I find her ideas (that Amazon is anti-competitive by being big) interesting, but I find her reasoning unconvincing. Her point is that breaking up large companies, merely because they are big, into smaller companies would improve the economy. She says:
"the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. "
She is upset because companies pursue growth over profits. I'm not sure I see this as a bad thing. Even if it were a bad thing, it's not something that only large companies pursue, it is probably more common among small companies.
You can't have an economy based on competition acting as a regulatory mechanism if there is no effective competition. When there is no B, A dictates the terms.
On the tech front, when you only have A and B, they are strongly incentivised to make their technology idiosyncratic and incompatible, if there's a couple dozen, they are driven to at least an informal industry standard and often a more formal one complete with bake offs to assure compatibility. That accomplished, the players are obligated to compete on some combination of service and price.
Her paper (Score:3, Insightful)
I find her ideas (that Amazon is anti-competitive by being big) interesting, but I find her reasoning unconvincing. Her point is that breaking up large companies, merely because they are big, into smaller companies would improve the economy. She says:
"the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. "
She is upset because companies pursue growth over profits. I'm not sure I see this as a bad thing. Even if it were a bad thing, it's not something that only large companies pursue, it is probably more common among small companies.
Her second argument addresses A
Re:Her paper (Score:2)
You can't have an economy based on competition acting as a regulatory mechanism if there is no effective competition. When there is no B, A dictates the terms.
On the tech front, when you only have A and B, they are strongly incentivised to make their technology idiosyncratic and incompatible, if there's a couple dozen, they are driven to at least an informal industry standard and often a more formal one complete with bake offs to assure compatibility. That accomplished, the players are obligated to compete on some combination of service and price.