Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

They actually do. Google it. It's below minimum.

And to clarify, because the point is often missed: I'm not mentioning Smith because I agree with all he's written, and certainly not for what he's claimed to have said, or to suggest that Jacob Viners very tortured re-assembling of various snippets across three separate books of the work is the book's central message. Smith is verbose as hell, but can, and does, get to the point when he really wants to:

"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." "A man must live by his work." "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." "[Political economy proposes] first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people...; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services."

Smith isn't the last word on economics. And he's not the first. His views, even when wrong, are almost always well-considered, and it's usually possible to learn from his mistakes. And he anticipates a verry surprisingly large number of present concerns (with a few gaping holes: mechanisation and automation are almost wholly ignored, even though Smith personally arranged for a position for James Watt at Edinborough).

He is simultaneously highly influential, greatly ignored, and tremendously misrepresented. Reading him is extremely revealing, though I'd suggest he not be thee sum total of your economic education.

But what he absolutely is not is the laissez-faire advocate of harsh market therapy for all things, and corporate apologist, he's often represented to be, by both critics and so-called advocates. Which even brief passages can make clear. His two chapters on wages particularly.

"Imagine ordering from a Sears catalog and not knowing if what you ordered is genuine or not."

There's the thing. That would mean they'd failed, and someone in their buying department may get yelled at. They'd feel it was their reputation hurt even if it was someone else's fake. On the high street it's the same unless you go to markets or "sub-prime" independents.

Amazon seem to feel their brand is entirely separate from the people selling crap on their platform. I think they're very mistaken, and are in for a rude awakening if they keep it up.

Amazon could have taken marketplace in a different direction when they started it and kept much of their early reputation. Simply by doing enough of the buying checks the traditional sector did to ensure legitimate sellers and baseline quality. It'd cost a little more in staff and time, but would probably pay for itself in fewer returns, refunds and complaints. Marketplace could have been for products that meet Amazon's standards, rather than Amazon, the store with no standards, but fast refunds. Limit it to "enough" choice, lose the counterfeiters friend of co-mingling etc.

I'm disappointed someone else hasn't tried to do this, even if at a smaller scale than Amazon. Etsy, ebay etc leaves it all to the sellers and ratings. Price isn't everything.

No one benefits except the garbage sellers from 30 copy "brands" of every product, and crap promoted in every search. Most with fake reviews, terrible quality, short life, and no chance of warranty service.

Someone should disrupt them, but given how large and pervasive Amazon are, they'd better have deep pockets.