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Comment by privateSFacct | Hacker News Reader

The point is to generate choices / alternatives.

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?

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Regulating that a retailer selling genuine products is nothing at all like zoning or funeral homes.

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.

It is the same.

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.

No it is not. Why would you socialize a problem by requiring the government to spend taxpayer resources and slowing down shipping with inspections in a stream of hundreds of millions of packages?

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.

Umm the state ia the government. It is socialized by definition already on every level.

No, due to federal rules Amazon has an edge over normal retailers for following basic laws.

There are lots of alternatives for each category of products - Zappos for shoes/clothes, Mouser for electrical components, etc. though there is no one competitor to Amazon that is as comprehensive as it is.

Edit: Turns out Zappos is owned by Amazon. But my point still stands if we replace it with something else.

I had not heard of Mouser until this moment - thank you!

Mouser (and Digikey) are both really excellent. They aren't cheap, but that's probably part of why they're excellent.

Zappos is part of Amazon.

Mouser / digikey generally have inflated prices, and shipping on top of the order. I only go there for specific components, for day-to-day components Amazon is just fine.

Ebay still exists and is way better for niche stuff anyway.

Yes. I have decided to change my buying priority. When I need something, I first look to local businesses. If I can't find what I want there, I look to manufacturer websites. If that fails, I used to go to Amazon, followed by eBay.

I think I need to just go to eBay at that stage, and drop Amazon entirely.

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