I’ve found that the rise of Apply Pay as a payment mechanism on random sites has been helpful in getting me off of Amazon. Often it’s just as easy to order something direct if they have Apple Pay (or ShopPay, but I have other issues with them) and the same price as Amazon. Plus discoverability is awful on Amazon anyways.
Still don’t get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping from Amazon, but not punching in my credit card number to random sites has been enough to get me to move 50% of my shopping to retailers direct.
To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with Prime. Do other merchants offer fast delivery often enough?
Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or cashback.
The local Target and Home Depots all offer same day pickup and delivery. For our house, that's taken 90% of the business away from Amazon.
What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.
>What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.
Realizing this was what made me quit Prime years ago, and eventually drive down my Amazon purchases to just a handful of times a year. For the most part, there's really not much of a difference if I get a book tomorrow vs. four days from now, or if I get it from Amazon or from the nearby Target. But there's a lot of infrastructure built up to satisfy this admittedly frivolous expectation of fast delivery.
Are there cases when rapid delivery is necessary and valuable? Absolutely. Are those cases the norm? Not in my life, by an overwhelming margin.
Do you actually care that much about fast delivery?
My Prime membership ended 3 years ago. These days I just put items in the cart, and place order whenever it reaches $35. If I need an item in a hurry -- which rarely happens -- I go to a store to buy it.
This barely affected me, and I ended up with much fewer impulse purchases.
What's funny though is that the "standard" delivery often takes 5 calendar days. But AliExpress shipments can take as few as 8 calendar days. I ended up spending even less -- well, if the items are manufactured in China, why not just order on AliExpress where you get the same/similar items and pay less.
This is true. DHL asked me to delay my shipping because of Black Friday chaos and it was a bunch of crap that I didn't really need immediately so I delayed it for a week.
For the most part these days, Amazon seems like a fast way to ship goods from Alibaba in the one to two day time frame.
For a lot of other stuff, it feels like they've lost their edge on price and shipping.
Often my main reason for using Amazon is that it reduces the friction associated with buying for more retailers. For example worrying about data breaches, being put on spam email lists, etc.
Had to buy some simple toolkit today. It was 5 bucks on Amazon, but I decided to find a local store that sells it. Same price btw.
I think we should be a bit more aware about the impact of ordering everything through Amazon. Not only regarding delivery, but also the message it sends to local stores.
I've had this exact sentiment for many years but... what are we supporting really?
Is it because you want a distributed network of inventory across the country near you in case of emergency?
Is it because you like talking to someone when doing purchases?
Is it because you think someone is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they brought near you?
Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
Like I feel like I should want to support local business but it is way less efficient and I can't really convince myself that I'm not just repeating something my parents also said.
I found myself gravitating back to local stores after years of buying essentially everything on Amazon because local stores at least to some degree curate their inventory while Amazon increasingly does not. If you're looking for a specific product that doesn't matter as much (although Amazon also has counterfeiting problems). But if you're just looking to browse what's available in a certain category of product, Amazon is nearly unusable. You'll almost certainly find dozens of Chinese companies with randomly generated names selling what are essentially copies of the same product with no good way to pick one or even tell if they're any good (reviews being basically useless on Amazon these days).
Because they don't have the same unlimited inventory capacity, local stores have to put at least some effort into selling products with some base level of quality and focusing on the products most likely to sell in each category. Local stores are by no means perfect here, but they're vastly better than Amazon in this regard. And it's especially important because finding good independent product reviews on the internet these days is also a challenge, and even where they exist they're not reviewing whatever no-name Chinese brand Amazon is selling anyways.
While the junk item situation on amazon is real, I can't agree with this take about local stores. I find that local stores tend to have random crap that they want to sell rather than high-quality items.
It has been surprising to me for years that people put up with this, I find it really terrible as a shopping experience. Like shopping in the worst dollar store you’ve ever been in that’s also the size of a city and loaded with ads, except you can’t actually touch the products or smell the pervasive scent of cheap plastic while you browse. And they want you to pay a subscription!
Shopping from retailers that employ actual buyers feels like a real upgrade.
What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
If a global business decides to just toss all the plastic it uses it in its backyard you'll never notice because it's 2000 miles away. If Amazon decides to treat their workers unfairly, you'll never notice. But you'll notice if a local business does it because you'll be walking in there every day. There's a level of accountability.
In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online. It's incredibly unclear to me why a super poor and undeveloped local economy is better than a specialized globalized one. In my country there was a dictatorship with protectionism and when we opened things got way better, not worse.
Regarding me not noticing crimes, I think we have police and regulations for that.
Where were the police and regulations when Boeing's products killed hundreds of people? Last time I checked, nobody among top management went to prison for that.
That's what "too big to fail" corporations can get you: failed products, anti-competitive environment, regulatory capture, no responsibility.
Getting fined for a few (hundred) million dollars is not responsibility, it's chump change for multi-trillion dollar corporations.
> In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online.
(1) That is because technology also takes away components of life that one can enjoy without being rich such as accesss to nature and local food production.
(2) The global economy is only so "good" because it takes advantage of the commons in poorer places. We simply should not have the capability to do that. You only benefit off the suffering of others.
(2) They where literally describing a poor area being better off with global trade.
Economies of scale and local advantages make the world better off. There’s no advantage to growing bananas in greenhouses in Iowa when you can grow wheat and trade with Panama.
That local trade involves taking advantage of the commons (putting CO2 in the atmosphere) to make it work. In my opinion, we do not have the right to take that advantage.
More CO2 is produced manufacturing and maintaining those greenhouses than shipping fruit from tropical locations.
So no, in this case local production is simply worse for the commons. More broadly things that cost dramatically more are generally worse for the environment in subtle ways.
Well for one, lots of my local economy would just involve trade and helping community members for free, creating local community gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible with very little.
On (1), I grew up behind the iron curtain in a pre-internet age next to a village (no TV, no organized entertainment). The typical non-working activity there was not to enjoy the beauty of nature (as farmers they were fed up with it) but to be bored, get drunk and start fights with anyone non local. When the economy opened up in late 1980s anyone who could ran out to cities.
I will take technology and some globalism any day. My 2c.
That's the thing that I see a lot of. I grew up in Africa, and was exposed to extreme poverty, since as far back as I can remember.
People living poor don't like it. They may have accepted it, and may have learned to deal with it, but they don't tend to like it. They want out, and generally jump at the chance to do so.
People in richer communities may have fantasies about "living closer to nature," but that doesn't usually involve things like shooing rats off your kids at night, or having your house collapse, when there's a 3.0 earthquake.
People in poorer communities may have unreasonable expectations of what having money will bring, and we often see poor people that get rich quick (think Lotto "winners"), having pretty miserable lives.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
I picked a place to live that's close to nature, right across my back fence from millions of acres of public forest. I love it here. Poverty is not required. I commute to work via Starlink and most nonperishables are delivered to my front porch by UPS, mostly from Amazon. It's green on both sides of my fence, and it's a choice that normal people, who can work remotely, can make if they value it. My house is far cheaper than one in a city and local costs are lower. Amazon deserves credit for making such a lifestyle easier, and if we can export more of it, that sounds like an advance.
False dichotomy. Both situations are bad because both are predicated on lack of wisdom. A lack of wisdom in a poor place implies brawls and wanton violence. A lack of wisdom in a rich, technological age implies resource destruction and climate change.
Wisdom combined with restricted technology would be ideal, such as with the Amish. They have their problems but they show that a technologically restricted society is best. Note: I am not arguing for NO technology, but severely restricted technology.
Ok, let's restrict the technology. What's the end goal?
Because 1 billion years from now, even if humanity is back to before the wheel technology plants will have disappeared and the oceans evaporated due to the sun.
If we want Earth originated life to have a chance to go over this bump something will have to go forward.
Who is going to do this "severe restriction of technology"? The people themselves, as you write, do not want to do it.
And anytime a self-appointed elite start doing "what is best for the people" against their will, police repression and labor camps are also on the menu. Nah, I will take my freedom, including the freedom to make mistakes.
You assume the people always won't. There's a growing amount of skepticism towards technology and it's quite possible people will begin to hate it. I myself intend to spread the word about the dangers of technology to the best of my ability.
The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
I do not think your second point stands. Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
The last 40 years have seen enormous economic growth outside the G7 to the point that North America and Western Europe no longer dominate the global economy.
Vice president Vance marrying a woman from India was a look into the future. The rich elite know what's happening.
> The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
Because they lack wisdom and human beings en masse operate on instinct, not wisdom.
> Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
The classic reply of the economist. It's because the industrial world measures better off with variables like "life expectancy" and "money".
But a longer life does not a better life make, nor does money always equate to better off.
For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism account for that?
That is the other extreme that is also bad. In economies like that protectionism supports inefficient local production - favouring some people at the cost of others. It is designed to funnel money away from some people to others.
The dominance of the economy by a few big companies also has the same effect - elimination of competition.
It's clearly not as black and white as you paint it. Local production uses the same materials that global production uses due to pricing. As long as transportation is cheaper than local production this will stay the same due to simple economics.
Also accountability is the same there, shops just buy their material regardless of working conditions and whatsoever. At least companies can be regulated based off of that.
The error is too systematic to say "just produce local".
It's a start. As I always say, practices such as encouraging at least _local involvement_ is a start. Of course, another necessary step is revolution to bring down large companies.
Your ideas of how the world work are just patently false. A lot of local farms use large amounts of plastic everyday, its quite common to use plastic sheets to cover the ground when planting. You think you would know they are just dumping it into the pit on their land?
Global trade is one of the best things to happen to the world, it has improved the lives of many. All your advocating for is going back to a time which you did not live it but you romanticize. I suspect it was not as romantic as you make it out to be.
This is a common sentiment especially in Germany, but Hannah Richie in Not the End of the World shows multiple studies where the impact of CO₂ from transport is negligible for most foods. Other factors like what we decide to eat play a much greater role.
Your plastic example is a reasonable example, but I could also counter that if plastic is the problem then locally isn't necessarily more sustainable. Local farmers can also wrap their products in plastic. In the end, the plastic is there to increase the shelf life. Even most local products will need to have a shelf life of a few weeks. It's unreasonable to demand farmers stop batching their produce and instead demand they carry a few apples to the market each day.
> What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
This is true for the extreme minority of products that ARE produced locally.
