They realized they could use the government to protect their interests. After years of praising open-source, they also realized that they don't really like competition. Queue up Peter Thiel's Zero to One and his praising of monopolies.
Those tax dollars go back to California and country. Amazon does everything in its power to not pay taxes or help society. It really shows little Amazon is taxed at, if at all.
This is a huge problem in the US. Tax-payers are subsidizing a lot of medical advances, then the US government gives it to the private sector, privatizing whatever medical advances were paid by tax-dollars.
Socialism seems to create a lot of markets for the Capitalist private sector.
California has some strict laws about beach access for everyone and you still see beach-side homeowners trying to fence off the public's access to the beach or putting up illegal signs that say "Private Property, No Beach Access" or something like that
I leave up articles for days hoping I'll read them, they pile up in my tabs— wasting so much memory. A lot of pc memory is wasted from just this on my end and I know I'm not the only one.
It's interesting to think about how much wasted energy comes from tabs you're leaving open, hoping you'll get back to them one day.