If nobody goes to retail stores to _ask_ for a specific type of security glasses, how will they ever know to stock it? We, the consumers making Amazon's monopoly.
No, Amazon is not a monopoly, they are a very large and influential player. You can still buy eclipse glasses (and practically all other products) from other vendors, both physical and online. It may not be as smooth, cheap, fast or convenient as Amazon, but that's pretty damn far from the bar for a monopoly.
There was never any guarantee that the invisible hand would fix badness overnight, merely that it will nudge them in the right direction. Which it does.
I don't know if I would characterize them as having monopoly control of the market because nearly 100% of all of my purchases are made online and 0.0% of my purchases have been made using amazon.com (or walmart.com).
Generally speaking I prefer to buy a product directly, or from a specialized retailer.
Last week I purchased a stethoscope from an online stethoscope retailer. A benefit of doing this is that they offer laser engraving-- something that Amazon, with its warehouses of robots and robot-like employees, cannot easily do.
The specialty retailer also carries a wider array of color and finish combinations, because that's their product niche.
Using a specialist retailer has allowed me to flex on my fellow volunteer EMTs with a personalized Technicolor stethoscope, which is dumb but nice.
But we aren’t saying “all of human commerce,” but “the retail sector.”
We can always narrow things into absurdity to imply a monopoly. But as a matter of fact, Amazon isn’t a monopoly in retail, or even online retail. To give an anecdote of my online buying in the past few months: I bought furniture from Crate and Barrel and Design Within Reach, in-line skates and street hockey gear from Pure Hockey, pilot supplies from Sporty’s, a silly tshirt from some random Facebook ad/vendor, some paracord and survival water from Amazon, an aircraft emergency raft from some raft company in Florida, some Surefire flashlight batteries from Amazon, a piece of furniture from Wayfair, sunscreen from the Sun Bum website.
I know not many would care what I bought over the past few months, but without even consciously trying, Amazon was just a part of my normal shopping mix, not even a majority of purposes were from there and the dollar amounts were even smaller of my total shopping spend.
Of course there are people that use Amazon more frequently and regularly, but that doesn’t make it a monopoly. You can easily buy from other places. Amazon retail is really nothing more than a highly efficient version of Sears. Ubiquitous, but hardly a monopoly.
Oh, don't be absurd. Customers obviously don't actually want this. Amazon is a monopoly—not in the sense of "is literally the only vendor", but "is considered the default by at least a plurality of Americans"—and has the money and the clout to just keep doing what they're doing even if it's creating friction, frustration, and money loss to some customers.
You seem to be mistaking the theory of an ideal free market with the messy reality of markets with incomplete and asymmetric information, high price sensitivity, and a lack of time and mental energy to shop around and otherwise gain more information and other options.
Amazon isn't a monopoly by any definition. There are plenty of places to buy things. Repeating it over and over again won't change reality. Feel free to bookmark this and come back to it 10 years from now. Amazon won't be broken up, either.
Customers are so lazy they want the government do everything for them. If you don't like Amazon, close the tab and go to eBay.com or Walmart.com. It's very easy, and can be done in seconds. This isn't like telecom monopolies where you can't actually switch.
As long as consumers trust Amazon and don't trust the merchants, it doesn't matter. They have to use Amazon anyway. This is presented as a strategic problem for Amazon, but it isn't.
The solution is regulations and unions. If it's not Amazon it will be something else. Many people do not have time or money to look for alternatives. I never buy on Amazon but directly from the providers, but that takes time that I have but many people does not.
This rings a little hollow to me because as a consumer, wouldn't I have noticed a lack of non-amazon options?
My family buys on Amazon a lot but I am well aware that I can buy any of that stuff, including at times for a lower price, elsewhere - from company website to Costco to Walmart market, via Google shopping, etc.
Doesn't the existence of these infinity choices make claims of monopoly a bit farfetched? I am sure it's more complicated than this, but... is it?
Amazon doesn’t have a monopoly. They sell less than Walmart. You can take your products elsewhere. Your problem is with Amazon doing on their platform what every brick and mortar does in their own stores.
Everyone has an opinion on why Amazon is a monopoly and should be broken up, but this is what they don't think about. I trust Amazon not to get breached. No one is infallible, but tech is their thing.
I have no interest however, in further increasing the amount of online shopping accounts I maintain, because that means I have to keep tabs on the shenanigans of even more, highly technically incompetent, companies to know if I've been compromised.
A monopoly would indicate there exists a lack of options for buyers or control of prices from a very large seller.
As it stands now, Amazon is a glorified Alibaba that sided with buyers in disputes.
You can find the same things on Amazon on Alibaba, Newegg, bestbuy, Walmart, iTunes, Google Play, the Amazon sellers own websites, etc. the buyer is in no way required or affected negatively by not interacting with Amazon.
So I’m struggling to see the point of labeling Amazon a monopoly when it doesn’t convey any useful information.
You touch on something important. Beyond the fact that the term monopoly gets thrown at a company without any further qualification of such a statement, there's no real thought put into how the company is using said alleged monopoly power to raise prices on consumers or create barriers to entry in the market.
Amazon's prices trend downward, constantly. Amazon is also itself a market facilitator, agnostic to which products sell, so long as they sell. High quality and low prices race to the top of customer ratings. Third parties sell on Amazon as well, providing a global market for local brick and mortar shops. Further, Amazon is by far not the only website selling things on the internet. The internet is pretty great at lowering barriers to entry.
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