The American retail market can be described with three words: variety, variety and still more variety. Anything and everything one could need is available for purchase at the biggest retail providers. Just walk into the closest Target, Walmart or Aldi, peruse the meticulously organized aisles and walk past the food, makeup, hardware, clothes, toys and technology. Tell me you haven’t found exactly what you're looking for. Now, imagine you could indulge in that same sense of pure bliss, calm and convenience from the comfort of your home. Fortunately, you can with Amazon.
Brought to life in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, the multinational conglomerate began as a small online bookselling service operating out of a rented garage. By 1999, Amazon had seen such success in the bookselling market that Bezos was named Time’s Person of the Year. By 2001, Amazon had a market cap of around $4 billion and was staffed by approximately 8,000 employees. Bezos had always maintained that Amazon’s true purpose was not bookselling but rather becoming a technology company intended to facilitate online transactions and deliveries to users. Bezos’ vision was partly represented by the creation of Amazon Web Services, a data service and cloud storage provider.
Given Amazon’s widespread reach, we must ask: How has the ascension of Amazon as America’s largest online retailer affected our economy, our working conditions and even our relationship to consumption?
Amazon’s corporate activities are so strongly associated with an uptick in available employment that the company is often subject to large tax breaks and subsidies. Just in 2022, Amazon squeezed over $5.1 billion in combined subsidies and tax breaks from state and federal sources. The most profitable of Amazon’s subsidiaries, Amazon Web Services, controls a dominating 32% of the cloud infrastructure market, providing massive data storage capabilities for several facets of the U.S. government.
Is it wise to have the heart of the American economy represented by a parasitic megacorporation — to have employees trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare, working endless hours in barren Amazon warehouses and lacking the most basic of rights? Amazon has repeatedly been issued citations for maintaining grueling working conditions in its warehouses, shortchanging employees’ checks and fostering open hostility towards unions.
Looking past the impressive origin story, the real face of Amazon becomes clear, and it is not pretty. The Federal Trade Commission, in partnership with 17 U.S. states, has been impelled to sue Amazon for “illegally maintaining monopoly power.” The case claims, among other practices, that Amazon biases search results to prefer its own products over those of higher quality. Amazon has previously been accused of overcharging small distributors while restricting their sales on other platforms. U. S. representatives have even called into question the efficacy of their own antitrust laws. In its need for ever greater profit margins, Amazon has become an overbearingly dominating force across many markets, and its ‘benevolent founder’ is not free from blame. Several internal sources claim that Bezos pioneered the same exclusionary practices during his 27-year stint as CEO, which ended in 2021.
Unfortunately, the government’s intervention in the Amazon problem seems to be an empty gesture, especially as government contracts and patronage represent part of Amazon Web Services’ revenue of over $90 billion. Many Americans find it hard to believe that the federal government is fighting the good fight against Amazon when the digital infrastructure of many government agencies, including the National Security Agency, U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Navy are serviced by Amazon Web Services. Our technological overlords at Amazon should have neither access to the databases of the most integral American intelligence agencies nor your personal information.
Amazon’s monopolistic behavior constantly seeks to redefine the relationship between “producer” and “consumer” — dehumanizing users into nothing more than potential sources of profit. We must refuse to offer our hard-earned money to a morally bankrupt conglomerate that uses its political and financial influence to increase its profit margins at the cost of its employees.
Amazon thrives on our convenience, but that convenience itself is, in turn, a form of exploitation. That exploitation takes the form of practicing wage slavery, overworking employees, crushing small businesses and increasingly controlling the market with no regard for fairness or ethics. Every dollar spent on Amazon strengthens its grip on the economy, fuels its exploitative practices and allows it to tighten its stranglehold.
But we are not powerless. By choosing to support local businesses, independent retailers and ethical alternatives, we can chip away at Amazon’s dominance. Every person able to participate should boycott all Amazon products from March 7–14. The question isn’t whether we can afford to boycott Amazon — it’s whether we can afford not to.
