6 ms·

Don't work for Amazon, don't buy from Amazon if you can. I've started to order my books through my local bookstore recently, it's surprisingly easy. I do my re

Don't work for Amazon, don't buy from Amazon if you can. I've started to order my books through my local bookstore recently, it's surprisingly easy. I do my research online (often times via AMZN tbh) and pick up the books on my way from/to the office.

gdulli 10y ago
Walgreens, Best Buy, and Newegg turned out to have better deals for the last few things I would have bought from Amazon. Lower or equivalent prices and free shipping without having to pay $100/yr or have a $50 order.
f_allwein 10y ago
Exactly this. Besides not paying a fair amount of tax (= not giving back to society), it also drains money out of local economies if everybody just buys everything from Amazon.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  You first have to explain the worship of local economies and small stores. 99% of the time they can't give you a better price, because their overhead isn't optimized and/or they operate at much smaller scale. So your suggestion is basically to support the less efficient businesses.
  - gdulli 10y ago
    It's not only about efficiency. Unlike Amazon, a real bookstore is a lot of fun to browse in. Being able to browse real shelves, hold and flip through real books for an hour or two is a great leisure activity in itself. Now that stores are closing and it's at risk, I'd even pay a small entrance fee if it meant keeping the good ones open. Though I agree that a larger chain bookstore with more selection offers more value than a small bookstore, for me it's more about real-world vs. online, not large vs. small business.
  - mmcwilliams 10y ago
    If your goal is to reward businesses that operate at the highest efficiency, then you are correct; supporting local businesses doesn't make sense to you. If you have any kind of self-interest, though, supporting local businesses should be your priority. How does it benefit you to send your money away from your city or town so that it does not get re-invested in the area directly surrounding you? A lower share of your money gets re-invested in roads and schools through taxes and it has a multiplying effect when local businesses shutter frequently. It lowers real estate prices (assuming you own real estate, this matters) and reduces the quality of life of those around you; a factor which tends to cause an increase in the crime rate. Your argument is essentially, "Why eat at anywhere other than McDonalds? They have the most efficient supply chain."
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      That argument breaks down when you realize that your local businesses aren't buying the goods or services that you can provide locally. You should really be buying from the people and businesses with the fewest trade transactions from your customers. Once upon a time, that meant buying local was a smart move, but now it's more complex. Since I, as a software developer, do not have any small business customers, the tightest possible trade graph loops that could return my own spending back to me all go through the larger national- and international-scale businesses. Generalizing, I should prefer to buy from the companies that spend the most on software and software development, or who often buy from companies that spend a lot on my industry. If I go to the farmers' market, I should prefer to buy from the stand that uses Google Pay or Stripe or Square or Bitcoin--or even Paypal--than from the one that is cash-only. Failing that, I should buy from the guy who has the newest tractor, with programmable GPS-assisted steering and blinking LEDs on the cup holder. Failing that, I should buy from the guy that spends the most on MMORPGs and dating websites. Anything invested in a place will never pay off if I have to move away from it. And if I move, I can always prefer to move to the places that already have good schools and roads and parks without any additional investment from me. Why should I eat anywhere other than McDonald's? Every chain and franchise restaurant runs McDonald's management software. They have touchscreen POSTs, and reprogrammable menu displays, and video screens at both of the dual drive-through lanes. They are consistent and inexpensive and "invest heavily" in R&D. Because sometimes I just want a convenient variety of salubrious and tasty food to eat, that's why. When Just-Down-My-Street Diner hires me to remodel their website, that's when I should prefer to eat there out of pure economic self-interest.
  - lr 10y ago
    Is efficiency all that metters in life?
    - briandear 10y ago
      Yes. That results in the best distribution of scarce resources. The opposite of efficiency is waste.
    - vinceguidry 10y ago
      In arenas of scale, yes. If you are the low-cost, mass offering, then wringing out unit economics is all that matters to you. Your customers are interchangeable and you can safely assume that there are more price-sensitive ones than there are those who value morals higher. Morals are God's concern, therefore it's up to God to enforce them. God needs to reach his hand down and decree to the land that thou shalt not abuse your employees. This reverberates throughout the land and causes the powerful to tremble in fear. They all get together in a room and quietly make plans to appease the masses so they don't pray for blood or start a revolution. Of course, in this case God is the government. Given enough political pressure, legislators can pass laws that change the landscape of commerce. Pressure can compel prosecutors to prosecute, regulators to punish. The threat of these punishments is often enough to keep the unscrupulous in line and allow the virtuous to have their say.
      - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
        All you're doing there is replacing the implied morality of 'God' with the different implied morality of 'economics.' It can be useful to remember that economics is primarily a branch of rhetorical moral philosophy - not an empirical science.
