Week 06 Response -- Yes, Amazon is a Packaged Goods Monopoly

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@generalfritz14 asked, "Would Amazon be considered a monopoly? What other monopolies, if there are any, are there in the United States and why?"

Yes, Amazon can be considered a monopoly.

A monopoly is defined by The Economic Times as "a market structure characterized by a single seller, selling a unique product in the market. In a monopoly market, the seller faces no competition, as he is the sole seller of goods with no close substitute." Although Amazon isn't the single seller of any product for any country, it sure seems like it's aiming to become the best seller of delivered goods. Although it is not a perfect monopoly, Amazon is much more of a monopoly than most other companies.

In the past, Amazon has bought out smaller companies that were losing against Amazon or other companies, gone against retail prices requested by their outside manufacturers, started sub-headquarters that sought to outsell other companies, and spied on competitor's prices (more details on Shortform). These are unfair business practices that indicate that Amazon is a monopoly.

I would like to add, though, that not all monopolies are completely bad. For example, the United States post office is a total monopoly on letter delivery, but I would not consider it to be bad because it doesn't seem to be exploiting citizens and it is probably the simplest way for letters to be delivered across the nation. (It could be that I don't see a problem with the U.S. post office because I don't really write letters or do taxes yet often.) However, I think it's safe to say that Amazon has some very questionable business practices.

There certainly exist other monopolies in the United States, including but not limited to the US post office, the NFL, AT&T, Intel, and Standard Oil (Worthly).

There are multiple reasons why monopolies rise up; sometimes it's because a company becomes large and finds ways to get away with unfair business practices that advance the company (Amazon), or because the government sets a company as a monopoly because it is simple and competition isn't really necessary for that company to work well (U.S. Post Office), or sometimes it's because the product that a company sells is incredibly rare (Standard Oil). In any case, I believe the line between a good and a bad monopoly is whether it seeks to grow by use of unfair or exploitative business practices.