Fruitlessly Dealing with Amazon

Amazon is ... well, it does not do the company justice to call it the "biggest name in retail."  However online retail got started, Amazon has taken it to another level.  You could be a total shut-in and, unless you enjoy the fun of walking around in stores, you could have whatever you could afford, delivered to you and not miss a thing.

Thing is, I didn't have to write that.  You use Amazon, same as I do.  Even you, the Russians who inexplicably read this column, you all probably use it somehow over there.  Bully for you and your borscht.

Everyone uses it, we get it.

Amazon is the brainchild of Jeff Bezos, who now owns the Washington Post, among other things. The Post, as we know, is a particularly obnoxious and heavily biased left-wing paper, which has dropped all journalistic standards by letting its reporting be influenced by its editorial page.  Once known for the Sousa march and now for its comical motto, "Democracy Dies in Darkness", the Post is now also known for its inability to say a good thing about President Trump and slavering loyalty to Hillary Clinton.

Oh, yeah, and the fact that their reporting, such as it is, is done solely by leftist "journalists."  And, of course, the fact that Jeff Bezos owns the paper.

There are plenty of times that I have exercised commercial judiciousness by boycotting products in certain cases.  I have been, throughout my life, a fervent anti-smoker.  As Philip Morris (now the "Altria Group" was buying companies unrelated to tobacco, I would decide simply not to buy those companies' products, same as I did when R.J. Reynolds owned Nabisco.  I did not buy Miller beer or Oreos or a variety of other things while they were owned by tobacco companies.

At one time I was part of a video-teleconferencing practice that was in negotiations with American Tobacco, and I ultimately pulled the plug on it.  My ethics would have been so severely compromised that it made no sense to go forward; I could not have faced my children.

So you get the idea.  Jeff Bezos owns a contemptible leftist print medium, and he owns about a sixth of Amazon, which makes him about the richest man on earth.  Or close.  Who really cares?  So if I am used to applying economic actions in support of my political and moral beliefs, then what do I do here?

Well, here's the thing.  It would be easy to just say "But you have to use Amazon; there are other brands of beer and cookies, but there is only one Amazon", and rationalize the fact that they don't boycott them.  There is certainly enough truth in that.  I sure don't want to lose that access.  Besides, just this week I noticed that Hilton Hotels' frequent guest/points system had effectively turned over the redemption of its points to Amazon -- if you have a bunch of points and want to redeem them, you have to link your Amazon account and choose Hilton points as your currency.  They're like everywhere. 

But frankly, it's this -- what the heck can you do economically to Jeff Bezos?  The man is worth about $90 billion dollars, or at least his Amazon holdings are.  He can literally fund the entire Federal government for more than a week just on his own assets, and at the rate Washington spends, that's incredible.  I actually did the math, and my net worth would run the Federal government for 1.2 seconds.  Literally.

So why should I inconvenience myself when that would be, well, peeing in the wind considering what the difference in our respective assets might be?  Would I feel really good about it?  Not even all that much; the Post was what it was before Bezos got there, and it will be what it is when it finally, mercifully stops operating.  I'll just order those K-cups through Amazon, I guess.

So there you go.  I don't even know if any of that was a surprise.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.