To understand how a monopoly is currently being built, please read: Amazon caused this problem themselves because of hidden pricing policy/behavior that causes

To understand how a monopoly is currently being built, please read: Amazon caused this problem themselves because of hidden pricing policy/behavior that causes artificially low price-fixing. They’ll never admit this is what caused the problem. Amazon punishes 3rd party FBA/prime sellers for raising prices by removing their listings from the “buy box” or removing their prime badge. Amazon brags to customers that they “found a new seller to sell you this item at a lower price” but in reality Amazon forces sellers to stick to their low prices because if they are ever raised to meet demand, Amazon removes prime status, effectively killing sales. (A class action lawsuit was filed last Thursday for exactly this, Amazon got sued a couple years ago for same thing, I’ll find link and repost) So you had an entire swath of consumer goods (“essential” and “non-essential”) unable to increase prices in response to demand. Amazon fulfillment centers are basically the equivalent of toilet paper right now. I can’t imagine how Amazon continues to get away with such blatant price-fixing. They will drive every major online retailer out of business. Edit: for all the downvoters, if Amazon allowed sellers to raise prices in response to demand on non-essential items, it would have slowed sales volume and not overwhelmed FCs, and my wife and I would not have a 3 week lead time on children’s Motrin.