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Your freedom is pretty narrow in scope though. Amazon has so much market power, and regulators are so weakened that instead of the government setting the bounda

Your freedom is pretty narrow in scope though. Amazon has so much market power, and regulators are so weakened that instead of the government setting the boundaries, billionaires and PE are with financial weapons. Yeah, you can go pop a Shopify store open whenever you want, but if you want to succeed you are going to see a lot of Bezos-built barriers to climb. Further, do we have "greater access to markets" and is that desirable, when those markets are largely selling the same things, and what variety exists usually also comes with questionable reliability/quality? How does that greater market access affect the ability of average Americans to start and successfully operate a small business when products are so easily copied and drop shipped from Asia? The best chance at a reliable retirement and an equal or better life for your kids goes through a stable, broadly wealthy country. Inequality and corruption have toppled more ancient regimes than the US Republic, and all of your money exists in the form of "the full faith and credit" of the Republic. Your interests are aligned with the article.

themacguffinman 6y ago
> but if you want to succeed you are going to see a lot of Bezos-built barriers to climb. Like what, though? How is Amazon unfairly stopping indie stores from succeeding?
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  Lots of ways. Directly, such as - https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its.... It's a marketplace for laundering counterfeit and knockoff goods, harming the interests of legitimate businesses. Also indirectly by creating market pressures around logistics, pricing, SEO, and paid advertising that make it very difficult for a small operator to succeed against. A small business can struggle against a vertically integrated giant like Amazon, but only a very small portion will succeed to any degree. Moreover, it's incredibly frustrating, as a merchant, dealing with an unregulated private bureaucracy like Amazon's. I know plenty of merchants who have had their inventory mixed with counterfeit competitors, received arbitrary account bans (including having funds frozen), and had to spend large amount of cash to comply with new policies that they invent with little warning.
  - chii 6y ago
    None of those are barriers. If you want to live on the amazon platform, you end up being a serf on their platform. That's a given. If you want to start a small business to compete with amazon, then of course their logistics, pricing and SEO is better than you. That's like saying that you want to start a garage car manufacturing plant, but you are out-competed by automanufacturer's investment in robotization and automation, and streamlined inventory management. That's not a 'barrier' per se - it's the point of amazon. As a small operator, if you do not have a value proposition, you don't have the right to exist.
    - arrosenberg 6y ago
      So are the barriers to entry obvious or nonexistent? Because you described both. Not only are they barriers, but vertically integrated monopolies have been illegal for a century. If erecting economic moats is the entire point of Amazon like you said, then it’s obvious they need to be broken up. You really don’t think small, independent merchants are affected by Amazon’s 2 day delivery or taking back any return? That’s naive.

themacguffinman 6y ago

> but if you want to succeed you are going to see a lot of Bezos-built barriers to climb. Like what, though? How is Amazon unfairly stopping indie stores from succeeding?

arrosenberg 6y ago
Lots of ways. Directly, such as - https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its.... It's a marketplace for laundering counterfeit and knockoff goods, harming the interests of legitimate businesses. Also indirectly by creating market pressures around logistics, pricing, SEO, and paid advertising that make it very difficult for a small operator to succeed against. A small business can struggle against a vertically integrated giant like Amazon, but only a very small portion will succeed to any degree. Moreover, it's incredibly frustrating, as a merchant, dealing with an unregulated private bureaucracy like Amazon's. I know plenty of merchants who have had their inventory mixed with counterfeit competitors, received arbitrary account bans (including having funds frozen), and had to spend large amount of cash to comply with new policies that they invent with little warning.
- chii 6y ago
  None of those are barriers. If you want to live on the amazon platform, you end up being a serf on their platform. That's a given. If you want to start a small business to compete with amazon, then of course their logistics, pricing and SEO is better than you. That's like saying that you want to start a garage car manufacturing plant, but you are out-competed by automanufacturer's investment in robotization and automation, and streamlined inventory management. That's not a 'barrier' per se - it's the point of amazon. As a small operator, if you do not have a value proposition, you don't have the right to exist.
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    So are the barriers to entry obvious or nonexistent? Because you described both. Not only are they barriers, but vertically integrated monopolies have been illegal for a century. If erecting economic moats is the entire point of Amazon like you said, then it’s obvious they need to be broken up. You really don’t think small, independent merchants are affected by Amazon’s 2 day delivery or taking back any return? That’s naive.