Would it be fair to ask coal miners in the early 20th century if they shop at the company store?

Large retail companies are ubiquitous in our society. It takes a certain degree of socioeconomic privilege to be able to choose not to buy things from them.

what a horrible excuse. there are plenty of other options to shop at than amazon, in fact you have to go out of your way and wait for your items to buy from amazon. the assertion that one has to be privileged to not buy from amazon is also silly, how many lower status people do you see shopping at amazon. capitalism fails when people don’t exercise their choices and hiding behind excuses like this is why people run around saying capitalism doesn’t work

Who cares?

Amazon is a great company in a lot of ways, not great in some other ways, and none of that has anything to do with my opinions on local governance.

Or as Yogi Berra might have put it, this Amazon story isn't really about Amazon anyway.

Because the reason you buy things on Amazon is because they get you the best deal and they get you the best deal because they get the best deals. They get the best deal by exploiting workers in American warehouses, exploiting workers in Chinese factories or exploiting the citizens of New York. Either way, exploitation gets you that deal. Those guys who aren’t as effective at exploitation as Amazon? Well, you don’t shop with them, do you?

Now if you weren’t a price or convenience-sensitive consumer who didn’t shop on Amazon out of moral conviction, I would at least respect your perspective. But if you shop on Amazon, I’m not sure you get to quote Yogi Berra.

My issue is not with Amazon.

This is about the game, not the player.

Though now I'm misquoting Ice T too...

I don't see the show stopping conflict around shopping on Amazon and also pushing for an improved political/market environment. Maybe we'll just be spending more per order... still on Amazon? If exploitation is systematically eliminated, the concept of a deal still exists.

Well, Yogi also said that if the world was perfect, it wouldn't be. So I keep shopping at Amazon.