WEBVTT - But They Make It So Easy! (with Stacy Mitchell) 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:03.800 Hey, I'm Baritone Day Thurston and this is how to 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:08.720 Citizen with Baritone Day in season two. We're talking about 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:12.520 the money, because, to be real, it's hard to citizen 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:22.360 when we can barely pay the bills. Yo, I have 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:28.000 a confession. I'm addicted to Amazon. Yep, it's true. Me 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.440 Mr Barraitune Day, Mr shop Local, Mr Man with the 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.440 show called How to Citizen with Baritone Day. I can't 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:42.000 stop shopping at the behemoth that is Amazon. But I 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:46.640 also kind of love it. I mean I love the 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.640 next day delivery, the next hour delivery. Sometimes Amazon anticipates 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:52.839 what I want. They're just like, you know you want it. 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:54.880 We know you want it, literally, we know because we 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:57.600 have all the data about you. So just click the button. 0:00:57.840 --> 0:00:59.480 And I'm like, I don't want to click the button. 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.920 It's convenient, but I'm also trying to quit, that's right. 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.319 I'm trying to slow down the habit. I take deep 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:11.320 breaths before these purchases. I'm even in a text group 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.640 with some friends who are also self admitted Amazon addicts, 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:19.120 and we're trying not to be. We're working together to 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.080 slow the spread of the Bezos throughout our wallets and 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:27.560 bank accounts and attention spans, and we're finding other ways 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:30.520 to spend our money, other places to get soaked, or 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:35.720 computer monitors or gardening gloves or well anything, because they 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.440 sell everything. And it's been nice to not feel so alone, 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.600 and I think you can relate. So I split from 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.600 Amazon July. But it was difficult because now if you're 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:48.880 part of a working family, you know you're going to 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:55.360 be susceptible to the convenience of a platform like Amazon. 0:01:55.640 --> 0:02:00.880 But Amazon is just such a morally terrible company. So 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:02.640 it's something that I really want to get off of. 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.560 It's just so enticing with their prime shipping and their prices, 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.400 and especially during COVID, one of the few places I 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:12.560 am able to defeat my Amazon habit is with books 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.320 now for those ten dollar shoelaces that you don't tie. 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:18.840 And I'm still using Amazon, especially if you're looking for 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:25.000 something that's unique and different. I go to Amazon seriously 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:28.040 in the minute it takes me to complete my Amazon purchase, 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:32.160 reluctant as I may be, they've already sold over a 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.799 thousand products to other people. This company is so much 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:44.040 bigger than our individual resistance movements in Amazon. Killed it, 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.160 killed it financially, revenues up thirty eight percent to a 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:54.119 record three hundred eighties six billion dollars and founder Bezos 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.440 founder Jeff Bezos, richest person in the world. He is 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.679 now worth Wait I looked this up. All the money? Yeah, yeah, 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.119 I just I carried the one and it comes out 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:10.400 to all the money. Now, in the past few episodes, 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:14.080 we've been talking about exclusion and how leaving people of 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:19.120 color out of the economic system has contributed to massive wealth, inequality, 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:23.200 and our division. How ownership, whether in business or in 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:27.120 real estate, can help solve this problem. But that alone 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:29.839 is not gonna cut it. If you just bring more 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.800 people into an unfair system, that doesn't necessarily make the 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:39.640 system more fair. So we're gonna talk about this concentration 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:43.240 of power that contributes to our wealth and equality and 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:45.760 to our division, and we're going to talk about what 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:48.040 we can do about it. But first I need to 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.440 understand what we're dealing with. How does the company like 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.120 Amazon get so big in the first place, Why does 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:59.680 their size even matter? And how can we as citizens 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.960 stop it? So I needed some help. I needed to 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:07.760 talk to somebody about this. That I tried my therapist 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.160 and they were like, I can't help you with this. 