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Comment by mycologos | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is, to me, a glaring example of just how little people are willing to translate outrage over capitalism and wage slavery into voting with their feet. I've literally heard people trash Amazon's labor practices, admit that they've been Prime members for years and will continue using them, and then express hope that the government will step in and do something to Amazon. Since many of these people are individuals I like on a personal level, I don't push on this, but there's something disturbingly infantile about it.

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It's not infantile to believe that one of the roles of government should be to protect individuals from the gargantuan power amassed by corporations. There is no way to avoid capitalism through personal responsibility.

I agree that it's reasonable to ask one's government to intervene against a powerful and possibly monopolistic corporation. However, I think this should be accompanied by the personal responsibility of avoiding that corporation. I'm sure there are people that really rely on Amazon deliveries, but for most consumers it comes down to it being slightly cheaper and slightly more convenient. It seems like such a small amount of personal responsibility to ask of people to divest from this particular company if they think it's bad.

Most consumers expect that all available options in the marketplace comply with all regulations, and then make a surface level decision on the best option. So if there’s a company that is not competing in a fair way, there should be regulation to limit unfair behaviour (imo) -- otherwise every consumer needs to know every detail about every company and process and purchase with integrity.

Look up the phrase "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism."

We live in a time when the economic power of the middle class is eroding rapidly, and being able to order cheaper goods from Amazon with fast free shipping was a huge benefit even before we started living through a global pandemic.

It would take a truly staggering percentage of people around the world to choose to boycott Amazon before they actually started feeling it—and that wouldn't even touch some of their other major sources of revenue, like AWS, which provides it with a lot of income these days.

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