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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5886889" data-attributes="member: 19675">Sorry for what follows, and for returning so late- long, bad day.Obvious, I would think: fewer retail outlets means less competition for Amazon on both sales to the public AND purchases from publishers. And even in a major population center like Dallas/Fort Worth, I can feel the effects. I'm pursuing degree #4 and, so far, many of the required books have been available only through Amazon. There is no competition. As a result, when Amazon decides to take its sweet time, I have no remedy like going to another bookstore to get it, regardless of price. Worst so far: despite ordering the main textbook a week before the first session, it did not arrive until the week before the final exam. The professor was forced to spend his money to supply us with photocopies of the relevant text to keep things moving. That simply didn't happen when there were 6 national B&M bookstore chains AND the bookstores near the various school campuses also stocked a wide variety of textbooks (often for more than one school).In addition, even though, by now, I'm used to shelling out the occasional $200-500 for individual small print run academic textbooks, the number of books I've had to buy in that price range has increased as competition has decreased.And as the articles pointed out, the retailers have repeatedly talked about the loss of bargaining power as the number of outlets decrease. Cite? It's pretty common knowledge within the industry:<a href="http://philipclarkmusic.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/an-open-letter-to-independent-comic-book-distributors/" target="_blank">An Open Letter to Independent Comic Book Distributors  Dreamchilde’s Weblog</a><a href="http://www.co2comics.com/blog/tag/eclipse-comics/" target="_blank">Eclipse Comics | CO2 COMICS BLOG</a><a href="http://www.co2comics.com/blog/tag/independent-publishers/" target="_blank">Independent Publishers | CO2 COMICS BLOG</a>Which includes this about how they could manipulate what reached stores on the production side:(First Comics won parts but also lost parts in that litigation, mainly because they were not completely honest in their own business practices.)Consumers suffer in terms of price and the availability of non-Marvel or non-DC product. How would Image have done had they not been forced to pay more materials costs to make their comics? How would Valiant & Dark Horse have done if their products not been relegated to "whatever space is left" on the magazine racks?And those were companies that SURVIVED. Pacific, First, and a host of others simply didn't.Choice between all of Coke's or Pepsi's products...ONLY...is not a truly competitive market in the economic sense. Consumer choice is so constrained as to be essentially meaningless.Oligopolies and monopolies are equally damaging to the consumer. The only difference is that a monopoly has only one company dominating core comprising the whole market, whereas an oligopoly has "two or more". In economics, monopolies and duopolies are just considered subsets of oligopolies that warrant a special name. They still function the same.A publisher cannot set a higher price if there is no outlet for him in which to set a higher price. IPG is being severely hurt by Amazon's anticompetitive stance. EDC is still doing OK, but as their own president pointed out, they are still getting revenues from Amazon due to product they had already put into their distribution network one way or another. How well they will do after a few more months will tell the tale. But having lost as many retail outlets as they had because of Amazon's pricing, it may well be the sequel to IPG's story.There is- this very kind of practice is mentioned a few places legal journals and cases.Monopsony<a href="http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2533&context=fss_papers&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Dautomobile%2520manufacturer%2520monopsony%2520behavior%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D4%26ved%3D0CCMQFjAD%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigitalcommons.law.yale.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D2533%2526context%253Dfss_papers%26ei%3DUvKRT8iAG8rs2QXD4rX1BA%26usg%3DAFQjCNHjTlUyJTZOFjlXXGqvRT19_U3W-Q#search=%22automobile%20manufacturer%20monopsony%20behavior%22" target="_blank">http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2533&context=fss_papers&sei-redir=1&referer=http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=automobile%20manufacturer%20monopsony%20behavior&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCMQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.law.yale.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D2533%26context%3Dfss_papers&ei=UvKRT8iAG8rs2QXD4rX1BA&usg=AFQjCNHjTlUyJTZOFjlXXGqvRT19_U3W-Q#search="automobile manufacturer monopsony behavior"</a><a href="http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1273&context=sulr&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Damerican%2520automobile%2520manufacturer%2520monopsony%2520behavior%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D6%26sqi%3D2%26ved%3D0CDAQFjAF%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1273%2526context%253Dsulr%26ei%3DmfSRT7_tDcea2AWg64WeDg%26usg%3DAFQjCNEsO5Zddno8adZYgGVCdbVSOB_B_Q#search=%22american%20automobile%20manufacturer%20monopsony%20behavior%22" target="_blank">http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1273&context=sulr&sei-redir=1&referer=http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=american%20automobile%20manufacturer%20monopsony%20behavior&source=web&cd=6&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1273%26context%3Dsulr&ei=mfSRT7_tDcea2AWg64WeDg&usg=AFQjCNEsO5Zddno8adZYgGVCdbVSOB_B_Q#search="american automobile manufacturer monopsony behavior"</a>See also United States v. Colgate & Co.