  - fsloth 10y ago
    Local bookstore has the value of being a bookstore. Personally I love the feeling of space filled with works of print, any of them browsable by will. The experience of connecting with something physical is what makes it different from just browsing amazon's kindle store.
- briandear 10y ago
  What's a 'fair' amount of tax? It doesn't drain local economies: it drains local retail, but if local retail were more competitive, then they'd be more competitive. Why should I subsidize local retail by paying higher prices? I don't owe local retail anything. If they aren't providing a better value (either through lower prices or better service,) then why should I buy from them? It's not my fault they can't compete. Amazon wasn't always big. They started small as well -- however they knew how to innovate which is a skill most local stores lack because they still use a distribution model from the 1800s.
  - apk17 10y ago
    An amount that a similar national company would have to do. International companies have a way of shifting earnings into jurisdictions where they don't need to pay much taxes, since there is still a race to the bottom between countries. 'Better they pay us 2% of revenues that that other country 10%.' (This has noting to do with the way the supply chain is done.)
  - jawilson2 10y ago
    I think you can make the argument that if you have strong local business it improves your neighborhood by keeping that money local, where it is reinvested either directly (e.g. your neighbor who owns the local hardware store has more money to buy things, upgrade his house, etc.) or through taxes. This leads to better schools, infrastructure, etc. There ARE drawbacks to having a giant centralized but convenient all-in-one supplier that can undercut the little guy on price and timeliness; you lose something along the way. I am not blameless in this; we just bought a house, and although we have a locally owned hardware store that I try to go to first, there are so many things I have had the options of A) waiting 7+ days for them to get it in, B) getting it from Home Depot/Lowes within an hour, or C) getting it delivered from Amazon Prime tomorrow. It is nearly impossible to compete with that, but I WANT to support my local guy whose family has owned the business since the 60's. I don't know what the answer is.
vijayr 10y ago
Almost every big company [1] does something or the other that is so bad ethically (and sometimes legally too) that if we decided to boycott, we'd end up boycotting them all - and this is assuming people are even willing to, which most people aren't (convenience and product price trumps everything else to most). I just wish there is a way to protest and protest strongly enough for them to change their behavior. There have been some good attempts [2]. What else can a normal person do to protest? [1] Some examples here - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4wpl0i/whats_a_big_industry_secret_that_isnt_supposed_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4wpl0i/whats_a_b... [2] https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse
- gdulli 10y ago
  You can find positive and negative anecdotes about any company, but with Amazon it's a qualitatively different situation. It's a long-term ongoing pattern of unethical behavior, a cacophony of negative feedback that outweighs the positive. The way they treat their blue-collar employees, white-collar, business partners, sellers, etc. (All parties except the buyers.) I've stopped buying from them but I'm realistic, very few people will care enough to do so, not enough to affect their bottom line. I do it because it supporting them would feel wrong to me. Not because I expect I can make them change.
  - vijayr 10y ago
    I don't shop at a few places (Walmart etc), can add Amazon to that list. Will it make any difference though? You and I are probably in the rounding error minority, unlikely to move the needle. We can feel good about our choices though, I don't see any other positive result.
    - gdulli 10y ago
      Whether it makes a difference or not, I'd rather feel good about my choices than feel bad. With its current practices, it's only a matter of time before Amazon has a recruitment problem that it can't fix.
mrweasel 10y ago
>I've started to order my books through my local bookstore recently Yeeaah, about that... Last time I ordered a book at my local book store, they just ordered it of Amazon. The guy behind the counter tried to remove the Amazon packing discreetly, but failed. If book stores are going to be complain about how Amazon is putting them out of business, they should at least not use them as a supplier.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  Is it possible their usual supplier just couldn't get them that book for whatever reason? It's not necessarily a good idea to explain that to the customer and have them decide "much less hassle to use Amazon for everything then", than to order off Amazon and sell it to the customer at cost and hope they come back.
  - Moto7451 10y ago
    When I worked retail we stocked books from one vendor that actually sold their products directly on Amazon at a lower cost than they'd sell to their wholesalers. We'd gladly take that discount instead of paying a premium for ordering directly from the publisher. We also used that as an opportunity to drop ship. The business sold books to get people in the store to buy higher ticket items so feeding the Amazon machine was a neutral affair.
  - GabrielF00 10y ago
    Probably their usual supplier is slower. I haven't had a bookstore order something for me in a few years, but it used to take more than 2 days to get the item. I'm guessing that the distributors that supply bookstores are optimized to deliver large shipments, not one-off orders.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I'm happy having an MITM between me and Amazon's identity and preferences engine. My local bookstore gives me Amazon's price, and has an understanding that my name doesn't go on the order. Better yet: the library.