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.520 I'm sorry. I could work with a lot, but your 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:15.600 issues with concentrations of corporate powered that's a bit beyond 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:20.520 my license. So I reached out to somebody else, someone 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.760 taking on Amazon head on, someone who saw Amazon's hospital 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:29.680 takeover coming before most of us did. More and more 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:34.080 of our commerce is moving to this online arena that 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.280 is not at all a market. It is a private 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:40.200 arena controlled by Amazon. It gets to regulate in essence 0:04:40.440 --> 0:05:00.080 commerce and that's coming up after the break. Heyst Ea, 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:02.120 see how are you. I'm well, it's so nice to 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.560 see you. Nice to see you too. So so, Stacy, 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:09.680 I'd love to start if you could introduce yourself. I'm 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.479 Stacy Mitchell. I'm the co director of the Institute for 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.360 Local Self Reliance, where a research at advocacy organization that 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.880 builds local power to fight corporate control. So we do 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:21.760 a lot of in depth research looking at how the 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.359 economy works and doesn't work, and what are the ways 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:28.120 that we could make it more democratic, more sustainable, more 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:32.920 locally rooted. So what's the story of your relationship with Amazon. 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:38.719 I began to notice Amazon maybe more than fifteen years ago. Now, 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:43.880 as a company that was kind of quietly taking over 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.560 more and more of our commerce. And really the first 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:49.599 thing I noticed about Amazon was that they didn't have 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.440 to collect sales tax. You know, I happened to live 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:54.720 in a neighborhood and in a community where there are 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.440 lots of local businesses within walking distance. With neighborhood, with community, 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:03.080 we're talking abot. I live in Portland, Maine. UM, So 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.680 I guess I first started noticing Amazon and sort of 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:09.359 hearing from those local business owners when I was out 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.120 running errands picking up books or whatever it might be. 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.640 And you know, in many cases they were beginning to 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.320 sell online and to have like another way for people 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:22.679 to shop with them, but they were having to add 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.720 this sales tax on top of it and finding that customers, 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.960 you know, to save that five ten percent were migrating 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.920 to Amazon. And so that was I guess, really the 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:36.360 first time I paid much attention to the company. Um. 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:41.720 And it seemed outrageous to me that government would telt 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:43.840 the playing field, that it would sort of put its 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:49.560 thumb on the scales in favor of this distant company 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:52.880 that didn't even have a presence in the community over 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.039 the businesses that we're working really hard to keep their 0:06:56.080 --> 0:07:00.680 communities employed and vibrant and happening. Why would we do that? 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:05.200 That didn't make any sense. Most of us did not 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:09.400 feel a sense of outrage or alarm, but you did. 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:13.800 So why did you care so early? What was it 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.840 about this situation that so animated you. I don't entirely 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.320 really know where it comes from, And honestly, if somewhat 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:26.200 wondered that my myself, and this partly maybe comes from 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:29.000 growing up in Maine, because at the time that I 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.680 grew up, it was really devastated economically. You know, there 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:37.400 had been particularly these like timber companies, big fishing operations 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:39.560 that had come through and like devastated a lot of 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:43.520 the state's economy. The city Portland, where I grew up, 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:46.680 by the time I was a teenager, you know, downtown 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.120 was half vacant. It was a place that was hard 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:53.560 for people to make a living, that had no life 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.280 to it, and was at the losing end of a 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.800 lot of decisions that were made very far away and 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.920 with no consideration for the impacts that they were having here, 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:04.920 and certainly not being made by the people who felt 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.600 those impacts. So as a teenager, I think I felt 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.560 that injustice very much and was a punk rock kid 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.680 who you know, spent a lot of time downtown in 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:19.080 these sort of vacant places, wanting to reanimate them, you know. 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:21.480 And this, of course, there was an era when most 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:23.360 of the other kids were at the Mall, which had 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:25.040 was one of the things that had done a lot 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.240 of devastation to the to the downtown. I'm having this 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:30.200 picture in my mind. I want you to help me 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:34.520 fill it in punk rock, Stacy Mitchell, tell me, tell 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.400 me about teenage punk rocks. Daisy, What are you wearing? 