I’ve been ordering from Amazon less and less because of how flooded it has become with cheap crap at exorbitant prices. Every site that sells stuff on a broad scale is like this now. If you go to Etsy, you now have to carefully traverse sellers because there are tons on there now that sell AliExpress bulk items as expensive one-offs.
Search for a necklace on Etsy. Simple enough. Except now instead of each seller being an artisan that makes the item, you’ll get a list of items that can be purchased in bulk on AliExpress for $1-2 per piece. Sellers will buy stuff in big bulk purchases, and resell that same necklace for $50. They even go as far as making fake backstories for their stores.
The head mod of r/EnoughLibertarianSpam wedged this into my brain years ago:
The whole idea of free market forces is that corporations will be motivated to be good based on reputation alone, which assumes that reputation can't be falsified.
Netflix was awesome, but we've returned to the age of cable. The good news is now you CAN choose ala carte. The bad news? All the channels suck, and almost none have what you're looking for.
We're getting close to that with calls for different streamers to "take over" a show that failed on one. We've also seen streamers like Netflix take on cable's failures.
Pretty much waiting for Disney to do a direct continuation of the original marvel MCU shows, though they kind of are doing that with Daredevil, though dropping much of that show's characters.
The shitty thing about cable was that you had to buy basic cable just to get in the door, then each of the 5 most popular channels were in separate packages that added 15 bucks each.
For a short while you could access almost everything on one streaming site for $15. Then slowly it began to fragment to the point where each service in theory has a nearly infinite library, but in practice you need 4+ subscriptions to access all the content most people want to watch. So it's back to the same core reason cable sucked.
I interpret it in a broader sense. Recently I tried to test a mechanical keyboard to see if I would like it. The small local shop did not have any (understandably), so I went to MediaMarkt and they didn't have any either. It seems that since everyone is ordering stuff online, the physical shops only have stock for very generic stuff.
So... the convenience that everyone was demanding (being able to order anything) is now mandatory for me.
Of course, it's just first world problems in my case.
Most of the small local shops have been closed down by a combination of big box stores and Amazon anyway, so in a lot of places, your only options are the evil megacorp you have to drive to or the other evil megacorp that's convenient.
I interpret it in a broader sense. Recently I tried to test a mechanical keyboard to see if I would like it. The small local shop did not have any (understandably), so I went to MediaMarkt and they didn't have any either. It seems that since everyone is ordering stuff online, the physical shops only have stock for very generic stuff.
So... the convenience that everyone was demanding (being able to order anything) is now mandatory for me.
Of course, it's just first world problems in my case.
Funnily enough that's more or less the opposite in germany. Amazon used to be good and had everything but now it's flooded with cheap chinese garbage. Some products you won't even find and if you find it it's often fairly expensive.
My last two mechanical keyboards I bought were from MediaMarkt and ComputerUniverse. The Mediamarkt one I even got in a local shop at a reduced price because it was the display model. In general the local shops do have a good product selection here. At Mediamarkt I could try several different mechanical keyboards with various switch types.
I went to my local mall 2 weeks ago and entered through the Best Buy. They had several types of mechanical keyboards with different switches on display, most had a couple keycaps stolen.
I can see the point though, I just don't think it applies everywhere.