Amazon has long employed predatory pricing to establish market dominance.
And in Monopoly 101, cornering a market allows you to jack up prices.
So it’s good that The New York Times is keeping an eye on Amazon, writing that the Seattle giant has been raising prices for some niches of the book industry, including “scholarly and small-press books”:
Amazon sells about one in four printed books, according to industry estimates, a level of market domination with little precedent in the book trade.
It is an achievement built on superior customer service, a vast range of titles and, most of all, rock-bottom prices that no physical store could hope to match. Even as Amazon became one of the largest retailers in the country, it never seemed interested in charging enough to make a profit. Customers celebrated and the competition languished.
Now, with Borders dead, Barnes & Noble struggling and independent booksellers greatly diminished, for many consumers there is simply no other way to get many books than through Amazon. And for some books, Amazon is, in effect, beginning to raise prices.
— I don’t understand why publishers like to hand over their opinion pages to other publishers who have their own.
The Wall Street Journal likes to print New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman’s half-coherent ramblings.
And USA Today last week gave valuable real estate to Forbes CEO Steve Forbes—a real Capitalist Tool in more ways than one—who tosses off a column headlined, “Focus on economy, not climate.”
Surprise, surprise: Forbes thinks we need to forget about environmental regulations and the like and ramp up the oil-burnin’!
The guy owns a magazine, and he runs his thoughts in it every issue. Free up the USA Today space for someone who doesn’t own a press.
— Speaking of the WSJ, that wretched page called last week (on the 4th of July!) for Egypt to get a murderous dictator to clean things up a bit:
Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who took over power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly shreds them:
Presumably, this means that those who speak for the Wall Street Journal - the editorial was unsigned - think Egypt should think itself lucky if its ruling generals now preside over a 17-year reign of terror. I also take it the WSJ means us to associate two governments removed by generals - the one led by Salvador Allende in Chile and the one led by Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. Islamist, socialist … elected, legitimate … who cares?
Presumably, the WSJ thinks the Egyptians now have 17 years in which to think themselves lucky when any who dissent are tortured with electricity, raped, thrown from planes or - if they’re really lucky - just shot. That’s what happened in Chile after 1973, causing the deaths of between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Around 30,000 were tortured…
Presumably, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board believes that because Pinochet “hired free-market reformers”, he should be excused the excesses of a few death squads. That is, presumably, why they think a business-friendly cold killer in the Pinochet mold is who Egyptians need now to manage their “transition to democracy”.
But really, I’m at a loss. There must be some sort of justification for such a statement. I just haven’t the slightest clue what it is.
The justification is that, in right wing land, Chile was a miracle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile
More than that, it was a model.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6930.htm
These are the people who think the federal government overreaches when it interferes with a state's right to disenfranchise and dehumanize its people. They write storybooks about Adolph the leftist and purge things like how businesses and the right wing supported fascism.
These people just pretend the bloody parts of history away.... which is why they're doomed to yadda yadda yadda - we should all know the shtick by now.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 9 Jul 2013 at 06:30 AM
I mean here's an example of a cato man attending the lecture of another cato man:
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3749/the_chilean_miracle_shows_that_economic_liberty_is_the_best_way_of_helping_ordinary_people
"I had the pleasure on Saturday night of listening to Jose Pinera speak about economic reform in Chile, particularly the system of personal retirement accounts."
But Pinera ain't just some bum swept off the street and into the halls of Cato, he's got history:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/03/siren-santiago
"In 1974, having just completed his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard, Piñera returned to Chile eager to help run economic policy under the new Pinochet regime. Less than a year earlier, Chile's military—with backing from the United States—had stormed the presidential palace and seized power from the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Pinochet would become infamous for a reign of terror that included torture, murder, and kidnappings..
In 1975—after Friedman and Harberger insisted that the Chilean military impose "shock treatment" on the economy—the Chicago Boys took over major government ministries. Government spending was slashed, unemployment soared, wages were cut, production nose-dived. Many strikes were banned and wage negotiations ended. In 1978, amid growing worker unrest, Piñera was appointed labor minister. To head off a boycott campaign threatened by U.S. labor leaders, Piñera drafted a major labor law that—while touted as finally granting Chile's repressed workers legal rights—severely restricted organizing, striking, and wage negotiating. Harberger, who is on the advisory board for Cato's Social Security project, calls Piñera's move "a brilliant performance" that helped convince labor leaders in the United States to call off the boycott.
With labor's political power in check, Piñera focused on privatizing the pension system. He saw as his biggest obstacle the "tenacious belief that Social Security could and should be an effective vehicle for the redistribution of wealth.""
But all of that history is forgotten so Pinera can talk about the Miracle of Chile, one in which, "the poverty rate has plummeted from 50 percent to 11 percent!"
And what's forgotten? According to the wiki:
"the democratic centre-left governments of the 1990s also made a strong commitment to poverty reduction. In 1988, 48% of Chileans lived below the poverty line. By 2000 this had been reduced to 20%. This was achieved through a 17% increase in the minimum wage, a 210% increase in social spending targeted at the low income sectors of the population, and across the board tax increases, reversing the Pinochet tax cuts of 1988 and bringing in a further 3% of GDP in tax revenue. Overall, social spending and redistribution accounted for 40% of the poverty reduction, with economic growth doing the rest."
