There is a middle ground between a carefully curated list of vendors and any company can fill out some paperwork and signup.

Does anybody live in that middle ground?

Amazon ten years ago?

id argue that amazon is the middle ground; temu has lower quality

Technology and automation (especially software) allow 90% of the market to be grabbed by 10% of the sellers, or even 1%.

It is tough (seemingly impossible) for the middle ground to exist in this environment.

We (us, the people reading here, the demographic building the software and technology and automation) would do well as a community to spend more time on introspection about what ends it serves that tech, which was sometimes promoted as a great equalizer, gets built so often in practice only to make the walls of an aspiring monopolist's fortress more steep with no benefit to anybody else.

Unironically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWF74KMRq04

We as an industry are seen as defined by crap/enshitification now. The world gave us good faith, cheered us on, mostly excitedly hyped us. And we picked, by small choice after small choice, this.

Technological advancement by itself merely creates the potential for equalization. Whether that potential is actually realized depends on the culture of society, though. You can use the same basic tech to build Star Trek communism or a cyberpunk dystopia.

Someone should tell the person in charge of Apple’s App Store that.