For my fourth AMD I chose to read a German Article on "Die Zeit" about a potential boycott of Amazon due to monopolistic properties. Now, I'm not entirely sure how true this may be given my German is still has a few holes to say the least but I did what I could with the interpretation. The article is called "Ein Amazon-Boykott wird nicht hilfen."
Essentially, from my interpretation, people who work at amazon and who work with amazon are frustrated with Amazon's book market ways. They claim that they have too much market power in the book market and in the labor market. Workers claim that Amazon treats them unfairly. Overall though, people question Amazon but in a 'free market economy" they are "convenient" and "competitive."
This, I know is a very elementary translation of the article but I think it is pretty close. Being an econ major all of the things said here make sense to me. Amazon exhibits a lot of monopolistic characteristics. This gives them market power with which they would be able to take advantage of in the form of price setting. Also, Amazon exhibits monopsonistic characteristics meaning they would have market power over labor force wages and quantity.
On a more German language note, I recognized a lot of the vocabulary used in this article. I wish I remembered what they all meant because then I may understand the article fully. I also noticed some reflexive clauses and changes in the endings of adjectives. These are cool things to recognize in what Germans see as every day things like a newspaper.
http://www.zeit.de/kultur/literatur/2013-02/amazon-verlage-kommentar
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