I have a theory about how Amazon could destroy capitalism from within. Because no one will publish my Unabomber-tier ramblings I'm posting it here.
Fuck tl;drs but the thesis is that from a historical materialist perspective Amazon's business model creates competition against the market itself as a means of facilitating transactions. Therefore it puts up a threat to the market itself, creating a contradiction within the market that created it that is analogous to a metastatic cancer growth opposing and overtaking the body which it grew from.
Amazon is frequently touted as a wild success story for capitalism. An unassailable trillion dollar market valued corporate superpower, Amazon lacks even the ghost of a competitor and its business model has essentially become running much of the modern economy. I wish to tell a different story. Rather than a success story, however, Amazon spells the doom of capitalism. It represents an inflection point at which all the converging forces of digital efficiency, automation and algorithmic optimization, economies of scale and the tendency of markets to consolidate into monopolies turns capitalism inside out from within. Amazon by itself calls for a new economic theory and a fresh reinterpretation of capitalist economics. Like a metastatic cancer, Amazon will eat capitalism from within, replicating until it replaces all tissues with its own likeness.
Central to this view of Amazon is that it virtualizes the free market within a centrally planned and organized revenue capture funnel. Different sellers are allowed to put their goods up on Amazon, and with respect to seller versus seller, they may compete by price point or product quality with the others in a simulation of market competition. All of these transaction however are facilitated, controlled and taxed by Amazon, who plays the role of a surrogate state regulating its virtual market. Amazon’s virtualization of the market is further compounded by the fact that it sells nearly everything. Unlike previous monopolies, it does not corner a market, it corners *the* market. It provides the most efficient means for allocating commodities ever conceived, providing a centralized and well-supported delivery fulfillment logistics network that does a better job than thousands of small, disconnected and single-product or limited selection online retailers. The totality of Amazon’s selections however is not a byproduct of it outcompeting competitors, b
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