( CNN ) -- Late in January , the book publisher Macmillan told Amazon it wanted to raise the prices of its books sold through the online retailer . Amazon made clear it wanted to continue to set prices for Macmillan 's books , as it does for most books it sells . To make sure the publisher understood it was serious , Amazon cut the links that enable people to buy Macmillan 's books via Amazon 's Web site . For more than a week , you could still see Macmillan books on Amazon ; you just could n't order one . Even though the two companies have since struck a truce , the showdown should deeply concern anyone who cares not merely about the health of this vital industry , but about concentration of political power in America . What should concern us foremost is not that Amazon 's managers believe they -- rather than the people who write and edit our books -- have a right to set the price for books . It is that Amazon 's managers believe they have consolidated sufficient power -- the company sells as much as 80 percent of all ebooks , for instance -- to enforce their will by cutting off the public 's access to a publisher 's books . More disturbing yet , Amazon is not alone in having captured such a position . Another company that has captured a real say over the actions of our publishers is Wal-Mart . And Wal-Mart is a goliath that has repeatedly used its dominant position to influence the content of products by refusing to sell certain books or music . Indeed , such brute use of power is increasingly the norm across our economy . As anyone who has studied the business practices of Wal-Mart , Home Depot and Best Buy knows , rough treatment of the people who make what we buy is true in just about every industry . It was not always this way in America . A generation ago every city boasted its own department stores , discount shops and independent bookstores . Power was so widely distributed that few retailers enjoyed any real power over suppliers . The consolidation in retail since then is due largely to two revolutions in our anti-monopoly laws . The first was the Consumer Goods Pricing Act of 1975 , which gave retailers the power to price other companies ' products . Second was the Reagan administration 's reframing of our anti-monopoly laws in 1981 around the concept of `` consumer welfare . '' Until then , the prime purpose of anti-monopoly laws was to protect citizens against concentration of political power . Since then , officials have used our anti-monopoly laws instead to lower prices . To achieve this end , they often virtually promote concentration of power over entire market systems . As a result , it is now all but routine for big firms , in their efforts to grow bigger and increase profits , to dictate prices to suppliers who depend on them to get to their customers . Such use of power can strip away or destroy much of the cash suppliers would have invested in new products or simply to maintain systems and skills . There is nothing new in this . A century ago Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes spelled out the dangers in a case in which a retailer manipulated the price of a drug , `` I can not believe , '' he wrote , `` that in the long run the public will profit by this court permitting knaves to cut reasonable prices for some ulterior purpose of their own , and thus to impair , if not to destroy , the production and sale of articles which it is assumed to be desirable that the public be able to get . '' In the case of Amazon , consolidation has often been presented as a consequence of new technologies . And it is not entirely clear how we can apply traditional anti-monopoly laws , many of which have geographic components , to online commerce . But any careful reading of history will carry us to analogous challenges in our past , like those posed by the early railways , and thereby to other potentially useful forms of anti-monopoly law such as common carriage rules . Also , most of Amazon 's abuses would have been avoided if the people who make our products ( in this case books ) still enjoyed complete autonomy to set their own prices . Amazon acted badly . So too Wal-Mart , especially during last fall 's book price war . Yet the fundamental flaw lies not with the decisions made by managers of these companies . It lies with viewing our anti-monopoly laws as a tool to promote a flawed vision of efficiency rather than to protect our most vital liberties . Defenders of concentration will continue to justify their use of power with claims they are serving the `` consumer . '' But we should be clear that fixation on lowering prices can result in truly dramatic costs . Sometimes it is degradation of the quality and safety of the products delivered to the American `` consumer . '' Sometimes it is the concentration of power over the people who produce our books and other vital products and over the American citizen . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Barry C. Lynn .
War over e - book prices between Amazon , is a power play , says John ##nie Lynn . Lynn : Government has stressed lower prices while allowing growth of powerful retailers . He says the cost of the war has been domination of retailers over suppliers .