📦 Today is the day I am quitting Amazon Prime
Talk about hometown pride, now Amazon closed the Whole Foods in my neighborhood, the most populated neighborhood in the city and two blocks from a popular and profitable QFC (Kroger).
Today is the day I am quitting Amazon Prime.
Yes it’s incredible and convenient and maybe a great deal and comes with “can’t miss” TV content and other free tech services, but it’s not good for us.
Amazon enables us to think everything is cheap and easy and disconnects us from the people in our communities trying to provide unique, local, sustainable solutions to life.
Amazon provides small businesses a platform to sell their creations to the masses at the same time it copies successful products and sells them under the Amazon Basics brand.
Amazon employs more than 1 in 10 Seattle residents as a tech or corporate worker and pays many of them multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars each per year to help improve the system. Seattle’s median income has increased about 43% since 2010 ($85k to $110k).
Amazon attracts employees from all over the world to a city with limited land and housing, displacing existing Seattle residents and increasing the cost of housing for all, driving a luxury housing, food and entertainment culture in the city that isn’t affordableble for all to enjoy.
Amazon spends a tiny percent of its massive profits on social efforts to provide housing while it funds political candidates and bills that counter the progressive ideas put forth by our citizens.
Amazon is constantly chasing the next shiny thing, testing products and stores and then letting them die when their leadership changes, leaving customers that are no longer a priority in the dark.
Amazon built some very cool biome spheres in the middle of its downtown campus that are only for employees to enjoy while globalization continues to deforest the actual Amazon Rainforest. (They do graciously invite the public in a few charitable days per year.)
I have nothing personally against Amazon employees and I am not claiming to quit Amazon altogether, sometimes you need some obscure random thing now.
But I have been working to remove Amazon from my life since I posted about it in February and it has actually been fun! I plan to share more details but here are a few thoughts on reducing dependence on Amazon:
🛍️ Shopping local is fast and fun. Amazon can get it to you tomorrow, but local shops can get it to you today. Having a curated limited selection available is amazing because you can trust their merchandisers and ask experts questions about your choices rather than “doing research” online for hours.
📦 Buying directly from online shops is a more curated, fun shopping experience, and benefits the sellers who don’t have to give up to a 30% cut to Amazon. Many offer free shipping, and checking out with Shop App or PayPal is just as easy as Buy it Now on Amazon.
🛒 The best way to start weening yourself off of Amazon is to stop clicking Buy it Now. Use it to a shop around and add things to your cart, but let them sit for a bit. Think about where else you could buy them and you may find yourself stopping there as you go about your day.
💬 Alexa sucks and you know it. I don’t have one anymore and I have enjoyed figuring out the best ways to make my smart home work smoothly without it. While I trust that they are not listening, I am glad there’s no longer an active mic in my home. I’ll tell you about my smart home soon.
📺 If you’re hooked on Prime TV, they offer a video-only subscription for $8.99/month.
If you like free music from Amazon, you aren’t paying the artists. If you want human creativity rather than recycled AI music in the future, we are going to have to pay artists. Spotify isn’t much better for artists but it’s my top choice today. I haven’t tried Tidal, Bandcamp or SoundCloud but there are options that have better revenue models for creators.
That’s all for now, thank you for reading! You can read my previous writing about this here: https://www.facebook.com/share/16gDGmgp92/?mibextid=wwXIfr
