Establishing a regulatory framework around Amazon that does not address the ability of Amazon to use its power to influence the government would quite possibly take us the way of Dr. Frankenstein. The government’s place is not to run this market but rather to protect the people in it.

Nowhere in this story does Amazon enhance consumer welfare; it neither offers a better product to consumers nor a better service to other merchants. The company takes the data it gets from the small businesses it hosts and weaponizes that data against them.

That Americans have more confidence in Amazon than in the education system or Congress is troubling because Amazon is not invested in the well being of Americans so much as it is invested in convincing Americans that we need Amazon for our well being—and more, that we will never stop needing it.