I understand where you are coming from, but there are lots of consignment stores and flea markets, at least in the middle parts of the US. The person you pay at the front counter simply records the transaction for the merchant. Amazon is a sort of cross between traditional retail and a consignment store, so it's not obvious (or "common sense") where product liability should lie.
If a consignment store would allow random people from all over the world to sell illegal and dangerous goods with a fake ID while dodging taxes... would anyone find that tolerable?
Why accept the website equivalent?
[1] Starting from Page 17 -- https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2020-d07...
The last phrase you use continues to perpetuate the odd perception that Californians are weird extreme hippie aliens that Middle America should avoid at all costs.
And then, your comment simultaneously envies California’s strong worker and consumer protections.
It’s almost as if Californians aren’t weirdo hippies and they’re just normal people who have demanded and received robust environmental, safety, labor, and privacy protection.
I’d love to live in California right next to those weird Californians and be able to make CCPA requests. I’d also love for non-competes to be illegal.
It’s almost as if other states’ citizens have been failed by their governments in comparison, and/or their citizens are too unaware of these issues to have lobbied for data protection laws.
It has astonished me that a certain political party has just gotten away with labeling an entire state in our country as a bad place, especially one as big and diverse as California.
Maybe that certain political party would have a chance to win California if Joe from Texas didn’t think California was a Mad Max liberal wasteland and considered taking a new job there.
That plus the completely unsustainable water situation that I refuse to be a part of worsening.
Agricultural water in the drier parts of California is an entirely different story.
(god I am so glad that Louisiana managed to go into this pandemic with a DINO governor, it would have been even worse with someone licking Trump's bootheels setting policy)
That said, California (like Texas) is a large enough state that you can find pretty much any community you feel comfortable with here. You can also find any climate you feel comfortable with (except for Arctic), and you can find a house at any price you may want to pay, but you may not be able to find a union of the choices.
As such, generalizations rarely achieve the goal intended unless that goal is to inflame.
An alternative would be establishing a similar legal notion of strict liability in the jurisdiction where you happen to reside. This requires that you give up none of the features of your current residence, rather it involves becoming more active in its governance which, frankly, is something I wish more people would do.
Yes, this is commonly secondhand goods. But not always. The shop in Winters is all new products, more like a brick-and-mortar Etsy. It's a thing.
Amazon isn't separate blocks of space, and merchants don't really rent their own areas. On a website that'd look like amazon.com/mycrapcompanystore/ or something.
As a customer I just go to amazon and search for what I want. They choose what specific items I should see, in what order, and I am barely aware of who actually sent the item to Amazon. You have to look pretty closely to even tell. In many cases it's just not even possible to choose, with the way Amazon combines their stock.
I could buy the same goods on Amazon but have none of the traceability or protections.
If I'm buying a second hand item like an old video game or something I always use Ebay since I can see what the product actually looks like and can make my own judgement on condition based on the photos. Something you can't really do on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/s?me=A30QSGOJR8LMXA
Overall I'd agree, though -- Amazon has gone out of their way to take focus away from the individual merchants on their site and give customers the impression that they're buying items "from Amazon".
I'm getting a widget that was pulled out of a co-mingled inventory box at some Amazon warehouse.
Amazon owns the entire shopping experience, end-to-end. They run the website. They design the website. They handle payments. They advertise the items ("Customers who bought Foo also bought Bar"). They handle shipping. They handle refunds. They handle warehousing.
But they don't seem to want to own the responsibility. I'm assuming that's because it's not the profitable part of this equation.
Like 12 years ago I used to build stock/cart systems for said drop shippers.
You can tell the difference when you buy, it's just not blatantly obviously unless the main Amazon listing is out of stock and you click on the "other sellers" link yourself. Go to your orders page and every product will tell you the "sold by" name.
I didn't know about it before, so I tracked it down and it sounds like such a nice place! I used to drive up and down 505 all the time visiting family in Oregon. It's been a while, but a stop in Winters will be in store for my next trip.
"a unique collection of vendors who work in partnership to market as a group and showcase the goods of several small businesses in one creative space."
It's a great place to get a hepatitis tattoo, scam "6,000,000-watt" car stereo amplifier, or dubious candles that all smell like crayons plus whatever they claim to smell like. And these days, covid too.
Downtown Winters is a great stop if you're coming up/down the 505. It's cute. Main street is closed off to vehicles and set up with tables for open air dining and wine tasting. There are two wineries, two breweries, and remarkably good restaurants for a town pop 7,000.