flâneur

Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie

mattstoller.substack.com · 2,625 words · saved by 1 readers

A new antitrust case shows that Prime inflates prices across the board, using the false promise of 'free shipping' that is anything but free.

Hi, Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Or just read on… Last week, the Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust suit against Amazon. The point of the suit is simple, but not stated explicitly - to unravel Amazon Prime, which at this point has at least 126 million members, roughly the same number of households in America (128.5 million). I’ve read a bunch of the coverage, but no one has hit that point yet. So that’s what I’m going to write about today. It’s a fascinating moment in the political…

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