Like Walmart, only with supercomputers and drones: At Amazon.com "cheap" comes at a very hefty price

[ND-Dem]

At first blush, you might wonder why the Lowdown is digging into a company that has built a strong reputation with millions of consumers and even has a rather hip vibe going for it. After all, isn't Amazon considered a model of tech wizardry, having totally reinvented retail marketing for our smart-phone, globally-linked age? Yes. And doesn't it peddle a cornucopia of goods through a convenient "1-click" ordering system, rapidly delivering the goods right to your doorstep? Yes, yes, and yes. Also, doesn't it offer irresistibly steep discounts on the price of nearly everything it sells (which is nearly everything)? Yes, again.

However, as an old saying puts it: The higher the monkey climbs the more you see of its ugly side. Amazon certainly has climbed high in a hurry. Not yet 20 years old, it's already a household brand name and America's 10th largest retailer...

But what is the source of those "efficiencies" and the low prices that are so greatly admired by Wall Street and so gratefully accepted by customers? Are they achieved strictly by being a virtual store, selling everything through the World Wide Web, meaning that it doesn't have to build, staff, and maintain any retail outlets? Or is Amazon achieving market dominance the old-fashioned way--by squeezing the life out of its workers and suppliers, by crushing its competitors (from small shops on Main Street to big chain-store rivals) with monopolistic muscle, and by manipulating our national and state tax laws?

Voila! There's the ugly side. Thus, in both this month's issue and September's, the Lowdown will take a hard look at what Amazon is doing to whom--and where that is leading our society.

Amazon screams for scrutiny because it, more than any other single entity, has had the infinite hubris to envision a brave new, computer-driven oligarchic order for our society--then has proceeded to assemble it.

For some 30 years, corporate control has steadily (and stealthily) enveloped major elements of our society--workplaces, politics, education, media, upward mobility, etc. This encroachment has even been given a benign name: "The new normal." But it's not normal, and it's not the result of some immutable economic force, marching through history--it is the product of corporate money and power being relentlessly asserted by individuals.

No one has imagined corporate domination more expansively nor pushed it harder or further than Bezos, and his Amazon stands today as the most advanced and the most ambitious model of a future under oligarchic control, including control of markets, work, information, consumerism, media... and beyond. He doesn't merely see himself remaking commerce with his vast electronic networks, algorithms, and metrics--but rebooting America itself, including our society's concept of a job, the definition of community, and even our basic values of fairness and justice. It amounts to a breathtaking aspiration to transform our culture's democratic paradigm into a corporate imperium, led by Amazon.

Bezos, an admirer of Walmart's predatory business strategy, didn't just duplicate it--he wired it into his supercomputers, applied the Big Data techniques of the NSA to it, and routed it through the matrix of his own grandiose imagination. Walmart, the "Beast of Bentonville," is now yesterday's model of how far-reaching and destructive corporate power can be. Amazon is the new model, not just of tomorrow's corporate beast, but the day after tomorrow's...

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/3724#.VNL2jGctGgx

[MohRokTah]

1. Man, the anti-Amazon crew is working overtime.

Are you going to spam the forum all night?

You are aware that the vast amount of warehouse work for Amazon is outsourced, right?

[ND-Dem]

2. Then you must be the "pro-amazon crew," right?

Also, technically, you don't actually work for BeZon. You're hired by temp agencies with Orwellian names like "Integrity Staffing Solutions," or by such warehouse operators as Amalgamated Giant Shipping that do the dirty work for the retailer.

This gives Amazon plausible deniability about your treatment--and it means you have no labor rights, for you are an "independent contractor." No health care, no vacation time, no scheduled raises, no promotion track, no route to a full-time or permanent job, no regular schedule, no job protection, and--of course--no union. Bezos would rather get Ebola virus than be infected with a union in his realm, and he has gone all out with intimidation tactics, plus hiring a notorious union- busting firm to crush any whisper of worker organization.

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/3724#.VNL2jGctGgx


Bezos is a pig.

[MohRokTah]

3. Fuck yes.

Amazon is awesome.

Amazon gets somewhere between 20 and 40% of my purchasing business.

I'm going off now to purchase an Amazon product right now because that's what I do when people put down Amazon on DU.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. And when they put down Wal-Mart, do you...

run right over there to grab a roll of toilet paper?

Amazon sucks but you don't just tolerate them, you enjoy doing business with them.

We understand. yes, we understand very well.

[MohRokTah]

5. I haven't set foot in a Walmart in over twenty years.

I don't buy their cheap crap.

And the vast majority of my Amazon purchases (with the exception of all eBooks and free streaming) are actually from Amazon third parties that accept Prime. I buy a lot of electronics parts from Amazon because the third parties selling there can be cheaper than Newegg.

I haven't bought a hard copy of a book since I bought my first Kindle.

[ND-Dem]

8. Walmart is just too low-rent for you. Amazon is more upscale. Still a slave-labor business, but

an upscale one.

Yeah, I get it.

[LanternWaste]

13. It is indeed fun, to pretend we know the intent and preoccupations of other people...

It is indeed fun, to pretend we know the intent and preoccupations of other people... it certainly allows us to feel more clever and knowledgeable than we in fact, are.