If you buy a screwdriver from the privately-owned DYI shop around the corner it will have been produced in the same Chinese factory and shipped by the same boats and trucks as the one you'll buy from Amazon.
You're not at all supporting local sustainability, you're just paying more to add one more middleman.
Well, also, if you don't support Amazon, then you don't support the growth of a large company like Amazon which is one more component of the collection of big corporations that are exactly those responsible for globalization in the first place.
Globalization is one of the best things that has ever happened to humanity.
It allows whoever is willing to understand the peoples of the world share way more than what makes them different. Globalization, specially through the internet, but trade as whole, is my personal bet on what could "end all wars". In fact it is the first necessary step for the philosophical parts of the communist manifesto that are salvageable, the parts about the global coalition of common peoples working on shared goals and with similar baseline prosperity.
It is only good if you take a short-term, human-supremacist view of the world. If you consider all life to have worth independent of its value to humanity, then globalization is a horror. And then globalization and the industrial society is the cause of climate change, so it's only good in the short-term.
If by "short-term" you mean "until we stop killing each other in massive wars" (I doubt we can eliminate individual murder), I guess I agree, but by my estimation that will take several centuries at least. If by short term you mean before that, I doubt that we can agree. I'm talking about something that to me is already so far in the future that it was strange to hear "short-term" as a response to that argument!
Regarding human-supremacist view, I hadn't seen that expression before but if I interpret it correctly, I would say that describes a great big majority of the world population and I believe anyone would have a really hard time making this case to anyone on the street. I respect the moral purity in a way, but I think it's wildly impractical to call people around you human-supremacists, when like I said we are still not totally in agreement that things like wars should not happen. We say we do but there's never not been wars in our history. I don't know man, I feel like you're too deep in this rabbithole of morality to be able to have a normal discussion about getting a lightbulb at the local store when you start calling other people human-supremacists. But I do enjoy the banter!
Well, when I see people dump their shit into the homes of animals, then I think that comes from an attitude of human supremacy. When I see pristine forests cut down for profit but laws protecting the homes of people, that's human supremacy.
My goal is not to get most people to like me, or agree with my views. I fully acknowledge that I am a fundamentalist in the sense that I have a few axioms (all life is equal and technology must be regressed) and I have a zero compromise policy on that. Of course, unfortunately, to make a living I must participate in some of our atrocities.
I don't think it's necessary either, that I conform and discuss as others. There is no shortage of conformists. Either our destructive ways will stop, in which case I am working to bring them down through my writing, or I will fail. It's something I believe in and nothing will change that.
It is a bad thing. And you say it like it's a dichotomy.
And I could certainly get most of the comforts of modern life with 5% of the force of globalization. House, food, bed, some reading material, etc. I don't really care for technology, and I use it because it's part of my work and livelihood. BUT, I could easily be just as happy living a simpler life.
Believe me, I've already thought about it. I could be pretty much as comfortable with WAY less global trade. Most people buy way too much clothes, use way too much technology, none of which makes life more comfortable.
> Hell, without globalization you wouldn't even be able to do your job, where do you think your Nikon's, Canon's and Sony's come from?
(A) My point is that if there were other forms of labor, I wouldn't be less comfortable.
(B) Again, I'm arguing for a reduction in global trade, not an outright ban. My point is that it needs to be reduced.
Is it hypocritical to complain about your government even though they make the country that you live in? Of course, I'm using the resources I have, but I could be equally comfortable in a different world. My argument is that our current world is not necessary and not optimal.
Please get off the internet then, destroy your computer and go live on a farm. I don't say this to be an antagonist but it is what you yourself is suggesting others do.
The products sold in local stores are never produced locally. It's national or international products, just like on Amazon.
Buying from local stores pays the salaries of local salesmen, that is a benefit for the community. But wouldn't the community benefit better if they did a job that was needed instead?
local production happens in China though. if you live anywhere else, most of the stuff you can buy off Amazon was made in China. the local shops will ultimately buy it from China too.
> you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently
For some value of "more efficiently". I mean if the most efficient way to work is to have delivery drivers pee in a bottle and warehouse workers develop RSIs, who am I to complain? Someone else's dignity is a small price to pay in order to get a 3% rebate on some commodity.
>Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
That’s such an odd way to paint it.
When people live in a system with millions of quettallionaires and the bilion left are mere millionaires where 1 unit of currency is enough to buy the best meal in town with all towns in the world equally provided in services, the system won’t see much strikes happening soon.
When people live in a system where a small cake is growing at a slow rate and a few hundreds people are cornering always more of it at an accelerating rate, all the more when the extraction rate of the cake is known to exceed the cake regeneration rate, the system is well on its road for repeated strikes or even bloody social movements.
Ok, these allegories are two possible points in a spectrum. Which scenario is most likely to be closest to the world as its perceived by most people out there?
People don’t love or hate big corporations and riches out of the blue. If there are given room out of the vivid feeling that their life is a day to day struggle to survive, most people can perfectly demonstrate nuances in their judgment.
Amazon doesn't have any extra power post-local stores. If Amazon ups their prices then the local stores reappear. In some weird future where Amazon completely obliterates small businesses it might take a few years, but it'd take more than a few years of good prices before that from Amazon to get to that state. The manufacturers always have strong incentives to defect from an AWS dominated equilibrium. They want middleman prices to be low, it means they move more goods and make more money.
Although I should stress I like the idea of buying local. If the money goes off to some exotic foreign place it is less likely that I will get my hands on it later on. Better to live in a wealthy community than a poor one, etc. Local capital is local prosperity.
- local retailers offer better jobs, and often better benefits. The work you do stocking at Menards is much better than sorting boxes at Amazon
- support local repair vs repurchasing. This cuts down on the upstream demand and does wonders for local small-business economies. And again, provides better jobs than sorting boxes.
- Efficiency is great! But what is Amazon efficient at? They have maximized the speed and convenience of delivery. Once stated that way it's obvious there must be tradeoffs. One of those tradeoffs is the shit work. In one dist center, a guys entire job was to wheel odd shaped boxes from one side of a warehouse to another. Whenever you order a big or weirdly shaped box, that guy moved it. Even he hates that job. It's meaningless, non social, provides no transferrable skills.
- ultimately what your parents were talking about is how one chooses to shape their local economy and jobs market. I want to buy from companies that I would want my friends and family to work for.
A hyper-efficient system is inherently fragile: if something happens to any part of it, it has a big ripple effect all over the place, because there's no slack anywhere. More resilient systems always have some redundancy that helps them cope in a case of failure. If you think about societally optimal setup, it likely should include a mix of systems, from very efficient to very resilient. Something about eggs and baskets.
When you spend money at businesses which are owned by people that live in your community, more of that money continues to circulate in your area. It's better for the local economy, if only marginally, and therefore better for you.
This is more important for businesses that produce and capture a larger amount of value, like locally owned restaurants vs corporate owned chains, but any little bit helps at least a little.
(Of course if you're a rootless corporate mercenary who goes wherever work takes you, with no long-term stake in the place you live, then it doesn't matter at all.)
This is an interesting take. I'm not sure it's true but I will look it up. My knee-jerk reaction is that most large purchases already siphon your money away (home, car, travel), and overthinking where to buy a random small object for the house makes no difference, but I hadn't considered the locality of money circulation!
Amazon discusses that every dollar of salary produces $2.5 of local economic activity, eg, because their workers buy coffees that then pay the salaries of baristas who then…
That money comes from many communities and is distributed to a handful; and I think it would be interesting to quantify the loss of economic activity from Amazon moving money out of a community.
Honestly it's interesting to me that this is a novel take to you. I believe it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle.
Money sent off to Detroit or Japan for your car is as good as lost to your community, but as I said even a small amount of money spent locally will help your local community a small amount, which is more than none. Even eating at a locally owned McDonald's franchise is slightly better than eating at a corporate owned store. That difference is probably too small to be worth looking up who owns a McDonalds, but if the choice is between McDonalds or some local diner then it doesn't require any time spent looking it up.
> it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle
I think you'd be surprised to realize how much that's not actually the case.
If you google the "Preston model", you'll find a lot of material waxing lyrical about the government of a lone city in England that actually dared to follow that principle in their procurement strategies. They are doing well, but the fact that it feels revolutionary for mainstream sensibilities shows that those principles are still very unknown to most.
(I should add: the principle of locality is not always a good thing, because there are scoundrels everywhere. Again in England, the regeneration of massive swaths of land previously used for steelmaking is being done through well-connected local businessmen and corrupted politicians, and it is a shameful rip-off for the taxpayer. If a national government had done that, the relevant minister would have faced the sack; but it's ”old boys” from the area, the national press is not interested, and so it's just business as usual.)
- market diversity matters, and we have a more functional market with many smaller actors
- similarly, a smaller local actor is more accountable for their behavior
- efficiency comes mostly from cutting things, some of which mattered (eg, individual buyers at companies do more due diligence on the product than Amazon)
- it’s better that every community have a local moderately rich person than one super rich person nationally, eg, in terms of charity to your community
- politics remains local and hence tractable
- smaller organizations have less of a “frozen middle”, which creates numerous problems with national scale organizations
There’s probably more reasons if I really stopped to think about it.
For me it’s that last one and also wanting more of my money to flow through my community. I don’t want to live in a world where 10 trillionaires control everything. I already tried to avoid Amazon but Bezos blocking the Post from endorsing a political candidate as we descend into extreme oligarchy was the last straw.
This is an insightful breakdown, though I think it leaves out the option I would have chosen. A small business run by a human who is physically present is going to make different decisions that are better for the community.
I have to say though I have evolved a bit in this perspective as I've come to realize that these small business owners can be every bit as greedy or even more. Especially there are a lot who are just fundamentally incompetent at business and try to make up the difference by extracting it from their employees, willfully ignoring labor laws in ways a large company would not dare. A large company is a big target surrounded by people who want a piece of the action and often must tread carefully as a result.
I've personally never worked in such a position, but I have heard absolutely crazy stories from people who have, things like demanding that commission only sales people come in hours early to do unpaid work like cleaning unrelated to their job title, "fining" people $75 for checking their phone while "on the clock" (again in a commission only job), constantly helping themselves to their employees paycheck finding things to "charge" them for, and just generally being a menace and treating employees like they personally owned them. Their ego and sense of entitlement go completely wild. The owners I have known personally will brag about cheating on their taxes while railing against the government, running an atrociously inefficient business that they talk about as if it's some sort of charity. In many cities there's a whole good old boy network type system in place that's no less corrupt and ugly than whatever you want to say about companies like Amazon.
