Competition and Markets Authority, Labour, Amazon, Regulators, Politics, Business, UK news, E-commerce Business | The Guardian
The Competition and Markets Authority is the strongest line of defence against monopolies, so its change in leadership really mattersYou may not have paid attention to the UK government’s decision this week to replace the chair of a regulatory body, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). But this decision really matters, because the CMA is our strongest line of defence against the power of Elon Musk and the other tech barons – and it illuminates just how dangerous Labour’s economic agenda in office is proving to be. To understand why, we need to talk about monopolies.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!Nicholas Shaxson is the author of The Finance Curse: How Global Finance is Making us all Poorer Continue reading…
The Competition and Markets Authority is the strongest line of defence against monopolies, so its change in leadership really matters
You may not have paid attention to the UK government’s decision this week to replace the chair of a regulatory body, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). But this decision really matters, because the CMA is our strongest line of defence against the power of Elon Musk and the other tech barons – and it illuminates just how dangerous Labour’s economic agenda in office is proving to be. To understand why, we need to talk about monopolies.
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!
Nicholas Shaxson is the author of The Finance Curse: How Global Finance is Making us all Poorer
