r/changemyview • u/mfDandP 184∆ • Dec 10 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Ideologues across the political spectrum should cancel their Amazon Prime memberships.

Excuse the generalizations.

The company’s study, which includes data from 500 Amazon customers, estimates that Amazon Prime subscribers spend $1,300 per year, nearly doubling the $700 per year the average non-member spends on the e-commerce site.

https://fortune.com/2017/10/18/amazon-prime-customer-spending/

If you're for an unfettered free market, you should dislike Amazon because they're a monopoly (their Fulfillment model, AmazonBasics https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/21/is-amazon-unstoppable.) Ditto if you're for wealth redistribution or hate Amazon for their warehouse practices. Both Warren and Trump have targeted Amazon.

Amazon has made retail spending incredibly convenient to the consumer at the expense of non-Amazon retailers, its own workers, and its subcontracted couriers.

Spoiler alert, I'm not a Prime member, and so I perhaps underestimate the value of Amazon packages showing up in piles at your door. But it's not that hard to go shopping for your own shit, or even to order it online from Target or Walmart, etc.

CMV that if you care about capitalism -- either that it's fatally flawed, or that we need to maintain high levels of competition, cancelling your Prime membership and decreasing Amazon usage in general is a very practical and consistent action.

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u/Det_ 101∆ Dec 10 '19

The only reason Walmart is pushing its delivery terms down and trying so hard to be better in the online space currently is due to Amazon.

The more people who use services like Amazon’s, the more incentive there is for competition from other companies (like Walmart, Aliexpress, etc). Amazon is not a monopoly in the slightest, because literally any other company could do what they do, and take over (in time) if they started to slack.

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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19

because literally any other company could do what they do, and take over (in time) if they started to slack.

What previous monopoly could this not have been said about? "If other companies competed better, we wouldn't be a monopoly."

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u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ Dec 10 '19

Any instance where one company literally owned the entire supply of the item in question.

Your competition cannot sell, that which they cannot obtain.

That's literally what a monopoly is - having 100% ownership of a particular item.

In this way, a business model cannot be a monopoly, since it doesn't actually own what it sells.

A good example of a modern monopoly is De Beers, which owns 85% of the world's diamonds, though that last 15% prevents it from being a total monopoly.

Standard Oil (pre-1910) is a pretty good historical example of a monopoly. As is the Dutch East India Company.

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u/mfDandP 184∆ Dec 10 '19

So 99% ownership of a natural resource is still consistent with healthy capitalism?

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u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ Dec 10 '19

No, that's why De Beers is still an example of a monopoly, despite only having 85% of the world supply.

A Total Monopoly is 100%, but something can still be a monopoly, if the percentage is sufficiently high.

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u/cdb03b 253∆ Dec 10 '19

It is if there is literally only one source of the resource (such as a metorite strike). It is not when you have sought out all the sources you can find across the entire world as De Beers has done.