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:39.520 How what are you Where are you hanging out? And 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.640 how are you interacting with this half vacant downtown port 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.840 Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean, you know, all the stuff, 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.520 the ripped up nylons and the dyed hair and filt 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:54.960 leather jackets or jean jackets with safety pins, all that 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:59.720 good stuff. And we took over empty spaces for music 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:02.679 and for you know, sort of gatherings of that sort. 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.480 You know, it was self invented because we weren't in 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.000 New York or any place that mattered, So it was 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.000 kind of a sort of bottom up local version of 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:17.760 of punk rock. Your punk rock was local and self reliant. 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:20.560 It's okay, it wasn't New York. That's fine. It was 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:26.320 yours and you invented it for yourself. What's the leap 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:32.000 from this punk rock social justice teenager too working more 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:37.120 formally against the influences of big businesses? I am. I 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.960 moved out to St. Paul, Minnesota and went to college, 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:44.559 and UM, I decided to study history, and I think 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:47.360 particularly because I was interested in how things change. If 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.439 you don't like the way things are, how do they 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:51.640 shift and what are the forces that make them shift. 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:55.360 But then after college, I am, you know, I was 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:58.400 looking for someplace to work, and I was sort of 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.320 torn between on the one hand to be an activist 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.640 and on the other hand wanting to do like research, 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.360 like maybe be an academic. And I ran across an 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.959 ad for this organization, the Institute for Local Self Reliance UM, 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:13.520 looking for a research assistant. And it was a good 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.120 marrying of those two things. And so I've now been 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:21.600 at elis R for about twenty years. Yeah. So you 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.240 get to the Institute for Local Self Reliance, when do 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:30.080 you decide to take on Amazon? We fought on the 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:33.800 sales tax fight for a while. UM, and ultimately it 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.040 took many years and was way too late in some 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.480 sense to even matter, but we ultimately one um and 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.439 along the way I just kept being struck by where 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:48.560 this company was going. I remember thinking around. I mean, 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.000 it felt like when you're on the tarmac, when you're 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:54.319 on a plane that's about to take off, and you're 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.079 and you're moving down the runway at this huge speed 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:59.320 and you're about to get airborne, and at that point 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.560 money you take off completely. And it felt like we 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:07.040 were at that moment and that the implications of this 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:12.480 were really far reaching. And so in we set out 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.400 to try to do an in depth look at the 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:18.280 nature of Amazon's power and the scope of this company 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:22.199 and what its implications were, and I, together with a 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:26.480 researcher here um Olivia Lavekia, we wrote this big report 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:30.360 called Amazon Stranglehold that looked at Amazon's monopoly power, sort 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.760 of analyze the nature of what exactly what is Amazon. 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:36.440 It's not a retailer, it's something different, you know, so 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.679 analyzing what that was, how it gained that sort of power, 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.200 and then what were the impacts for independent businesses, for 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:48.440 producers and creators and authors, for working people and ultimately communities, 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:52.320 And then we used that report to go around and 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:56.080 talk to journalists, talk to policymakers, talk to other advocates, 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:57.640 and say, this is something you really need to be 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.160 paying attention to. And that helped to be in a 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.120 conversation that I think brought much more attention to the 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:09.280 implications of Amazon. You say, Amazon is not a retailer, 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:14.000 it's something else, and I hear dramatic music in the background. 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:18.400 What is it? So? What? What is? What is Amazon? 