Thursday, December 22nd, 2016
Stephan: One of the trends shaping our future is consolidation. Six corporations own most of the media is one. But nowhere is it clearer than with Amazon, as this report spells out. I admit it I use Amazon frequently. We live in a rural area, getting to a store like Costco, is a a project. Amazon is in my office, as it is in yours. It fulfills a need, although we buy many things from other sites. But Amazon is the new Sears.
If you read in the diaries, and daybooks of men and women, beginning in the late 19th century they are filled with tales of the Sears catalogue. All over America people ordered from their Sears catalogue, then in some rural farms put it in the privy, both as reading material and toilet paper. It was a ubiquitous totem object.
It seems to me the question is is not that Amazon commands such a large market share, but that it be regulated and the culture demand that it conduct its affairs while fostering wellbeing. This is one reason why unions are important. But it takes everyone: Wellbeing is a collective intention made up of many acts.
Amazon Books, for now the online retailer’s sole physical bookstore, at the University Village mall in Seattle, March 9, 2016.
Credit: Michael Hanson / The New York Times
Amazon.com is ubiquitous: It seems to reach into all the corners of our lives, selling everything from toiletries to furniture. Yet, beyond the “A to Z” selections offered on Amazon exists the reality that workers, consumers and their communities are suffering from the retailer’s stranglehold on the American economy, researchers at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) say in a study released in late November. Not only does Amazon possess an increasingly dominant share of the retail market — with one of every two dollars spent online going to the company — but it is increasingly expanding into other low-road money-making schemes, at the expense of public coffers. Amazon’s grip on the US economy should be worrisome for anyone seeking an egalitarian and fair society.
“A to Z”? The M Is for Monopoly
As ILSR puts it, when considering Amazon, imagine “if Walmart owned most of our malls and Main Streets, […]
Stephan – Have you found any articles on internet stores charging different prices according to zip codes?
I now buy most of my books from Amazon and, if possible, from the used section. I will purchase new to support the author when I can, but then there is the conflict of using up more resources verses purchasing it used. I do quite a bit of research online, but prefer reading from a real book.
Thank you Stephan for your lead-in to this article. I was laughing so hard after remembering my grandfather’s house (where I lived for a while when young) and sliding down the hill in mornings to the out house and having to use those hard Sears catalog pages for toilet paper. It brought back great old memories of the care-free days of my youth. I told my wife about it and we sat and laughed at our similar experiences for half an hour.
Isn’t Amazon a utility? Just as is Google. Only problem is that between this centralization and robots and Artificial Intelligence we have no jobs last. What do we do…. kill all the robots? Throw the computers in the fire? Well, no, for you are reading this on one of them.
The unknown trend in from of our noses is that there is no room for people in our economy, but the economy is Just Fine. That was so apparent as the Democrats were mouthing the great economic numbers…. to voter who said… no! We must come to terms, economically, with robots, and no one politically, Bernie, Hillary or the Donald came near that.
If Robots are seen as utilities, and everybody gets a nick through the UBI, then at least business can have customers. Elon Musk, seen as a devil from the right because he supports solar, supports the UBI, Universal Basic Income. Why? He actually makes stuff in manufacturing and sees how productive robots are.
How can this ever be digested politically? I don’t know. I do know that if we follow tradition… the bankers way… we will dramatically enforce inelastic demand, otherwise known as war.