Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You don't have monopoly power for Guernica posts, because it's too easy for anyone else to enter. Sorry.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Were you filing an objectively frivolous suit (not the exact language, as I haven't thought about that type of case for more than a decade)?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

We have 3 adult kids living at home. Two deliveries happen by 8 am.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I think the problem was the earlier case against the service company may have been driven by a desire to monopolize repair of a certain part, and the patent side might have been frivolous. My case was solid. It was just a big company afraid to have something blow up on them again.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

There is a sort of tension between patent law and antitrust law, in that patent law is about getting the exclusive right to use a certain technology, and antitrust law is about preserving the benefits of competition. But that exclusive IP right is about an input to competition in a broader market. If you have the exclusive right to operate a ferry across a certain stretch of river, and someone builds a bridge there, you may still have an exclusive right to that technology, but you can't charge whatever you want because people might use the bridge instead. (But is the bridge made of cellophane, Adder?) Also, antitrust law says it's OK to get a monopoly if you do it by competing on the merits, which might mean building a better mousetrap and patenting it.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It has been mentioned I am willing to file frivolous IP lawsuits, so, go ahead, MAKE MY DAY!

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/econom...th-not-qualify

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.naiba.com/...a_Monopoly.pdf

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/ama...er-11602084168

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That’s an unduly narrow definition that ignores Amazon’s anticompetitive practices. Amazon is not just a package delivery company. If your product can be sold on AMZN, you must deal with the company. And it will fuck you over in favor of its own version of the product, or one offered by a manufacturer or vendor in which it has an interest or with which it enjoys more profitable terms.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You have to think more about its anticompetitive behaviors across a number of industries to understand how it is a monopoly. Bezos is a genius. The company employs its power across so many industries that its ability to kill competition can always be defended with, “Yeah, but we don’t control X % of any specific market except a few like books, about which no one cares.”

One of the articles I cited notes AMZN is also a monopsony in some markets. I think that’s true. In that regard, I think it’s uniquely anticompetitive. WalMart is in the same basket. Ask any wholesaler or manufacturer who’s been to Bentonville to negotiate fair prices with those assholes.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

For what it's worth, I believe "objectively baseless" is the standard I was trying to remember.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

This is called "competition." Lots of people have tried to find a way to call it something else, but none convincingly.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Oh, FFS.

First of all, read Ben Evans on Amazon's market share. He is smart and writes well.

From your first link:

The article then quotes Barry Lynn as saying that Amazon is a monopoly in books and some electronics. I suspect Amazon has a monopoly in e-books. For physical books, do they? If they do, are they abusing that monopoly? What do you think, Sebby?

The second link is a bunch of talking points from the American Booksellers Association, and if I was going to cocktail hour, I would probably rather spend time with those guys than with Amazon. Note first that when they talk about market share, they talk about "online" sales. But you can buy those same books offline. Not sure that online is a market, or that anything is stopping booksellers from selling their books online in competition with Amazon, except that Amazon is very good at it. I get the same book, cheaper and faster, from Amazon. You know who that is good for? Me. What's the harm here to Amazon's monopoly? Do you think people are writing fewer books because the publishers are making less money and paying authors less? And that's Amazon's fault?

If Amazon is driving down prices because it's using its size to drive good deals with publishers, isn't that good for consumers and the economy? Is there any reason why others can't do the same thing there?


I'd like to read the third link but I'm not a WSJ subscriber. Quote, please.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Some day, you and I will have a drink or two and I will get to tell you more about this. I will explain to you that lawyers as smart as me have spent much time and money to try to turn what you are talking about into antitrust claims, without avail. Just calling these practices "anticompetitive" does not magically turn them into antitrust violations (or Amazon into a monopoly, for that matter).

What you are talking about is, potentially, a problem for businesses selling on Amazon. Amazon's competitors have tried and failed to persuade businesses that these are reasons not to do business with Amazon. Businesses that sell on Amazon have many, many other ways to sell in e-commerce. eBay, Rakuten, Etsy, Shopify, etc., etc. No one is forced to sell on Amazon.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Pray tell, which competitors has Amazon killed?

