This is quite nonsense. Amazon.com is far from being a monopoly and will never become one. The competition is already fierce and is getting stronger. Amazon.com has to compete against companies which are even bigger and more powerful than the online pioneer. Google for instance uses her muscles to become a huge online seller. Amazon.com is starting same-day delivery of goods in some places - and Google does the same and delivers products from Costco, Target, Walgreens, and other brick-and-mortar stores on the same day of the order. Apple sells a lot books, music and video via iTunes and people can choose whether they read e-books on Amazon`s Kindle or on Apple`s iPad.
The competition is a big gain for consumers who can expect cheap goods comfortably delivered. If Amazon would raise prices, reduce service quality and selection as "The New Republic" alleges, this would strengthen her competitors and would attract more companies to enter the e-commerce business.
The continuous Amazon bashing by the liberal media is not a coincidence. Liberals don`t understand economy and they mistrust markets. They underestimate - or bluntly ignore - the power of competition. They believe that markets have to get regulated by the government otherwise they would be destroyed by monopolies.
But monopolies are rare. Every time when someone - or a company - has a successful business others will try to copy him and to get a huge share of the pie. There are 2 exemptions:
- Artificial Monopolies which are created by government regulations. Book publishers are monopolies because by law (copyrights) nobody else is allowed to print the same book without their permission.
- Natural monopoly: It doesn`t make sense to run say 10 railroads between say New York and Bostn because this would multiply the costs by 10 and each railway company would make huge losses. (In the 19th century there had been competition among US railway companies. Most of them went soon bust).
Selling goods online is not a natural monopoly, every body can do that.
Disclosure: I am an investor in Amazon.com, user of a Kindle and subscriber of Amazon Prime.
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