When you forget stuff like that, all you have is a story 'where heroic right wingers grab the reins of a chaotic country and tame it, making the world a better place.'
And since it's such a happy ending, with 'liberalism and democracy for all and free markets to thank for it', they just want to see it happen over and over again in country after country.
They don't want to occupy their beautiful minds with the bloody struggles of people who will never be seen at their dinner parties where Jose Pinera's going to give a little talk. Those people don't really exist. Let's move on and talk about when Chile, "made a successful and peaceful transition to democracy in the late 1980s and has generally continued on a pro-free market path."
Let's think about happy things.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 9 Jul 2013 at 07:03 AM
Chile did benefit greatly from free-market policies, to the point where they have the highest GDP per capita in South America now with one of its most free-market economies, but unfortunately it took a strongman like Pinochet for it to happen. It is kind of dumb for the WSJ to use Pinochet as an example, given all the deaths and disappearings under his rule, but they at least got the conclusion factually correct, a richer, freer Chile, which Thimbo can't even get through his thick skull.
But it is dumb unsigned editorials like this why I stopped reading the WSJ, specifically their unsigned editorial bashing Rand Paul after his drone filibuster. Once they published that, I soon stopped going to their website and haven't gone back since.
#3 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Tue 9 Jul 2013 at 01:37 PM
"unfortunately it took a strongman like Pinochet for it to happen."
A strong man didn't make it happen. If it were left to the strong men and the 'free market' fascists who rely on the government to defend THEIR rights (and crush everyone else's) Chile would still be a hellhole with 48% poverty.
The fact is that the liberalized economy combined with an authoritarian state crashed in 1982. The facts are that all throughout Latin America the "free market" financial liberation approach was tried, by strongman and by IMF, and it resulted in lost decades, lost of institutional confidence, and pushes leftward because rightward there was nowhere to go.
Do you think Pinochet was the only strongman? The only rightwing dictator?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
Do you think Pinochet was the only person who led a massive privatization / liberalization campaign?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Menem#Economy
Seriously, open a f**king history book.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 10 Jul 2013 at 02:59 AM
If you've ever cracked open any history, how about you actually try reading what is written? From your link about Menem,
"introduced a series of reforms in 1991 with a fixed exchange rate tying the Argentine peso to the US dollar. This Convertibility Plan was followed by privatization of utilities (including the oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), the post office, telephone, gas, electricity and water utilities). A dramatic influx of foreign direct investment funds helped tame inflation (from 5,000% a year in 1989 to single digits by 1993) and improved long-stagnant productivity, though at the cost of considerable unemployment.
Menem's successful turnaround of the economy made the country one of the top performers in the world of the developing countries. Argentina's GDP (below 1973 levels when Menem took office) increased 35% from 1990 to 1994 and fixed investment, by 150%."
How is it that prosperity always follows such free market plans and poverty always follows your beloved left-wing redistribution plans and yet somehow you never notice? Oh, that's right, moving a little back towards the left was the reason for Chile's prosperity, not the fact that it is still one of the freest markets in South America, at least according to the dumb lefties. When arguing with people as stupid as Thimbo, no wonder people just stop, as the lefty arguments are so f'ing stupid, blatantly ignoring reality to keep making your loony assertions otherwise.
#5 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Wed 10 Jul 2013 at 07:53 AM
Yeah, did you continue reading on about the Argentina story, like about the time when all the hot money left, the state had no more assets to sell, and the imf started slapping a bat against its palm asking "Where's my money?" on behalf of itself and private creditors?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_economic_crisis_(1999%E2%80%932002)
How is it crashes always seem to follow the "prosperity" after free market plans?
Maybe it takes more than juicing the stock market, a bubble in a sector or two of the economy, and a bunch of short term easy credit to build a stable economy.
Because what we've seen from 'free market' experiments everywhere is that they do produce a temporary boost to the economy as 'jaaab creators' take advantage of reduced rules and increased leverage to pocket a bunch of cash for themselves.
But everybody else, and that means the bottom 90% who make up the middle class:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/america-without-a-middle_b_377829.html
They get so shafted.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 10 Jul 2013 at 12:47 PM
It's not for nothing that Investor's Business Daily known as 'The Wall Street Journal for the Soldier of Fortune crowd':
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/070513-662688-egypt-needs-chile-style-free-market-economic-reforms.htm
#7 Posted by Mora, CJR on Wed 10 Jul 2013 at 06:35 PM
Obviously Menem, while he had his pluses, wasn't ideal, with the amount of govt debt he ran up. I wonder who's running up massive govt debt today? ;)
But obviously the more free market moves he made helped, while running up govt debt, which no free marketer would recommend, didn't help and ultimately led to a crisis. Nobody is talking about a stock market rise, bubbles, or easy credit, which are results of a freer market, not causes. Obviously if you subsidized the results but ignore the causes, ie free market reforms generally, you won't get the benefits.
But the remarkable across the board prosperity of the US since it went more free market for the last 33 years is great evidence of why we should be going even more free market today. :)
#8 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Fri 12 Jul 2013 at 10:39 PM