Numbers can be absolutely fascinating

Nick Shaxson gives us his absolute proof that Amazon is a vile, dirty, monopolist that definitely needs to be regulated into something something:

You might think that as a company like Amazon has grown bigger, its services would become cheaper as it reaps economies of scale. Not so: research shows that the price of sending a standard parcel via Amazon in the UK has more than doubled since 2017. Meanwhile, the income from the advertising fees that independent sellers must pay to stay visible to customers exploded: a nearly 17-fold rise from 2017 to 2022. International research even shows that Amazon uses its chokehold over sellers to pocket more than half of sellers’ revenues in fees. Half!

Gross margins in retail seem to be about or even over 50%. So a gross margin in retail of 50% seems not to be wholly conclusive in proving the existence of monopoly - nor even of market power.

But then if you’re heading up a new unthink-tank based upon attacking corporate monopoly you’re going to get your figures where you can, no?

Tim Worstall