I just found this out about Michael Bloomberg: He is a "self made billionare"

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102. You keep reframing the landscape everytime that I destroy a central claim that you made.

So, it is pointless to debate.

You brought up state sales tax, that is an adder to a sales amount, it helps only if people are sensitive to the added price. Books used to go for prices in the range of $30-$70 when Amazon entered the market, I doubt that serious readers that paid those prices worried about a 4% charge added on. Plus, Amazon added handling and shipping charges to the base price, that was a disadvantage because dominant book sellers of the time didn't let the customer see that added (it was couched in the price).

Your claim that finance companies don't put money into money losing enterprises also has holes in it because that happens all the time, companies get "restructured" almost endlessly until it becomes clear there is no path for survival. Finance companies most likely didn't dump money into Amazon until it became clear that there was a workable business plan.

You mentioned Bezos' education and career before he and his wife started Amazon. The profile that you gave is common for CEOs of large companies, like Waldenbooks and Borders were at the time. The higher levels of corporations is an incesstrous world, they appoint people to the highend jobs that have degrees from a tiny number of elite universities, if you see someone else in those rolls, he or she started up the company. So the point that you made about Bezos' education and connections is pretty much irrelevant, the CEOs that his company competed against most likely had the very same or even broader professional profile. The idea behind Amazon was simply conceived better than and better executed than rivals. Yes, there were many online booksellers, some of them well financed, but they didn't have ideas that allowed them to grow.

There are plenty of ideas in the world, as you pointed out, but a select few people have the patience, foresight and creativity to make those ideas a reality. I don't dispute the role of fate, a person working in a cotton field versus Einstein, but the point that I make is there were many people that had Einstein's education and opportunities that died unknowns because they didn't have the vision and creativity that he had - so, again, an observation by you is basically irrelevant to why one person succeeds wildly while others with the same opportunities don't.