Amazon has unbalanced everything.  This is not entirely Amazon’s fault - our own desire for speed, cheap products, and convenience at all costs have given rise to the company - but the reality of delivering on the infinite and immediate marketplace promise that Amazon has made is wrecking havoc on our economy, our definition of work, our bodies, and our environment.  

 

Amazon is remaking our world.  It has already remade our consumer experience: Mom and Pop stores have closed or radically remade themselves in Amazon’s image.  Right now, it is remaking our assumptions about the labor market, evoking the same struggles that industrial serfs and assembly line workers confronted in previous eras.  And it is starting to remake our fundamental environment, both in terms of changing the climate and the physical makeup of hyper-local communities unlucky enough to be chosen as a location for an Amazon warehouse.  

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​​​​​​​​​​​​Whats more, Amazon has continued to hone it's platform to maximize every little dark pattern and trick possible to keep us buying.  The costs of all that consumption, and the ways in which Amazon keeps us hooked, have been detailed again and again - though perhaps never so concisely as in the documentary Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy.  ​

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We can't let this happen.  We must break free! We should stop using anything related to Amazon, and use our power as consumers to curb some of the company's worst excesses.  In so doing, we can both target the league-leader in the new world of E-commerce and make a case for how consumption in 2024 can and must look different then it has in the past. 

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This site is a resource and an educational tool, without any particular delusions of grandeur about bringing an end to Amazon.  The number of boycotting people needed for Amazon to take notice, let alone to break their cosmic-level control of our current consumer reality, would be nearly impossible.  Even a ‘redeemed’ Amazon might not change that much - capitalism can not be harnessed to buy our way out of our current problems.   With all those caveats, please take the following pledge. Consider it a purchasing pledge, but also a pledge to think through your consumption and, hopefully, end up buying a little less shit, a little more in line with your values. 

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I pledge to not order anything from Amazon (or Amazon affiliates like Audible, Amazon Video, etc.) until the local warehouse or shop that would process my order is unionized, the truck that delivers my package is electric, and the company has taken Producer Responsibility for the products that it puts out into the world.  

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Yeah, that's basically the same as saying "I'll just boycott Amazon", but one does like to have a demand, doesn't one?! When you've done that, stick around and check out the longer Case against Amazon, and the Forum of ideas, workarounds, and alternatives.