gdulli 10y ago

Walgreens, Best Buy, and Newegg turned out to have better deals for the last few things I would have bought from Amazon. Lower or equivalent prices and free shipping without having to pay $100/yr or have a $50 order.

f_allwein 10y ago

Exactly this. Besides not paying a fair amount of tax (= not giving back to society), it also drains money out of local economies if everybody just buys everything from Amazon.

imaginenore 10y ago
You first have to explain the worship of local economies and small stores. 99% of the time they can't give you a better price, because their overhead isn't optimized and/or they operate at much smaller scale. So your suggestion is basically to support the less efficient businesses.
- gdulli 10y ago
  It's not only about efficiency. Unlike Amazon, a real bookstore is a lot of fun to browse in. Being able to browse real shelves, hold and flip through real books for an hour or two is a great leisure activity in itself. Now that stores are closing and it's at risk, I'd even pay a small entrance fee if it meant keeping the good ones open. Though I agree that a larger chain bookstore with more selection offers more value than a small bookstore, for me it's more about real-world vs. online, not large vs. small business.
- mmcwilliams 10y ago
  If your goal is to reward businesses that operate at the highest efficiency, then you are correct; supporting local businesses doesn't make sense to you. If you have any kind of self-interest, though, supporting local businesses should be your priority. How does it benefit you to send your money away from your city or town so that it does not get re-invested in the area directly surrounding you? A lower share of your money gets re-invested in roads and schools through taxes and it has a multiplying effect when local businesses shutter frequently. It lowers real estate prices (assuming you own real estate, this matters) and reduces the quality of life of those around you; a factor which tends to cause an increase in the crime rate. Your argument is essentially, "Why eat at anywhere other than McDonalds? They have the most efficient supply chain."
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    That argument breaks down when you realize that your local businesses aren't buying the goods or services that you can provide locally. You should really be buying from the people and businesses with the fewest trade transactions from your customers. Once upon a time, that meant buying local was a smart move, but now it's more complex. Since I, as a software developer, do not have any small business customers, the tightest possible trade graph loops that could return my own spending back to me all go through the larger national- and international-scale businesses. Generalizing, I should prefer to buy from the companies that spend the most on software and software development, or who often buy from companies that spend a lot on my industry. If I go to the farmers' market, I should prefer to buy from the stand that uses Google Pay or Stripe or Square or Bitcoin--or even Paypal--than from the one that is cash-only. Failing that, I should buy from the guy who has the newest tractor, with programmable GPS-assisted steering and blinking LEDs on the cup holder. Failing that, I should buy from the guy that spends the most on MMORPGs and dating websites. Anything invested in a place will never pay off if I have to move away from it. And if I move, I can always prefer to move to the places that already have good schools and roads and parks without any additional investment from me. Why should I eat anywhere other than McDonald's? Every chain and franchise restaurant runs McDonald's management software. They have touchscreen POSTs, and reprogrammable menu displays, and video screens at both of the dual drive-through lanes. They are consistent and inexpensive and "invest heavily" in R&D. Because sometimes I just want a convenient variety of salubrious and tasty food to eat, that's why. When Just-Down-My-Street Diner hires me to remodel their website, that's when I should prefer to eat there out of pure economic self-interest.
- lr 10y ago
  Is efficiency all that metters in life?
  - briandear 10y ago
    Yes. That results in the best distribution of scarce resources. The opposite of efficiency is waste.
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    In arenas of scale, yes. If you are the low-cost, mass offering, then wringing out unit economics is all that matters to you. Your customers are interchangeable and you can safely assume that there are more price-sensitive ones than there are those who value morals higher. Morals are God's concern, therefore it's up to God to enforce them. God needs to reach his hand down and decree to the land that thou shalt not abuse your employees. This reverberates throughout the land and causes the powerful to tremble in fear. They all get together in a room and quietly make plans to appease the masses so they don't pray for blood or start a revolution. Of course, in this case God is the government. Given enough political pressure, legislators can pass laws that change the landscape of commerce. Pressure can compel prosecutors to prosecute, regulators to punish. The threat of these punishments is often enough to keep the unscrupulous in line and allow the virtuous to have their say.
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      All you're doing there is replacing the implied morality of 'God' with the different implied morality of 'economics.' It can be useful to remember that economics is primarily a branch of rhetorical moral philosophy - not an empirical science.
- fsloth 10y ago
  Local bookstore has the value of being a bookstore. Personally I love the feeling of space filled with works of print, any of them browsable by will. The experience of connecting with something physical is what makes it different from just browsing amazon's kindle store.
briandear 10y ago
What's a 'fair' amount of tax? It doesn't drain local economies: it drains local retail, but if local retail were more competitive, then they'd be more competitive. Why should I subsidize local retail by paying higher prices? I don't owe local retail anything. If they aren't providing a better value (either through lower prices or better service,) then why should I buy from them? It's not my fault they can't compete. Amazon wasn't always big. They started small as well -- however they knew how to innovate which is a skill most local stores lack because they still use a distribution model from the 1800s.
- apk17 10y ago
  An amount that a similar national company would have to do. International companies have a way of shifting earnings into jurisdictions where they don't need to pay much taxes, since there is still a race to the bottom between countries. 'Better they pay us 2% of revenues that that other country 10%.' (This has noting to do with the way the supply chain is done.)
- jawilson2 10y ago
  I think you can make the argument that if you have strong local business it improves your neighborhood by keeping that money local, where it is reinvested either directly (e.g. your neighbor who owns the local hardware store has more money to buy things, upgrade his house, etc.) or through taxes. This leads to better schools, infrastructure, etc. There ARE drawbacks to having a giant centralized but convenient all-in-one supplier that can undercut the little guy on price and timeliness; you lose something along the way. I am not blameless in this; we just bought a house, and although we have a locally owned hardware store that I try to go to first, there are so many things I have had the options of A) waiting 7+ days for them to get it in, B) getting it from Home Depot/Lowes within an hour, or C) getting it delivered from Amazon Prime tomorrow. It is nearly impossible to compete with that, but I WANT to support my local guy whose family has owned the business since the 60's. I don't know what the answer is.

