Paul Krugman: Why Amazon is dangerous and evil

Many readers will be purchasers of books, or whatever, from Amazon. We shouldn't be! - if we want to protect that bookshop down the road from going the way of the dodo, etc. etc. But Amazon is worse than just threatening the viability of small shopkeepers - as Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in Economics has explained.

"Sometimes Paul Krugman eases into his column by writing metaphorically, or giving some valuable background. In Monday's column, he just up and blurts out his point: "Amazon.com, the giant online retailer, has too much power, and it uses that power in ways that hurt America."

He spends most of the rest of the column explaining why this is so, and why, while the online retailer is not quite "a monster" intent on eating the whole economy, as some critics portray it to be, it is nonetheless a too-powerful company that is playing a deeply troubling role

It is in some way comparable to Standard Oil, which in its day had "too much power," Krugman writes, "and public action to curb that power was essential."

Continue reading this piece, from AlterNet, here.

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