So anyone that knows me well, knows my passion for bringing economic and social equality to our world. I believe no one is justified in being a bazzillionare.
Often, I get push back with a statement like “well then just don’t buy from Amazon!”. I usually don’t engage this push back because it shows an utter lack of understanding the complexity of our economic reality. But let’s go ahead and look at Amazon. Amazon started as another online book retailer. They did this very well with their fast delivery and great customer service. Then they introduced more and more goods. Then they introduced 3rd party sellers. As far back as selling books, behind the curtain they were known as brutal. I’ve heard small independent retailers say to the effect, "You can’t sell through them and you can’t sell without them." They are notorious for copying popular items from their 3rd party sellers at a price they can’t compete with. For instance, I was in a jam and needed a pair of dressy casual pants that fit - in a hurry. I searched for “Men’s chino pants”. A few option appeared but the Amazon Essentials options were the most prominent. The price for one pair was $13 USA. How in the world can anyone make a pair for pants for less than $13. There is no way they are paying a decent wage to the person making them. You know there is a part of that price that goes toward shipping from some other country. The pants are okay. I’ve been wearing them and no seems have blown out or anything. Obviously they’re no LL Bean Chino’s which I would rather have. And obviously, they’d never be able to claim ethically made - which I would rather have. I can’t afford that right now. Yes, I need to shop at a secondhand store… That’s for another day. But the biggest misnomer in the understanding of Amazon is that… They are not a retail business! 75% of their revenue comes from cloud computing services, AWS. If the retail side closed down tomorrow, their annual revenue would probably go up! All of the cost of the retail side would go away and the cloud infrastructure could then be sold to other companies. I hope the recent services blackout we all experienced opens some eyes to how big AWS really is. So now that Amazon is in the category of too big to fail, politicians will roll out even more tax breaks and interest free loans if it ever falters. So I hope you begin to see that “just don’t but from Amazon“ just isn’t as simple as that.