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I recently learned that Etsy actively terminates sellers based in China, seemingly indiscriminately, the message is quite clear that they just don't want to do this kind of business, unlike Amazon.

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And for good reason; a big, if not THE biggest problem that Etsy has at the moment is that people's designs are blatantly getting stolen and reproduced at a fraction of the creators' price. There's a lot of pressure on Etsy to combat that. This is where copyright and (?) design patent laws come into effect as well.

People are trying to make a living by crafting things, and the free market is swooping in by undercutting them with a race to the bottom.

I feel like there could be a better version of this. Like an Etsy, but with support for creators, so that when demand reaches a certain threshold, the platform could offer support with scaling and industrializing the product, for a share of the profit. Essentially the same process, but actually rewarding the market-maker.

If only they had let me access their images normally, I might not have developed hatred for them.

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