Convenience Is Killing Us. Shopping Choices in an Unsustainable Economy.

Moving further from Amazon has been a win for me in 2022

Dear Human of Planet Earth,

I picked up this little guy at Cozy Glow. Yes, it’s a very undressed tree! But the owner - not me - likes it just as it is

Shopping for me is never therapy. It’s never fun. It’s never a sociable activity. And 95% of my purchases are weighed up. Do I really need this? Do I need it now? Less than 5% of my purchases are spontaneous. I prefer to shop alone, and if I end up satisfied with my purchases, I’ll admit there’s a measure of satisfaction.

I’m proud to say I’m a citizen, not a consumer. Researchers say the distinction makes a difference to how we behave. Think of yourself as a citizen and your actions are more civic-minded - you think about how your actions impact others. Think of yourself as a consumer and your focus turns inward - how do I benefit from this transaction?

Amazon, Global Villain or Superhero?

Remember the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021? While some of us had the privilege of working and shopping from home, Amazon workers were packaging and delivering our stuff. We were thankful for Zoom and Amazon - but not so much for Google Classroom. What would the pandemic have been like without online support?

Even so, I’ve been avoiding Amazon for years before Lockdown. Once I learned Amazon treats their employees like rubbish - denying them toilet breaks and sick pay, while subjecting them to intense surveillance, I resolved to buy from them as infrequently as I could manage.

They’re not the first company to come to mind when I need something. Prime’s persistent ads didn’t suck me in. How often do I need something the very next day that I can’t get locally? Twice a year at most. Maybe it’s different for you.

Cory Doctorow, co-author of Chokepoint Capitalism¹ with Rebecca Giblin, tells us how Amazon competes against its own sellers with product lines ripped off its sellers - by brilliantly analyzing the data flowing through its superstore:

Remember that one of those search-results for a cat-bed was a product for dogs? Remember that Amazon made that dog product? How did that end up there? Well, if you’re a seller trying to make a living from cat-beds, your ad-spending is limited by your profit margin. Guess how much it costs Amazon to advertise on Amazon? Amazon is playing with its own chips, and it can always outbid the other players at the table.

Those Amazon own-brand products? They didn’t come out of a vacuum. Amazon monitors its own sellers’ performance, and creams off the best of them, cloning them and then putting its knockoffs above of the original product in search results (Bezos lied to Congress about this, then admitted it was true):

https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/jeff-bezos-may-have-lied-to-congress-about-amazon-practices-reps/

Source: How monopoly enshittified Amazon. Chokepoint Capitalism ruins everything. | by Cory Doctorow | Nov, 2022 | Medium

The more I hear about Amazon the more I want to avoid it.

Amazon, the world’s biggest bookstore - but not for me

A friend introduced me to Bookshop.org and now I turn to Amazon as my last choice for hard copies of books, checking first with Bookshop.org, Waterstones, the local library and sometimes the local charity shops.

I have an Amazon Kindle. It’s only more environmentally friendly to use an e-reader than to buy paper books when you’ve read about 100 books on your Kindle². This is my 2nd Kindle and I haven’t read 100 e-books yet - so till I’ve read 200 on my Kindle, the only thing it’s saving me is money and space.

So yep, my e-books, are usually an Amazon purchase. When this Kindle dies, if I buy another company’s e-reader - will I be able to access all my books on a non-Amazon product using the kindle app? I hope so. But the fact the question comes to mind demonstrates how little we trust these mega-companies to be ethical sellers in the first place.

My active avoidance isn’t devout. I’ve made 22 purchases on Amazon over 2022. This is the list of what I didn’t avoid buying on Amazon:

• 12 Kindle books including four I couldn’t get via Waterstones, Bookshop.org etc

• 6 virtual purchases like Robux for Roblox and a few months of Amazon Fire for Kids subscription

• 2 items to be sent on to Ukraine via a local volunteer

• 2 hard copies of books I couldn’t get elsewhere

By supporting Amazon, aren’t we supporting myriad independent businesses?

Isn’t Amazon just a giant marketplace, supporting affiliates and independents and giving a lot of charity through Amazon Smile?

Well, that’s what they’d like you to believe.

I was chatting with a guy who runs an independent local gift store. He was explaining what happens when folks go to Amazon for his stuff rather than come to his bricks-and-mortar business. On a £10 item, he might earn a paltry 20p.

If you’re signed up for Prime, you could be forgiven for being surprised that as a Prime Amazon customer, your local businessman has to pay to have your product shipped to you via next-day delivery. You might have thought you don’t pay shipping because Amazon pays it, through all those accumulated Prime subscriptions it's been raking in.

But no, the seller pays for a service Amazon claims it’s providing to you. This truly shocked me.

So when you pay £10 for the item, Amazon deducts £6 just to arrange the next-day shipping. You’re paying for Prime - while Amazon is using your custom to punish your local businesses - and businesses everywhere else.

You’re paying Amazon for a service. The seller is paying the courier for Next Day Delivery on Prime, while Amazon is laughing all the way to space, or Mars, or wherever Bezos is heading.

(I’ve now said that three different ways, so I think you get it. I’m still shocked though).

Those aren’t the only fees Amazon charges the seller either.

Here’s Cory Doctorow³ again, explaining why sellers feel forced into Prime:

Amazon sellers have to offer their lowest price on Amazon — they can’t sell more cheaply anywhere else.

Then Amazon hits sellers with fees. Lots of fees:

• Fees to be listed on Prime (without which, your search result is buried at the bottom of an endless scroll):

• Fees for Amazon warehouse fulfillment (without which, your search result is buried at the bottom of an endless scroll)

And finally, there’s payola — the “ads” you have to buy to outcompete the other people who are buying ads to outcompete you.

