[sgt101]

(total side track) There are other things that some customers want though:

- for the recommendations to offer me things I want or need, not things I just bought

- to be able to evaluate the quality of items rather than just the price of items

- for Amazon to extend it's brand around the items that I buy. "Amazon Recommends" is just so weak and offers no assurance or opportunity for loyalty. It's more or less meaningless and I suspect it's something that suppliers buy.

As every in business it's very difficult. I know that Amazon is humongous and knows it's business inside out. I am sure that Amazon insiders just feel tired reading other people's ideas about what would make things better, but on the other hand I do think that the narratives of business inevitability (and AI inevitability) are just false. Yes they have triumphed until recently, but what's happening in China really does undermine the idea that the future will be everyone just grifting to everyone else for a dime while the big corps enshitify anything that emerges from the primordial ooze.

Not that I think that what's happening in China is good.