major military interventions.

If you google "best places to live in the USA" you will see that majority of it is democrat cities, and if you check where people are moving to, that's mainly blue states as well, with one exception which is Californians moving away. What you need to understand is that Sillicon Valley didn't made it better, it made it worse, it caused wealth discrepancy which caused people who are not as rich to move away from there due to lack of money, that's the reason.

Trump or no Trump, democrat or republican, black or white, religious or secular, like I said, it's NEVER about the ideas, it is always about the people, good people will create good states, bad people will create bad states, simple as that. It has absolutely nothing to do with which party you are on.

[blue_hurricanger]

What you missing here is this one. People or buyer has a sort of loyal thinking to branding or platform. If they used to get their stuff from a platform, unless it earns their mistrust, they'll keep using it. This is how Amazon has established itself and its position. They got too many customers browsing Amazon that they were confident even with a little bit more expensive price, they can still sell it against the competitors on other platforms. As well as tricks like price floor like this. So yeah, I can understand why some sellers feel frustrated if they made their goods become available on many platforms and earn a blacklist from Amazon if they set their goods price lower on any platforms other than Amazon.

Yes... the last point is a valid one and I am not very comfortable with it.

Amazon blacklists sellers if they sell their products at a lower rate in any of the other online platforms. If the California authorities want to eradicate this practice, then I am 100% in support of them. But given the socialist/communist leaning of the current California representatives, I really don't think that their intention is that good.

Here in India, it is an entirely different story. Offline stores (who used to overcharge the customers by up to 2x) are mad that products are being available at very cheap rates in Amazon.

To be fair, it was Amazon's site after all. They might do a lot of 'scoop low' like this to maintain their monopoly on all the eCommerce platforms and competitors. For example, they can argue the 'price floor' is there to help and protect sellers on their site from the flash sales from other storefronts which also have their store open on other eCommerce platforms different from Amazon. Short flash sales to attract customers from Amazon leaving the site for the other.

Similar to that, a cut for Amazon from the seller higher than the other is a normal thing in online distribution or retail. About how one popular distributor demands more cuts than the less popular ones. Steam, for example, takes 30% share from the sales on there. Epic Games, another platform to sell games only take 12% from the sales, the rest toward the devs. All are fair in the open and competitive market.