All told, these fees add up to 45% of the price you pay Amazon — sometimes more. Companies just don’t have 45% margins, because they exist in competitive markets. - Source

No wonder the UK government can’t afford to pay nurses, teachers, posties, and all its railway workers properly.

Amazon and other digital giants are siphoning money out of the economy. Not content to have eviscerated the high streets, they strangle the life out of businesses marketing their wares via the all-inviting Amazon platform.

Now I shop online all the time, and many of the smallest providers run part or all of their service online. I place orders with local businesses and with large national and multi-national chains. I use an online service for my weekly food shopping. It’s not the move to online shopping I object to. It’s monopolies and their abuse of power I have a problem with.

The inverse of a monopoly is a monopsony, Cory Doctorow tells us:

If you are a seller, you have to be on Amazon, otherwise no one will find your stuff and that means they won’t buy it. This is called a monopsony, the obscure inverse of monopoly, where a buyer has power over sellers.

But monopoly and monopsony are closely related phenomena. Monopsonies use control over buyers — the fact that we all have Prime — to exert control over sellers. This lets them force unfavorable terms onto sellers, like deeper discounts. In theory, this is good for use consumers, because prices go down. In practice, though…

Back in June 2021, DC Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust suit against Amazon, because the company had used its monopoly over customers to force such unfavorable terms on sellers that prices were being driven up everywhere, not just on Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie

-Source

I think I’ve done well to limit my Amazon purchases to 22 in 2022. Since I have more unread books in my life than the ripest old age I could dare aspire to, maybe I can limit my shopping on Amazon to zero next year!

Now for the fun bit! I’m going to celebrate with you the local places where I’ve been Christmas shopping!

• I picked up Christmas tree decorations, a scented gift candle, a wooden reindeer with countdown-to-Christmas number cubes, and specialty plum jam from Cozy Glow.

• Scented candles and a diary from Roomium. If you’re ever in Coulsdon - that little town on the South edge of Croydon - or you’re looking for decorative pieces with an artsy, stylish or retro feel, Roomium is a place you want to check out.

  

  Candles and a diary from Roomium. It’s a delightful little place, packed with unique decorative pieces. Go visit!

Hand-made soaps from Willow Wish, a charity providing a business opportunity for people with learning disabilities. I never heard of them before. They had a stall at the Coulsdon Yuletide Street Fair and I’m really delighted to introduce you to them.

handcrafted soaps from Willow Wish, made by people with learning disabilities

A book/tablet holder, perfect for placing my phone when I’m listening to podcasts in the kitchen, from WH Creations. I found them at the Coulsdon Yuletide Street Fair as well.

This book/tablet holder was handcrafted from the staves of a genuine bourbon whiskey barrel. The metal strap comes from the barrels too. WHCreations specialises in handcrafting furniture from materials destined for landfill.

Chocolate truffles from Cocoa Jones, a Purley-based business. Cocoa Jones Chocolates adhere to as many ethical standards as they can think of. For starters, they use high-quality fair-trade cocoa and they avoid palm oil. They offer vegan options to their customers and use recyclable packaging.

gift boxes for the connoisseurs, but you can order gourmet brownies, truffles and so much else as well!

Whether I buy from these businesses online or in person, once I’m going through Amazon to get to them, I know my money is going back to my community.

Does it matter?

Yes, actually. A functional economy is one where enough money is flowing between everyone participating in the economy for most people to feel satisfied and secure.

If instead, most people feel anxious and fearful and many can’t make ends meet, while unthinkable sums of money are hoarded by shareholders of massive entities like Amazon - entities which happily pay disproportionately less tax than brick and mortar businesses, employees on PAYE, and the honest self-employed folks who fill out their tax forms - what we have is an unsustainable economy.

Amazon has its uses, but I’ll continue to buy from them as rarely as I can.

Will I sell with them?

I’ve noticed that for some self-published authors, Amazon is the only source for their books. Like most authors, I’ll probably sell my books on Amazon too. But I’ll be using my website and social media to encourage readers to buy elsewhere if they can. Maybe like me, some of them will make a habit of it.

Amazon is unfair to their employees, unfair to their sellers and increasingly, unfair to their buyers.

And yet so many of us buy from them all the time. Convenience is killing us. Shopping online is one thing. Doing all our shopping from one giant shop that’s become both a monopoly and a monopsony is another altogether.

What does this have to do with climate and sustainability? Well, to answer that we find ourselves comparing bio-diversity vs monoculture, competition vs monopoly, shared ownership and collaboration vs whimsical autocracy, open source info vs patents, shared wealth vs hoarding …

I’ve run out of space and time to elaborate, but think about it over the holidays and you’ll see how it’s all connected!

On that note, Merry Christmas!

With Love,

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Radical,

Croydon,

London,

That patch of earth known today as the United Kingdom

Lat +51.51 Long, -0.118

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1. Note that I went straight to Goodreads to share the link about Chokepoint Capitalism. Goodreads is my default place for reviews and for organising my to-be-read list, but it’s owned by Amazon and therefore a gateway for conveniently buying your books from Amazon too! I could have changed the link but I thought better to leave it there, as a way of underlining how embedded these Big Tech companies are in our lives, even those of us who actively resist them!

2. From ‘How Bad Are Bananas’ by Mike Berners-Lee, revised 2020 edition

3. Full article here: How monopoly enshittified Amazon. Chokepoint Capitalism ruins everything. | by Cory Doctorow | Nov, 2022 | Medium