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Amazon
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Don't use amazon !
The money you spent in a billionaire owned shop is less money for family owned shop in your community. Not only it transfer tons of wealth to billionaire, but having a nice neighbourhood bookstore, and other small business nearby is a real improvement to your local community and everyone benefits from it.
The sad thing is that at least here in Germany they are becoming the only option for more and more products. Most of the things I ordered in the last few years I couldn’t have gotten locally. Often my only other option is a different soulless and ethically questionable online retailer that asks a 30% higher price, uses the worst delivery service in the country and is just as much of a threat to family owned stores.
This mainly applies to movies on DVD and BluRay but I even had to order some semi-exotic cooking ingredients from Amazon because nobody in my medium sized city has them in stock.
I just wanted to buy safety pins. I couldn't find any. Looked at the supermarket, dm even mall like stuff like Galaria Kaufhof, nothing. The only place at that time I could buy some was amazon or as you said, another soulless online retailer with the worst shipping companies.
I go to great lengths to not use Amazon but in the US, unless you live in a large urban area Amazon and Walmart have systematically run most smaller, neighborhood retailers out of business already. If I wanted to go to a bookstore that wasn't a Barnes and Noble, I would need to drive about an hour and a half.
No, I wouldn't support someone's family. I would support a large national or international chain. Where I live, family-owned stores have disappeared way over a decade ago. I'll gladly spend a bit more to support a small store but if I have the choice between three different soulless and faceless corporations, I'll put my own financial interests first. There's exactly two things that I can still buy from independent stores: vinyl records and board games. In the game store I'm a regular to the point where the owners greet me by name and offer me a drink as soon as I walk through the door.
I think you misunderstood. I didn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to support family-owned businesses.
I would LOVE to support small businesses. But there are almost none left where I live and the few that are still there are so important to me that I‘m basically friends with the owners.
The only real choice I have left for most things is between Amazon, the German Amazon equivalent Otto and a few big chains like Müller, Kaufland and MediaMarkt-Saturn. Neither of them are small businesses by any definition. Between those and only those I pick the cheapest because in those cases my wallet matters more than which rich asshole I dislike the most.
And no, that’s not because I ruined small businesses. For the longest time I’ve made an effort to buy as much from small businesses as I could. But that option is gone.