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:25.720 You know what makes Amazon more dangerous than other monopolistic 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.640 firms like Walmart is that Amazon doesn't simply want to 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.160 dominate markets. You know, Walmart dominates the food industry, and 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:36.239 that's a serious problem with lots of implications. But Amazon 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.839 isn't about dominating markets. It's about being the market. It's 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:46.000 about being the underlying infrastructure that other companies need in 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:51.199 order to reach customers. So their online platform, their website, 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:55.400 captures about two thirds of online shopping traffic. When people 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.480 are looking to buy something online in the US, two 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.560 thirds of them start at Amazon, which means that if 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:05.400 you're not selling on Amazon's platform, you're giving up two 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.079 thirds of the market right out of the gate. It's 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.160 kind of like the Google search result. You know, people 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.040 start their Internet searches through Google primarily. Amazon is like 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:17.280 that for online retail exactly, and it didn't used to 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:19.920 be this way. You can go back six seven years ago. 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:22.480 You're looking for a pair of running shoes. You would 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:24.640 type it into a search engine, maybe Google, which is 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.080 its own problem, but you would get a bunch of results. 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:29.520 It would include Amazon, but it would include maybe your 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.280 local independent running shoe store or a manufacturer. Now people 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:37.480 just started Amazon, you know, there's the online shopping platform. 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.200 But then to that, Jeff Bezos has added these other 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:46.200 sort of core pieces of infrastructure. One is cloud computing. 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:53.320 Amazon controls about of the world's cloud computing capacity. What 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:56.959 that means is that more and more companies of all kinds, 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:00.520 governments of all kinds are moving their data into a cloud. 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.640 A huge amount of that globally is now running on 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:09.600 Amazon's infrastructure. Netflix, big publishing houses like Condemnast, the CIA. 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.880 I mean, it's a long list of entities that rely 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:16.640 on Amazon's infrastructure. And then there are these other big pieces. 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:21.560 Amazon has lately become an enormous logistics and package delivery operation. 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:25.240 They now are delivering so many packages, not only their 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:28.520 their own, but those of other companies that they're rivaling 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:33.280 ups and the postal service in terms of size. And 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:38.000 they have built Alexa, this voice interface that powers are 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.720 smart homes, and are smart offices and a whole bunch 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:44.360 of like smart industrial processes. It is the interface that 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:46.480 other companies have to use if they want to have 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:53.560 their devices and their applications be voice enabled. If you 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:56.200 want to sell something and reach customers online, you have 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:58.040 to do it on Amazon. If you want to ship 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:00.240 something and have it reach customers the next day, you 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.720 have to do it through Amazon's logistics. If you want 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:05.920 to have your data in the cloud, Amazon again is 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:09.680 the dominant provider there. And because of that, Amazon has 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.880 this godlike view of a huge amount of the activity 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.280 that's occurring across the economy, and it can pick off 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:19.560 using all of that intelligence that it has, it can 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:23.440 pick off these lucrative streams of revenue and preference its 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.440 own products and services on that infrastructure, and for the 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.120 stuff that it doesn't want to do itself, it can 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.920 just levy a huge tax on the activities of other 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:37.600 companies that rely on that infrastructure. So either way it wins, 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.000 and this begins to explain how it is that Jeff 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:43.880 Bezos has become so incredibly wealthy to be the richest 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:46.760 man in the world with almost two hundred billion dollars 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:54.040 to his name. Wow, So what form does that tax take? 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.080 Because it seems a bit ironic given the company's origins 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.920 in evading sales taxes to be able to levy taxes 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.800 on businesses that are on its platform. That's right, I 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:06.280 think how we part of how we need to begin 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:10.840 to understand these monopolistic companies like Amazon is as a 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:14.880 form of private government. That's the nature of their power. 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:17.400 And it's also begins to help us see how what 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.400 they're doing is a direct threat to democracy. You know, 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.680 in a in a democratic society, a market should be 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.680 an open place governed by rules that are set through 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.960 a public process, where everyone who participates in that market 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:33.080 is on equal footing more or less, but more and 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:37.440 more of our commerce because of Amazon, is moving to 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.520 this online arena that is not at all a marketplace. 