Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Chris-1235 t1_iww7kp9 wrote

Looks like China is better at this free market thing than the US, which let a huge monopoly to form.

11

[deleted] t1_iwwn42p wrote

You got the opposite. Endless merging till monopoly is exactly what free market leads to. Anti-trust is from the state.

12

Chris-1235 t1_iwwvd5s wrote

No mate, free markets are not unregulated markets. Only in the US has this distortion of the term taken place. Even here:

"Antitrust laws ensure competition in a free and open market economy, which is the foundation of any vibrant economy"

https://www.uschamber.com/major-initiative/antitrust-laws

8

MoscaValorosa t1_iwxbjef wrote

Well, words have the meaning you want them to have. When liberals (in the classic non-american meaning) say they want an open free market what they really mean is a market unregulated enough for maximum capital reproduction and regulated enough so the goverment can help with some more profit. So usually that's what I mean by free market.

And if you are not joking, you are reproducing the schrodinger's socialism falacy: when something works in China it's because it's capitalist; when it fails it's because China's communist (neither are true. China's socialist). China not having a massive monopoly as Amazon is consequence of it's own historical development, which went in the opposit direction of the liberal economic canons, not because it succeded at implementing a capitalist vision of free market.

"which is the foundation of any vibrant economy": this was brought to you by the Washington Consensus gang.

4

amadozu t1_iwxjvei wrote

Calling Amazon a monopoly is frankly a bit daft. The graph is just a list of 'e-commerce companies' listed by global revenue (including all division of each business, e-commerce or not). Walmart for instance made $67 billion in direct e-commerce last year, but isn't listed because it's not explicitly an e-commerce business. The same is true of most major e-commerce players in the US (Target, Best Buy, Costco, etc).

For retail in general in 2021 (US-only):

  1. Walmart: $460b
  2. Amazon $220b
  3. Costco: $140b
  4. Home Depot: $140b
  5. Walgreens Boots: $110b

You have to go down to 47th before you reach less than $10 billion. The US retail market is comically huge, and e-commerce is a minority of it. Amazon is the largest player within that minority, but a tiny portion of US retail in general.

5