Amazon Boycot March 7-14th | No Purchases. Its time to disrupt the system.
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It was. Explain why I should be confident that the money will still be there IF I get to retire?
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It's so bad and cyclical while just being unavoidable in some areas. On the map, you'll notice how heavily populated northern europe is compared to a lot of sparse areas which have less options. I'm in a relatively normal size town and there is one big box choice and maybe one defunct "local" store that's barely getting by.
I had to beg a guy in a corner shopping center "repair shop" for a small syringe of thermal paste when I ran out (I'm not fucking kidding, there's just no electronics store anywhere nearby, losing Radioshack was fucking hard). Dude at the shop was the only reason I didn't have to go online and wait a week (he wasn't selling it, just had spare for his own use). My trades and hobbies make this a common occurrence throughout the week. Most places now are forced to sell on Amazon to remain competitive (Amazon dominates with shipping cost reduction alone for large items), finding a local or even nationally based company through search algorithms becomes harder and harder as they can't pay to keep up with SEO bullshit. You can try to keep it all legit but with competitive monopolies everywhere you just eventually find out your favorite company no longer really exists.
There are some suppliers I could shop with but each one is an hour drive in different directions and 80% of the time they're ordering the same shit through the same companies I would be using if I went online. It works sometimes, but takes so much effort it becomes it's own full-time job that no one has the ability to keep up with.
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Amazon stuff is totally not literal garbage
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It's kinda sad, I've been back and forth with online ordering actually being a "logistical god-send" for our chaotic consumerism. I mean think about it, one full delivery truck that can bring in a full neighborhoods worth of goods for the week/day versus every single car being driven to only transport a portion or less of a trunk (sometimes driving out for even one item).
In a perfect "non-monopoly/Amazon couldn't exist world" where everyone could plan ahead and have everything shipped, you could save on store/display costs (including environmental) and just have a smaller distribution center from semi-trucks to box trucks for local deliveries. Could even go from box truck to local end point distribution (biking,etc) so city spaces could go car-less. Keep the local farmers/co-op markets for socializing/freshest produce-shipping and bob's your uncle.
Instead we have the worlds most horrific amalgamation where you have underpaid people in fucking V8 trucks delivering a few bags of groceries someone has "door dashed" from the local grocery store or just a burger from a local joint so they don't have to cook because they only have an hour of free time a day.
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To be frank,
Constructive criticism has not been well received by anyone lately as apparently everyone just sees it as flat criticism and with the rise of internet echo chambers for every group, criticism in any form immediately points you as an other to be ignored.
People of all walks only want to hear what is convenient and self confirming.And also, people are not ubermensch and do not just have a working plan that perfectly replaces this one the same way this one is ineffective. It will take conversation and community to figure out what works. No one can plan or act alone.
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Not necessarily. The employees of airlines have been quite impactful with partial, random strikes in a method called CHOAS. Not everyone will strike at the same time and their strikes only last a few hours- enough to cause problems for the flight they've been scheduled on. This hurts the company without harming too many customers and has been effective in the past as a strike strategy.
Think of a partial strike as a warning that more could follow if demands aren't meet.
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Tax-free growth, beating inflation, diversification to mitigate risk & lessen volatility (eg, not putting eggs all in 1 basket).
Markets always have risk: if you're really afraid of risk, you can shift to mostly low-risk types of investments (bonds, money market, cash equivalents, etc).
Real estate is typically considered riskier.Retirement isn't necessary: qualified distributions (no tax penalty) only require reaching a certain age or any of the many exceptions (including terminal illness).
Early distribution with tax penalty is always possible.It's all basic information a certified financial planner or advisor or some articles on the internet can tell you.
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I’m canceling Prime here in Brazil mostly because it’s getting more and more expensive, the selection of products with free shipping is getting smaller and I don’t even watch anything anymore on Prime Video. I realized the only reason I still have it is inertia from the good times when it costed me $2 a month—years ago.
It shows that Amazon was probably operating at a loss before to bankrupt the local competition, but now that they raised prices and offer less, it’s actually becoming a worse deal.
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I’ve been able to successfully degoogle, and recently came to terms that I need to deamazon too. It’s going to take quite a while. I’m a prime subscriber and use AWS.
I’m looking into Barnes and Nobel for future book purchases. I recently did a larger purchase online directly from the vendor instead of purchasing through Amazon. I plan to do more of that.
What’s been frustrating has been the small things. I needed a pill splitter, so I stopped at Walmart on the way home from work, dealt with some crowd and retraced my steps around the pharmacy a few times before I found it, then had to deal with self checkout. This would have been quicker and wasted less of my time to use Amazon. That’s going to be the hardest kind of benefit to give up.
AWS I’ll probably start migrating this summer. I’m planning to switch to Backblaze for cloud storage. I still need to look into an alternative registrar, and ideally very cheap static web hosting. I also need to find providers that have good ansible support since I use that for all my local and remote configuration.
It took years for me to get off Google. I worry it’s going to take even longer to give up Amazon, but yeah it’s time.
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Yeah the true crime has been how awful cut and beige all their clothing options are now. But they have always chased which ever group they think is in power and spending cash and I guess it's wannabe trad upper middle class now, instead of queer upper middle class.
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And why should I be confident that any of that is going to survive the next 4 years?
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sounds easy considering I haven't bought anything from Amazon in years
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Here's the thing. If I could shop somewhere else I would. Do you know what sets Amazon apart from other places? It's their delivery, pure and simple. I ordered 3 TV's from Best Buy. It took them a week to ship them. I had to pay for shipping on top of the $600 I spent. On the day I was supposed to receive them I was home all day. I got a notification they were an hour out. So I went outside and waited for them to arrive. They never arrived, but i got an email telling me they had stopped by but I wasn't home.
So I had to go down to their depot to pick them up. I am stuck using public transit so Imagine trying to get 3 40 inch TV's home on a bus. I ended up having to get a cab half way home with money I couldn't afford to spend just to get it all home.
So for me, That is the main reason I buy from Amazon. Although lately I've been shopping with Uber from Walmart.
And Fuck Purolator.
