It’s Time to Boycott Amazon
In 1994 ex wall street businessman Jeff Bezos founded a small company, by the name of Relentless, ran from the garage of his Bellevue estate in Washington. The company dispatched books to customers who were able to browse the collection using the internet, a global network still in its prototype years. The name was swiftly changed to Amazon and by 1997, just three years after the company’s inception, the shares skyrocketed to a total of $54 million. The following year sees Amazon moving away from selling purely books, widening its demographic but temporarily resulting in an annual net loss. No problem, let’s fast forward to 2006, where the company is now worth $0.25 billion. A decade later and Amazon crosses the $1 billion margin, catching up to the giants: Apple and Google. And as of September 2020, Jeff Bezos is worth $113 billion and Amazon over $1 trillion — valued at the most profitable company in history. If it were a country, it would have the 56th highest GDP on the planet.
What started out as an innocent online bookstore in Washington, has become a vacuum that sucks dry its workers, local businesses and smaller firms. The company has morphed into a killing machine that scoops up and picks clean any smaller company in its way, hoovering up every last drop of cash. The company is among many in attempting to dodge tax, and floats its extra profit ‘upstairs’ leaving thousands of workers on less-than-minimum wage. If that wasn't bad enough, the workers are often subjected to horrendous labour environments with little to no break time — all so that you can be spoon-fed next day delivery.
Lets begin with the benefits of Amazon. You can order anything, you can order it cheaply, and you can receive it within a day. These are pretty good and there’s no denying that. With Amazon, you don’t even have to leave your bed to obtain your weekly food shop. Nonetheless, these all have one thing in common, they are benefits to you, but at the expense of others.
In 4 US states, Amazon is in some of the top companies to have workers rely on food stamps. In certain Amazon warehouses, such as the Staten Island warehouse, injury rates are dangerously high, with workers required to scan parcels at a rate of 30 per minute. This is a mandated rate, that is constantly monitored by surveillance technology that stretches as far as a GPS wrist tracker in some warehouses. Workers are reportedly fired if they fail to reach these rates. The well-being of these people matters and cannot be disregarded for the simple motive of profit.
What about jobs though, surely Amazon creates innumerable jobs? This is true, Amazon does create thousands of jobs globally, only it kills off many more. There are over 4000 purchases every minute on Amazon, which massively outranks any other retailer on the planet, either online or in shop. People are continually swayed by the cheap prices Amazon provides, such that high street chains and local businesses are continually put under financial pressure. A number of renowned high street shops have gone into administration since 2019, undoubtedly caused in part by Amazon’s dominance. For example by the end of 2020, Vodafone is set to close 1100 stores across Europe and Africa, resulting in huge redundancies.
If we take a trip down memory lane, we find that the story is the same. Who remembers Toys R Us? Not so long ago it was the UK’s biggest toy company, and one of the largest in America, but in late 2017 it filed for bankruptcy, with 31,000 jobs lost in the U.S and 7000 in the UK. For those who are curious, the sales of toys on Amazon in 2017 was over $5.4 billion, compared with a loss of $36 million by Toys R Us. Coincidence? Undoubtedly this was one of the most critical factors leading to the destruction of a well known high street toy shop. This is one instance in a sea of many.
With the COVID19 pandemic, Amazon stocks have further increased as the need to buy online becomes more important. This highlights how perfectly Amazon has exploited the market. Where other companies suffer, Amazon thrives.
Amazon brainwashes the consumer with the perverse notion that cheaper is better. That convenience is better. The culture that it has created has lead us to become so determined on finding the cheapest and quickest way of getting what we desire, that we ignore how we get it. Amazon teaches us that we should prioritize our obsessive need for the cheapest-way-around, over the well-being of those delivering it to us. This is an inherently immoral principle. On the current trajectory, high street shops will become fewer, those jobs will disappear. Local businesses will become even rarer and constantly under pressure. Meanwhile the Amazon profits will continually surge upwards.
Much like its former namesake, the company really is relentless.
