But what about the rubes?

Pictured: noted space cowboy and
bootleg boner pill pusher, Jeff Bezos.

So the FDA evidently demanded that Amazon stop selling these things called male energy supplements which aren't supplements at all but erectile disfunction drugs. Yeah, they go under several different names, but they were found to contain the same active ingredients as erectile disfunction drugs like Viagra. You know, the things people need prescriptions for, but because Amazon will sell anything, anything, no questions asked, they were being sold without a prescription. 

Although you really have to fall for the
rubes who ordered and then took these
aggressively shady "supplements."

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't like Amazon and things like this are part of the reason why...things like this and not paying taxes, strangling competition, making their employees crap in bags--it's a long list, but suffice it to say I'm not a fan. To be clear, I'm not a fan of pharmaceutical companies either, and I am in no way rooting for them here. My issue is the bypassing of regulations, not screwing Pfizer. The FDA exists to protect the kind of rubes who will buy shady pills off the internet. 

They--Amazon, not the rubes--do the same thing with those bootleg gaming consoles. Yes, I make lots of things about video games, but hear me out. I'm talking about the knock-off NES's that boast thousands of "retro classics," of which not a single one is in anyway licensed. They get away with this by throwing up their hands and pointing out that they're sold through Amazon, not by Amazon. See what they did there?

"It's-a me, Dr. Plumber! Come buy-a some pills!"

-not a doctor

Oh quit being so dramatic, you can
live without free (but not free) shipping.

Whether it's video games, or drugs or those weird public domain ebook pyramid schemes, their defense is that it's the third-party sellers who are hawking the "Big Guys Extreme Power" and "X Max Triple Shot Energy Honey" (no, really, that's what it's called), and not Amazon per se. But I'm not sure I see the distinction. Amazon is platforming those third-party sellers and taking a cut, so by any reasonable standard, they're responsible and I guess what I want to know is how come nobody does anything about it? Huh? Not us. Obviously. We can cancel out Prime accounts, but apart from that, we're powerless randos, but someone should do something, right?

Like I said, I'm pretty biased against the company already, and yes, this is just another screed against them, but I just find this "let's do this clearly illegal thing until someone calls us out on it, and then blame 'third party sellers'" galling. 

"We can't possibly control what people sell on Amazon."

-a guy who can 100% control

what people sell on Amazon