There's One Huge Problem with Calls for Anti-Trust Action Against Amazon

The New Republic has a dramatic cover story out this week by Frank Foer with the simple title "Amazon Must Be Stopped." The specific argument of the piece stretches together a few threads including a curious nostalgia for the traditional book publishing industry, a critique of the consumer-focused trend in post-1980 antitrust jurisprudence, and a swipe at Peter Thiel's techno-utopianism. But at its core is a very simple but fundamentally mistaken contention about Amazon, namely that "the company has achieved a level of dominance that merits the application of a very old label: monopoly."