It makes sense that a carrier would discount for its best customer. But Amazon has access to rates and services that are probably net losses to their carriers. The carrier pushes these losses into small businesses and individuals. To understand this, price out the cost of one of your prime shipments as an individual. Depending on what you buy, shipping at normal rates can easily exceed the cost of the product alone. Chinese shippers on eBay are either directly subsidized by their govt, or stealing postal service from their employers. Again, price out the cost of sending the item back to see how it works.

In an earlier age, similar abuses led to the ICC regulating rail rates. If all the talk about helping small business isn’t just wind, then some sort of control has to be put in place over the primary carriers.