You might enjoy “The Market for Lemons” by the economist George Ackerlof [0]. It fits people’s descriptions of what’s happening with Amazon.
His idea was: buyers don’t know if a car is good and the risk of getting “a lemon” (a bad car) reduces how much they’re willing to pay. That means sellers reduce the quality of what they’re selling or leave the market. After a while the quality degrades so much that buyers notice and want to pay even less. Eventually the market is 100% lemons.
The paper was controversial when it was published in the 1970s, but helped kick start research into “information asymmetry” and the potential for market failure.
This sounds familiar to my used car shopping experience a few years back. Went to see at least 20 private party sellers over a period of a few weeks and most were junk, bought by shady dealers at used car auctions. And their prices were well above the blue book for excellent condition, despite the cars being fair at best. I did manage to find some actual private sellers, and ended up with something I like and still drive now, but it required a lot of time and determination. I can understand why some people would just go to a lot and drive off a couple hours later
His idea was: buyers don’t know if a car is good and the risk of getting “a lemon” (a bad car) reduces how much they’re willing to pay. That means sellers reduce the quality of what they’re selling or leave the market. After a while the quality degrades so much that buyers notice and want to pay even less. Eventually the market is 100% lemons.
The paper was controversial when it was published in the 1970s, but helped kick start research into “information asymmetry” and the potential for market failure.
[0] https://www.sfu.ca/~wainwrig/Econ400/akerlof.pdf