by Danny Caine
Hennepin County Library paperback 177 pages plus appendix, acknowledgements, and citations
Published: 2022 (original in 2021)
Genre: non-fiction, antimonopoly
This was on a friend's end table and caught my attention. She's a book store owner (Dreary Lane Books in Grand Marais, MN). I was curious, since I sometimes order from Amazon but dislike what I've heard about Jeff Bezos and how he does business. I didn't want to buy a copy (though I did buy some other books from her shop to give as gifts!), so I got it from the library to read.
Wow! It didn't surprise me that he would be passionate about this topic, but his depth of research (the citations are several pages' worth in small print) and his argumentation are strong. By two-thirds of the way through the book, I was thinking "I got the WHY; tell me HOW!" Very interesting reading.
Page 15: "Some may try to attribute the explosion of Amazon's reach to Jeff Bezos's business brilliance. However, even if Bezos had a profitable idea at the right time, literal billions in tax breaks and government benefits have helped Amazon rise to the pinnacle it occupies today. . . . In 2018, Amazon made over $11 billion in profits and paid no federal income tax."
That is the kind of thing that makes me want to scream! I don't mind paying taxes so that I have parks, libraries, roads, police, fire departments, etc. But to have someone reap such incredible wealth without paying taxes is just insane! Why would our government offer help to a billionaire and his company instead of helping veterans or fixing the health care crisis in America?
Page 39: "As a bookseller, trust me: not all editions of old books are created equal. For every lovingly assembled Norton or Oxford (or Belt or Valancourt) edition, there are dozens of shitty print-on-demand cash grabs scrambling to rob you of your money through bad algorithms."
There are just too many times people think they're ordering one thing and then what they get is just garbage. His conclusion that "The sloppiness of Amazon's bookstore, and their refusal to fix it, is actively preventing people from protecting and carrying on literary legacies." As a book lover, this makes me so sad.
Page 42: ". . . whatever moral compass Amazon has spins only when bad PR hovers near."
I know companies have making money as their primary goal, but it seems that some companies also try to be good employers or good stewards of the Earth. This line seems to perfectly capture the Amazon ethos.
Page 49: "But I think Amazon is deserving of special scrutiny for a few reasons. Chief among them is this: even if a new worker at Amazon starts at $15 an hour, Jeff Bezoa makes $8,560,000 an hour."
This level of wealth, especially uncoupled from moral direction, appalls me. Think of all the good he could do with that wealth! Make life better for his employees? Choose a cause and fight for it? Hey, Jeff! You can't take it with you. Eternity is a long time.
Page 76: "Because Amazon is so big and gets such a good deal from the USPS, it forces the USPS to raise prices on everyone else. Secondly, Amazon is an undue burden on the USPS because it forces the USPS to deliver only the routes Amazon doesn't want to deliver to itself. When doing so is cheap, Amazon completes last-mile deliveries with their own third-party vans. When it's too expensive, Amazon forces the USPS to take care of it."
I love the USPS! Between Louis DeJoy and Amazon, I'm seeing the impact of their horridness on the organization that should remain strong for all Americans.
Page 82: "There are three things that concern me about how Amazon has built its private shipping network: first, its desire to usurp a shipping network that's highly regulated and largely unionized with something unsafe and unregulated. Second, I worry about Amazon's constant desire to divorce itself from the consequences of its spread and influence. Seemingly at every turn, Amazon has a way to distance itself from the effects of its dominance. Our delivery van killed your grandma? We're sorry for your loss, but it's not really our delivery van. It's a third party van and the responsibility lies with this small company. Never mind that the company's sole purpose is to deliver Amazon packages or that it was founded with a loan from Amazon, it's still a separate company, see? . . . Third, and perhaps most importantly, when Amazon and other big companies take distribution into their own hands, it's creating a future where small and medium-sized businesses can't compete."
Caine offers specific examples throughout the book that just pile on the awfulness of this company. The grandma getting killed is a true story. (Chicago in 2016, right before Christmas. The driver was found not guilty of murder.)
Page 98: "Former Amazon executive James Thompson echoes many others when he says Amazon 'happen(s) to sell products, but they are a data company.'"
Page 99: "Amazon is obsessed with collecting your data. It is not obsessed with protecting it. . . . But it's worth bearing in mind three things we know about Amazon: data is incredibly profitable to them, they are incredibly ruthless in getting what they want, and they are less than careful once they have it."
This section was chilling! Louie and I have said that we don't want an Alexa (or Siri) in our home and we have chosen not to get a Ring doorbell. But the extensive reach of Amazon's data-collection is very Orwellian.
Page 140: "Finding legal ways to avoid paying taxes is central to how Amazon does business, and one of their main methods for this evasion is the courting of incentives from local governments."
Reading this makes me wonder how much Shakopee and Scott County gave up to have an Amazon warehouse in my area. I don't want to check. I'm guessing they thought only about bringing economic development to the area and providing job opportunities for residents.
Page 141: "Until that happens, in Lawrence, Kansas, a bag of chips is taxed at a higher rate than Amazon pays in federal taxes. Only one of those things is worth more than $1 trillion, and it's not the Doritos."
Again, how does our government find this a good option?
Page 163 finally brings me to the HOW part of this book's title! Here are the main points:
1. Shop Local
2. Cancel Your Prime Subscription, or even better, your Amazon account
3. Avoid Amazon-affiliated Brands
4. Instead of Amazon-affiliated brands, use indie-friendly alternatives
5. You don't have to plug your house into Amazon's privacy-invading security network.
6. Advocate
7. Make art about and outside of Amazon
8. Make it known
9. You can't scare me; I'm sticking to the union
I already like the "shop local" - and I try to do this. Actually, I've been trying to shop less in general. Amazon is too convenient and you can get so many different things. But I'm going to try harder to find things locally or figure out how to buy online from whomever actually produces a thing instead of from Amazon.
He makes it sound as though it's a huge hassle to fully delete your Amazon account. It is a convenient way for me to look for things and chuck them in my cart to think about finding or buying later. At some point, I may ditch this system.
Wow! There are a LOT of Amazon-affiliated brands! Most of these are not ones I use. I'm sad to see that Goodreads is an Amazon company, but I never started an account there.
Caine writes a very interesting and persuasive book. I felt a little sheepish about getting it from the library instead of spending money at an indie bookstore, but Caine says, "Public libraries are one of the last great anti-capitalist spaces. To really resist Amazon and what they represent, form a good and loyal relationship with your public library." Yay for public libraries!!!
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