In your vision of antitrust, the government decides what is a "fair" price?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

confidential to sebby: if Ty picks the restaurant the food will be good, but it will likely smell badly.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

If it is dead how can it smell at all?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Perhaps in some instances that defense holds. But if I am selling Widget X on AMZN platform, without use of which I cannot really enter the online marketplace, and AMZN intentionally:

1. Sells the same thing at a loss on its platform, to undercut my ability to sell; and/or,
2. Seeks to divert customers from me to another seller with which AMZN has a better deal (or of which AMZN is a part owner),

Is that really competition, or is that anti-competitive use of monopoly power over the online marketplace (which it owns)?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The list of businesses it has killed by engaging in the practices I noted above in response to Adder would go on forever.

No. But the govt can intervene where WalMart is throwing around its immense weight to force suppliers to sell to it at prices that will put them out of business, thereby creating a market in which only a handful of manufacturers and wholesalers who grow large enough to be able to sell to them in volume at such low prices, or have somehow diversified their pools of buyers enough to offset the thin margins provided by WalMart with reasonable profits from other purchasers, can survive.

WalMart's lovely folks in Bentonville offer, after making people wait for hours in its shitty corporate office, the following:

This is what we'll pay, and you can take it or leave it. And if you leave it, good luck finding someone else who'll buy as much from you as we do.

Again, that is technically, in the weakest sense, defensible as competition. (A situation in which "competition" ceases to have any real meaning.) But it's a competition in which WalMart is admitting it is a monopsony. And it uses its profits, accrued in large part from its purchasing power, to put competition out of business, which, wait for it... increases its monopsony. And so it goes...

Maybe that's not a black and white classic antitrust issue, but it's definitely anti-competitive in the fairest plain reading of that term.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Still, even while eating, they won't worry about the monopolies that manufacture that food....

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You assume your conclusion when you say "without use of which I cannot really enter the online marketplace". That's just completely wrong. Amazon is one of many channels. It's a good channel, but there are many others online.

If (*if*) Amazon had monopoly power in platform services necessary to sell in e-commerce, and if e-commerce were not constrained by offline commerce (as is clearly the case in some product markets, and is clearly not the case in others), then there would be a good argument that Amazon would be abusing its platform-services monopoly to advantage itself in other markets in which that's a key input. You can imagine that a rival of Amazon (let's call it "Etsybay") might vigorously argue this, to persuade you to use them instead of Amazon. You can imagine that other countries (say, in Europe) with less permissive monopoly-abuse law might be more sympathetic to these arguments than US courts, and that Etsybay might pitch your argument to those regulators too. If you were to be talking to someone at Etsybay who has been involved with this, what do you think they'd say if they could talk truthfully and anonymously?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

So it should be easy for you to name one competitor that Amazon has killed.

So, in your world, Amazon and Wal-Mart are both monopsonists as they bargain with the same businesses. Are you aware that "mono" means one?

This is not defensible as competition "in the weakest sense." It's competition driving prices down. Not everyone deals with Wal-Mart. If you don't want to deal with them, you find another channel (because the idea that they are a monopsonist, generally speaking, is silly). Wal-Mart demands low price, because that's what they promise consumers. That's how they compete. That is competition. And consumers like it, which is why they keep going back.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Once you're sitting at the table, the restaurant's kitchen usually has a monopoly on making your food, unless you make like Spicolli in Mr. Hand's class.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

If you can show that, you might have a case. As far as I know, no one has shown that and, in fact, the underlying assumption is that it can sell at a lower price do to lower costs, not selling below cost.

Self-preferencing where there are positive network effects is a really tricky question! There used to be complicated regulations about how the old Computer Reservation Systems displayed results when they were owned by the airlines. We should definitely be considering them for tech.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It is, in fact, one channel that manufacturers actively try to avoid.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I don't shop at Walmart, so I'm really struggling to think about what products over which they might exercise monopsony.

