The reason billionaires exist is because people like you and me are overcharged for everything we purchase so they can accumulate the surplus.
The reason why we don't do anything about it is because we evaluate that we get good value for our money in most situations.
What is that evaluation based on? Our past experiences...
But the only experiences we have to evaluate what our money is worth is us being charged enough that the rich people at the top accumulate an unreasonable amount of wealth.
We never have an experience where those leeches at the top aren't present to artificially inflate the price of things so we can actually realize how much we're supposed to be able to get for our money!
We wouldn't be underpaid if things were priced according to their actual cost because the actual cost of things is based on the low salary that people make!
Yet we produce more than ever per hour. So by that account either prices should decrease over time to reflect that, or our wages should be going up. :D
And we are paying taxes. The only money they give to the government is directly to the pockets of judges and politicians to make decisions against our best interest and to make them richer.
It's literally the same drop shipped stuff on temu. You can order from "local warehouses" and it's literally the same products. Amazon USES drop shipping. They don't own it.
Sometimes it is, other times it isn't. You won't know until you test your blood heavy metal levels. If you're touching it or if it touches what you're eating, it may not be worth finding out. And no I'm not comparing noname sponges from Amazon. I'm comparing noname sponges from a local retailer or brand name stuff like 3M ScotchBrite, etc.
Ok but the 50 dollar mp3 player on amazon is literally the exact same drop shipped 23$ mp3 player on temu. It's the same. Drop shipping doesn't have some factory stock being good and some factory stock being bad. That's not how drop shipping works. It's literally the same products available from the same warehouses just on different storefronts, for different prices.
Absolutely can be and in those cases you're getting the same thing good or bad or anywhere inbetween. Dropshippers, including the rebranding dropshippers (like Volta cables) are pure exploitation. They do very little "service" for the money they take.
Drop shipping doesn’t have some factory stock being good and some factory stock being bad.
White label producers also have range of options, often including quality. They're usually going to be the same case because changing that would need new molds and molds are expensive but you can cheap out a lot when buying electronic components and probably don't even have to re-program the pick+place machine, just throw in a reel of say bargain-bin reject flash chips in the machine instead of the good stuff.
And, of course, the cheap options might actually be the better one. It's literally impossible to tell, as a consumer.
When it comes to Chinese products my advise to avoid all white-label stuff.
6 for 75ct. Eurocent, so in USD it's a whopping 81ct. Tax inclusive. Available in both scratchy and gentle.
If supermarkets get away with charging those kinds of prices there's two things to do: a) Raid each and every HQ to see whether you can nail them for collusion, b) price controls.