Protecting Consumers from… Themselves?

October 10th, 2023

A short essay in the American Institute for Economic Research from Dr. Kimberlee Josephson, an associate professor of business, spells out in stark detail the oddity of the Federal Trade Commission trying to protect consumers from companies and services they continue to use.

She writes that 200 million people around the world buy from Amazon. Organizations of all sorts, including the U.S. government (and I would add, much of the U.S. military), rely on Amazon Web Services to manage and safeguard their digital operations. What’s wrong with these people? Didn’t they read Lina Khan’s note in The Yale Law Journal?

What about the small merchant? Is this the “forgotten man and woman”?

Hardly. Currently, more than 60 percent of sales in Amazon’s stores are derived from small and medium-sized businesses. Amazon works hard to train and promote sellers in entrepreneurship.

The FTC seems to be reacting not to some structural defect in the market, but out of the progressive critique of the choices pesky consumers continue to make. Don’t they know better? Josephson writes: “Our Starbucks coffee, use of smartphone capabilities, and online shopping sprees weren’t brought on by force – they were choices. And to a large extent, we are better off because of them.”

She concludes: “If Amazon can be sued by the FTC for the success it has achieved in catering to customers and enabling the sales of third-party sellers, what chance does a small business have for crafting its own strategies and having autonomy over its own operations and distribution networks?”