diberry - 4:56 am on Jun 13, 2011 (gmt 0)

Maybe the stores can't start stocking a decent selection at affordable prices because of their "expense of the account, administration and theoretical lost sales."

That's not a new expense for these stores, and most of them are much older than Amazon, so they coped with that cost a long time ago.

No - I live in a very congested city, where businesses can get buy with stocking crap at outrageous prices, and there are so many people competing to get stuff that the stores still have trouble keeping up with demand.

Just FYI, I'm not necessarily against a Constitutional sales tax requirement for online merchants. I just don't think sales tax is what's actually giving Amazon its advantage. Even when they're trying (and I have lived in cities and towns where businesses really had to compete for business), brick stores can't possibly stock the selection Amazon does because that's not what they're designed to do.