It's because the absolute centralization of business in one entity is almost indistinguishable from Communism. For now it may appear that Amazon is cheaper/more convenient, but in the long run this type of monopoly leads to worse products and services.
Under communism, workers own the means of production and all of the profit their labor creates. Centralizing business into a single private monopoly whose profit is entirely controlled by shareholders is the exact opposite of communism.
You're correct that monopoly leads to a degradation of products and services, but that's a flaw in capitalism (specifically the myth of the self-regulating free market ideal that eschews proper regulation in favor of the "invisible hand.")
"All the downsides"?! I find living in the US to be quite different from what I've seen of life depicted in current/past communist countries.
It sure seems to me as if there were a few additional downsides in those communist countries that I don't see to anywhere near the same degree in the US.
> is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they brought near you?
Yes. That generates sales taxes. That generates property taxes. That pays for insurance. That pays for upkeep which is hopefully provided by a local contractor. Where this cycle repeats.
> and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
Yes. The money actually doesn't bother me, it's the access to unrestrained political influence it buys you, and big corporations monopolize labor pools and result in worse outcomes for working conditions and wages. Where this story starts.
I needed some 3D printing filament a few days ago. Shopped around locally and the absolute cheapest was ~$50. Amazon was $17 with next day shipping.
The overheads of physical retail stores makes it all but impossible for them to compete with online shopping. I’d love to “support local” but I don’t have the expendable income to spend double/more on everything.
What we ideally need is more “local online businesses”, but that seems to be very rare outside of niche hobby/craft type stuff.
It turns local businesses into showrooms for Amazon, and that is a failing business model.
I do not patronize Amazon. But f I did, I would pick a margin - let's say 20% - and resolve to buy locally when the price is at least that close to the online price.
> But f I did, I would pick a margin - let's say 20% - and resolve to buy locally when the price is at least that close to the online price.
Focusing on the price is a complete misunderstanding. Just looking at my recent amazon purchases. I have bought 3mm and 2mm thick brass sheets, 0.8mm endmills, a set of dwarven miner minis, and a highlander cow shaped slipper. I have no clue which shop would even hope to have these things. I could get on my bike and go to all the hardware shops around me in the hopes that maybe they have endmills, or all the department stores and walk up and down to see if they have the slippers I'm thinking about. And I would be still without brass sheets and dwarven miners.
Or I can from the comfort of wherever I am browse a wild selection of things and get them for reasonable price. I bought the miner minis while physically situated in a coffee shop waiting for my friend to return from the washroom. Just because I happened to have a minute to think about what I need for our next DnD session. That is insanely convenient.
I'm spoiled by having a local Microcenter here in Houston. Not always the cheapest filament, but it's often competitive enough. Inland is as good as any other brand I've tried, and in some cases, I prefer their colors.
Xyltech is also in Houston, and they don't have a typical retail operation, but you can place an order and pick it up.
Polymaker has a Houston warehouse, and while you can't pick it up, a number of SKUs actually ship from there.
Often I buy bulk purchases of Sunlu from Aliexpress. Usually takes about 8 days to get to me, but at around $11/KG for PLA+, it's a great price.
You should check out Protopasta! Their prices aren't rock bottom ($30 for a 1kg spool of PLA) but the product is really good and if you happen to live near the warehouse you can pick up your order on the same day
> The overheads of physical retail stores makes it all but impossible for them to compete with online shopping.
As a purely-theoretical thought experiment, this may be true.
As a blanket statement about prices in the real world, this is not correct.
There are many stores around me here in San Francisco who absolutely do have prices that are close to (and sometimes lower than) "e-tailer" prices. If stores in SF can meet or beat "e-tailer" prices, I find it hard to believe that stores in Bum-fuck Nowhere, USA can't ever do the same.
I think it's a mistake to look at the % price difference instead of the dollar price difference. It's a $33 dollar difference. Which is not much if you are a busy person, but a lot if you have time to shop around. If you're buying a motorcycle and it's $6200 at your local dealer and $6100 a couple of towns away, then you'd consider that difference negligible.
Every local business should be a "local online business" as you suggest. But most business owners don't give a fuck and are happy to see Amazon crush them. Why?
I used to try to support local business, but frankly it's such a waste of time to go looking for products that they never have in stock, ward off annoying salesmen who never have a clue if you actually need help, and dealing with bad return policies. The price difference is but icing on the cake.
Should I spend 15 minutes each way driving (carbon emissions) to the store and waste 1 hr of my time in this case, when it can be delivered to me tomorrow? I definitely want to support local, but the cost/benefits are not as clear in this case.
You really need to consider the reality outside of your own bubble of concern. Especially as your bubble doesn't even extend beyond the door of your house, since you don't understand that the Amazon delivery driver is also driving and also spending his time.
The product is delivered the same distance, whether it is from "Producer -> Amazon warehouses -> Customer" or if it is "Producer -> Retail warehouses -> Customer". An Amazon delivery car with a bunch of products to deliver is the equivalent of OP filling up his car with purchases when shopping in town.
You basically can't buy couple-dollar things on Amazon, which is rather annoying. F.ex. I wanted a fiberglass pole, 5/16" diameter. I could buy 10 for $20. Home Depot had one for $3.50.
Apple Pay has raised my confidence level about buying directly from smaller internet sites. Since those sites don’t get my raw credit card info when I use Apple Pay, I don’t have to worry about whether they’ve implemented CC handling well (most have not).
I was talking about buying from online merchants. I’m less familiar with the security implications of chip-and-pin or contactless card for in-person transactions. Do those technologies prevent the merchant from getting raw CC info?
Rightly or wrongly, I worry less about the security implementations of hardware point-of-sale terminals than the security implementations of small websites.
I mostly prefer Apple Pay for in-person transactions because of anonymity — my understanding is that it makes it harder for companies (other than Apple) to track my purchases.
Bank of America automates the process of creating virtual cards for your account when you set up contactless payments such as Google Pay. It is not an anonymous service as the bank still keeps the transaction records and iirc, will occasionally sell or relinquish the data on request to 3rd parties or enforcement agencies.
Yes mostly. The cell phone wallets were the convenience difference that caused merchants to upgrade their POS systems to support contactless. Before that there just wasn't much reason for merchants to change their existing card infrastructure. Now customers feel inconvenienced if they have to use a credit card.
Amazon used to be the cheapest in almost every category, but more and more, I find that places like Harbor Freight beat them. I even bought a pricey resin printer and a wash and cure station the other day; Microcenter had them beat by $100+.
Harbor freight also has much more consistent quality and no fake name brand items. It’s funny because they used to be synonymous with low quality- but now they seem to have the highest quality tools you can easily buy as a consumer.
I don't think people buy on Amazon because it is the cheapest, they buy on Amazon for convenience. EVERY SINGLE TIME I buy something from someone else (talking online here) I painfully regret that decision (didn't arrive on time, didn't arrive at all, shipped in multiple shipments, one arrived, two didn't and yet order is showing as delivered -> this is just small sample of what I have seen just in the last say 6 weeks). My wife and I have been trying all year to purchase as much as we can on other e-commerce websites but in often (always) ends up like these examples above...
If I don't need to drive to the "local" store, then the local store is miles better than Amazon especially if it has the choices you need. The problem is: 1. many times they don't have exactly what you need but Amazon does and 2. if it requires a ride, then both are no longer 5 bucks.
Once, when polled by HR, I noted that it should be more efficient for many different people in a given neighborhood to place orders, and for one delivery truck to run through it dropping off packages even if somewhat fuel-inefficient, than for that myriad of consumers to make separate trips even if using fuel-efficient vehicles.
Stores should not try to "out-Amazon" Amazon --- I buy my groceries from a store which is 1 mile away, and usually stop on the way home from work --- if I need something over the weekend or on a telework day which won't wait, I walk or ride my bike unless there is some other errand which needs to be made. Similarly, I prefer to shop the local hardware store (bike-distance) for hardware and tools (when suitable ones are available, if not, then it's Harry Epstein, or Jim Bode, or a trip to Woodcraft, or an on-line order).
Folks forget what life was like before Amazon --- there were occasions when I drove all around multiple towns looking for one connector because I didn't want a project to wait for a special order and 6--8 weeks delivery --- my kids were amazed when we came across my copy of the book: _U.S. Mail Order Shopper's Guide: A Subject Guide Listing 3,667 Unique Mail Order Catalogs_ by Susan Spitzer
You do realize that an electric Amazon van delivering hundreds of packages to your neighborhood pollutes a lot less than you taking your G-wagon to the local store, right?
> but also the message it sends to local stores
"You're obsolete", which is true? Local stores are usually more expensive, carry less inventory, require you to go there or charge delivery fees, have inexistent or predatory return policies, etc. It's simply a worse experience in every way.
There was a time where this was compensated by the vendors having wide knowledge about the subject that they were selling items for, but it's not the case anymore, so really, what's left to local stores?
I don't know why people have this tendency to romanticize outdated and objectively worse in every way things just for the sake of "tradition".
Ignoring the tone of your comment, I agree with you in a way, but I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live.
The US suburbs don't really have what I would call "local stores," just big, well known corporate stores. So, when making the choice of where to buy Product X, my options are giving my money to Best Buy, Walmart, Ikea, Kroger, etc...or Jeff Bezos, whose online empire offers slightly more convenience than the others because I don't have to drive if I can wait a day or two.
There's no family-owned businesses to hurt here because they were all chased out by the Big Box stores years ago. Heck, I remember when they filled in the pond I learned to fish in as a kid just to put up that Walmart. Sure, Amazon can be held up as contributing toward the death of the small business, but those wheels were spinning long before Bezos was selling books out of a garage or whatever mythology we want to accept.
I don't like Amazon. I don't like the idea of one entity having that much influence and control over my consumer habits. I don't like that the business model is just drop-shipping in a trenchcoat of digital services. I don't like that their workers are basically treated as third-world labor.
But I do have to admit that they have won the game and as a result, I have to use them. I wish it were otherwise, but we're past the point of no return, on that. We all gave them permission for this to happen by patronizing it for years, even down to the mistreated workers who keep applying for those jobs knowing full well Amazon's employment reputation. Amazon did not kill small business. Consumers did, ever suckered by savings and convenience.
