That leaves a market gap and then a better company can fill it, unlike centralized economies. Is that happening? I would say yes, at least in some cases. High-quality, direct-to-consumer brands are great. I rely on purchasing guides for many of my buys and those point me to brands whose primary attribute is quality (or cost effectiveness) instead of marketing or historic adoption. That's great for me and great for the company!

But many people haven't adapted to ecommerce like that. I think that will change as people learn to have more suspicion and place more of their trust in neutral third parties (historically how you made purchases when everything was local and your community gossiped about which places were good and bad). Yeah, there will be issues when those third parties turn out not to be trustworthy (like Yelp), but I think overall the ability to make well-informed purchasing decisions has never been higher. People are just slow to change their habits for this new world.