To be fair, every single wholesaler operates this way.
I have personalky spoken to wholesalers who sell widgets X (lighters etc) to retail stores.
If the retail stores undercut everyone else and drop the price below MSRP, they will exclude them in the future. There is centralized price control even though the retailers are free to do what they want.
That is done by auto dealers and anyone else who does MSRP. The difference is that they are still competing in that product category. Amazon on the other hand is a platform that stands BEHIND them. This leads to an emergent price cartel, just like in the propu lica piece on NYC real estate:
I have personalky spoken to wholesalers who sell widgets X (lighters etc) to retail stores.
If the retail stores undercut everyone else and drop the price below MSRP, they will exclude them in the future. There is centralized price control even though the retailers are free to do what they want.
That is done by auto dealers and anyone else who does MSRP. The difference is that they are still competing in that product category. Amazon on the other hand is a platform that stands BEHIND them. This leads to an emergent price cartel, just like in the propu lica piece on NYC real estate:
https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=385