Thing that I hate most about amazon is how it turned into the western version of aliexpress.
Completely flooded with terrible products, you know the ones (badly translated, titles that are a list of keywords, ai generated everything, clearly and badly edited product images, ...)
Like I'm at a point where I order like 5-10 products a year from amazon, mostly cause I can't get them elsewhere for reasonable prices. Everything else I buy in other online stores or physically.
> I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live
I live in the center of London and out of the 200 non-household goods orders I have on Amazon this year I don't think I would have been able to find even 20% of them in local stores.
Actually even when I do go in a store and find an item I need, I scan the barcode on the Amazon app and saw that it's usually a LOT cheaper on Amazon (like, 30% cheaper for the exact same tool).
Add to that what I mention in my previous comment about return policies, travel time, etc. and there's absolutely no reason not to order on Amazon, even if you're in the ideal place to go to local stores.
> Amazon can be held up as contributing toward the death of the small business
Amazon does more than most of those to let you buy from small producers, which also feature in their catalog. The volume SMBs ship on Amazon was in the double digit billions per year when I worked there — and is probably higher now.
> But I do have to admit that they have won the game and as a result, I have to use them.
Try ordering direct from the manufacturer's website. A surprising-to-me number of companies have set this up, and it's what I often do if I know what I want and Newegg isn't selling it for a reasonable price (or at all).
Unfortunately, Amazon policies prohibit them from selling their product any cheaper on their own website than they do on Amazon. This essentially guarantees that Amazon will always be cheaper, so there's not much point in going to the manufacturer's website where you don't get prime, you don't get the same guarantees, and you pay at best the same and at worst a whole lot more.
It's quite an evil genius policy on the side of Amazon.
what kind of a law would you put in place here to make this illegal? and who would it cover? amazon has a business, yes? and if you want to do business with amazon you have to abide but those rules. you can also just NOT do business with amazon - sell your shit at another place, done deal. too many times here on HN we see people say what you say - let's just add mooooooar laws (these would have to be FEDERAL to make any sense) and have government involved in as many things as possible... it is just wrong although in theory you can say this is unfair - but certainly should be be illegal... like saying apple charging 30% wig should be illegal :)
The laws of our economy are not there to serve a few large companies. They are there to serve us, people, most of all. Do you think that markets will collapse if we had more fair rules for big companies?
You're right. The most environmentally-friendly solution is to truck, train, or ship things into stores in big cities and let people walk or take public transit to get their things.
I'm not sure how you imagine that ordering direct from a manufacturer works, but I'm certain that most of them have their goods in big warehouses and use major delivery services to get those goods to you, much like they would get those goods to an ordinary store.
Goods are going to be shipped, flown, and trucked around. Until we invent macro-scale teleportation, there's no reasonable way to stop doing that entirely.
We are taxed for road repairs. It's a common tax on gasoline here in the United States; and, yes, there is a known issue around this with electric cars and some efforts in place to try and rectify it.
Many states recapture those lost taxes via vehicle registration surcharges for EVs. (For example, Texas charges $200, which is consistent with what a truck or SUV would pay driving around 12k mi/yr)
Amazon employing people creates a lot of taxes. Don't forget everything's taxed, not just corporation tax. Every employee generates income tax, employee tax, if they invest their money the interest is taxed, almost everything they buy from a shop has VAT, fuel they purchase is taxed, everything they buy has a higher price because that business has to pay tax and so do its employees, ad infinitum. There's tax everywhere, and the roads will still be there if none of those people had jobs and weren't paying any tax.
There is no such thing as "employee tax". Usually, what exists is a scheme for some of the employee's salary to be paid in the form of retirement schemes, health care, etc. It's not a tax to subsidize unrelated things. Likewise, the income tax is not there to pay for the company's use of collective amenities, it's there to pay for the citizen's use.
In the end, if your company doesn't pay all the stuff that other companies do, it's freeloading, and the society would most likely be better off with another company getting the business.
I agree, in almost all cases there is a store nearby that sells it - and if not I probably won’t need it that bad.
But for me it is an ideological thing - I absolutely loathe Amazon and it’s practices; I just have to visualise how I insert my money into Bezos gaping asshole and my desire to shop at Amazon is rapidly diminishing.
But I think ordering stuff when you are able bodied is immoral as well - not super immoral but you should always feel a little bit bad if you order stuff that you could’ve picked up yourself.
Also the distances in my country are tiny, if you live in the outback with 200km to the next neighbour it’s a different story
For me it is also something ideological but even from an economic point of view I never buy on Amazon, this is my reasoning:
You buy it cheaper but you are generating a debt, it's like buying on credit: somewhere someone is being exploited or a natural resource is being overexploited, and you will pay for it in the future, with a poorer environment socially, economically and naturally.
Everything comes back. I once read that I don't know which tribe made decisions that were good for the next 7 generations, well, buying on amazon is a decision that is not good even for the current generation, you will probably see the consequences in your own or your children's life.
Interesting to see discussion on Reddit from r/AmazonFC are pretty negative , wonder if these are genuine employees comment for PR team hired by Amazon
Just a reminder that if you search for "Thank my driver" on Amazon you'll get $5 donated to your most recent delivery driver at no cost to you. You can do this once per delivery, for every delivery, for the few weeks leading up to the holidays.
Looks like they no longer get the tip. This is what I see:
As of December 10, 2024, we have received more than 2 million "thank yous,” concluding the promotion offering $5 per "thank you" to eligible drivers. You can continue to thank your drivers and we will share your appreciation with them.
There seems to be a cap per local area. My area hasn't donated any money for the past week or so. It just says a thank you will be given to the driver. I presume it's because enough people used it to max out the allotment in our zip code(?).
I am just curious who still orders anything today with delivery expectation to get it before Xmas. From my experience the delivery drivers are today delivering tons of stuff ordered a week ago and they are so overloaded, that todays order might come only in January.
Back in my day, everything was 6 to 8 weeks for delivery from catalogs (Sears Christmas Wishbook, anyone?) and the carriers were far less accessible when it came to tracking packages and whatnot than they are today. Honestly, those times seem like a cold-sweat nightmare, now. Speaking as an old man who regularly shakes his fist at passing clouds, I'm pretty damned happy with the current delivery times, even if they are occasionally a few days late. Those folks are out there breaking their backs for us and we'd best not forget it
Speaking from personal experience: people with ADHD, who don't have their shit together but desperately want to avoid disappointing the people they care about. People who then get hoodwinked by the bald faced lies everybody from Amazon right through to the courier staff will tell you about projected delivery dates and "oh, gosh, sorry, you know we just attempted delivery but couldn't get in!" (while you're sitting in front of the building)
My solution for this is to keep gifts for the people I buy presents for in mind throughout the year, and buy things as I come across them, then, when it's time to wrap, my wife and I lay things out and decide what actually gets gifted, excess gets set aside for upcoming birthdays (which are both fortunately early in the year, Jan. and March) or possibly even the next Christmas, then come April I start in on the process again.
Are they specifically calling for a boycott, though? Or just striking? (Because if it's the latter, getting orders that go unfulfilled may actually help their cause.)
So what you're saying is we should order a bunch of stuff and then cancel at the first sign of a delay in fulfillment so amazon loses more by waiting it out?
> The world's second-largest private employer employs 1.5 million people. While that's a lot, it's a decrease of over 100,000 employees from the 1.6 million workers it had in 2021. [...] While Amazon is bringing on hundreds of thousands of robots per year, the company is slowly decreasing its employee numbers.
This is the discussion which we need to be having, and one which has been put off since Jimmy Carter failed to put a tax into place on computers so as to budget for worker re-training for folks whose jobs were eliminated by computers.
Instead, you had situations such as the type compositors unions bargaining for sinecures for their members, rather than participating in, and informing the usage of the new systems, contributing to a decade of ugly "Desktop DTP".
On-going automation should reduce the total number of hours which humans need to work to ensure that humanity is housed, clothed, fed, &c. --- why aren't we talking about reducing the workweek? See recent story in Tokyo:
Or, if the U.S. gathered together all the money used for Disability, SSI, WIC, Unemployment, Welfare, Social Security &c. _and_ their administration and overhead, there would be a significant amount of money --- would that be sufficient to fund a Universal Basic Income?
10k is about 0.7% of their total employee count. I wonder if this will have any effect.
I’ve found that the rise of Apply Pay as a payment mechanism on random sites has been helpful in getting me off of Amazon. Often it’s just as easy to order something direct if they have Apple Pay (or ShopPay, but I have other issues with them) and the same price as Amazon. Plus discoverability is awful on Amazon anyways.
Still don’t get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping from Amazon, but not punching in my credit card number to random sites has been enough to get me to move 50% of my shopping to retailers direct.
To me, the key feature of Amazon is the fast delivery with Prime. Do other merchants offer fast delivery often enough?
Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or cashback.
The local Target and Home Depots all offer same day pickup and delivery. For our house, that's taken 90% of the business away from Amazon.
What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.
>What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.
Realizing this was what made me quit Prime years ago, and eventually drive down my Amazon purchases to just a handful of times a year. For the most part, there's really not much of a difference if I get a book tomorrow vs. four days from now, or if I get it from Amazon or from the nearby Target. But there's a lot of infrastructure built up to satisfy this admittedly frivolous expectation of fast delivery.
Are there cases when rapid delivery is necessary and valuable? Absolutely. Are those cases the norm? Not in my life, by an overwhelming margin.
Exactly. The $35 free shipping threshold actually helped me hold off a few impulse purchases. Thanks Amazon!
Do you actually care that much about fast delivery?
My Prime membership ended 3 years ago. These days I just put items in the cart, and place order whenever it reaches $35. If I need an item in a hurry -- which rarely happens -- I go to a store to buy it.
This barely affected me, and I ended up with much fewer impulse purchases.
What's funny though is that the "standard" delivery often takes 5 calendar days. But AliExpress shipments can take as few as 8 calendar days. I ended up spending even less -- well, if the items are manufactured in China, why not just order on AliExpress where you get the same/similar items and pay less.
This is true. DHL asked me to delay my shipping because of Black Friday chaos and it was a bunch of crap that I didn't really need immediately so I delayed it for a week.
