https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/techn...mazon.html
As you can see, even though she's a married WNB London-born Pakistani immigrant, it is quite easy to find common ground here.
Getting in touch with her to explore possibilities requires a relatively small risk and potentially huge rewards.
Quote:Quote:
Amazon has more revenue than Facebook, Google and Twitter put together, but it has largely escaped sustained examination. That is beginning to change, and one significant reason is Ms. Khan.
In early 2017, when she was an unknown law student, Ms. Khan published “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” in the Yale Law Journal. Her argument went against a consensus in antitrust circles that dates back to the 1970s — the moment when regulation was redefined to focus on consumer welfare, which is to say price. Since Amazon is renowned for its cut-rate deals, it would seem safe from federal intervention.
Ms. Khan disagreed. Over 93 heavily footnoted pages, she presented the case that the company should not get a pass on anticompetitive behavior just because it makes customers happy. Once-robust monopoly laws have been marginalized, Ms. Khan wrote, and consequently Amazon is amassing structural power that lets it exert increasing control over many parts of the economy.
Amazon has so much data on so many customers, it is so willing to forgo profits, it is so aggressive and has so many advantages from its shipping and warehouse infrastructure that it exerts an influence much broader than its market share. It resembles the all-powerful railroads of the Progressive Era, Ms. Khan wrote: “The thousands of retailers and independent businesses that must ride Amazon’s rails to reach market are increasingly dependent on their biggest competitor.”
The paper got 146,255 hits, a runaway best-seller in the world of legal treatises. That popularity has rocked the antitrust establishment, and is making an unlikely celebrity of Ms. Khan in the corridors of Washington.
(...)
The issue Ms. Khan’s article really brought to the fore is this: Do we trust Amazon, or any large company, to create our future? In think tanks and universities, the battle has been joined.
(...)
Big Tech’s great strength is that it is everywhere. Hardly anyone can live without it. But that omnipresence can be a weakness too. Just ask Facebook. It was the only global social media network, an enviable position — until it wasn’t. Ideas for regulating Facebook that were once unimaginable are now on the table.
Ms. Khan was not the first to criticize Amazon, and she said the company was not really her target anyway. “Amazon is not the problem — the state of the law is the problem, and Amazon depicts that in an elegant way,” she said.
From Amazon’s point of view, however, it is a problem indeed that Ms. Khan concludes in the Yale paper that regulating parts of the company like a utility “could make sense.” She also said it “could make sense” to treat Amazon’s e-commerce operation like a bridge, highway, port, power grid or telephone network — all of which are required to allow access to their infrastructure on a nondiscriminatory basis.
(...)
“This is a moment in time that invites a movement,” said Ms. Khan. “It’s bigger than antitrust, bigger than Big Tech. It’s about whether the laws serve democratic ends.”
As you can see, even though she's a married WNB London-born Pakistani immigrant, it is quite easy to find common ground here.
Getting in touch with her to explore possibilities requires a relatively small risk and potentially huge rewards.