Open source works fine, and does quite well as a business model (use it as free advertising).
What has happened here is a plain old case of monopoly.
Once markets are no longer efficient, the model breaks down. Amazon can use its resources to extinguish competition with their own product.
This is why we need antitrust law.
It's not a failure of capitalism, its not a failure of the businesses involved its just what happens when you run a freeish market. That is, things get out of whack to the point we the people feel it is unjust, it would eventually right itself but this would take a long time and likely do more interim damage than its work allowing, so we fiddle with it, hopefully not breaking anything in the process.
> its just what happens when you run a freeish market... it would eventually right itself but this would take a long time
If we think of the system as a delicate natural balance that we should try our best not to disturb too much I think we've immediately taken a very specific stance which itself shouldn't be above critical examination. It is, after all, just a social system and all social systems involve some level of design whether we like that fact or not.
In theory, we could conceive of the possibility of an economic system that both preserves the autonomy and independence of its actors while also preventing monopolies from emerging in the first place. Its a hard problem to wrestle with but its preferable to acquiescing to the blind faith in the invisible hand. We should never give up on an effort to understand how we could evolve our current systems into ones that work better (imagine if we took the same stance with technology).
Open source works fine, and does quite well as a business model (use it as free advertising).
What has happened here is a plain old case of monopoly.
Once markets are no longer efficient, the model breaks down. Amazon can use its resources to extinguish competition with their own product.
This is why we need antitrust law.
It's not a failure of capitalism, its not a failure of the businesses involved its just what happens when you run a freeish market. That is, things get out of whack to the point we the people feel it is unjust, it would eventually right itself but this would take a long time and likely do more interim damage than its work allowing, so we fiddle with it, hopefully not breaking anything in the process.