Man has the myth of the internet got you. I like when people claim an internet company does not have to pay for physical buildings, staff and other things. And the myth that this is the internet perpetuates itself.
In reality, Amazon does have all those things you mention and they do pass it on to the consumer of their products. Some of the way Amazon.com does business is called drop shipping, where they ship items from the third party’s shipping facility. However, Amazon.com does keep a physical inventory on hand. They must have aplace to store that physical inventory and they must have staff to receive and ship that inventory. Most of Amazon.com is no longer on 3rd party servers. So they must maintain what is known as a server farm. This requires buildings and staff.
If a company owns buildings and staff they must pay taxes on those assets and resources. Inventory can be taxed in certain situations.
I used to chat online and from the start I heard people say this is “internet”. Meaning it was fake and nothing was based in reality. How much farther from the truth they are. Your statements just perpetuates this idea: “This is just the internet.”
Don’t be silly. Of course Amazon has building and staff etc.
The difference is that one Amazon building serves hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of customers. They serve far more customers than could ever physically even fit into those buildings to even just pick up the books that they’ve ordered. Imagine the line that would form if all they had to do is walk through and just grab the book and walk out the other door.
Now compare that to any of the brick and mortar stores with a couple of cashiers who even have time to chat with the customers. Not only do they have to ship just a few books at a time to each store, they even have to provide a paved parking lot for their customers. Amazon only has to provide parking for the employees. Each employee serves thousands of cusomters per day instead of just a few hundred.
The building and labor cost for Amazon is but a small fraction of what the brick and mortar guys spend. I’ll bet the book-density at an Amazon building is at least ten times what it is at brick and mortar.
Most people are a lot smarter than you may be giving them credit for.