California Attorney General Rob Bonta last night filed a request for a preliminary injunction in California’s existing case against Amazon for price fixing. Attorney General Bonta’s 2022 lawsuit alleged that the company stifled competition and caused increased prices across California through its anticompetitive policies in order to avoid competing on price with other retailers. New evidence paints a clearer and more shocking picture. The motion for a preliminary injunction comes after a robust discovery process where California uncovered evidence of countless interactions in which Amazon, vendors, and Amazon’s competitors agree to increase and fix the prices of products on other retail websites to bolster Amazon’s profits. Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply. Vendors, bullied by Amazon’s overwhelming bargaining leverage and fearing punishment, comply — agreeing to raise prices on competitors’ websites (often with the awareness and cooperation of the competing retailer), or to remove products from competing websites altogether. Amazon’s goal is to insulate itself from price competition by preventing lower retail prices in the market at the expense of American consumers who are already struggling with a crisis of affordability.
Holy shit guys! S-so, if you have a monopoly, it’s like, you can do whatever the fuck you want? So it’s like in THE FUCKING GAME OF MONOPOLY? Jee, we are learning something new every day
In the game, you have to improve your properties to charge more rent. In reality, the monopoly can reduce quality and raise price at the same time.
You dont really improve it, just added more units. Its about volume, not quality.
Which is also a pretty good tactic in Monopoly: try to buy as many houses as possible, but do not upgrade to hotels - exhaust the housing market- that way the other players cannot upgrade either
Wait, is Jee how the kids spell it these days?
Considering the origin is “Jesus”, “Jee” is technically closer spelling than “Gee”. Not that I have a dog in this race.
Thanks bro, gee is what I was going for, kisses from Eastern Europe, or, as we call it, Gesus land
Well, your English is much better than my Eastern European. :) No clue you weren’t a native English speaker, so there’s that <3
The intermediate step is “Jeez.”
The post-step is “Geezie willikers!” :)
Was going to add “Gee Whiz” which comes before that one? Like it got shorter, then it got longer again?
It’s like nicknames. First it’s Joseph, then Joe, then Napoleon Jonaparte.
Oh, I thought that was the… just… regulat step. hehe.
I guess for some sort of vaguely-serious discussion[1], without doing any research, I think Jesus / Jesus Christ has stably evolved to Gee, with some variants like Gee Whiz being pretty common. I think Gee Willikers was more common around the TV Batman era and so now it’s less said straight and more said ironically. heh. I can’t think of any other common “Gee [something]”… maybe “Geezie Kreezie”, but I’ve only heard that from Suzy[2] Izzard, so not sure if that’s common or not. lol
It definitely got short; I wonder if we’d count a second word as it getting longer, or a second word replacing “Christ”. These are the types of inconsequential discussions I love. :)
which I find interesting but most others don’t lol ↩︎
previously Eddie ↩︎
In the game, even if you’ve built yourself up, an unlucky roll can still lose you the game. As opposed to real life, where the government decides you’re too big to fail.
That’s why you’ve got to get chummy with the banker and promise them a cut, and also that you’ll give them some of your cookies after the game.