I read Sean Kernan's story about Amazon's first sale this morning and it brought a flood of memories back to my first introduction to Amazon which was around 2008 or 2009.
I went to a prestigious college in the eastern part of North Carolina - aptly dubbed East Carolina University. OK, prestigious is a stretch, but ECU did consistently rank as one of the nation's top party schools in prestigious publishing powerhouses such as Playboy Magazine. I may have contributed to that ranking in some aspect, but I did manage to clean up and graduate!
After my freshman year I had to get a job, so I went to the gas station across the street from the school, The Campus Store, and started working as a cashier. I carried kegs for frat parties and the likes of Ryan Nyquist - a BMXer who lived down the street, sold packs of Swisher Sweets that would later be unrolled and emptied for some reason or another, and had fun locking the cooler doors at 2am just to watch drunk people come in and beg for another case of brews at 2:02.
I got "stung" one time by ALE (Alcohol Law Enforcement) who sent in an underage girl to buy a pack of cigarettes. I knew that if you ask someone who is working for ALE their age they have to tell you, so that was my go-to move! It was a question I'd asked hundreds of college kids and I used it to simply gauge the situation and see if I needed to actually ID them. So she comes in and my natural first question having never seen her before was, "How old are you?" She got a confused look and said, "Uhh, seventeen." I laughed and said sorry, have a good night.
The ALE officer came in afterward a little disgruntled and said I was getting around the rules. I said, "Whatever, I didn't sell to her." And that was that.
OK, back on track - that's not what this is about. Next to the gas station where I spent almost an entire third of my college career was the Campus Bookstore which was the "off-campus" bookstore. The employees came over a lot and I got to know them well. Fast-forward to a few months after I graduate and can't find a job, I find myself working for a newly opened bookstore in Virginia Beach as the Campus Bookstore sought to expand.
In college, I would go to the store next door and they'd help me find textbooks - I didn't know where they came from. Now I understood. Over the next few years my relationship with Amazon would grow way too close and I would become all too familiar with it.
Hence, my love and hate relationship with it.
As a critically thinking person with some semblance of ideals and morals about how things should work, I despise Amazon. Like, with a passion. Take, for example, AmazonBasics. On the surface it's great. They're basic things like power cables, batteries, even clothes and shoes. Some of them are even halfway decent products.
There's the story, though, of the person who needs work boots. In current times, a really good pair of boots that will last 10 years might cost $300. But a person making minimum wage and needs boots can't afford that, so they buy $100 AmazonBoots which last 1 year. After 10 years that person has spent $1,000 on boots instead of $300 if they'd bought the nicer pair.
I have my sights set on buying a pair of Cheaney's one day (they were mentioned in a Jack Reacher book so of course I want them). They're $350 and are a classic look that will never go out of style. I've spent thousands on several different shoes over the years, and somehow it's still hard to tell myself that the $350 Cheaney's are a more worthwhile investment. I do the same thing with clothes - I hate fast fashion for all of its societal detriments - but I keep buying cheap clothes because it's hard-earned money that I don't want to spend.
On a different note, there's the person who wants to sell something. Their market is small so they begin selling via Amazon to sell more products. By selling on Amazon they are able to sell more goods and make more money.
However, Amazon sees this item selling really well so they make some simple modifications and start selling their own version or some other reseller does and makes it cheaper.
A vicious cycle is created where products are made more cheaply, people who can't afford good products pay more than people who can, and people have to work harder to make less - all the while, there's a small population at the top who are reaping the benefits of all of this, living a padded, comfortable life.
There was a post or comic I saw recently; the gist was this: society looks down on someone "selling their body" through sex, while someone at a warehouse does back-breaking work 8 or 10 hours a day to make a minimum wage paycheck for the benefit of shareholders and executives who make tenfold what they do while they sit in comfortable chairs or even run algorithms while they're playing video games or are out on the golf course. Work smarter, not harder, right?
What concerns me most often is the seemingly increasing number of people who don't understand what happens behind the scenes - or simply don't care. Whether it's where books come from or coffee beans for daily coffee. Some people get upset about using leather in products, but honestly, if treated properly it will last for years and is much more environmentally friendly than using other materials.
Books are such a interesting resource. Inside a book is veritable Pandora's Box. An adventure, a story, a wealth of knowledge, a new skill. When you buy a book you're not buying paper and ink, you're buying an experience.
Publishers can, and should, make a profit for helping put that knowledge into a neat package. Resellers make a little money for bringing the product in, providing a space to explore that resource, and organizing it in a way that you can find what you're looking for.
And it's people that need to understand that process. By understanding how a resource was presented to you - whether it's the pages of a book or the coffee you're drinking while you read the book - we can make better decisions as to where our hard-earned dollars go.
When I walk into a small business I try to never pull out my phone to check prices elsewhere. I ask for the owner's expertise and thank them for providing something they care about.
When I search on Amazon, I'll check the Used & New section to see if I can buy directly from a reseller who has a good rating and seems to respond to their customers so they can make a profit - or I'll see if they have their own online store and purchase direct.
I love that we are more connected with the world around us these days. In the palm of my hand is a cell phone and I can find information about just about anything I want - where things come from, how a product was made, and I can decide where my dollars are going.
I hate that it's incredibly easy to buy many things on Amazon, that many people don't have the ability to look into every product they buy, and that buying 10 cheap things will end up costing more than 1 expensive thing.
In Matrix Revolutions, Councillor Hamann takes Neo down to the engineering sublevels where no one is and remarks:
"That's how it is with people. Nobody cares how it works as long as it works."
I wish more people cared how things work. By caring how things work, we begin to care about the people that make things work. And by caring about the people that make things work we can put ourselves in their shoes and see that they might need some new ones.
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