Just a Vent
 

So, there are at least (or only) 47 Republicans who actually understand what liberty/freedom via the 5th and 14th Amendments (and the Declaration of Independence, although it has no legal authority) mean and embody - https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...e-law-00046682 Unfortunately, I doubt there are enough Senate Republicans with the moral fortitude to pass the bill. I suspect even so-called "libertarians" like Rand Paul will oppose it.

Re: Just a Vent
 

2

Re: Just a Vent
 

I was pleased that many Republicans would vote to protect marriages.

A lot fewer of them were ready protect contraception.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I know Rishi Sunak has been the leader in the Conservative PM race throughout, but I had a hard time believing that the party of Brexit would be will willing to be led by a dark-skinned non-Christian, and so it is no surprise to me to see that now that the field has narrowed to two, Liz Truss is polling ahead. Oddly, I haven't seen anyone point out that it might be an issue.

Re: Just a Vent
 

Same sex marriage is easy because everyone knows what it is. No one has to sit in a biology class or understand the reproductive cycle and ovulation and monthly blood and all that icky stuff.

Once they start going into the actual real world, their house starts falling apart. So that's why no rape and incest. That's why a woman has to be dying before they'll agree she's worth saving. (Meaning the abortions that DO happen will be late term abortions that NO ONE WANTS but are sometimes necessary, because these motherfuckers are the most ghoulish assholes on the planet.) They do not want any gray area at all. No abortions, ever, at all.

And we'll fucking kill you if you try.

Including the political careers of spineless Republican assholes who are so beholden to these crazy people they have to agree with the insanity.

what's the scam?
 

I just got a call from someone who seemed to think I have some ownership interest in a self-storage facility in Oxnard and who said they wanted to buy it. They had my name and number, but I have never heard of said self-storage area. Can't quite figure out what the scam is.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

In a FB chat with a artist friend who felt the presenter in the Jan 6 hearing was too monotone. I said maybe that was because she was trying to convince SOME Trumpers, and they would tune out if it appeared to be theater. Led into a convo about what the purpose of the hearings was.

I thought:

1 make a record for history of how vile and evil this man is; and

2 maybe convince some small percentage of Trumpers of 1.

He seemed to think the purpose was to satisfy his notion, that he already had, that Trump was double bad.

What was the purpose of the hearings?

Re: what's the scam?
 

Does it matter? Ask for an offer and take it, after disclaiming ownership to prevent a claim of fraud.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

!. Exposure of Trump's actions;

2. Outrage thereat;

3. Political advantage due to 1 and 2, above;
;
4. Political advantage due to 1 and 2, above; and

5. Political advantage due to 1 and 2, above.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Well of course, but outrage in what block? Political advantage with what block?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

San Francisco has its problems, but weather is not one of them:

https://twitter.com/DrewTumaABC7/sta...534146/photo/1

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Well, if their audience was Rupert Murdoch, it worked. Both the NY Post and the WSJ have unendorsed Trump.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I think the goal right now is to (a) make this an issue right up to the mid-terms - this and the fallout from the Dobbs decision are the Dem's biggest weapons this fall (not the Dobbs decision itself - I'm convinced that enough people would have gone along with it if there wasn't an insistance on no exceptions for rape, incest, health, etc.); and (b) kill any hope Trump has of getting elected again.

I'm not surprised Cheney and Kitzinger are on board with (a), they way a very different Republican party and the current one has to lose big before that becomes possible.

After the hearings will come prosecutions and convictions, as has been the case with every Democratic hearing like this since watergate.

Im not disagreeing with you, just identifying the political advantages involved.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Everything here is inverted. The GOP wants a Trump indictment (incense the base and run on him being martyred w/o having to run him, as he will lose). The Democrats do not want an indictment (bruise and batter him to ensure he'll either attempt to run and lose, or tear down better R candidates in a hissy fit as the GOP gets behind alternatives).

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

As someone who has been cited in the press as an unnamed former high ranking party official, let me say, indict him, convict him, show the world laws apply to everyone.

This is not just about Trump himself, but about re-establishing the rule of law.