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:45.080 Amazon calls it a marketplace. It is a private arena 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:47.800 controlled by Amazon. It gets to decide who's at the 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:50.280 top of the search results, which products do you encounter 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.760 when you enter certain words, it gets to regulate in 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:58.760 essence commerce and it also gets to levy attacks, and 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:03.720 lots of manufact surers and retailers small and large really 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:05.600 feel that they have no choice but to try to 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.680 sell there. Most of them are failing as they do it, 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:11.679 in part because the cost of selling on Amazon is 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.840 so steep. Five years ago, Amazon was taking an average 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:18.200 of nineteen percent of every dollar a seller made on 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.880 on its platform. Now it's up to thirty on average, 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.680 and many sellers are paying even more. What I hear 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:29.280 from these businesses is that they're giving more to Amazon 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:33.200 than their entire payroll and profit, Meaning Amazon, for hosting 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.440 a website is taking more from that business than all 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.119 the people who work there and make it happen. It 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:43.040 is a form of tax that's inescapable because of Amazon's 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.600 market power, and it's part of how the company is 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:49.160 so incredibly wealthy, and it's part of what powers Amazon's 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.000 ability to move into one market after another with this 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:59.919 built in advantage. There's something beautifully heinous ly ironic about 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:06.040 Amazon initiating its advantage on a five avoidance of sales 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:11.159 tax and then levying through its sales commission. That's a 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.160 neat trick. I wish I could do that. That sounds 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:16.320 like a good way to make a lot of money. 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.000 So so I think you've made a case for from 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.760 from my understanding, Amazon is not simply a retailer. It's 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.480 not just a store. It's infrastructure, and it's infrastructure that 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:33.320 other stores, manufacturers, retailers depend on to reach customers. Because 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:38.119 it has such dominance of online purchasing and of cloud computing, 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.080 and of increasingly logistics and physical delivery of goods. So 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.280 they've left the virtual world and are severely affecting the 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.280 physical world too. So if you were a business, you 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:54.600 kind of need Amazon. Um, how does Amazon squash competition? 0:18:56.400 --> 0:19:01.320 Amazon squashes competition by positioning itself as a gatekeeper. If 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:06.640 you control the roadway that the vast majority of traffic 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:11.560 is traveling down, then you control what that traffic sees. 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:16.480 And so from that position, Amazon can pick winners and losers, 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:19.320 and in particular, can favor its own products. You know, 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:23.080 a small company has a best selling product, really inventive 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.000 kind of product. Amazon sees that on its site and 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:28.760 then it then it actually copies that product, creates an 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:32.159 Amazon brand version of it. And gives itself top billing 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:35.320 in the search for results, and overnight that company that 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:40.320 invented that sees its sales fall just absolutely drop off. 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:44.639 A cliff we Um profiled in one of our reports 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.280 last year a business called the Top Shelf that sells 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.560 hair and barbershop kinds of supplies. And they did a 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:57.600 decent business selling on Amazon and elsewhere. Um. But over time, 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:00.800 as they became successful, it was almost like, as the 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:02.919 owner said to me, it's almost like Amazon noticed that 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:05.280 a lot of that revenue was coming to us, and 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:08.040 all of a sudden, we've got new fees, we've got 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.000 new you know, some of our inventories missing, and we're 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:14.040 spending a lot of time working that out. The fees 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.760 keep going up year after year, and suddenly our margin 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:19.320 is gone. You know, he had built up a business 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.680 selling online with about fifty employees, a warehouse he was 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.159 up in Michigan. He was really excited about kind of 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:28.600 bringing jobs to his community. And then you know, in 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.040 a matter of months, he's starting to lose money. He's 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:34.400 heading into the red, he's having to lay people off, 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.560 and then there's a dispute. Amazon says that one of 