The sunk-cost focus of just getting people to pay for a membership to something and then they care about getting the most out of their membership… that would be

The sunk-cost focus of just getting people to pay for a membership to something and then they care about getting the most out of their membership… that would be an issue on its own, though not massively distorting. The rest of the behind-the-scenes stuff is appalling. I fear that doing anything about this relies mainly on bad experiences. The harder it is to find a good product or the more commonly a low-quality knock-off makes people unhappy, the more they will actually listen to these other complaints about all the problems with Amazon. If Amazon can figure out how to keep customers having mostly positive experiences of finding things they want and being happy with them, it will be very difficult to get the public support needed to push back on all the problems. Lousy bread and boring circuses make it much easier to build movements for change. Artisan bread and excellent circuses really are probably enough to keep people from wanting to rock the boat (sorry for the mixed metaphor).