How do you convince Congress to pass that legislation when there’s lots of money on the other side lobbying for the status quo?

By having a President that holds rallies on getting these issues passed and sets a agenda for the people to vote for congresspeople who support consumer protection laws like these. This is where the office of the Presidency really has impact, it can direct the attention of millions of people to exert great pressure on its target.

Hypothetically, what if the executive branch also ever happened to be nonfunctional?

There is already legislation that should give the FTC teeth to fine or shutdown Amazon based on counterfeit goods, especially if the branding is illegitimate.

There's a lot of anti-tech energy on the left lately. And Bezos painted a target on his back by getting into Twitter feuds with Trump. He's also now synonymous with the Washington Post which has never met a Republican they liked.

This all adds up to a company nobody seems to like in DC. If there's any company I could see getting a Washington smackdown soon, it's Amazon.

>He's also now synonymous with the Washington Post which has never met a Republican they liked.

Have you ever actually read the WaPo editorial page?

I’m talking about their reporting, not their editorials — which, no, I don’t regularly read. Although it’s worth noting they’ve not once endorsed a Republican for president, ever.

They serve DC, so I’m not surprised or upset they have a bias — but we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t exist either.

Obviously owning a liberal newspaper doesn’t win Bezos any points on the right, which became obvious with Trump supposedly pressuring the Pentagon not to use AWS.

There is no political solution until politics is clean. Left, right, whatever. It’s all mood until then.

I think they should be liable, but I think even just enforcing the existing laws without making them liable would put a stop to it.

Just have the police start tracking down what warehouses counterfeit items came from, and getting search warrants to search them.

Apart from the fact that this would directly reduce the number of counterfeit's... repeatedly shutting down warehouses for searches would kill Amazon's bottom line. Cleaning up after the police would kill Amazon's bottom line. Etc.

It's not exactly justice, but it is damn effective. You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride and all that.