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.240 his items that he's selling his counterfeit, which he says 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:44.960 is not the case, but they immediately suspend his account, 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.640 no sales. He goes to zero overnight, and they seize 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.200 tens of thousands of dollars of his inventory. And as 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:54.439 it turns out, when you sign on to become an 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:58.239 Amazon seller, the terms of service, just the standard thing 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:01.520 that everyone has to agree to, includes this little provision 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.399 in there that says you can't go to court if 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:05.960 you have a dispute. You have to go through an 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:11.000 arbitration process that Amazon sets up. So now he's waiting 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:15.040 for this arbitration process and he's lost all his inventory, 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:17.760 he's been shut off from selling, and you know, he 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:23.920 can't even get anyone from Amazon on the phone. We'll 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:45.960 be right back. M We hear about this term monopoly, 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:51.600 in this term anti trust, not necessarily knowing what they mean. Yeah, Um, 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:54.480 what monopoly ultimately means as a company that has enough 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:57.359 power to basically bully and tell people what to do 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:00.240 because it's so dominant in that market. And it's a 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.400 level of power that can be achieved with something less 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:05.639 than a d percent of the market, considerably less than 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:08.240 a percent of the market. So that's what a monopoly is, 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:13.800 and so anti monopoly has been part of our country's 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:17.360 policy really since the beginning. I mean the Boston Tea 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:20.560 Party when colonists through all that tea into Boston Harbor, 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:24.960 was partly a protest against the power of Parliament, but 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:27.760 it was very much a protest against the East India Company, 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:32.840 this global corporation of its day that dominated the tea 0:22:32.920 --> 0:22:35.440 trade and in fact had gotten a special deal with 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:38.120 the British Parliament where it didn't have to pay taxes. 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:40.480 It was given all of these advantages in the colonies, 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:44.040 and the colonists mad at the government and mad at 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:47.080 this dominant company and the effects that had on local 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:50.040 tea merchants through a bunch of its tea into Boston Harbor. 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:52.320 So so from the beginning there was this understanding you 0:22:52.359 --> 0:22:54.200 had to deal with private power if you wanted to 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:58.280 have a democracy. So we began to pass laws. Uh 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.840 those laws where the state level and still are, but 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:03.840 they began to be this time in the late nineteenth 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:09.320 century where powerful corporations began to span multiple states, and 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:13.919 they often evaded those state laws to control their power 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:17.080 by forming what we're known at the time as trusts. 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:20.639 This sort of other level of decision making above the corporation, 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:22.920 where they were sort of knitted together in a trust. 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:25.880 And that's how they sort of side stept those state laws. 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:28.680 And so that gave rise to the need for federal 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:31.800 laws to control their power. And they're known as antitrust laws, 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:35.520 so against the power of those of those trusts. So 0:23:35.600 --> 0:23:40.280 a trust was like a legal entity that these companies 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:43.479 created to avoid accountability at the state level. And then 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:45.800 the Feds come in and say, hold up, wait a minute, 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:48.760 and when what do they do? And so it's really 0:23:48.800 --> 0:23:52.600 not until the nineteen thirties, and particularly with Franklin Roosevelt, 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.239 that we get sort of the full implementation of our 0:23:56.280 --> 0:24:01.600 antitrust laws on the point a new basis of security 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:05.640 and prosperity. And he looks across the country at all 0:24:05.640 --> 0:24:08.520 of these problems, you know, farmers not being able to 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:11.600 make a living, people being out of work, the collapse 0:24:11.640 --> 0:24:15.480 of the banking system, and so on, and he recognizes 0:24:15.520 --> 0:24:16.639 that a lot of them have to do with a 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:22.080 concentration of private power and of monopoly, freedom from unfair competition, 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:28.720 and dominating my monopoli abroad. And so, particularly in his 0:24:28.800 --> 0:24:33.439 second term, begins this really strong anti monopoly campaign, and 0:24:33.480 --> 0:24:36.880 we have a number of decades where that New Deal 0:24:36.960 --> 0:24:40.960 thinking really really guides things. It's really important to pause 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:44.639 here and sort of step back from this to just say, obviously, 0:24:44.760 --> 0:24:48.160 for much of our history, we had a very narrow 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:51.440 idea of who counted as a citizen right, and so 0:24:51.720 --> 0:24:56.639 black Americans, women, gay Americans, others were locked out of 0:24:56.680 --> 0:25:01.520 these economic rights for much of that story. And so 0:25:02.560 --> 0:25:05.040