For the most part these days, Amazon seems like a fast way to ship goods from Alibaba in the one to two day time frame.
For a lot of other stuff, it feels like they've lost their edge on price and shipping.
Often my main reason for using Amazon is that it reduces the friction associated with buying for more retailers. For example worrying about data breaches, being put on spam email lists, etc.
Had to buy some simple toolkit today. It was 5 bucks on Amazon, but I decided to find a local store that sells it. Same price btw.
I think we should be a bit more aware about the impact of ordering everything through Amazon. Not only regarding delivery, but also the message it sends to local stores.
I've had this exact sentiment for many years but... what are we supporting really?
Is it because you want a distributed network of inventory across the country near you in case of emergency?
Is it because you like talking to someone when doing purchases?
Is it because you think someone is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they brought near you?
Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
Like I feel like I should want to support local business but it is way less efficient and I can't really convince myself that I'm not just repeating something my parents also said.
I found myself gravitating back to local stores after years of buying essentially everything on Amazon because local stores at least to some degree curate their inventory while Amazon increasingly does not. If you're looking for a specific product that doesn't matter as much (although Amazon also has counterfeiting problems). But if you're just looking to browse what's available in a certain category of product, Amazon is nearly unusable. You'll almost certainly find dozens of Chinese companies with randomly generated names selling what are essentially copies of the same product with no good way to pick one or even tell if they're any good (reviews being basically useless on Amazon these days).
Because they don't have the same unlimited inventory capacity, local stores have to put at least some effort into selling products with some base level of quality and focusing on the products most likely to sell in each category. Local stores are by no means perfect here, but they're vastly better than Amazon in this regard. And it's especially important because finding good independent product reviews on the internet these days is also a challenge, and even where they exist they're not reviewing whatever no-name Chinese brand Amazon is selling anyways.
While the junk item situation on amazon is real, I can't agree with this take about local stores. I find that local stores tend to have random crap that they want to sell rather than high-quality items.
It has been surprising to me for years that people put up with this, I find it really terrible as a shopping experience. Like shopping in the worst dollar store you’ve ever been in that’s also the size of a city and loaded with ads, except you can’t actually touch the products or smell the pervasive scent of cheap plastic while you browse. And they want you to pay a subscription!
Shopping from retailers that employ actual buyers feels like a real upgrade.
One big reason is it keep money local.
When you buy from a non local business, that money leaves your towns microeconomy.
It’s part of why dollar stores destroy low income areas.
What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
If a global business decides to just toss all the plastic it uses it in its backyard you'll never notice because it's 2000 miles away. If Amazon decides to treat their workers unfairly, you'll never notice. But you'll notice if a local business does it because you'll be walking in there every day. There's a level of accountability.
In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online. It's incredibly unclear to me why a super poor and undeveloped local economy is better than a specialized globalized one. In my country there was a dictatorship with protectionism and when we opened things got way better, not worse.
Regarding me not noticing crimes, I think we have police and regulations for that.
Where were the police and regulations when Boeing's products killed hundreds of people? Last time I checked, nobody among top management went to prison for that.
That's what "too big to fail" corporations can get you: failed products, anti-competitive environment, regulatory capture, no responsibility.
Getting fined for a few (hundred) million dollars is not responsibility, it's chump change for multi-trillion dollar corporations.
I agree with you: let's just buy our next 747's from the nearest mom-and-pop aviation shop!
> In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online.
(1) That is because technology also takes away components of life that one can enjoy without being rich such as accesss to nature and local food production.
(2) The global economy is only so "good" because it takes advantage of the commons in poorer places. We simply should not have the capability to do that. You only benefit off the suffering of others.
(2) They where literally describing a poor area being better off with global trade.
Economies of scale and local advantages make the world better off. There’s no advantage to growing bananas in greenhouses in Iowa when you can grow wheat and trade with Panama.
That local trade involves taking advantage of the commons (putting CO2 in the atmosphere) to make it work. In my opinion, we do not have the right to take that advantage.
More CO2 is produced manufacturing and maintaining those greenhouses than shipping fruit from tropical locations.
So no, in this case local production is simply worse for the commons. More broadly things that cost dramatically more are generally worse for the environment in subtle ways.
Few people would be able to afford much in your local economy.
Well for one, lots of my local economy would just involve trade and helping community members for free, creating local community gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible with very little.
On (1), I grew up behind the iron curtain in a pre-internet age next to a village (no TV, no organized entertainment). The typical non-working activity there was not to enjoy the beauty of nature (as farmers they were fed up with it) but to be bored, get drunk and start fights with anyone non local. When the economy opened up in late 1980s anyone who could ran out to cities.
I will take technology and some globalism any day. My 2c.
That's the thing that I see a lot of. I grew up in Africa, and was exposed to extreme poverty, since as far back as I can remember.
People living poor don't like it. They may have accepted it, and may have learned to deal with it, but they don't tend to like it. They want out, and generally jump at the chance to do so.
People in richer communities may have fantasies about "living closer to nature," but that doesn't usually involve things like shooing rats off your kids at night, or having your house collapse, when there's a 3.0 earthquake.
People in poorer communities may have unreasonable expectations of what having money will bring, and we often see poor people that get rich quick (think Lotto "winners"), having pretty miserable lives.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
I picked a place to live that's close to nature, right across my back fence from millions of acres of public forest. I love it here. Poverty is not required. I commute to work via Starlink and most nonperishables are delivered to my front porch by UPS, mostly from Amazon. It's green on both sides of my fence, and it's a choice that normal people, who can work remotely, can make if they value it. My house is far cheaper than one in a city and local costs are lower. Amazon deserves credit for making such a lifestyle easier, and if we can export more of it, that sounds like an advance.
False dichotomy. Both situations are bad because both are predicated on lack of wisdom. A lack of wisdom in a poor place implies brawls and wanton violence. A lack of wisdom in a rich, technological age implies resource destruction and climate change.
Wisdom combined with restricted technology would be ideal, such as with the Amish. They have their problems but they show that a technologically restricted society is best. Note: I am not arguing for NO technology, but severely restricted technology.
Ok, let's restrict the technology. What's the end goal?
Because 1 billion years from now, even if humanity is back to before the wheel technology plants will have disappeared and the oceans evaporated due to the sun.
If we want Earth originated life to have a chance to go over this bump something will have to go forward.
Who is going to do this "severe restriction of technology"? The people themselves, as you write, do not want to do it.
And anytime a self-appointed elite start doing "what is best for the people" against their will, police repression and labor camps are also on the menu. Nah, I will take my freedom, including the freedom to make mistakes.
You assume the people always won't. There's a growing amount of skepticism towards technology and it's quite possible people will begin to hate it. I myself intend to spread the word about the dangers of technology to the best of my ability.
The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
I do not think your second point stands. Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
The last 40 years have seen enormous economic growth outside the G7 to the point that North America and Western Europe no longer dominate the global economy.
Vice president Vance marrying a woman from India was a look into the future. The rich elite know what's happening.
> The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
Because they lack wisdom and human beings en masse operate on instinct, not wisdom.
> Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
The classic reply of the economist. It's because the industrial world measures better off with variables like "life expectancy" and "money".
But a longer life does not a better life make, nor does money always equate to better off.
For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism account for that?
That is the other extreme that is also bad. In economies like that protectionism supports inefficient local production - favouring some people at the cost of others. It is designed to funnel money away from some people to others.
The dominance of the economy by a few big companies also has the same effect - elimination of competition.
It's clearly not as black and white as you paint it. Local production uses the same materials that global production uses due to pricing. As long as transportation is cheaper than local production this will stay the same due to simple economics.
Also accountability is the same there, shops just buy their material regardless of working conditions and whatsoever. At least companies can be regulated based off of that.
The error is too systematic to say "just produce local".
It's a start. As I always say, practices such as encouraging at least _local involvement_ is a start. Of course, another necessary step is revolution to bring down large companies.
Your ideas of how the world work are just patently false. A lot of local farms use large amounts of plastic everyday, its quite common to use plastic sheets to cover the ground when planting. You think you would know they are just dumping it into the pit on their land?
Global trade is one of the best things to happen to the world, it has improved the lives of many. All your advocating for is going back to a time which you did not live it but you romanticize. I suspect it was not as romantic as you make it out to be.
This is a common sentiment especially in Germany, but Hannah Richie in Not the End of the World shows multiple studies where the impact of CO₂ from transport is negligible for most foods. Other factors like what we decide to eat play a much greater role.
Your plastic example is a reasonable example, but I could also counter that if plastic is the problem then locally isn't necessarily more sustainable. Local farmers can also wrap their products in plastic. In the end, the plastic is there to increase the shelf life. Even most local products will need to have a shelf life of a few weeks. It's unreasonable to demand farmers stop batching their produce and instead demand they carry a few apples to the market each day.
> What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
This is true for the extreme minority of products that ARE produced locally.
If you buy a screwdriver from the privately-owned DYI shop around the corner it will have been produced in the same Chinese factory and shipped by the same boats and trucks as the one you'll buy from Amazon.
You're not at all supporting local sustainability, you're just paying more to add one more middleman.
Well, also, if you don't support Amazon, then you don't support the growth of a large company like Amazon which is one more component of the collection of big corporations that are exactly those responsible for globalization in the first place.
Globalization is one of the best things that has ever happened to humanity.
It allows whoever is willing to understand the peoples of the world share way more than what makes them different. Globalization, specially through the internet, but trade as whole, is my personal bet on what could "end all wars". In fact it is the first necessary step for the philosophical parts of the communist manifesto that are salvageable, the parts about the global coalition of common peoples working on shared goals and with similar baseline prosperity.
It is only good if you take a short-term, human-supremacist view of the world. If you consider all life to have worth independent of its value to humanity, then globalization is a horror. And then globalization and the industrial society is the cause of climate change, so it's only good in the short-term.
If by "short-term" you mean "until we stop killing each other in massive wars" (I doubt we can eliminate individual murder), I guess I agree, but by my estimation that will take several centuries at least. If by short term you mean before that, I doubt that we can agree. I'm talking about something that to me is already so far in the future that it was strange to hear "short-term" as a response to that argument!
