[stuart78]

Commerce led by mega aggregators has a long history in the US. Walmart and Sears to name two that were dominant in earlier generations. Both of those companies pushed suppliers to adhere to high / punishing standards as well. While those companies were dominant in their time, a key part of the reason all three have done so well is that they serve the actual customer better than the alternative. Sears was like the internet on paper. Walmart radically expanded the inventory available to shoppers across the country. Amazon does both of these things 10x more efficiently.

I am not naive to the many valid critiques of all three, but the customer benefit is an important part of the discussion that seems consistently forgotten. It is so critical because customer preference and changing market dynamics are what ended the reign of both Sears and Walmart and they are what will do the same to Amazon. But until then, Amazon has figured out how to deliver stuff to my door quickly and inexpensively.

One small example. When I was young I loved music and in my medium sized town there was one record store with two locations. It was fine, and they would order in anything you asked for, but limited inventory available browsing. In the 90s Best Buy, Barnes and Noble and a few other now-forgotten big box retailers came to town. The impact was immense. Inventory went up ~100x over this period and price went down. And the breadth was amazing. Huge classical and Jazz sections, neither of which had much presence at the independent shop. The independent shop survived too. They had Ticket sales, hippie merch and a more specialized catalog. Wonderful differentiation in offerings. Now markets have shifted many times over since those days. Some retailers (including the record shop) have adapted others have not. So it goes.