Still, in this case, there are two key factors, I think:

1. It’s the law. There’s this bit of the Trade Practices Act which I’d never heard of, but apparently applies. I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know whether I like it or not. But eBay Australia does need to play by the rules as they stand.
2. eBay Australia is not a true individual, but a corporation. Now a corporation is a legal entity which we have created which has the legal powers of a human, except that it’s immortal and has no other prime directive except to maximise its profits. The 2003 Canadian movie The Corporation explains why this may be a Bad Thing. The 3-hour film is on Google Video

I certainly agree there’s a bit of hypocrisy between a government saying that the market will solve all and yet rules have to be made to prevent liberty overall. I need to read and explore more to respond to your final point though.

By moving her shop elsewhere she will be moving away from where the most customers are, there’s no argument. At the same time though, eBay should not be punished for being successful — they still have the same rights to their property, and the disposal of it, as you or I do. Just because Alice isn’t happy doesn’t mean Frank Lowy has to change everything.

Further on that point, it’s just as you said — if she wants a place on eBay’s property, she must play by eBay’s rules. It’s just like if I’m on your property, I follow your rules. If I don’t like them, I get off your property. Again, being big and successful does not take this right away from eBay. So long as Alice is on Lowy’s property, Alice plays by his rules. If she does not wish to, she can go elsewhere.

“eBay must prove that the public benefit flowing from the move outweighs the public detriment”

Why should eBay have to do this? First of all ‘public benefit’ is is extremely subjective. What one person sees as public benefit, another may see as detriment. Secondly, on moral grounds, eBay retains all the rights that you or I do. eBay is the property of eBay, and eBay can dispose of eBay as eBay wished to dispose of eBay. There will be no public detriment caused by eBay’s changes, because eBay is only making changes to itself — its own property. Whether other individuals wish to engage with eBay is totally up to them — they’re not being forced in anyway. The Government has no roll to play, but to let the market do its thing, and let the people enjoy their liberty.

Imagine if the Government disallowed Prussia.Net’s latest innovation because it ‘did not provide public benefit’. According to whom? And when did your company take on this burden of providing for the public? (By current day definitions, as in this case with eBay, the answer would read ‘as soon as you became successful’ — utter idiocy, I believe.

Refining what I wrote yesterday, perhaps it’s not fascism per se that we see in cases like this, but actions of fascist nature. If you want to boil down Socialism to its basic definition it would be something along the lines of ‘the Government owns the means of production, and therefore, there is no private property’. Fascism would read ‘individuals retain the right to property (at least, a semblance of it), but the Government holds total power over its disposal or use’. So far as that, the Government telling eBay how it can or cannot dispose of its property is most certainly of a fascistic nature.

The Government, through the dastard competition laws, says that in order to keep ‘liberty in general’, we must take away the liberty of some. I disagree: so long as eBay is denied liberty, I am denied liberty.

Imagine that you’re Alice, proud owner of the new shoe shop at your local Westfield. Bob is buying a pair of brogues. As Bob opens his wallet, suddenly Frank Lowy appears. “There’s some terrible con-men around,” he intones gravely. “Let me handle that.” He grabs Bob’s cash and pockets a fiver. “I’ll give you the rest next Wednesday,” he says, and disappears.

Alice, understandably, is mightily p-ssed off.

You’re right, Alice could indeed move her shop elsewhere. But, with either eBay or Westfield, the result is that you move away from where the biggest collection of potential customers are. If you want to be where the customers are, you play by the rules of that forum.

Nevertheless, as a piece I’m about to write for Crikey today will say, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will investigate this eBay/PayPal deal. As The Sheet reported yesterday:

A spokeswoman for the ACCC said eBay must prove that the public benefit flowing from the move outweighs the public detriment of what seems to fall under the “third line forcing” provisions of the Trade Practices Act.

I do hope you’re not over-using the word “fascism”. I’ve previously warned about this.

eBay should be able to do whatever they want with their product — they’re not forcing anybody to use it, nor are they forcibly removing anyone’s money like your analogy implied. If their actions have a negative effect on their users, people will stop using eBay and eBay will lose money. It’d just be, again, market economics doing its magical thing.

In that sense, I also disagree with your representation of eBay as a monopoly. A monopoly (or at least a coercive monopoly, though the terms are almost synonymous these days, thanks to our culture’s acceptance of all doctrines socialist) is a business that set its prices and policies with immunity from the laws of supply and demand. eBay does not have this. This is only possible by Government creation. If you see eBay as a monopoly, it is a non-coercive monopoly or an efficiency monopoly. It has so much control of the market because it offers the best product. This disappears as soon as it stops offering the best product — i.e. it is not immune from market forces.

I’ve probably gone off on a million tangents, but I hate competition laws so much for their hypocrisy. eBay has a capitalism-given right to offer its products to the market as it wishes. It’s not immune from the forces that could destroy it.

In the end, it’d be amoral for the Government to bust in with its monopoly of force and tell eBay what to do. That’s fascism, but hey… every time I see a politician on the news all I see is example after example of fascism, and no one believes me!

On consume finance specifically, I’ve been told by people at Apple dealerships that the margins are so low on the computers themselves that they make more money out of selling you a lease than selling the computer.

The Paypal anti-competitive behaviour is a very visible one. I was wondering the other day how many invisible monopolies exist. Like, the other day I was shocked an appalled to learn from Four Corners that Australia’s credit market is dominated by GE. And given how aggressive Business is to sign you up to credit, it’s convenient to focus your loathing onto the one company.

My Crikey article has more, though for the time being it’s behind their paywall.

I personally like the benefits of PayPal — being that it is instant, integrated reasonably well with eBay, handy for international purchases, and safe enough (providing your not the type of person who clicks every link in every spam email they receive). I can pay for an auction in less than a minute and that’s great for me.

However, to remove nearly all other payment options is very crappy. How many legitimate sellers request DD payments every day and have no problems. I suspect quite a lot and now each one will have to foot the PayPal bill because uneducated folks got ripped off. Of course, plenty of people (including experienced sellers/buyers) have been ripped off using PayPal.

And that’s the main problem here — people being scammed out of money. Why not just make PayPal mandatory on all sales, and for anyone who chooses not to use it and gets ripped off, tough luck.

The ability to get your money back might be easier when using PayPal, but the scammers are still going to exist. Maybe that’ll be enough to boost consumer confidence in eBay. The increased PayPal buyer protection up to AU$20,000 sounds nice.

But to me it just seems like a way to get a bigger commission.

The marketplace on eBay is huge and I reckon most sellers/buyers will just have to lap it up in the end. I don’t see too many moving over to that other auction site I saw advertised at 12AM amongst the phone sex ads, or Oztion.