> what they carry is much more like "organic junk-food" than actual food.

There is truth to that. But the same guideline for healthy shopping applies as much to Whole Foods as any grocer:

"Buy most of your food from the perimeter of the store, less from the aisles."

i.e. Buy fresh, not processed, when possible. Exceptions noted in advance.

Business is just too easy when you're big.

I think we need something like progressive economic barriers. Right now this seems inverted, with all the barriers at the "entry" level.

How about we just reduce barriers for early stage companies. Federal business healthcare plans, lower regulations and simply the tax code for companies l.

I don't think there are barriers at the "entry" level at all. You can't build something like Amazon or Walmart over-night, the sustain and focus in these corporations are only doing what the economic "fitness function" tells them to: Sell more stuff at a lower price with lower costs [and quality]! When these systems get so large and impersonal, fraud can only escalate--fake goods sold to invisible personas who can only write strongly worded letters that are immediately tossed into /dev/null, if they even knew what /dev/null was.

This will always come back to bite us all because you cannot legislate long-run self-destructive self-interest away. Consumers will almost always prefer the lowest price and wholesalers will prefer to move more units in fewer transactions to retailers--because that is less work for more money. Once you get big enough to influence the wholesaler/manufacturer price everyone is captured and if you introduce a "price freeze" in an attempt to make people more "equal" welcome to a world of shortages and more robust black market/System D environments.

This is a cultural/people problem--not a legal problem--that is not likely to go away any time soon short of a particularly bad pandemic that changes the focus away from price to authentic relationships between people. I've got no problem dropping $25 for a 5# pasture-raised chicken raised by wonderful people, but other people less fortunate must buy the $1.99# factory-fresh-concentration-camp-chicken from Walmart because they need to eat, you know?

I was thinking more like the megacorporations in Shadowrun...where you're a citizen of the corporation and they provide virtually everything in your life.

Given their location, I guess they're Telestrian? lol

Shipstone.

Gosh, I need to reread Friday. It's been ages.

They don't offer bank accounts yet. Only then Mr Robot could come and change the world by hacking them /s

You can now deposit cash into your Amazon account via bank transfer (one-way transactions) for a 2% rewards benefit.

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-gives-2-rewards-back-pr...

They do offer credit cards through third parties. They also have the Amazon payment service that allows third parties to process transactions through Amazon.

If Amazon could drop $13B on a national grocery retailer they could just as easily drop some number of billions to buy every podunk regional bank willing to sell and merge them into the Bank of Amazonia.

If Elon Musk doesn't do it first to enable easy financing for Elon Musk-fans' buying everything Elon Musk. Musk.

Where do I sign up?

Not quite on Samsung's level in Korea, yet.

Credit accounts + gift card balances is almost the same thing.

No, they don't really control the money. If all amazon balances were gone it would not be a significant event for the US. Evil corp is like a Bank of America or Wells Fargo. If they close, people can't pay rent, food, etc. For Amazon that's (luckily) not the case (yet).