Regarding human-supremacist view, I hadn't seen that expression before but if I interpret it correctly, I would say that describes a great big majority of the world population and I believe anyone would have a really hard time making this case to anyone on the street. I respect the moral purity in a way, but I think it's wildly impractical to call people around you human-supremacists, when like I said we are still not totally in agreement that things like wars should not happen. We say we do but there's never not been wars in our history. I don't know man, I feel like you're too deep in this rabbithole of morality to be able to have a normal discussion about getting a lightbulb at the local store when you start calling other people human-supremacists. But I do enjoy the banter!
Well, when I see people dump their shit into the homes of animals, then I think that comes from an attitude of human supremacy. When I see pristine forests cut down for profit but laws protecting the homes of people, that's human supremacy.
My goal is not to get most people to like me, or agree with my views. I fully acknowledge that I am a fundamentalist in the sense that I have a few axioms (all life is equal and technology must be regressed) and I have a zero compromise policy on that. Of course, unfortunately, to make a living I must participate in some of our atrocities.
I don't think it's necessary either, that I conform and discuss as others. There is no shortage of conformists. Either our destructive ways will stop, in which case I am working to bring them down through my writing, or I will fail. It's something I believe in and nothing will change that.
> responsible for globalization
You say it as if it's a bad thing. Most of the comfort in your life comes from globalization.
Hell, without globalization you wouldn't even be able to do your job, where do you think your Nikon's, Canon's and Sony's come from?
Statements like this are beyond hypocritical.
It is a bad thing. And you say it like it's a dichotomy.
And I could certainly get most of the comforts of modern life with 5% of the force of globalization. House, food, bed, some reading material, etc. I don't really care for technology, and I use it because it's part of my work and livelihood. BUT, I could easily be just as happy living a simpler life.
Believe me, I've already thought about it. I could be pretty much as comfortable with WAY less global trade. Most people buy way too much clothes, use way too much technology, none of which makes life more comfortable.
> Hell, without globalization you wouldn't even be able to do your job, where do you think your Nikon's, Canon's and Sony's come from?
(A) My point is that if there were other forms of labor, I wouldn't be less comfortable.
(B) Again, I'm arguing for a reduction in global trade, not an outright ban. My point is that it needs to be reduced.
Is it hypocritical to complain about your government even though they make the country that you live in? Of course, I'm using the resources I have, but I could be equally comfortable in a different world. My argument is that our current world is not necessary and not optimal.
Please get off the internet then, destroy your computer and go live on a farm. I don't say this to be an antagonist but it is what you yourself is suggesting others do.
The products sold in local stores are never produced locally. It's national or international products, just like on Amazon.
Buying from local stores pays the salaries of local salesmen, that is a benefit for the community. But wouldn't the community benefit better if they did a job that was needed instead?
> It's national or international products, just like on Amazon.
Yup. If you go to a souvenir store in a remote town (say Kiruna, Sweden), you will typically find local themed products manufactured in China.
> Local productions
local production happens in China though. if you live anywhere else, most of the stuff you can buy off Amazon was made in China. the local shops will ultimately buy it from China too.
> you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently
For some value of "more efficiently". I mean if the most efficient way to work is to have delivery drivers pee in a bottle and warehouse workers develop RSIs, who am I to complain? Someone else's dignity is a small price to pay in order to get a 3% rebate on some commodity.
>Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
That’s such an odd way to paint it.
When people live in a system with millions of quettallionaires and the bilion left are mere millionaires where 1 unit of currency is enough to buy the best meal in town with all towns in the world equally provided in services, the system won’t see much strikes happening soon.
When people live in a system where a small cake is growing at a slow rate and a few hundreds people are cornering always more of it at an accelerating rate, all the more when the extraction rate of the cake is known to exceed the cake regeneration rate, the system is well on its road for repeated strikes or even bloody social movements.
Ok, these allegories are two possible points in a spectrum. Which scenario is most likely to be closest to the world as its perceived by most people out there?
People don’t love or hate big corporations and riches out of the blue. If there are given room out of the vivid feeling that their life is a day to day struggle to survive, most people can perfectly demonstrate nuances in their judgment.
Perhaps it’s out of fear of what Amazon’s market and price-setting power would be post-local stores
Amazon doesn't have any extra power post-local stores. If Amazon ups their prices then the local stores reappear. In some weird future where Amazon completely obliterates small businesses it might take a few years, but it'd take more than a few years of good prices before that from Amazon to get to that state. The manufacturers always have strong incentives to defect from an AWS dominated equilibrium. They want middleman prices to be low, it means they move more goods and make more money.
Although I should stress I like the idea of buying local. If the money goes off to some exotic foreign place it is less likely that I will get my hands on it later on. Better to live in a wealthy community than a poor one, etc. Local capital is local prosperity.
I used to work at Amazon.
What you want to support are:
- local retailers offer better jobs, and often better benefits. The work you do stocking at Menards is much better than sorting boxes at Amazon
- support local repair vs repurchasing. This cuts down on the upstream demand and does wonders for local small-business economies. And again, provides better jobs than sorting boxes.
- Efficiency is great! But what is Amazon efficient at? They have maximized the speed and convenience of delivery. Once stated that way it's obvious there must be tradeoffs. One of those tradeoffs is the shit work. In one dist center, a guys entire job was to wheel odd shaped boxes from one side of a warehouse to another. Whenever you order a big or weirdly shaped box, that guy moved it. Even he hates that job. It's meaningless, non social, provides no transferrable skills.
- ultimately what your parents were talking about is how one chooses to shape their local economy and jobs market. I want to buy from companies that I would want my friends and family to work for.
But yeah, I buy from Amazon all the time too.
A hyper-efficient system is inherently fragile: if something happens to any part of it, it has a big ripple effect all over the place, because there's no slack anywhere. More resilient systems always have some redundancy that helps them cope in a case of failure. If you think about societally optimal setup, it likely should include a mix of systems, from very efficient to very resilient. Something about eggs and baskets.
I do it to try to keep the money flowing around in my local community.
When you spend money at businesses which are owned by people that live in your community, more of that money continues to circulate in your area. It's better for the local economy, if only marginally, and therefore better for you.
This is more important for businesses that produce and capture a larger amount of value, like locally owned restaurants vs corporate owned chains, but any little bit helps at least a little.
(Of course if you're a rootless corporate mercenary who goes wherever work takes you, with no long-term stake in the place you live, then it doesn't matter at all.)
This is an interesting take. I'm not sure it's true but I will look it up. My knee-jerk reaction is that most large purchases already siphon your money away (home, car, travel), and overthinking where to buy a random small object for the house makes no difference, but I hadn't considered the locality of money circulation!
Amazon discusses that every dollar of salary produces $2.5 of local economic activity, eg, because their workers buy coffees that then pay the salaries of baristas who then…
That money comes from many communities and is distributed to a handful; and I think it would be interesting to quantify the loss of economic activity from Amazon moving money out of a community.
Honestly it's interesting to me that this is a novel take to you. I believe it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle.
Money sent off to Detroit or Japan for your car is as good as lost to your community, but as I said even a small amount of money spent locally will help your local community a small amount, which is more than none. Even eating at a locally owned McDonald's franchise is slightly better than eating at a corporate owned store. That difference is probably too small to be worth looking up who owns a McDonalds, but if the choice is between McDonalds or some local diner then it doesn't require any time spent looking it up.
> it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle
I think you'd be surprised to realize how much that's not actually the case.
If you google the "Preston model", you'll find a lot of material waxing lyrical about the government of a lone city in England that actually dared to follow that principle in their procurement strategies. They are doing well, but the fact that it feels revolutionary for mainstream sensibilities shows that those principles are still very unknown to most.
(I should add: the principle of locality is not always a good thing, because there are scoundrels everywhere. Again in England, the regeneration of massive swaths of land previously used for steelmaking is being done through well-connected local businessmen and corrupted politicians, and it is a shameful rip-off for the taxpayer. If a national government had done that, the relevant minister would have faced the sack; but it's ”old boys” from the area, the national press is not interested, and so it's just business as usual.)
I don’t think “efficiency” is the only priority.
A few reasons:
- market diversity matters, and we have a more functional market with many smaller actors
- similarly, a smaller local actor is more accountable for their behavior
- efficiency comes mostly from cutting things, some of which mattered (eg, individual buyers at companies do more due diligence on the product than Amazon)
- it’s better that every community have a local moderately rich person than one super rich person nationally, eg, in terms of charity to your community
- politics remains local and hence tractable
- smaller organizations have less of a “frozen middle”, which creates numerous problems with national scale organizations
There’s probably more reasons if I really stopped to think about it.
For me it’s that last one and also wanting more of my money to flow through my community. I don’t want to live in a world where 10 trillionaires control everything. I already tried to avoid Amazon but Bezos blocking the Post from endorsing a political candidate as we descend into extreme oligarchy was the last straw.
This is an insightful breakdown, though I think it leaves out the option I would have chosen. A small business run by a human who is physically present is going to make different decisions that are better for the community.
I have to say though I have evolved a bit in this perspective as I've come to realize that these small business owners can be every bit as greedy or even more. Especially there are a lot who are just fundamentally incompetent at business and try to make up the difference by extracting it from their employees, willfully ignoring labor laws in ways a large company would not dare. A large company is a big target surrounded by people who want a piece of the action and often must tread carefully as a result.
I've personally never worked in such a position, but I have heard absolutely crazy stories from people who have, things like demanding that commission only sales people come in hours early to do unpaid work like cleaning unrelated to their job title, "fining" people $75 for checking their phone while "on the clock" (again in a commission only job), constantly helping themselves to their employees paycheck finding things to "charge" them for, and just generally being a menace and treating employees like they personally owned them. Their ego and sense of entitlement go completely wild. The owners I have known personally will brag about cheating on their taxes while railing against the government, running an atrociously inefficient business that they talk about as if it's some sort of charity. In many cities there's a whole good old boy network type system in place that's no less corrupt and ugly than whatever you want to say about companies like Amazon.
It's basic ethics. Amazon are an evil corp, vote with your wallet and don't support them.
It's because the absolute centralization of business in one entity is almost indistinguishable from Communism. For now it may appear that Amazon is cheaper/more convenient, but in the long run this type of monopoly leads to worse products and services.
Under communism, workers own the means of production and all of the profit their labor creates. Centralizing business into a single private monopoly whose profit is entirely controlled by shareholders is the exact opposite of communism.