(below is where you rationalize that the option you provided is the only possible reason to use Amazon that may exist)

[ND-Dem]

19. the poster has clearly expressed his intent and preoccupations in multiple threads on this matter.

[MohRokTah]

17. Walmart sells cheap crap.

And no, you don't get it.

You're making shit up to fit your agenda.

[FSogol]

16. Their arguments do ring a Bell.

[daredtowork]

6. "Being Homeless is Better Than Working for Amazon"

'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon'

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/nov/28/being-homeless-is-better-than-working-for-amazon

Inside Amazon's Bizarre Corporate Culture

http://gawker.com/inside-amazons-bizarre-corporate-culture-1570412337

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

U.S. Government Investigates Recent Worker Deaths at Amazon Facilities

http://gizmodo.com/u-s-government-investigates-recent-worker-deaths-at-am-1590865203

BONUS: Local authors fume as Bezos holds secret Santa Fe retreat

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/business/local-authors-fume-as-bezos-holds-secret-santa-fe-retreat/article_87796248-1b51-5b35-b43f-04f42cc9d5c8.html

[ND-Dem]

9. Interesting, thank you.

“Every year, Jeff Bezos of Amazon invites authors, artists, musicians and other creative people for a secret, swag-laden get together called Campfire,” said Authors United organizer Doug Preston, a writer who lives part time in Santa Fe. “Meanwhile, for the past six months, Amazon has been harming the livelihoods of 2,500 authors by impeding and blocking sale of their books in order to gain leverage in its dispute with the publisher Hachette.”

Diversified Production Services, which produces special events, listed the “featured talent” that year as Neil Armstrong, Man Booker Prize-winner Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), musician, songwriter and producer T Bone Burnett (Crazy Heart), street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey, author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, Czech model and philanthropist Petra Nemcova and Pulitzer Prize Winner Alice Walker (The Color Purple), among others.

Kurt Andersen, a former Time magazine writer... revealed in 2011 that he had attended the gathering in Santa Fe the previous year. His website says he “felt the company [Amazon] was trying to soften up the literary establishment as it moves toward publishing.”

Dennis Johnson, writer/journalist and co-founder of Melville House, the independent publisher in Brooklyn, N.Y., said on his book blog that year, “Well, now that Jeff Bezos is pretty much done destroying American book culture, he’s decided to spend some of his ill-gotten gains on … looking like a champion of writers. Or maybe he just needed to buy some friends.”

The item went on to say that the “Amazon oligarch” had flown authors Michael Chabon, Khaled Hosseini and Neil Gaiman, songwriter Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, and film directors/producers Jason Reitman and Werner Herzog, in addition to Atwood and Walker, to a “think-tanky” event he called the “Amazon Campfire.”

“Nobody knows anything,” he said. The invitees sign nondisclosure statements, and “they’re sticking to them.” Breaking the agreement would be taking your life in your hands, Johnson added, because “he [Bezos] will pursue you.”

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/business/local-authors-fume-as-bezos-holds-secret-santa-fe-retreat/article_87796248-1b51-5b35-b43f-04f42cc9d5c8.html

[Sherman A1]

11. +1000

[sunnystarr]

10. What's your beef?

Less than 2 hours ago you posted another rage about Amazon.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026181834

Personally I love my Amazon.

[ND-Dem]

12. yes, so many democrats love slave labor.

[el_bryanto]

14. Amazon seems inevitable.

It's like fast food or the cheap car - once the idea exists, people are going to want it no matter how much you tell them they shouldn't.

Bryant

[seabeckind]

15. I shop at Amazon

because it gives me easy access to products I am otherwise unable to find anywhere in the retail outlets.

The retail outlets stock and push the products that give them the most return, not necessarily the products that best meet my personal needs. Just a couple of days ago I went into a Staples looking for a particular product type to solve a problem. I had already checked the other places we get the everyday household products but they didn't carry anything like that. Turns out Staples -- which supposedly is the category of product I needed -- didn't either. I ended up with a haf-assed solution from a hardware store that I had to modify to make work.

Another example: in wiring my surround sound system I needed connectors which I could not easily find anywhere in the retail outlets. It was hit and miss.

Another example: Lighting fixtures. Tho I could use the special ordering process at one of the big box stores, the cost of doing a on-off was prohibitive. Using one of the specialty lighting stores was worse because their products were the result of contracts with certain suppliers.

I don't shop at walmart cause their products are shit. Lowest quality at the highest price.

As far as I'm concerned Amazon has found a particular niche and does it well. If their labor relations aren't proper, fix that problem. Eliminating them because of the labor relations just forces a worse problem because our choices become worse.

[benz380]

18. I love Amazon for car parts. Don't have to deal with the fees, etc. like on Ebay.

Plus my son's business does a lot of buying on Amazon and he gets my stuff next day without me being charged.

[ND-Dem]

20. isn't that nice for you. "If their labor relations aren't proper, fix that problem." who's gonna

help fix it? apparently not you, or any of the 'democrats' who just *love* amazon.

[dreamnightwind]

21. Jim Hightower under the bus

Surprised to see so much support for Amazon on this site, not the kind of company we should be supporting.