[AdamB]

An excellent article on how resellers, in this case Amazon, morph from a customer based model, to a supplier based model, to one where the entire experience is designed just to siphon the maximum amount of money away from everyone.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them. Link.

[yellowcanoe]

An excellent article on how resellers, in this case Amazon, morph from a customer based model, to a supplier based model, to one where the entire experience is designed just to siphon the maximum amount of money away from everyone.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them. Link.

As a Canadian, I have a pretty positive image of Amazon. The selection of goods available from Canadian suppliers has always been significantly smaller than what was available from US suppliers. Ordering from a US supplier quite often involved high shipping costs and customs handling fees. In some cases, a US supplier would not be willing to ship to Canada thus requiring use of a third party to provide a US address and additional fees to reship the item to Canada. Amazon provides us with a vast array of products with low shipping cost and no customs handling fees.

[ralfy]

That's how businesses work.

[Newfie]

We spend significant amounts of time outside the US, in Canada and the Caribbean. One comes to appreciate Amazon. In Canada I drive 40 miles to a supermarket or a small Walmart. The Aalmart has very limited stock. Amazon next day delivery is somewhere between 3 days and 2 weeks. FexEd overnight has taken 10 days and that required me to drive 40 miles to meet the driver.

There is no Amazon in the Caribbean, something as simple as clear Gorilla tape is not to be found. Stuff in Antigua is 2x the cost of St Martin because Antigua has no income tax, it's income is all VAT.

In the states I can live in a tiny remote cabin, on a dirt road, 30 miles from a big Walmart and have a huge selection delivered within 3 days.

Think of the gas this saves. One guy makes delivers for a hundred or more people.

The other way to look at Amazon is that it is a monopoly, there is no other significant supplier of the same service. That service being convenient and timely delivery of goods through an easily searchable platform. A monopoly will always tend to abuse.