vijayr 10y ago

Almost every big company [1] does something or the other that is so bad ethically (and sometimes legally too) that if we decided to boycott, we'd end up boycotting them all - and this is assuming people are even willing to, which most people aren't (convenience and product price trumps everything else to most). I just wish there is a way to protest and protest strongly enough for them to change their behavior. There have been some good attempts [2]. What else can a normal person do to protest? [1] Some examples here - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4wpl0i/whats_a_big_industry_secret_that_isnt_supposed_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4wpl0i/whats_a_b... [2] https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse

gdulli 10y ago
You can find positive and negative anecdotes about any company, but with Amazon it's a qualitatively different situation. It's a long-term ongoing pattern of unethical behavior, a cacophony of negative feedback that outweighs the positive. The way they treat their blue-collar employees, white-collar, business partners, sellers, etc. (All parties except the buyers.) I've stopped buying from them but I'm realistic, very few people will care enough to do so, not enough to affect their bottom line. I do it because it supporting them would feel wrong to me. Not because I expect I can make them change.
- vijayr 10y ago
  I don't shop at a few places (Walmart etc), can add Amazon to that list. Will it make any difference though? You and I are probably in the rounding error minority, unlikely to move the needle. We can feel good about our choices though, I don't see any other positive result.
  - gdulli 10y ago
    Whether it makes a difference or not, I'd rather feel good about my choices than feel bad. With its current practices, it's only a matter of time before Amazon has a recruitment problem that it can't fix.

mrweasel 10y ago

>I've started to order my books through my local bookstore recently Yeeaah, about that... Last time I ordered a book at my local book store, they just ordered it of Amazon. The guy behind the counter tried to remove the Amazon packing discreetly, but failed. If book stores are going to be complain about how Amazon is putting them out of business, they should at least not use them as a supplier.

vertex-four 10y ago
Is it possible their usual supplier just couldn't get them that book for whatever reason? It's not necessarily a good idea to explain that to the customer and have them decide "much less hassle to use Amazon for everything then", than to order off Amazon and sell it to the customer at cost and hope they come back.
- Moto7451 10y ago
  When I worked retail we stocked books from one vendor that actually sold their products directly on Amazon at a lower cost than they'd sell to their wholesalers. We'd gladly take that discount instead of paying a premium for ordering directly from the publisher. We also used that as an opportunity to drop ship. The business sold books to get people in the store to buy higher ticket items so feeding the Amazon machine was a neutral affair.
- GabrielF00 10y ago
  Probably their usual supplier is slower. I haven't had a bookstore order something for me in a few years, but it used to take more than 2 days to get the item. I'm guessing that the distributors that supply bookstores are optimized to deliver large shipments, not one-off orders.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I'm happy having an MITM between me and Amazon's identity and preferences engine. My local bookstore gives me Amazon's price, and has an understanding that my name doesn't go on the order. Better yet: the library.