The other side is a bit more complex, but Amazon is definitely subsidizing shipping costs from their yearly subscription and seller fees. The argument is that this is unfair to smaller companies which don't have capital to burn... and that is kind of true? I think there are valid points on both sides.
The fashionable thing to say, indeed!
Yet the anyones are all covertly buying from Amazon, working for Amazon, and investing in Amazon.
There are still some obscure items that, due to the sheer spread of Amazon, are incredibly difficult to get anywhere else, online or off - but that was Amazon's original market benefit to begin with. You could always get that weird book on Amazon that you couldn't get in the book store.
Even then, I was up to 1:00am in the morning a lot of times waiting for delivery slots to open. And then Amazon began releasing delivery slots incrementally throughout the day, which probably made it more equitable but also meant I had to constantly refresh the checkout page a dozen times an hour to get one instead of being quick on the draw after midnight.
Anyway, I’m not sure what your point is. You can hate something and still use it. Especially if that something actively made it much harder to not use it. It’s the same with made in USA goods. Most people crave them. But thanks to our government and corporations, it’s difficult to do it - or at least, do it affordably. Does that mean people prefer made in China? Or that they’re just posturing when they say they don’t like made in China? No.
Unless you're getting your reviews from friends and family, you should still probably wonder if they're fake.
A bigger market is a good thing, and something to encourage. By supporting broken/longer IP laws, software patents, and local-favoring of distributors, Amazon encourages a smaller, more centralized, more broken market.
For example, Seattle rebuilt and renamed the old Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena. While I am a more ardent environmentalist than most (my virtue signalling duly noted) this name is a local pinnacle of vacuous virtue signalling nonsense.
The phrase's roots come from the alt-right looking for a replacement for SJW accusations not being taken seriously:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22Virt...
For example, a peacock's tail is a honest fitness signal -- it does take a lot of effort to maintain (in food and vulnerability) so it serves as a good signal for fitness.
Naming an existing place after a virtue you want to pretend to hold is an empty virtue signal.
Rezoning the city to reduce car traffic would be a honest virtue signal for the same virtue.
"Empty" is usually dropped from "empty virtue signaling", because why bother.
Alt-right association or origin don't make the phrase automatically invalid. You could even say pretending that it does is itself a virtue signaling in the derogatory sense.
Not really. I see the accusation used almost exclusively to refer to any time someone deliberately associates themselves publicly with any view that is opposed by the viewer. It's literally just a meaningless accusation thrown at someone who disagrees with you about something.
And since I pointed out my own virtue signal, have I marginalized myself with abnormal behavior?
/s, obviously.
Not really. It was called Key Arena before because Key Bank funded it. It was good advertising for them. The buildings on college campuses are also named after their donors. It acknowledges who paid for it.
Names can also just be for fun, like the Seattle Space Needle. The Emerald City is also the official nickname for Seattle.
Climate Pledge Arena is about as fun as "eat your broccoli, it's good for you."
And also, the whole reason Amazon named it that is because they are pledging to make the arena powered by renewable energy. You can certainly argue how significant that is, but it certainly doesn’t seem all that different from buying a park and naming it after climate change.
I've said my piece. It's up to the readers to make up their own minds.
At the same time, I also realize that there are plenty of good things about their existence, as someone who grew up in an area without a good library.
Being good for a specific thing that is partially their fault (Amazon supports terrible intellectual property laws as much as any big company with their political donations, which prevents the market from being able to function efficiently; there's no reason Chinese sellers shouldn't be able to print out-of-print technical books, for example) doesn't make them good, or make me hate them any less.
I don't buy from Amazon, and I don't invest in Amazon, and I don't work for Amazon. I'm relatively consistent, but even people who aren't consistent aren't hypocrites for participating in society when they disagree with how it functions.
I think that voting isn't ideal, but I still vote, because it's available. This is pretty natural; it isn't some shocking abandonment of moral principles. Nor is using a company's services despite it being an awful actor in society because you can't afford anything else (partially because of their position and participation in society, which is worth pointing out).
I'm as capitalistic as anybody, but Amazon's a bad actor that's contributing to the destruction of capitalism by encouraging intellectual property laws and making political donations encouraging ending things that actually help the market like ePacket.
Rural voters are actually far more progressive than many people might think (over half of them are in favor of M4A, if we take polls of rural states at face value), but they vote based on the party line rather than who actually represents their interests. This is partially because of the destruction of education in rural states.
The same is true for citizens all over the country. Dianne Feinstein repeatedly kept flying a confederate flag over SF's city hall during the 80s, for example, but she's never lost a race; tell me that represents the will of the people: https://www.newspapers.com/image/460776332/
More generally, my limited understanding of French politics is that they have a very strong agricultural interest that's disproportionate to the populace, similar to the US. The limited news I read about French domestic politics indicates that their government generally accommodates and subsidizes non-urban citizens, much like ours does.
Edit: Here's the (Amazon) quote about rural concerns:
> Amazon said the legislation, adopted by parliament but not yet enacted, would punish those in rural areas who cannot easily visit a bookstore and rely on delivery.
(I'm in the US, visiting from a US IP address.)
"Dating wall" perhaps? Whether it's asking you to pay up, or just to register an account, it's still asking you to enter into a relationship with the content provider, and you bounce off because you'd rather not have that relationship.
Relationships are a burden, there's only so many one can keep track of.
I'd really like a plugin that will override styles on links to sites on a list I get to keep.
* Accepting Amazon's claim: this strikes me more as the removal of a rural subsidy (cheap delivery to hard to reach places, Amazon skipping out on every tax they can to lower prices) than the imposition of an urban one. Maybe a distinction without difference economically, but it's an important political distinction.
* Not accepting the claim: wouldn't this support rural bookstores? Amazon's conceit here is that people want convenience, which a local rural bookstore surely provides over an urban one for rural dwellers. Whether they "compete" with urban bookstores is sort of a red herring, given that (small) bookstores qua businesses tend to be labors of passion that aren't looking to edge out some distant urban competitor. That doesn't mean they can (or should) go broke, just that the economics aren't necessarily a dog fight between rural and urban.
(This is all purely hypothetical, and explaining how the statement could be true. Probably it isn't, since there's no way an indie bookstore competes on price with Amazon.)
Rural areas have a mix of the estates of the top net worth individuals and the laborers who work there. The wealthy are subsidized along with the working class. It makes more sense to stop subsidizing the rural areas entirely and then pay the working class fair wages.
As for defending the rural areas with force, that's the whole point of having a national military - it's not like we're going to forcibly conscript everyone just because they happen to live in the region.
how much of a difference does urban / rural divide make in France regarding such effects?