<a href="http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~mjperry/Unit4.html" target="_blank">http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~mjperry/Unit4.html</a>Whenever a price is maintained at below market clearing level, it is artificially low. The example given in the link refers to government subsidies.However, a private retailer cross subsidizing a low price on a product with profits from others- especially for long periods of time or for extremely low prices- provides the same effect.Sacrificing profits for greater market share is not illegal. Sacrificing profits to drive competitors from the market, though, is. Key, though, is that the burden of proof is upon those making the allegation.Publishers are complaining because they want a SUSTAINABLE price that will let them continue to operate as full-service publishing companies. They can't set that price with Amazon continually driving their non-Amazon outlets out of business.No goalpost has been moved. They refused because the price demanded by Amazon was not sustainable. They did NOT raise their prices during or post their squabble with Amazon.Nope, I'm bringing all economic costs of the product into it.Believe it or not, we don't pay full cost for a lot of things when we pay for them. Take plastics, for instance. Many of them in the past were exceedingly cheap...but one reason for this was that the manufacturers used production processes that released high levels of pollutants into the environment. Those costs were initially allocated to our healthcare system and cleanups by the government. When the costs of using cleaner processes were folded back into the manufacturing costs via anti-pollution legislation, the costs of those products rose.  That's because more of the relevant real economic costs were being included in the price, and the users were paying it instead of non-users.Wal-Mart is doing the exact same thing with labor costs.Show me where. I said that there were several waves of major indie comic companies that got into the market. Most are gone, some were bought out by Marvel or DC, and a few limp on as "fringe competitors" those companies in an oligopolistic market that have no real control, generally following the lead of the market dominators.No, it's illegal because economists demonstrated that it is a harm to consumers in the long run.Louis Phlips suggests that the necessary conditions for predatory pricing are:1 The aggressor is a multimarket firm (possibly a multiproduct firm).2 The predator attacks after entry has occurred in one of its markets.3 The attack takes the form of a price cut in one of the predator's markets, which brings this price below a current non-cooperative Nash equilibrium price at which the entry value is positive for the entrant (possibly below a discriminatory current Nash equilibrium price with the same property).4 The price cut makes the entry value negative (in present value terms) in the market in which predation occurs.5 Yet the victim is not sure that the price cut is predatory. The price cut could be interpreted by the entrant as implying that its entry value is negative under normal competition. In other words, the victim entertains the possibility that there is no room for it in the market under competitive conditions.Here's a pair of nice, dry economics papers on it:<a href="http://www.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/6/6691/papers/DoraszelskiFinal-P.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/6/6691/papers/DoraszelskiFinal-P.pdf</a><a href="http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/pbolton/PDFS/BBRPrincetonDP.pdf" target="_blank">http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/pbolton/PDFS/BBRPrincetonDP.pdf</a>OPEC is not government run, it is a cartel consisting of oil-producing states for the purpose of controlling oil prices (and just because a cartel is operating at the level of nations doesn't make it any less an oligopoly). And for most of its history, it's done just that.OPECs goal is to control oil prices at a level it wants for a variety of reason. In the 1970s, their embargo against countries that supported Israel caused a fourfold increase in price.They have also raised or lowered prices when member nations broke step with the plan, depending on the reasons for doing so. For nations that cheated to get money for necessities, OPEC (mostly the Saudis) reduced production. For those that merely cheated for market share, the response was (Saudis) flooding the market with oil to lower the price to reduce the reward for cheating, such as in 1986.Look up US v Microsoft. Microsoft was found to be a monopoly in Federal Court, on a host of grounds and ordered Microsoft be broken up (here's the findings of fact)<a href="http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm" target="_blank">U.S. v. Microsoft: Court's Findings of Fact</a>However, due to judicial misconduct in the case, the Appellate Court remanded the case.  The DOJ decided not to pursue breaking up Microsoft.  Eventually, Microsoft avoided a legal finding of monopoly- and the statutory penalties that could be levied- by settling out of court, which included revising clauses in Microsoft's contracts with PC makers that limited their ability to use non-Microsoft software.(John R. Wilke ("Microsoft Drafts Settlement Proposal, Hoping to Resolve Antitrust Lawsuit". The Wall Street Journal, September 2001)In 2007, Linux had just under 13% of the desktop market. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Mac is currently running around 14%. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Apple is the big dog in mobile computing, but Windows-based computers are a different story.The concept of collusive competitors in an oligopoly or oligopsony is hardly alien. In fact, some oligopsony models predict such collusion as a precursor to successfully exercising oligopoly/oligopsony power.This is classic oligopsony behavior, and is not a conspiracy theory. I had to study it in the 1980s under Walter Adams (noted antitrust economist) & others- I doubt they were lying to me.You really don't understand the point I was making- namely that they had no power in their negotiations. Because of the pattern of chronic underpayment to their businesses in question were entirely dependent upon the local manufacturers. They could not expand their capacity enough to the point of being able to supply to other car makers, or even to produce non-auto part products.  They were irrevocably linked to the automakers' fortunes.Hmm...differing numbers from contemporaneous sources. Only time will tell.</blockquote>

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