Amazon's low costs is only possible because they externalize their costs to society.
Also price fixing the books doesn't imply better paid anything, there's no large causal connection there.
Overall this is a win for pirates, inefficient booksellers and Amazon's margins. The anti-dumping perspective is a farfetched narrative given it isn't actual dumping, it's just very low margin selling, and moreover bookselling isn't a natural monopoly and has low barriers to entry so dumping incentives don't really exist.
When you use temps in stead of real employees, you externalize their healthcare etc. as well.
When you sell books in Europe, but you don't pay taxes like European bookstores, you externalize that as well.
When you use predatory pricing for more than a decade, and it kills off real bookstores, that's an externality as well.
When you ship items one by one with trucks and planes, you have a large CO2 footprint. Again an externality.
Amazon is not some genius new high-tech business model, winning because they are smarter than everyone else. It's just low wages, predatory pricing, tax avoidance and disregard for the environment.
If true, this isn't Amazon's fault, and it's not an externality either. If there's a loophole in the tax law, the onus is on the EU or France to fix it, the onus isn't on Amazon to voluntarily give extra money above and beyond what's required. No business ever does this. Moreover, price fixing books doesn't fix the tax loophole.
> large CO2 footprint.
That's why I said "They may have some externalities", similar in extent to many other businesses that operate in the physical world. Per-shipped item, Amazon probably has the least amount of externalities compared to other bookstores thanks to operational efficiency, so on the carbon externality point they should be celebrated (on a relative basis). Also, this is an argument for a carbon price, not an argument for price fixing of books.
> externalize the wage // externalize their healthcare
These aren't externalities. Amazon pays enough money for them to live. If the public votes to give them extra handouts then that isn't Amazon's fault. You would also need to make the argument that low-skilled labor on aggregate would be earning more money if Amazon wasn't around, which is a claim I strongly dispute. Part of the improvement in operational efficiency is passed on as superior wages relative to other low-skilled labor.
> It's just low wages, predatory pricing, tax avoidance and disregard for the environment.
Strong disagree. It is high wages (relative to market rates for that skill tier), competitive pricing, tax compliance, less pollution on a per-item basis, PLUS extreme operational efficiency and economies of scale/physical network effects (the latter in this list being the most dominant explanatory variable).
An example. Suppose someone is working at the best job they could find for $8/hour, and I decide to hire them for $15/hour. Am I "dumping the cost onto society"? Maybe you could frame it that way, but in reality my contribution has been to reduce the burden on society by $7/hour.
