Comment by eesmith
1 day ago
What is your goal here?
Do you understand what malfist wrote by "near monopoly power", and agree that it's a correct description of California's anti-trust lawsuit?
If not, what do you not understand?
As to your new set of questions, do you mean my personal beliefs, or do you mean the process by which the courts determine if an organization is abusing monopoly power, or to you mean an actual court decision? I'll answer all three.
Personally, yes, these companies abuse their near monopoly power. The failure to enforce the Robinson–Patman Act, the de-fanging of the FTC and consumer protection agencies, and the post-Borkian re-casting of antitrust law to "consumer welfare", has, IMHO, devastated the American free market resulting in a centralized command economy dominated by a handful of megacorporations.
Nor am I alone in this belief. It is not hard to find articles like "Walmart’s Monopolization of Local Grocery Markets" at https://ilsr.org/article/independent-business/walmarts-monop... which, among other things, points out how the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department has, since the 1960s, greatly raised the threshold for what "highly concentrated" market capture means, and WalMart is extreme even by that definition.
The legal process is to identify the relevant market. This can neither be too narrow - the market for "RC Cola" is not "those who buy RC Cola" but also includes other colas - nor too large -- RC Cola is not really interchangeable with milk, even though both are liquids which people drink.
If 99% of the people drink RC Cola, that could be because they love the taste, and are willing to pay more for it. (This is the premise of the Borkian view that monopolies are a direct and visible expression of consumer choice.) The anti-trust case must therefore also show there was abuse of its market position. That is what California's complaint does by describing many cases of third-party sellers unwilling to offer lower prices elsewhere, for fear of retaliation by Amazon. (The "consumer welfare" interpretation wrongly, IMO, rejects the idea that vendor concerns like this are part of antitrust law.)
There's probably more, but I'm a programmer, not a lawyer. I only know about these details because of the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit and commentary about the influence of Lina Khan on the FTC.
As for legal decisions, like I said, the last 40 years or so have chiseled away at antitrust law. So we have the FTC under Lina Kahn bringing up an anti-trust case, https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2025/12/18/how-w... :
"A newly unredacted FTC complaint shows that PepsiCo and Walmart worked together to rig grocery pricing, drive up pricing at competitors and protect Walmart’s dominance. Internal PepsiCo documents reveal a coordinated strategy to give Walmart better wholesale prices, penalize independent and regional grocers that tried to lower their prices and preserve Walmart’s “price gap” by pushing rivals’ shelf prices up."
but then having it dropped voluntarily by the Trump/Ferguson FTC.
Which is why these sorts of things are now taken up on state courts, like California for Amazon, or New York (see Gelbspan v. Pepsico and Walmart at https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/mopabybynva/...). That does use the word "monopoly" and "monopolist", and describes the SSNIP test as the Hypothetical Monopoly Test used to determine if the relevant market is well-defined.
So if you are looking for actual court cases which have determined this, you either haven't been paying attention to the topic (completely understandable!), or you are a willing supporter of the Chicago School and the billionaire class which gain power by promoting it.
I guess I’m looking for a definition of the market for which Amazon holds a “near monopoly” and the criteria for establishing that designation.
It can’t be because 99% of people shop at Amazon to the exclusion of other retailers, because they don’t. Indeed, Amazon’s share of aggregate retail spending is quite low.
The response has been, roughly, “There are a bunch of court cases where these things are hashed out, and Amazon’s name has come up.”
OK, but as I said to begin with, antitrust is not just about monopoly power.
What monopoly powers does Amazon hold? At what point did they acquire them (roughly) looking back to their founding 30 years ago?
Maybe frame this the other way: If Amazon is only a “near monopoly”, what would have to happen to drop the “near”? What weight is that word carrying?
Then you need a primer in competition and anti-trust law.
The steps are to identify the relevant market and show abuse of market power - abuse as defined by antitrust law. The relevant market is not "aggregate retail spending". The California complaint goes into details about how online sales are not interchangeable with brick and mortar stores, something I mentioned earlier.
Determining abuse is not a simple plug&chug exercise.
The Walmart complaint I linked to describes the SSNIP test as one such test. The complaint goes into the analysis. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_but_significant_and_non-... for an overview.
It's not "99%", but such levels are a political decision about how what is fair and what is unfair market power. I pointed to the ISLR page, and mentioned how the threshold for concerns about market concentration has increased. Here's the full paragraph:
> Even by the permissive standards of today’s Justice Department, Walmart’s market power is considered extreme. Under guidelines established by the department’s Antitrust Division in 2010, markets in which one corporation captures more than 50 percent of revenue are defined as “highly concentrated.” (The agency has repeatedly raised this threshold since the 1960s, including sharply increasing it in 2010. These guidelines are used to evaluate mergers.)
My response has been "here are complaints which go into the details that you've asked about. You should read them to understand their arguments."
> but as I said to begin with, antitrust is not just about monopoly power.
And I completely agreed with you. However, for this specific case of Amazon, the California complaint can correctly be interpreted as concerning abuse of monopoly power, even if California never used that term. Because they don't need to use that term.
> What monopoly powers does Amazon hold?
Addressed in the complaint.
> At what point did they acquire them (roughly) looking back to their founding 30 years ago?
Why does that matter? When did Standard Oil become a monopoly? I doubt the Supreme Court of Ohio had to determine a rough date before being able to issue a breakup order.
> what would have to happen to drop the “near”?
Why does it matter?
I've already pointed out that economics and law use different definitions of "monopoly". Adding the qualifier "near" ensures that "monopoly" isn't misread as the economics definition of being a (pure) monopoly.
Determining abuse is not a simple plug&chug exercise.
I’m not asking about abuse, I’m asking about monopoly. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s possible to become a monopoly through legitimate competitive action, and indeed similarly preserve that monopoly without violating anti-trust law.
So again: Why is Amazon a “near monopoly”? You go on for pages and pages through multiple comments that amount to, “Because California alleges that they are”—despite California not using that word, just words about anti-competitive practices that you claim are the same thing. I deny that claim. I believe California is alleging Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive behavior that would be anti-competitive behavior whether they’re a monopoly, near monopoly, or no monopoly at all.
Why am I wrong?