free market requires competition, otherwise it stops optimizing for providing better and better value propositions each market is an optimization algorithm, bu

free market requires competition, otherwise it stops optimizing for providing better and better value propositions each market is an optimization algorithm, but if the search space is too big, it gets into a pathological state (market failure), and any economic surplus resulting from optimization goes into keeping it in this state (which is likely profit maximizing for a small subset of participants, sellers or buyers, depending on monopoly or monopsony situation of course) Amazon spends its profit on crushing competition instead of providing a better marketplace. Regulations are ineffective if they can't move the market out of this failure mode. (I.e. fines have to be big enough and the actual compliance has to affect a large enough part of the market.) As long as it takes a few months (or less) to set up a new established seller of things, and as long as the advantage of having a non-fraudelent business is less than doing these scams, the scamming will continue. Fundamental dilemma of Amazon is that they want fungibility. A book is a book, even if it's new, mint condition, used, dusty, hardcover, paperback, large font, high quality, cheap paper, fancy cover, etc. But this works well only for books, where it's obvious to check. (Are every page readable and present? yes, great. no? refund.) But this breaks down almost immediately where fakes and knockoffs and cheap shit is much cheaper to produce (so the price is very competitive), works kind of okayish initially (so hard to check for non-experts). For example any appliance and furniture (see the endless variations on office and "gaming" chairs, tablets, powerbanks, USB hubs, cables, gadgets, mouses, keyboards, monitors, dietary supplements, fitness machines, car addons, etc.)