You're correct that monopoly leads to a degradation of products and services, but that's a flaw in capitalism (specifically the myth of the self-regulating free market ideal that eschews proper regulation in favor of the "invisible hand.")
It’s all the downsides of communism, but non of the benefits.
"All the downsides"?! I find living in the US to be quite different from what I've seen of life depicted in current/past communist countries.
It sure seems to me as if there were a few additional downsides in those communist countries that I don't see to anywhere near the same degree in the US.
> is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they brought near you?
Yes. That generates sales taxes. That generates property taxes. That pays for insurance. That pays for upkeep which is hopefully provided by a local contractor. Where this cycle repeats.
> and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
Yes. The money actually doesn't bother me, it's the access to unrestrained political influence it buys you, and big corporations monopolize labor pools and result in worse outcomes for working conditions and wages. Where this story starts.
I needed some 3D printing filament a few days ago. Shopped around locally and the absolute cheapest was ~$50. Amazon was $17 with next day shipping.
The overheads of physical retail stores makes it all but impossible for them to compete with online shopping. I’d love to “support local” but I don’t have the expendable income to spend double/more on everything.
What we ideally need is more “local online businesses”, but that seems to be very rare outside of niche hobby/craft type stuff.
It turns local businesses into showrooms for Amazon, and that is a failing business model.
I do not patronize Amazon. But f I did, I would pick a margin - let's say 20% - and resolve to buy locally when the price is at least that close to the online price.
> But f I did, I would pick a margin - let's say 20% - and resolve to buy locally when the price is at least that close to the online price.
Focusing on the price is a complete misunderstanding. Just looking at my recent amazon purchases. I have bought 3mm and 2mm thick brass sheets, 0.8mm endmills, a set of dwarven miner minis, and a highlander cow shaped slipper. I have no clue which shop would even hope to have these things. I could get on my bike and go to all the hardware shops around me in the hopes that maybe they have endmills, or all the department stores and walk up and down to see if they have the slippers I'm thinking about. And I would be still without brass sheets and dwarven miners.
Or I can from the comfort of wherever I am browse a wild selection of things and get them for reasonable price. I bought the miner minis while physically situated in a coffee shop waiting for my friend to return from the washroom. Just because I happened to have a minute to think about what I need for our next DnD session. That is insanely convenient.
I'm spoiled by having a local Microcenter here in Houston. Not always the cheapest filament, but it's often competitive enough. Inland is as good as any other brand I've tried, and in some cases, I prefer their colors.
Xyltech is also in Houston, and they don't have a typical retail operation, but you can place an order and pick it up.
Polymaker has a Houston warehouse, and while you can't pick it up, a number of SKUs actually ship from there.
Often I buy bulk purchases of Sunlu from Aliexpress. Usually takes about 8 days to get to me, but at around $11/KG for PLA+, it's a great price.
You should check out Protopasta! Their prices aren't rock bottom ($30 for a 1kg spool of PLA) but the product is really good and if you happen to live near the warehouse you can pick up your order on the same day
For filament I typically order directly from the manufacturer (dasfilament for example) but idk if that's viable in the US
> The overheads of physical retail stores makes it all but impossible for them to compete with online shopping.
As a purely-theoretical thought experiment, this may be true.
As a blanket statement about prices in the real world, this is not correct.
There are many stores around me here in San Francisco who absolutely do have prices that are close to (and sometimes lower than) "e-tailer" prices. If stores in SF can meet or beat "e-tailer" prices, I find it hard to believe that stores in Bum-fuck Nowhere, USA can't ever do the same.
I think it's a mistake to look at the % price difference instead of the dollar price difference. It's a $33 dollar difference. Which is not much if you are a busy person, but a lot if you have time to shop around. If you're buying a motorcycle and it's $6200 at your local dealer and $6100 a couple of towns away, then you'd consider that difference negligible.
Every local business should be a "local online business" as you suggest. But most business owners don't give a fuck and are happy to see Amazon crush them. Why?
I used to try to support local business, but frankly it's such a waste of time to go looking for products that they never have in stock, ward off annoying salesmen who never have a clue if you actually need help, and dealing with bad return policies. The price difference is but icing on the cake.
Should I spend 15 minutes each way driving (carbon emissions) to the store and waste 1 hr of my time in this case, when it can be delivered to me tomorrow? I definitely want to support local, but the cost/benefits are not as clear in this case.
You really need to consider the reality outside of your own bubble of concern. Especially as your bubble doesn't even extend beyond the door of your house, since you don't understand that the Amazon delivery driver is also driving and also spending his time.
That driving and time is amortized across 1000s of deliveries.
The product is delivered the same distance, whether it is from "Producer -> Amazon warehouses -> Customer" or if it is "Producer -> Retail warehouses -> Customer". An Amazon delivery car with a bunch of products to deliver is the equivalent of OP filling up his car with purchases when shopping in town.
You basically can't buy couple-dollar things on Amazon, which is rather annoying. F.ex. I wanted a fiberglass pole, 5/16" diameter. I could buy 10 for $20. Home Depot had one for $3.50.
Amazon does not seem to have good prices anymore. And it is hard to judge the quality compared to seeing stuff in person.
I feel like they are riding on old momentum by now. The experience shopping there is terrible.
Apple Pay has raised my confidence level about buying directly from smaller internet sites. Since those sites don’t get my raw credit card info when I use Apple Pay, I don’t have to worry about whether they’ve implemented CC handling well (most have not).
I almost never have to resort to Amazon any more.
Is this an ad? Paypal's been doing this for 25 years.
Did America go straight from giving full credit card info to Apple Pay? Chip and pin and card contactless both solve that problem
I was talking about buying from online merchants. I’m less familiar with the security implications of chip-and-pin or contactless card for in-person transactions. Do those technologies prevent the merchant from getting raw CC info?
Rightly or wrongly, I worry less about the security implementations of hardware point-of-sale terminals than the security implementations of small websites.
I mostly prefer Apple Pay for in-person transactions because of anonymity — my understanding is that it makes it harder for companies (other than Apple) to track my purchases.
Bank of America automates the process of creating virtual cards for your account when you set up contactless payments such as Google Pay. It is not an anonymous service as the bank still keeps the transaction records and iirc, will occasionally sell or relinquish the data on request to 3rd parties or enforcement agencies.
Yes mostly. The cell phone wallets were the convenience difference that caused merchants to upgrade their POS systems to support contactless. Before that there just wasn't much reason for merchants to change their existing card infrastructure. Now customers feel inconvenienced if they have to use a credit card.
Amazon used to be the cheapest in almost every category, but more and more, I find that places like Harbor Freight beat them. I even bought a pricey resin printer and a wash and cure station the other day; Microcenter had them beat by $100+.
Harbor freight also has much more consistent quality and no fake name brand items. It’s funny because they used to be synonymous with low quality- but now they seem to have the highest quality tools you can easily buy as a consumer.
I don't think people buy on Amazon because it is the cheapest, they buy on Amazon for convenience. EVERY SINGLE TIME I buy something from someone else (talking online here) I painfully regret that decision (didn't arrive on time, didn't arrive at all, shipped in multiple shipments, one arrived, two didn't and yet order is showing as delivered -> this is just small sample of what I have seen just in the last say 6 weeks). My wife and I have been trying all year to purchase as much as we can on other e-commerce websites but in often (always) ends up like these examples above...
If I don't need to drive to the "local" store, then the local store is miles better than Amazon especially if it has the choices you need. The problem is: 1. many times they don't have exactly what you need but Amazon does and 2. if it requires a ride, then both are no longer 5 bucks.
I worked in an Amazon warehouse for two different periods:
- for over a year part-time on weekends
- four-day full-time in-between jobs recently
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/dmnuts/53mamazon_fulfi...
Once, when polled by HR, I noted that it should be more efficient for many different people in a given neighborhood to place orders, and for one delivery truck to run through it dropping off packages even if somewhat fuel-inefficient, than for that myriad of consumers to make separate trips even if using fuel-efficient vehicles.
Stores should not try to "out-Amazon" Amazon --- I buy my groceries from a store which is 1 mile away, and usually stop on the way home from work --- if I need something over the weekend or on a telework day which won't wait, I walk or ride my bike unless there is some other errand which needs to be made. Similarly, I prefer to shop the local hardware store (bike-distance) for hardware and tools (when suitable ones are available, if not, then it's Harry Epstein, or Jim Bode, or a trip to Woodcraft, or an on-line order).
Folks forget what life was like before Amazon --- there were occasions when I drove all around multiple towns looking for one connector because I didn't want a project to wait for a special order and 6--8 weeks delivery --- my kids were amazed when we came across my copy of the book: _U.S. Mail Order Shopper's Guide: A Subject Guide Listing 3,667 Unique Mail Order Catalogs_ by Susan Spitzer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4313476-u-s-mail-order-s...
> Not only regarding delivery.
You do realize that an electric Amazon van delivering hundreds of packages to your neighborhood pollutes a lot less than you taking your G-wagon to the local store, right?
> but also the message it sends to local stores
"You're obsolete", which is true? Local stores are usually more expensive, carry less inventory, require you to go there or charge delivery fees, have inexistent or predatory return policies, etc. It's simply a worse experience in every way.
There was a time where this was compensated by the vendors having wide knowledge about the subject that they were selling items for, but it's not the case anymore, so really, what's left to local stores?
I don't know why people have this tendency to romanticize outdated and objectively worse in every way things just for the sake of "tradition".
Ignoring the tone of your comment, I agree with you in a way, but I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live.
The US suburbs don't really have what I would call "local stores," just big, well known corporate stores. So, when making the choice of where to buy Product X, my options are giving my money to Best Buy, Walmart, Ikea, Kroger, etc...or Jeff Bezos, whose online empire offers slightly more convenience than the others because I don't have to drive if I can wait a day or two.
There's no family-owned businesses to hurt here because they were all chased out by the Big Box stores years ago. Heck, I remember when they filled in the pond I learned to fish in as a kid just to put up that Walmart. Sure, Amazon can be held up as contributing toward the death of the small business, but those wheels were spinning long before Bezos was selling books out of a garage or whatever mythology we want to accept.
I don't like Amazon. I don't like the idea of one entity having that much influence and control over my consumer habits. I don't like that the business model is just drop-shipping in a trenchcoat of digital services. I don't like that their workers are basically treated as third-world labor.
