Opinion: Amazon isn’t the ‘bad guy’

I spent $55 last night online shopping. It’s the holidays, and I was late to buy gifts for the people in my life, so I panicked and bought all of them in one sitting. I slipped into my mom’s room multiple times, guiltily clutching $10, $15, $20 at a time because I used her Amazon Prime account for convenience, the better prices, the wider selection, and the fast, reliable shipping.

That day Amazon didn’t seem to be the ‘bad guy’ everyone thinks it is; it had everything I needed, right when I needed it. However, their convenient services come with a price. Amazon employs despicable practices and has reached heights no company should ever reach– all things must be put into check. However, even though this is true, it’s not our job to do it. 

No company was better weathered for the Covid-19 pandemic than Amazon. In fact, Amazon has profited off the madness, doubling its total e-commerce sales in May of this year, according to Time.com. One would assume this massive boost in profits would translate to better working conditions for their one-million-plus workers deemed “essential” during the Covid epidemic. However, this is not the case. With massive protests still raging on to this day, people contest the unfair and often unsafe working environment in Amazon’s warehouses. According to The Verge, the most recent of these protests raged during Black Friday, where demonstrators made their voices heard across five continents.

Additionally, there is something fundamentally wrong about one of the richest companies in the world growing even richer in a time of crisis. At the same time, millions of Americans lose their jobs and struggle with eviction and growing poverty. While Amazon has boasted about their charity work during the epidemic on their blog “aboutamazon.com,” these amounts simply drop in the bucket of a company that has recently surpassed a net worth of over $1 trillion. Amazon could be doing more, yet profits still reign supreme above humanitarian efforts for this giant.

This brings me to my next point: no company, no conglomerate, no individual should be worth such an obscene amount of money. This level of centralized wealth destroys our competitive market because it lacks a better phrase, money talks. No small, independent online shopping website can stand a chance against this giant, dripping with obscene amounts of capital. 

Competition is a key component to our economy, and Amazon’s domination over every dissenting voice is a threat to American capitalism as we know it. Even if you are not a fan of capitalism, there are worse economic structures to which we could be subject – and Amazon is beginning to worsen the cracks in our already fragile system. 

Amazon likes to boast how it provides a platform for small businesses to showcase and sell their product. However, this too is a farce, for they engage in predatory practices that track these small businesses’ sales, copy their products, and reproduce them at far lower prices, running these businesses into the ground, according to the Patriot Act. This is the ultimate tale of villain-screws-over-the-underdog, and it has no place in America’s free-market economy. 

However, despite all of Amazon’s glaring faults, we continue to use its services. I’m no exception. I still stream The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with a fervent obsession. I still buy my friends’ holiday gifts with a Prime membership and two-day shipping. Here lies my final point: Amazon can undoubtedly improve greatly as a company; however, it is not our job to fix it, for that job lies with the government.

Amazon is undoubtedly a fantastic platform for the consumer, and thus deleting your Prime account sends a significant and unfortunately rare message. I commend anyone who takes this defiant step. However, we shouldn’t have to stop using a service that is arguably better than all others like it. That would be unfair to millions of Americans who rely on Amazon’s cheap groceries after acquiring Whole Foods in 2019. It is especially unfair to the Americans who are petrified to leave their homes in the wake of the pandemic and rely on Amazon’s contactless delivery to provide them with essentials. 

To enact real change against Amazon, a company to which over 112 million people pay an annual fee in the US alone needs more than just a few individuals canceling their accounts. We can’t just throw pebbles at the Hoover Dam. Widespread cancellation of Amazon accounts would be nearly impossible, considering how reliant we have become on its services. 

Therefore, the government is our last saving grace: it failed us in the first place through its lax laws on businesses. Their willingness to let horrible practices slide in the face of unbelievably huge profits is what allowed Amazon to grow into the giant it is today. Now only the government has the power to stop it in its tracks. 

Amazon, despite all of its faults, still isn’t the bad guy. It’s merely extending the system as far as it can go, utilizing every faucet made available to it by our lackadaisical government. When you let a toddler drive a car, the toddler is just going to do what is natural– drive the car into a tree. When the car is totaled, you can’t blame the child– you can only blame yourself for letting him get that far.

Utilize Amazon– it is an essential resource made available to you. But do not become complacent; always fight for the workers’ rights and the struggling small businesses, and vote for government practices that will chip away at this obscenely rich, swollen giant.