[lwlml]

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?