But I do have to admit that they have won the game and as a result, I have to use them. I wish it were otherwise, but we're past the point of no return, on that. We all gave them permission for this to happen by patronizing it for years, even down to the mistreated workers who keep applying for those jobs knowing full well Amazon's employment reputation. Amazon did not kill small business. Consumers did, ever suckered by savings and convenience.
Thing that I hate most about amazon is how it turned into the western version of aliexpress. Completely flooded with terrible products, you know the ones (badly translated, titles that are a list of keywords, ai generated everything, clearly and badly edited product images, ...)
Like I'm at a point where I order like 5-10 products a year from amazon, mostly cause I can't get them elsewhere for reasonable prices. Everything else I buy in other online stores or physically.
> I also wonder if that has something to do with where I live
I live in the center of London and out of the 200 non-household goods orders I have on Amazon this year I don't think I would have been able to find even 20% of them in local stores.
Actually even when I do go in a store and find an item I need, I scan the barcode on the Amazon app and saw that it's usually a LOT cheaper on Amazon (like, 30% cheaper for the exact same tool).
Add to that what I mention in my previous comment about return policies, travel time, etc. and there's absolutely no reason not to order on Amazon, even if you're in the ideal place to go to local stores.
> Amazon can be held up as contributing toward the death of the small business
Amazon does more than most of those to let you buy from small producers, which also feature in their catalog. The volume SMBs ship on Amazon was in the double digit billions per year when I worked there — and is probably higher now.
Now, back to my regular Amazon criticism!
> But I do have to admit that they have won the game and as a result, I have to use them.
Try ordering direct from the manufacturer's website. A surprising-to-me number of companies have set this up, and it's what I often do if I know what I want and Newegg isn't selling it for a reasonable price (or at all).
Unfortunately, Amazon policies prohibit them from selling their product any cheaper on their own website than they do on Amazon. This essentially guarantees that Amazon will always be cheaper, so there's not much point in going to the manufacturer's website where you don't get prime, you don't get the same guarantees, and you pay at best the same and at worst a whole lot more.
It's quite an evil genius policy on the side of Amazon.
This should be illegal.
what kind of a law would you put in place here to make this illegal? and who would it cover? amazon has a business, yes? and if you want to do business with amazon you have to abide but those rules. you can also just NOT do business with amazon - sell your shit at another place, done deal. too many times here on HN we see people say what you say - let's just add mooooooar laws (these would have to be FEDERAL to make any sense) and have government involved in as many things as possible... it is just wrong although in theory you can say this is unfair - but certainly should be be illegal... like saying apple charging 30% wig should be illegal :)
Are you saying that antitrust law is nonsense?
The laws of our economy are not there to serve a few large companies. They are there to serve us, people, most of all. Do you think that markets will collapse if we had more fair rules for big companies?
I've done that, only to get it "fulfilled by Amazon" anyway.
Weird. I've done it a bunch and not had any indication that Amazon was involved with either the money-handling or the delivery.
It makes a ton of sense that it WOULD happen sometimes, but I've yet to see it.
This is probably not the most environmentally friendly solution, though.
You're right. The most environmentally-friendly solution is to truck, train, or ship things into stores in big cities and let people walk or take public transit to get their things.
I'm not sure how you imagine that ordering direct from a manufacturer works, but I'm certain that most of them have their goods in big warehouses and use major delivery services to get those goods to you, much like they would get those goods to an ordinary store.
Goods are going to be shipped, flown, and trucked around. Until we invent macro-scale teleportation, there's no reasonable way to stop doing that entirely.
> You do realize [...], right?
You are correct, but I don't like this idiom. Your point would come across better if it wasn't delivered in a patronisation sandwich.
Imagine you are taxed to repair the roads, on which your untaxed competitors is driving too ruin you.. a nightmare.
We are taxed for road repairs. It's a common tax on gasoline here in the United States; and, yes, there is a known issue around this with electric cars and some efforts in place to try and rectify it.
Many states recapture those lost taxes via vehicle registration surcharges for EVs. (For example, Texas charges $200, which is consistent with what a truck or SUV would pay driving around 12k mi/yr)
we'd be better off rectifying why everyone thinks they need to drive some monster truck
Amazon in europe went "untaxed" quite a while via the irish route, thus beeing subsidized by mom & pop stores.
Amazon employing people creates a lot of taxes. Don't forget everything's taxed, not just corporation tax. Every employee generates income tax, employee tax, if they invest their money the interest is taxed, almost everything they buy from a shop has VAT, fuel they purchase is taxed, everything they buy has a higher price because that business has to pay tax and so do its employees, ad infinitum. There's tax everywhere, and the roads will still be there if none of those people had jobs and weren't paying any tax.
> employee tax
There is no such thing as "employee tax". Usually, what exists is a scheme for some of the employee's salary to be paid in the form of retirement schemes, health care, etc. It's not a tax to subsidize unrelated things. Likewise, the income tax is not there to pay for the company's use of collective amenities, it's there to pay for the citizen's use.
In the end, if your company doesn't pay all the stuff that other companies do, it's freeloading, and the society would most likely be better off with another company getting the business.
Order from local store, order from Amazon, use first one to receive, return new one to whichever was more expensive.
I agree, in almost all cases there is a store nearby that sells it - and if not I probably won’t need it that bad.
But for me it is an ideological thing - I absolutely loathe Amazon and it’s practices; I just have to visualise how I insert my money into Bezos gaping asshole and my desire to shop at Amazon is rapidly diminishing.
But I think ordering stuff when you are able bodied is immoral as well - not super immoral but you should always feel a little bit bad if you order stuff that you could’ve picked up yourself.
Also the distances in my country are tiny, if you live in the outback with 200km to the next neighbour it’s a different story
For me it is also something ideological but even from an economic point of view I never buy on Amazon, this is my reasoning:
You buy it cheaper but you are generating a debt, it's like buying on credit: somewhere someone is being exploited or a natural resource is being overexploited, and you will pay for it in the future, with a poorer environment socially, economically and naturally.
Everything comes back. I once read that I don't know which tribe made decisions that were good for the next 7 generations, well, buying on amazon is a decision that is not good even for the current generation, you will probably see the consequences in your own or your children's life.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonFC/comments/1hhips1/amazon_te...
Interesting to see discussion on Reddit from r/AmazonFC are pretty negative , wonder if these are genuine employees comment for PR team hired by Amazon
Related:
Amazon Teamsters in NYC have voted to authorize a strike
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42436279
Just a reminder that if you search for "Thank my driver" on Amazon you'll get $5 donated to your most recent delivery driver at no cost to you. You can do this once per delivery, for every delivery, for the few weeks leading up to the holidays.
Looks like they no longer get the tip. This is what I see:
As of December 10, 2024, we have received more than 2 million "thank yous,” concluding the promotion offering $5 per "thank you" to eligible drivers. You can continue to thank your drivers and we will share your appreciation with them.
There seems to be a cap per local area. My area hasn't donated any money for the past week or so. It just says a thank you will be given to the driver. I presume it's because enough people used it to max out the allotment in our zip code(?).
Does this work if the driver is UPS or FedEx? Amazon drivers don't exist in my county and probably not in my state.
Surprised to see they're also offering it in Japan.
I am just curious who still orders anything today with delivery expectation to get it before Xmas. From my experience the delivery drivers are today delivering tons of stuff ordered a week ago and they are so overloaded, that todays order might come only in January.
Back in my day, everything was 6 to 8 weeks for delivery from catalogs (Sears Christmas Wishbook, anyone?) and the carriers were far less accessible when it came to tracking packages and whatnot than they are today. Honestly, those times seem like a cold-sweat nightmare, now. Speaking as an old man who regularly shakes his fist at passing clouds, I'm pretty damned happy with the current delivery times, even if they are occasionally a few days late. Those folks are out there breaking their backs for us and we'd best not forget it
Speaking from personal experience: people with ADHD, who don't have their shit together but desperately want to avoid disappointing the people they care about. People who then get hoodwinked by the bald faced lies everybody from Amazon right through to the courier staff will tell you about projected delivery dates and "oh, gosh, sorry, you know we just attempted delivery but couldn't get in!" (while you're sitting in front of the building)
My solution for this is to keep gifts for the people I buy presents for in mind throughout the year, and buy things as I come across them, then, when it's time to wrap, my wife and I lay things out and decide what actually gets gifted, excess gets set aside for upcoming birthdays (which are both fortunately early in the year, Jan. and March) or possibly even the next Christmas, then come April I start in on the process again.
I ordered everything Christmas related before December 1st.
Now I'm just holding my usual orders until after Christmas to avoid having stuff lost in the big rush.
Better to go with a digital gift card if you haven't received everything for now.
Try avoiding Amazon this holiday season, to not cross the picket line.
Are they specifically calling for a boycott, though? Or just striking? (Because if it's the latter, getting orders that go unfulfilled may actually help their cause.)
So what you're saying is we should order a bunch of stuff and then cancel at the first sign of a delay in fulfillment so amazon loses more by waiting it out?
[dead]
Just making sure that the case to replace them with robots is #1 priority for the business.
> The world's second-largest private employer employs 1.5 million people. While that's a lot, it's a decrease of over 100,000 employees from the 1.6 million workers it had in 2021. [...] While Amazon is bringing on hundreds of thousands of robots per year, the company is slowly decreasing its employee numbers.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-grows-over-750-000-153...
This is the discussion which we need to be having, and one which has been put off since Jimmy Carter failed to put a tax into place on computers so as to budget for worker re-training for folks whose jobs were eliminated by computers.
Instead, you had situations such as the type compositors unions bargaining for sinecures for their members, rather than participating in, and informing the usage of the new systems, contributing to a decade of ugly "Desktop DTP".
On-going automation should reduce the total number of hours which humans need to work to ensure that humanity is housed, clothed, fed, &c. --- why aren't we talking about reducing the workweek? See recent story in Tokyo:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342203
Or, if the U.S. gathered together all the money used for Disability, SSI, WIC, Unemployment, Welfare, Social Security &c. _and_ their administration and overhead, there would be a significant amount of money --- would that be sufficient to fund a Universal Basic Income?
Amazon is going to do that anyway. May as well stand up for your share of the profits.
The thing is, it used to be standard for full-time employees to get a full stock share, but that was bargained away --- anyone know the rationale?
Probably not going to happen anyway.