Amazon Is Ruining Everything

Can it be stopped?

Photo via www.quotecatalog.com on flickr.

A couple months ago, I needed windshield wiper fluid. So I went to Target. Yes, it’s a big chain, but it’s an actual brick-and-mortar store, and it’s close to our house. It’s convenient.

I wandered through the vast aisles till I found the automotive section, where I eventually managed to zero in on the section that purported to carry windshield wiper fluid. Only it didn’t. The shelves in that section were empty.

I could have driven around town looking for an auto supply store or some such place where I might have been able to find what I was seeking. That would have taken some searching, online first and then in person. There was no guarantee that when I arrived, the fluid would be in stock. And I had to get back home for a meeting.

So I went home and ordered the windshield wiper fluid on Amazon.

Amazon as a default for everything

That’s right. I am not without guilt. I’m far from perfect. I shop on Amazon, and Rafael and I watch more shows on Amazon Prime than we do on Netflix (thanks, Mom, for your Acorn and BritBox add-ins!). I buy groceries at Whole Foods, now owned by Amazon, and I get medical care at One Medical, now owned by Amazon. It feels hard to escape Amazon.

Yet I hate Amazon — a company run by a much-too-rich man who, in true evil villain form, is trying to take over the world.

That includes other businesses. Amazon has created a system that practically forces any business selling online to sell through them, since that’s where most shoppers go. But once the seller is in, they find they’ve fallen into a trap. Amazon uses bot-driven algorithms to demote sellers that offer their products for a lower price on any other site. It effectively requires sellers to use its fulfillment system. And it charges sellers nearly $1 for every $2 they make on the platform, raising prices for consumers. Sellers keep large portions of their inventories in Amazon facilities and pay for the fast and “free” shipping that Amazon customers have come to expect. Plus, they have to pay for advertising to ensure their listings aren’t drowned out by the many fly-by-night sellers that keep popping up — also degrading the user experience for customers.

This video lays it out:

If Amazon is doing this to online shopping, do we really want to trust them with our groceries or our health care?

How did it come to this?

I’m old enough to remember when online shopping didn’t even work — and when Amazon only sold books. In those early days, I tried now and then to make an online purchase but gave up quickly, because websites would hang and shopping carts wouldn’t function. It seemed like it would always be that way.

I hardly remember how we got from there to here. From not working to becoming ubiquitous, online shopping sneaked up on us much as aging does. (What? I’ve known my college friend Jack for 43 years? I can’t be that old — and the ‘80s were just a few years ago, weren’t they?)

While online shopping was sneaking up on us, so was Amazon. Gradually, it pervaded every corner of our lives. Reading? Amazon not only still sells books but also provides Kindles we can read them on, and Audible versions if we choose to listen instead. Streaming? Amazon has created its own original shows — some of them very good, like Deadloch, Good Omens, and the most wonderful The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

You can use Amazon’s Alexa to play music, control your smart home, and get weather forecasts. You can buy food from the company at Whole Foods, and return packages there while you’re at it. You can even get your prescriptions from Amazon’s online pharmacy.

Slowly, like the proverbial boiling frog, we’ve let Amazon take over our lives. You may not shop on Amazon, watch Prime Video, own a Kindle, frequent Whole Foods, or go to One Medical. But if so, you’re in a shrinking minority.

Can Amazon be stopped?

It’s no major news flash that we don’t have a truly free market in our modern capitalist system. Our system encourages and supports all kinds of monopolies and near-monopolies, like our utility companies — monopolies that are guaranteed a profit of about 10% — health insurance companies like Cigna and Aetna, tech companies like Microsoft and Alphabet, service companies like Comcast and Verizon, and companies that produce more tangible household products like Anheuser-Busch, Johnson & Johnson, and Nestlé. And we let billionaire businessmen who own multiple other companies also buy media outlets. How is that even allowed? No surprise, Jeff Bezos owns one of the most prominent media outlets, the Washington Post.

But Amazon has gone so beyond the pale, and has violated antitrust laws so egregiously, that now it’s in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC has a lawsuit in progress against the company, claiming that Amazon has violated antitrust laws that prohibit firms from using their monopoly power to unreasonably restrain competition. In this video, Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance does a great job of explaining both the lawsuit and how Amazon has adversely affected both sellers and consumers — and the deeper problems created by monopolies like this one.

As Mitchell points out, the U.S. actually has some strong antitrust laws; we just haven’t been enforcing them. Will we start now? I’m not holding my breath, but the lawsuit looks solid: there’s even evidence, Mitchell says, of Amazon executives “knowingly screwing consumers & killing competition, aware of their own wrong-doing.”

What could change if the lawsuit succeeds?

According to The Nation, it could mean lower prices and more options for all of us, the democratization of the online retail market, and a fundamental change to our system akin to the breakup of AT&T in the 1980s. No small thing.

I’m not a fan of capitalism, but for the moment, that’s our economic system. And to thrive, it requires innovation and competition, which Amazon is killing. That has to change.

We need the eggs

Amazon is not only one of the major monopolies; it’s also a prime (whoops!) example of the “enshittification” of online platforms.

Tech critic Cory Doctorow coined this term to refer to the process by which these platforms make things really nice for users, providing some perceived value that reels us in till we feel dependent on them, and then gradually deteriorate till they’re at best unpleasant and at worst extremely harmful. But at that point, it’s hard to leave because we rely on them so much. You know, the first one’s always free!

Facebook, with its manipulation of elections, was one of the early culprits. But most others have since joined in. Google search has gotten much worse, with ads increasingly drowning out solid results; I need not explain the enshittification of the platform formerly known as Twitter; even the more professional LinkedIn, one of the last holdouts, is showing signs of going down the tubes. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming platforms are headed in the same direction.

So why do we stick with them? Not all of us do, but those of us who haven’t jumped ship stay because of the convenience, connections, information, and other value we still get from these platforms.

Like the old joke goes, we need the eggs:

This guy goes to a doctor and says, “Doctor, my brother thinks he’s a chicken! What can I do?” The doctor says, “Why don’t you get him psychiatric help?” And the guy says, “I would, but we need the eggs.”

How can we get real, quality eggs — without enshittification? That remains to be seen. In his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari proposes banning the current business model for social media platforms, which relies on keeping us on their sites as long as possible. That would be a major step toward deshittification. But breaking up monopolies is also a necessary piece of the puzzle. Let’s hope that this antitrust lawsuit will take us in that direction.