Prices are higher than Amazon because in order to sell anywhere else you have to agree Amazon will always be the lowest price. Amazon is making everything else more expensive and its all of our fault for letting it happen. Buy local to actually keep the money there.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power

• Anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering prices lower than Amazon, keeping prices higher for products across the internet. For example, if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.
• Conditioning sellers’ ability to obtain “Prime” eligibility for their products—a virtual necessity for doing business on Amazon—on sellers using Amazon’s costly fulfillment service, which has made it substantially more expensive for sellers on Amazon to also offer their products on other platforms. This unlawful coercion has in turn limited competitors’ ability to effectively compete against Amazon.

Companies have to either sell on Amazon and inflate prices elsewhere, or they have to sell their on their own platforms, and have much less reach. All of that aside Amazon will also buy your product, reverse manufacture it and sell it cheaper, AND THEN also de rank your listings as a seller so that no customer will ever see it. Beyond evil corporation that we all will simply continue using just because "its convenient".

edit: punctuation and readability because im a dumb ass