Dharmesh Mehta Amazon’s vice president of customer trust and partner support, told CNBC that media reports detailing the company’s use of seller data are inaccurate.
Amazon just placed itself on record to the material mutual benefit of the #marketallocation and a #pricefixing collusion scheme between itself, as a retailer, and third-party sellers.
Every contract that restrains free trade has at least two parties that end up with a benefit. In this case, we already know that Amazon benefits — 40% of all sales come from third-party sellers and 100% of all sales from Amazon Home Services division come from third-party pros.
We now also know that third-party sellers benefit selling products in a #pricefixing collusion by company’s own admission of fact.
The same exact study can be done for Amazon Home Services scheme, it will likely confirm the same exact premise — both Amazon Home Services and third-party pros benefit from #pricefixing in the short term.
Of course, in the long term, Amazon is an unlawful monopoly, therefore, all third-party sellers will all eventually suffer and raise their prices. Their prices are either ultra- or supra- competitive, whatever they are, they are certainly not an open market.
Of course, it is much easier for “third-party sellers” to collude with Amazon than to take risk of building an alternative. Collusion between business is, by far, cheaper than open competition. Third party sellers must be treaded as a hub-and-spoke element of a united collusion scheme — as an aggregate this collusion network of independent sellers makes up almost half of all Amazon’s total sales.
This distinction is why one cannot side with third-party sellers as a “victim” — the law does not allow belligerents in a #pricefixing scam to claim damages — both belligerents benefit from the scheme and both belligerents engage in a felony.
#bigtech #antitrust #shermanact #ftcact U.S. Department of Justice Federal Trade Commission US Congress
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