Why Not Just Burn the Books like Good Little National Socialists

Too many right wing books are available. Krugman doesn't care much for free speech and expression, nor the market place. m/r

Paul Krugman Uncovers a Right-Wing Conspiracy at Amazon.com | FrontPage Magazine

By Arnold Ahlert On October 22, 2014 In Daily Mailer,FrontPage

Big-government aficionado Paul Krugman is calling for “public action to curb the power” of an entity he can’t quite bring himself to call a monopoly, even as he nonetheless compares its “abuses” to those of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company. The subject of his ire? “Amazon.com, the giant online retailer, has too much power, and it uses that power in ways that hurt America,” Krugman whines.

“Does Amazon really have robber-baron-type market power? When it comes to books, definitely,” Krugman insists. “Amazon overwhelmingly dominates online book sales, with a market share comparable to Standard Oil’s share of the refined oil market when it was broken up in 1911. Even if you look at total book sales, Amazon is by far the largest player.”

It is the largest player that even Krugman is forced to admit “has not tried to exploit consumers.” Yet he posits the notion that keeping its prices “systematically low” is not a benefit for those consumers, as much as it allows Amazon to “reinforce its dominance.” That dominance is used to “squeeze” publishers to lower the price of book sales to Amazon, and despite the fact that Krugman has already admitted Amazon passes those savings on to its customers, he remains adamant that one of the most basic concepts of free-market competition is a bad thing. “In economics jargon, Amazon is not, at least so far, acting like a monopolist, a dominant seller with the power to raise prices,” he writes. “Instead, it is acting as a monopsonist, a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down.” Despite Krugman’s hand-wringing, one is inclined to think the public would look favorably on this effect on the marketplace.

He notes that people buy books because they’ve heard about them, other people are reading them, they’re a topic of conversation, they‘ve made the best-seller list, and writers are promoting them. Yet Amazon’s “immense” power gives it the ability to “kill the buzz.” “It’s definitely possible, with some extra effort, to buy a book you’ve heard about even if Amazon doesn’t carry it,” Krugman concedes, “but if Amazon doesn’t carry that book, you’re much less likely to hear about it in the first place.”

-go to link-