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They wouldn't be able to offer their service without it all being in place, but they've contributed nothing towards it.
Yeah I don't take issue with this. Well, maybe the 'nothing' bit, I'm not sure that's entirely fair. I'm saying it's not the hugely significant factor in their meteoric success and now dominance that it's sometimes made out to be. It's certainly a factor in their ongoing business model, it's probably not right, but businesses gonna business.
At best it gave them a bit more bandwidth to play with but that would be nothing if they hadn't delivered hot shit at the right time in the right way.
Howard
Early on as a book seller - you're likely right. They were way more agile, and put themselves in a position where they could just eat their competitors lunch.
Prime at least is physical delivery, which makes it easier to follow (for me at least). To deliver this they've taken advantages of roads and other infrastructure , educated workforce, educated and skilled customer base etc, but not paid for any of it through taxes.
They wouldn't be able to offer their service without it all being in place, but they've contributed nothing towards it.
I imagine you could make a similar claim for their IT side. They seem to set up their data centres in countries with decent infrastructure and skills to exploit (Ireland, Luxembourg), but which also conveniently behave as tax havens.