> I wish somebody would straight compete with them rather than all the complaining to politicians.
One doesn't exclude the other.
One doesn't exclude the other.
If you go the government involvement route you ossify industries and actually can make it harder for folks to compete.
Funeral home chains were famous for pushing for lots of crazy regs that only a system with big economies of scale could meet to push out smaller independents.
In some cities like SF zoning hoops mean that only folks with HUGE pockets / attorneys and long time horizons can get through the planning / permitting and building process - all other restaurants etc basically need to rent (which means if they make the neighborhood nice they don't benefit).
What I want to know - is there a trusted online seller available now that a reasonable amazon alternative?
We need to empower states to regulate Amazon like any other retailer or have reasonable federal standards. In some cases states can apply the death penalty to retailers (revoking sales tax license) if they are perpetuating a fraud. You need regulators with teeth to compel positive behavior from a company are large as Amazon.
If the only folks who can sell products are ones who have a deal with the rightholder and can prove they have the rights to sell - obviously the big players will be the ones able to do the deals with Nike, Apple, etc and little guys will not.
If the federal government actually cared they can ALREADY intercept and even destroy imported counterfeit products - they do not because it's a bit time consuming and hard and they also don't care.
It would be much easier to empower states to enforce existing concepts like the warranty of merchantability in interstate settings or have a regulatory framework that would allow predatory platforms like Amazon to be held accountable for their behavior.
Edit: Turns out Zappos is owned by Amazon. But my point still stands if we replace it with something else.
I think I need to just go to eBay at that stage, and drop Amazon entirely.