We're All Amazon Customers

Amazon is funded by Vanguard Group Inc, BlackRock Inc., State Street Corp, Fmr Llc, VTSMX - Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Investor Shares, VFINX - Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares, Geode Capital Management, LLC, Price T Rowe Associates Inc, JPmorgan Chase & Co, and Morgan Stanley.

The one thing these corporations all have in common is that they don’t really make anything. They deal in pure money, and they, along with Google and other corporations, who pay for software reviews with Amazon gift cards, intend to make Amazon a monopoly.

This is modeled after Netflix’s corporate strategy. Netflix started streaming in 2007 and their stock increased steadily from 2002 until 2022, when other streaming platforms started to compete, but since then, their stock has rebounded to 2022 levels and continues to rise.

Netflix showed diminishing profits, and was actually losing money, as their stock price continued to rise.

Most people and media outlets ignored this, but like Amazon, they were heavily funded by private equity firms.

In other words, they were able to offer services at prices too good to be true and allowed people to share passwords with no oversight, until they felt they had conquered cable TV.

Now there are ads, the subscription fee has gone up, and it’s become increasingly difficult—if not impossible—to share passwords, but people are hooked, and they’ve bundled services with former competitors such as Apple TV and Peacock.

Despite the increased cost, it’s still cheaper than cable, but if you want to watch everything available on cable, you need to subscribe to a lot of streaming platforms, and they also offer exclusive shows and movies that appear to make them worthwhile. Even if Apple TV or Amazon Prime only offers one decent new movie a month, it’s still cheaper than going to the movies, but when entertainment companies gain a virtual monopoly, it flattens content.

If you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.

The problem with Amazon is much worse.

In terms of true cost, there’s no way it could be cheaper to order food from Amazon than buy locally. Instead of shipping to grocery stores, everything is shipped to individual entities, and all of that has to be packaged in cardboard boxes with plastic cushioning inside, depending on what you’re ordering.

These leaves consumers in a tough spot.

I want to support my local grocery store, but the price discrepancy has become too great, and again, a lot of the reviews I write are paid for with Amazon gift cards.

At the same time, the cost of groceries continues to increase, and at least in NY, going grocery shopping has become like dealing with the TSA. If you have any other bags, they have to be checked in, including reusable shopping bags. You load food into their carts, pay $4.00 for a cartoon of eggs, have to take pictures of items on sale to show the cashier when you’re overcharged, which makes you more paranoid about the advertised price of everything and compels you to memorize prices and watch the price of each item as you’re checking out, and then run to turn in your token for your empty reusable bag so you can load your groceries without buying a new bag and hopefully not piss off the people behind you.

More and more, the prices for items are not even posted and the variety of products has decreased. The only good sales now are for ice cream, which has become a luxury, and the grocery store seems more concerned with getting rid of it before it goes bad.

Buying from Amazon is about 50% cheaper, you don’t have to go through all of this bullshit, a lot us can’t afford to, but eventually, the bottom will fall out.

Local grocery stores will die, we’ll be left with no other viable option, and this is when Amazon’s prices will go up, or reflect their true cost, and they and all of their investors will make bank.

When you’re being screwed in every direction and retiring seems impossible—let alone the world as we know it surviving long enough for you to even make it—and you’re getting hit in the wallet, it’s difficult not to think in the short-term.

Maybe if I can just save or invest enough despite these assets losing value every year and showing signs of collapsing completely—or maybe because of this—we’ve become more self-centered and rapacious.

All we’ll have left are liquor shops, gun shops, and convenience stores that sell lousy cheap food, lottery tickets, and cigarettes, at least until Amazon is inevitably allowed to sell all of this to anyone with a gift card. Currently, guns are the easiest to buy on Amazon.

I still buy beer at the grocery store, but as far as canned tuna, cat food and litter, toothpaste, and toilet paper, Amazon is much cheaper, and again, more platforms—even work bonuses—are paid in Amazon gift cards.

I worked for Amazon delivering packages to people in Midtown Manhattan via hand truck, and the pay and conditions appalled me. I didn’t use any of their gift cards until this month, and as far as selling my books, I’ve sold about 500 times as many on Amazon as on every platform combined, and most of my books are on every platform.

So what the hell am I—or any of us—supposed to do?

Keep fighting when we’ve already lost?

I don’t have a family of my own, but I still have an elderly mother and a younger sister, and want to retire right now. I’m not 50 yet and have decent assets, but not nearly enough to retire, and if I keep getting paid in Amazon gift cards, I’m not in the financial position to justify not using them or Amazon in general.

Idealism, or just being fair, has become too expensive.

My best years are past me and the near future is going to be much worse than we expect, but there is an upshot to this.

Like riding a bicycle in NYC (I feel like I’m going to die at least once every time), it puts all of your other problems into perspective.

There’s no point in worrying about work or retirement, or probably anything. Do the bare minimum and buy the bare minimum. If you want to write a book or paint or whatever, now is the time.

If you want to make a reasonable argument—and this is difficult because we have viable solutions—don’t bother.

The game is already over.