this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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Amazon is only a problem because Canadians make it one. You don't have to use any of their services, and if you agree that what they are doing is wrong you need to immediately stop using all of their services.
Every use, regardless of how you personally justify it, is an action in support of their practices. Every time you use their services, you support union busting. You support wage-slave labour practices. You support the production of waste by buying cheap and convenient products you don't need. You are literally holding them up and allowing them to do what they do.
Don't be a part of the problem. If everyone said "We won't do business with you because X" that business stops doing "X" because "Y" is the only way to make money now.
This is a great ideology, but there aren't many better alternatives for a lot of people. Most of the alternatives (e.g. Walmart) are just as complicit.
Avoid Amazon when you can, but they have such a critical mass that the only way to defeat them is through government regulation.
Try AliExpress. It has all the same Chinese garbage, but at half the price.
Amazon is not an essential service. One does not need an alternative to a non essential service. One simply doesn't care about the harm done enough to put in any effort to avoid these companies.
This argument is tiring, and in support of these business' by pretending like they are unavoidable. They aren't.
They've inserted themselves into every corner of the consumer goods market. From books to electronics to hobby tools. You'll be hard pressed even in major cities to find local sellers for all sorts of things. Of course this didn't happen overnight. Of course everyone who has used one of their products or services are complicit. But at this point saying that they're not an essential service isn't entirely true. So many businesses, small and large, couldn't compete, and shut down or switched to selling on Amazon. So when they vacate a market there's a vacuum left, and very few businesses to step in immediately to take up the slack.
Some of the businesses left to fill that void are just as bad, Walmart et al.
Was it avoidable?
Sure! It was, absolutely.
Was it obvious as they slowly took over and crushed multiple markets?
Sure, but people are essentially lazy, and will almost always go for the easiest option even if it's actively harming their quality of life and options available to them.
Better alternatives for what? I can't think of anything I've ever bought from Amazon out of necessity, only laziness. And nowadays, pretty much everything that cannot be bought at a brick and mortar store, can be bought directly from the manufacturers website.